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| Al Stewart - Year of the Cat |
Al Stewart - Year of the Cat Lyrics and Youtube Music VideosAlbum:
Year Of The Cat Released:
1976 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
She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running
Like a watercolor in the rain
Don't bother asking for explanations
She'll just tell you that she came
In the
Year of the CatShe doesn't give you time for questions
As she locks up your arm in hers
And you follow 'till your sense of which direction
Completely disappears
By the blue tiled walls near the market stalls
There's a hidden door she leads you to
These days, she says, I feel my life
Just like a river running through
The year of the cat
While she looks at you so cooly
And her eyes shine like the moon in the sea
She comes in incense and patchouli
So you take her, to find what's waiting inside
The year of the cat
Well morning comes and you're still with her
And the bus and the tourists are gone
And you've thrown away your choice you've lost your ticket
So you have to stay on
But the drum-beat strains of the night remain
In the rhythm of the new-born day
You know sometime you're bound to leave her
But for now you're going to stay
In the year of the cat
Year of the cat
Writer/s: WOOD, PETER / STEWART, AL
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner/Chappell Music, Inc., CARLIN AMERICA INC
Lyrics licensed and provided by
LyricFindYear of the Cat Stewart is Scottish born, and has been recording since 1967. His songs have lots of very catchy tunes, many historical and political themes, and lots of clever lyrics that seem to paint pictures in your mind. He was once described as the chief scribe of English music. (thanks, steve - worcester, England) Many of the lyrics were inspired by the 1942 Humphrey Bogart movie Casablanca. The title comes from Vietnamese astrology. The Year of the Cat is also called the Year of the Rabbit... It comes every 12 Years and it is supposed to be a stress free year. The Last Year of the Cat was 1999. It was also the Year of the Cat in 1975, the year before this came out. But, there is no guarantee that the Year of the Cat that Stewart sang about was 1975, since it could have been 1963, 1951,1939, 1927 and so forth. We'll look forward to the next one in 2011. (thanks, Brian - Grand Forks, ND) Alan Parsons produced the album. Parsons was a prominent recording engineer long before going on to his own solo success. He had previously worked on the Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon. This started off as a completely different song. Al Stewart originally wrote the lyrics after seeing the British comedian Tony Hancock in Bournemouth, England in 1966. Hancock was very depressed, and the show was a disaster, with the comedian going to the front of the stage and addressing the audience directly and pouring out his soul. In Al Stewart: The True Life Adventures of a Folk Rock Troubadour , Stewart is quoted: "He came on stage and he said 'I don't want to be here. I'm just totally pissed off with my life. I'm a complete loser, this is stupid. I don't know why I don't just end it all right here.' And they all laughed, because is was the character he played... this sort of down-and-out character. And I looked at him and I thought, Oh my god, He means it. This is for real." Hancock killed himself in 1968 with a drug overdose. Stewart's song was originally titled "Foot Of The Stage," with the chorus, "Your tears fall down like rain at the foot of the stage.
Many of Stewart's songs have alternate lyrics, and he wasn't happy with the Hancock-inspired words, as he didn't want to take advantage of the man's tragedy and besides, no one in America knew who Hancock was. Al re-wrote the lyrics as "Year Of The Cat," which he delivered to Parsons. (thanks, mike - Edinburgh, United Kingdom)