"Year of the Cat" is the title track of the 1976 album Year of the Cat

Year of the Cat

Year of the Cat is the seventh studio album by Al Stewart, released in 1976 and engineered by Alan Parsons; it is considered his masterpiece, its sales helped by the hit single "Year of the Cat," "one of those 'mysterious woman' songs," co-written by Peter Wood...

by singer-songwriter

Singer-songwriter

Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...

 Al Stewart

Al Stewart

Al Stewart is a Scottish singer-songwriter and folk-rock musician.Stewart came to stardom as part of the British folk revival in the 1960s and 1970s, and developed his own unique style of combining folk-rock songs with delicately woven tales of the great characters and events from history.He is...

, which album was recorded at Abbey Road Studios

Abbey Road Studios

Abbey Road Studios is a recording studio located at 3 Abbey Road, St John's Wood, City of Westminster, London, England. It was established in November 1931 by the Gramophone Company, a predecessor of British music company EMI, its present owner...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 in January 1976 by engineer Alan Parsons

Alan Parsons

Alan Parsons is a British audio engineer, musician, and record producer. He was involved with the production of several significant albums, including The Beatles' Abbey Road and Let It Be, as well as Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon for which Pink Floyd credit him as an important contributor...

 and released in July 1976. The "Year of the Cat" single reached #8 on the Hot 100

Billboard Hot 100

The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...

 in Billboard

Billboard (magazine)

Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...

in March 1977. Although technically Stewart's 1978 single "Time Passages

Time Passages (song)

"Time Passages" is the title of a 1978 Top Ten hit by singer Al Stewart which was the title track for Stewart's 1978 album release, produced by Alan Parsons. Reaching #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in December 1978, "Time Passages" also spent ten weeks at #1 on the Billboard Easy Listening...

" is his career record with a #7 peak, "Year of the Cat" has remained Stewart's signature recording receiving regular airplay on both classic rock

Classic rock

Classic rock is a radio format which developed from the album-oriented rock format in the early 1980s. In the United States, the classic rock format features music ranging generally from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, primarily focusing on the hard rock genre that peaked in popularity in the...

 and folk rock

Folk rock

Folk rock is a musical genre combining elements of folk music and rock music. In its earliest and narrowest sense, the term referred to a genre that arose in the United States and the UK around the mid-1960s...

 stations. The track is noted for its lengthy instrumental sections - in fact, from the 6:40 album version, over four minutes of the song is spent on instrumentals, including a long solo that encompasses cello, Violin, piano, acoustic guitar, distorted electric guitar, Synthesizer, and saxophone. The transition from acoustic guitar to electric to saxophone was initiated by Tim Renwick. Parsons had Phil Kenzie add the saxophone part of the song — and by doing so transformed the original folk concept into the jazz-influenced ballad that put Al Stewart onto the charts.

Shorter versions of the track can be found on some European 7" single formats. Though both of the discs carry the same label and catalogue number (RCA PB 5007), the French single features the A side track clocking at 4'30", the Italian one features an even shorter mix of just 3'30" so that the lengthy instrumental intro is completely missing.

Co-written by Peter Wood, "Year of the Cat" is a narrative song written in the second person

Second-person narrative

The second-person narrative is a narrative mode in which the protagonist or another main character is referred to by employment of second-person personal pronouns and other kinds of addressing forms, for example the English second-person pronoun "you"....

 whose protagonist is a tourist in an exotic market where a mysterious silk-clad woman appears to carry him away for a gauzy romantic adventure. On wakening the next day beside her, the tourist realizes, with equanimity, that his tour bus is gone and he has lost his ticket. He will be staying on for a while.

The song "Year of the Cat" began as "Foot of the Stage" a song written by Stewart in 1966 after seeing a performance by comedian Tony Hancock

Tony Hancock

Anthony John "Tony" Hancock was an English actor and comedian.-Early life and career:Hancock was born in Southam Road, Hall Green, Birmingham, England, but from the age of three was brought up in Bournemouth, where his father, John Hancock, who ran the Railway Hotel in...

 whose patter about "being a complete loser" who might as well "end it all right here" drew laughs from the audience: Stewart's intuitive response that Hancock was in genuine despair led to the writing of "Foot of the Stage". It was the melody for this never recorded song which Stewart set the lyrics of "Year of the Cat" to in 1975: pianist Peter Wood was given a co-writing credit on the song in recognition of his constructing the classic piano riff on the recorded track.

Subsequent to the entry of the "Year of the Cat" single on the US charts the track afforded Stewart a major hit in Australia (#13), Belgium/Flemish Region (#7), Canada (#3), Italy (#5), the Netherlands (#6) and New Zealand (#15): in the UK, where the single had been overlooked on its original July 1976 release, renewed interest in the track was evident in a Top 40 chart entry although interest leveled off outside the Top 30 with a #31 peak in January 1977. "Year of the Cat" would remain Stewart's sole chart single in his native UK.

The song appears in the film version of Running with Scissors

Running with Scissors (film)

Running with Scissors is a 2006 American comedy-drama film based on Augusten Burroughs' 2002 memoir of the same name, written and directed by Ryan Murphy, and starring Joseph Cross, Annette Bening, Brian Cox, Joseph Fiennes, Evan Rachel Wood, Alec Baldwin, Jill Clayburgh, and Gwyneth Paltrow with...

(2006) and in the film Radiofreccia

Radiofreccia

Radiofreccia, released in 1998, is the first movie directed by Italian rock singer-songwriter Luciano Ligabue, based on his 1997 debut novel Fuori e dentro il Borgo....

(1998), the directorial debut of Italian rock star Luciano Ligabue

Luciano Ligabue

Luciano Ligabue , more commonly known as Ligabue or Liga, is an Italian rock singer-songwriter, film director and writer.-Biography:...

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Another version of the song, also performed by Stewart, appears on Volume 1 of the Cities 97 Sampler

Cities 97 Sampler

The Cities 97 Sampler is a series of albums containing "live in studio" recordings from radio station Cities 97 in Minneapolis, Minnesota...

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