Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CLXVII--Al Stewart: Year of the Cat

I often note in my weekly posts here on FNJ, with some sense of amazement, how many artists I've featured have turned a hit or two into a career in the music business.  I'm not really sure why I'm amazed--it's not like only having a couple of hit records instantly makes you into a prime candidate for being an Assistant Manager at Foot Locker after the glow is gone.  Still, it's special that there are folks who love music enough to keep making it even without the fame and fortune (though I'm sure the fortune from having a hit single can certainly prolong a career).

And such is the case with this week's featured artist, Al Stewart, who began his career in 1966 in London, released several albums with little fanfare before having back to back top ten LPs in the late 70's, and then faded into relative obscurity, though he still has a small but devoted following.  Still, it was enough to let Stewart play music for over 52 years now--he's released sixteen albums, three live albums, and still tours extensively these many years down the road.  Stewart is well known for writing songs with an historical bent to them, as well as being a songwriter's songwriter--lots of imagery and fancy words.  He's said that he tries to make his songs into aural cinema--a movie song, more or less--and at least as it pertains to this week's tune, I can certainly see it that way.

Fun Fact:  In 1969, Stewart released an album called Love Chronicles, which included an 18 minute song of the same name chronicling (so to speak) the sexual adventures of his youth and it was the first mainstream song to contain the word "fucking,"  Alrighty, then...

Released in 1976 on his aptly titled Year of the Cat LP, "Year of the Cat" would go on to reach #8 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100 in March of 1977, and become Stewart's signature song.  Surprisingly, it is not his biggest single--"Time Passages" released the next year would go on to reach #7 (also with a bullet....).  The LP would be the biggest seller of Stewart's career, reaching #5 on the Billboard 200.  For those interested in such things, the cat is one of the twelve signs of the Vietnamese zodiac, and, luck of all luck, Stewart actually recorded it in the year of the cat....

"Year of the Cat" is a somewhat different song for an emaycee fave--clocking in at a little over 6 and a half minutes, four minutes of the song is instrumental.  And while the chorus is catchy as all hell, it's basically just one line ("...in the year of the cat..." or a slight variation thereof) repeated just five times throughout the song.  Still, it's a great story--man traveling through a foreign city encounters a mysterious woman at a bazaar and after spending the day and night with her realizes he's missed his bus, lost his ticket, and is going to stay with her...though he probably shouldn't.  Stewart manages to throw in references to Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre ("Casablanca"), opens it with a killer piano intro (being a guitar aficionado, I sometimes forget how great piano is in pop songs), has a long instrumental break that goes from acoustic guitar solo to electric guitar solo to sax solo seamlessly, and overall has written one of the truly great story songs in the history of pop music.  Stewart noted after he recorded it that if the song wasn't a hit record he wasn't ever going to have a hit record--fortunately for the rest of us it was, and the rest is rock and roll history.

Lyric Sheet:  "On a morning from a Bogart movie/In a country where they turn back time/You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre/Contemplating a crime..."

Enjoy:

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emaycee