al stewart.the year of the cat full album mp3 free download

Stewart incorporated the notes into the melodic line of 'The Year of the Cat' anyway. Stewart asked if he could add words to the notes, but the pianist said no. He recalled that he was opening for Linda Ronstadt during a 1975 tour of the United States and receiving a decidedly mixed reaction from audiences when he noticed the pianist (presumably Wood) using a catchy chord progression during soundchecks. Stewart explained Wood's involvement in the creation of 'Year of the Cat' during a concert in Edmonds, Washington in November 2017. Pianist Peter Wood was given a co-writing credit on the song. It was the melody for this never-recorded song to which Stewart set the lyrics of 'Year of the Cat' in 1975. The song began as 'Foot of the Stage', a song written by Stewart in 1966 after seeing a performance by comedian Tony Hancock 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'. At the time of the song's release, the most recent Year of the Cat had been 11 February 1975 to 30 January 1976 thus, the song was written and recorded in the Vietnamese Year of the Cat. In the Vietnamese zodiac, the Cat is one of the twelve signs. When he watched Casablanca on television, an opening couplet came to him: “In 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… ”

Stewart was obsessed with Bob Dylan’s 'of' songs - ' Masters of War', ' Chimes of Freedom', and presumably in 1975, ' Simple Twist of Fate' - believing that the preposition made them sound 'portentous'. Per the Financial Times, Stewart's 'girlfriend left a book of Vietnamese astrology open at the page for the Year of the Cat, then just beginning, the words fitted the same four notes - and also contained the word 'of'. On waking the next day beside her, the tourist notes that his tour bus has left without him, and decides to stay where he is for the time being. Although Stewart's highest placed single on that chart was 1978's ' Time Passages', 'Year of the Cat' has remained Stewart's signature recording, receiving regular airplay on both classic rock and folk rock stations.Ĭo-written by Peter Wood, 'Year of the Cat' is a narrative song written in the second person whose protagonist, a tourist, is visiting an exotic market when a mysterious silk-clad woman appears and takes him away for a gauzy romantic adventure. The song reached number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1977. The song is the title track of his 1976 album Year of the Cat, and was recorded at Abbey Road Studios, London, in January 1976 by engineer Alan Parsons. ' Year of the Cat' is a song by Scottish singer-songwriter Al Stewart, released as a single in July 1976 in the UK (October 1976 in the U.S.).

Al stewart.the year of the cat full album mp3 free download