AL STEWART - YEAR OF THE CAT

YEAR OF THE CAT

AL STEWART

SONGWRITERS: PETER JOHN WOOD & AL STEWART

COUNTRY: SCOTLAND

ALBUM: YEAR OF THE CAT

LABEL: RCA VICTOR

GENRE: SOFT ROCK

YEAR:1976

"Year of the Cat" is a single by Scottish singer-songwriter Al Stewart, released in July 1976. 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. The song reached #8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1977. Although Stewart's highest charting 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.

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 cat

She 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

Well, she looks at you so coolly

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 and lost your ticket

So you have to stay on

But the drumbeat 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.