Year of the Cat

Definitive album of the seventies, and so much more.

After the spectacular yet restrained hi fidelity intro of rolling piano and added drums — let’s hear it for producer, Alan Parsons — the vocals come in with these iconic lyrics:

In a morning from a Bogart movie

In a country where they turn back time…

And I’m back there. A child of the seventies creeping through the hidden blue tiled wall by the market place to meet again the woman ‘running like a water colour in the rain,’ the woman who came high on surreal expectation in the year of the cat.

Step forward, Al Stewart, stay under the lights for awhile and take a bow for that definitive album of the seventies, The Year of the Cat.

The album was released in 1976, becoming Al Stewart’s seventh studio album. When the title track single hit the radio airwaves people could be forgiven for thinking this Al Stewart chap was some newbie who had struck lucky with his first offering. In fact Al Stewart had been peddling his wares and honing his craft over many years, all through the sixties and onwards, all through the emergence of the folk revival. He had sung in clubs and pubs, the width and breadth of merry England, sharing a flat with Paul Simon for awhile…