Al Stewart - Year of the Cat
On October 22, 1976, "Year of the Cat", Al Stewart's seventh studio album, was released.
The mid-1970s found Scottish-British singer, guitarist and songwriter Al Stewart at a critical crossroads in his career. For nearly a decade, from his debut album Bedsitter Images in 1967 through acclaimed albums such as Love Chronicles in 1969, which featured Jimmy Page and Richard Thompson, and Zero She Flies in 1970, Stewart had established a unique position in the London folk-rock scene. While his contemporaries wrote confessional songs about personal heartbreak, Stewart developed a literary and cinematic style of writing on his subsequent albums, Orange in 1972 and, most notably, the historical masterpiece Past, Present and Future in 1973, which came to be known as historical folk. But by 1975, Stewart felt that the familiar acoustic formula had exhausted itself, and decided to cross the Atlantic Ocean and settle in sunny California in search of a new and broader musical horizon.
The decisive turning point came on his sixth album, "Modern Times" from 1975, when he first teamed up with the young sound engineer and producer Alan Parsons, the man who had already left his historic mark at Abbey Road Studios on timeless masterpieces such as "Abbey Road" and "Let It Be" by the Beatles, and especially on the masterpiece "The Dark Side of the Moon" by the Pink Floyd. The initial connection between the two paved the way for the ambitious vision of "Year of the Cat". In January 1976, Stewart and Parsons gathered at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in London, joined by a select battery of great players, led by electric guitarist Tim Renwick, acoustic guitar and keyboard virtuoso Peter White who had then joined Stewart's regular backing band, keyboardist Peter Wood, bassist George Ford and drummer Stuart Elliott from the band "Cockney Rebel". Additional vocal arrangements and arrangements were later recorded at Davlen Sound Studios in North Hollywood, California, with the participation of Ambrosia frontman David Pack, and composer Andrew Powell, who was entrusted with the rich string arrangements.
Under Alan Parsons' baton, Stewart's sound underwent a spectacular metamorphosis. Parsons enveloped Stewart's soft, intimate, and precise voice in crystalline, wide-ranging layers of sound, combining British folk-rock with progressive pop, elegant jazz touches, and symphonic orchestrations. To give the songs an unprecedented emotional and dramatic volume, Parsons recruited saxophonist Phil Kenzie, who brought with him a warm, rough, and sensual sound that became one of the album's hallmarks. The quality of the recording and mixing on the album reached such a high level of acoustic perfection that for decades the record served as a permanent demo album for prestigious audio systems around the world.
The album opens with "Lord Grenville," a mesmerizing five-minute historical ballad that tells the story of the last and lost battle of the sixteenth-century English admiral Sir Richard Grenville and his ship the Revenge against the vast Spanish fleet in 1591. Rather than portraying the battle as a heroic war anthem, Stewart paints a poetic and melancholic portrait of the passing of time and empires sinking into the depths of oblivion, as gentle acoustic guitar riffs blend with Powell's majestic string arrangement and Renwick's soaring electric guitar solo.
Immediately following comes the rhythmic and sweeping single "On the Border", which takes the listener to a warm, sunny, and mysterious Mediterranean atmosphere, with stories of arms smugglers, fishermen, and mist on the water. The song is led by Peter White's virtuoso Spanish guitar work, which combines with Elliott's tight drum beat, rich background vocals, and accordion playing that gives the song a distinctly European cinematic flavor.
The musical journey continues with "Midas Shadow", a cynical and wise song about the lonely price of wealth and the pursuit of material success, adorned with a brilliant slide guitar solo by Renwick and rhythmic keyboards. It is followed by "Sand in Your Shoes", a light and airy piece with a country-folk flavor and lively violin playing by Bobby Bruce, telling the story of a country girl who leaves her home for the bright lights of Paris and London. The first side of the record is closed by "If It Doesn't Come Naturally, Leave It", a rhythmic and optimistic rock song that presents a liberated philosophical approach to life, and boasts the first saxophone solo on the album by Kenzie that elevates the track to new heights.
The second side of the album opens with one of Stewart's most beautiful and moving songs ever, "Flying Sorcery". The song is a romantic and poetic tribute to legendary pilot Amelia Earhart and the aviation pioneers of the early 20th century, using the terms of flight and biplanes as a metaphor for adventurous and untamable love. The delicate piano, soaring strings and melodic electric guitar solo create a real feeling of floating above the clouds. It is followed by "Broadway Hotel", a dark, theatrical and dramatic piece with Graham Smith's bluesy harmonica, followed by "One Stage Before", a complex and atmospheric psychological work about memory, alienation and introspection, which gradually builds from a tense silence to a broad orchestral climax.
The album reaches its absolute climax in the epic six-minute, forty-second closing track, the immortal theme song Year of the Cat. The song was born from a mesmerizing, rolling piano melody that keyboardist Peter Wood composed during a sound check for a joint performance by Stewart with the band "Fairport Convention". Stewart walked past Wood, was immediately captivated by the piano motif, and decided to write completely new lyrics for it. The song's early incarnation began back in 1966 as a humorous ballad about British comedian Tony Hancock, but one morning in California Stewart saw his partner's Vietnamese astrology book open to the page for the "Year of the Cat", the Vietnamese equivalent of the Chinese Year of the Rabbit, while the classic film Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart, was playing on television.
From this coincidence, Stewart weaves a sensual cinematic fantasy about a tourist wandering a sun-drenched Moroccan market, and meeting a mysterious woman in captivating silk who leads him away from the tour bus into a timeless adventure where time itself loses meaning. Musically, the song is a breathtaking display of arrangement and production, with Wood's piano motif leading into an unforgettable sequence of solos at the center of the song, which begins with Bruce's curling gypsy violin solo, moves to White's Spanish acoustic guitar solo, continues to Renwick's phaser-effect electric guitar solo, and explodes into Phil Kenzie's iconic alto saxophone solo, recorded in a spontaneous and unforgettable take after Parsons suggested adding brass instruments to give the song a nocturnal cinematic feel. Despite its unusual length of nearly seven minutes, Stewart and Parsons refused to shorten the song significantly for radio stations, and the artistic gamble paid off handsomely.
The iconic album cover was designed by the legendary design collective "Hipgnosis" of Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell, along with illustrator Colin Elgie. The detailed artwork depicts a mysterious woman drawn from behind as she puts on makeup and dresses up as a cat in front of a mirror for a costume ball, her entire bedroom filled with dozens of cat-themed items, figurines, photos, books, and toys, alongside one real cat sitting on the dresser, watching her.
Released in July 1976 in the UK on RCA and on October 22, 1976 in the US on Janus Records, "Year of the Cat" became a huge commercial and critical success that catapulted Al Stewart from a respected folk artist to an international star. The album peaked at number five on the US Billboard 200 and reached platinum status within a few months, while the title track reached number eight on the US Singles Chart and number one on the Adult Contemporary Chart. Five decades after its release, "Year of the Cat" remains the pinnacle of Al Stewart's work and one of the most polished, intelligent and romantic gems of progressive folk-rock and pop to emerge from the 1970s.
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