Year of the Cat

You know how some songs just roll out of the speakers and make the whole room lean in a little closer, Zoo Freaks? That's exactly what Al Stewart's "Year of the Cat" does every time the needle drops on it here at THE ZOO. It comes from that 1976 album of the same name, and the story behind how it got written is one of those long, wandering tales that could only happen to a guy who spent his nights in coffee bars and his days reading history books. Al has told interviewers that the music started life years earlier as a piece called "Foot of the Stage," a song about the British comedian Tony Hancock. Hancock was famous for being the funniest man in England until he wasn't, and Al saw him perform in Bournemouth back in 1966 when the man was clearly in a dark place. The audience laughed at the jokes about wanting to die because they thought it was part of the act. Al wrote the lyrics about that moment, with the line about tears falling like rain at the foot of the stage. When he played it for the American record company, they liked the music but had never heard of Tony Hancock, so they asked for a rewrite.

Al tried again with something called "Horse of the Year," this time about Princess Anne and her show horse. That one got the same reaction. Still searching for the right words, he was dating a woman named Marion who left a book on Vietnamese astrology open on the kitchen table one morning in their London flat. The chapter was titled "Year of the Cat," which was the Vietnamese name for 1975. Al looked at that phrase next to his old "Horse of the Year" title and knew the new one sounded better. He still didn't have a story, though. Later that same morning, "Casablanca" came on the television. He started writing about a morning from a Bogart movie, in a country where they turn back time, and a character strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre. The whole thing turned into this cinematic, slightly mysterious love song set somewhere that feels like Morocco. He has said he even toyed with writing something literally about cats before the movie gave him the opening lines.

The melody itself came from his pianist Peter Wood, who used to play this pretty little riff during sound checks on tour. Al heard it enough times that he asked if he could put lyrics to it. Wood said it was just an instrumental, but Al wrote to it anyway and gave Wood a co-writing credit. When they got into the studio with producer Alan Parsons, Parsons wanted to add a saxophone. Al hated the idea. He told Parsons saxophones belonged in jazz, not folk-rock, and that he might as well have asked for bagpipes. Parsons said to humor him and they could erase it if it didn't work. They put Phil Kenzie on the solo, and everyone else in the room loved it. Al still wasn't sure, so he stuck the song at the very end of the album so people might not even get that far. Of course it became the single, climbed to number eight on the Billboard Hot 100, and turned the album into a platinum smash that peaked at number five. Al has joked in interviews that success never turned his head because he never saw himself as a pop star in the first place. He has also admitted that having one big hit meant a lot of people only knew him for that one song, which he found a bit annoying, but the saxophone that he fought against is the part everybody still talks about.

Before any of that happened, Al Stewart was just a kid from Glasgow who ended up in the south of England. He was born Alastair Ian Stewart in 1945. His father, an RAF pilot, died in a training crash before Al was born, so his mother raised him mostly in Bournemouth after they left Scotland. He got caught up in the skiffle boom like a lot of British kids, then moved into local beat groups once the Beatles arrived. He even took a handful of guitar lessons from a young Robert Fripp who lived down the street. In 1963 the Beatles played Bournemouth, and Al and a friend talked their way backstage by pretending to be from a guitar company. John Lennon let him hold the Rickenbacker and play a bit of Chuck Berry. Al has told that story more than once, and it still makes him smile.

By the time he was around nineteen he realized he didn't look like a pop star when he checked the mirror. Elvis and Cliff Richard were pop stars. He couldn't sing that way and figured he was only an average guitar player. He headed up to London in 1965 looking for the folk scene he had heard about. The first place he walked into was Bunjies Coffee House in Soho, carrying a guitar case. The owner asked if he was a folk singer. Al wasn't, but he smelled a gig and said yes. He spent the next week locked in a room learning three albums' worth of Bob Dylan songs so he could actually play the Friday night spot. From there he became a regular on the circuit, sharing stages with people like Bert Jansch, Cat Stevens, and Roy Harper, and even sharing a flat for a while with a young Paul Simon. His first single, "The Elf," came out on Decca in 1966 with Jimmy Page on guitar. After that he signed with CBS and put out his debut album, Bedsitter Images, in 1967. He has said he always did things a little backwards, recording the music first and writing the lyrics later, which is exactly how "Year of the Cat" came together a decade down the road.

That whole path from the coffee bars to the platinum album is why the song still feels alive when we spin it. Al kept writing those long, story-driven tracks about history and characters while the hit single did the heavy lifting. You can find more of the records and the stories over at Al Stewart's official website. He keeps the official page going with tour news and the old albums. There is also the official Facebook page and the official X account where the updates land. For the folks who want to dig deeper with other fans, the Al Stewart Fans And Bandmates group on Facebook is still active with people who have been following the historical folk-rock side of things for years. The man who started out learning Dylan songs so he could keep a coffee-house gig ended up with a signature track that still sounds like a little movie every time it plays. That is the kind of long road we like to talk about around here.