Written by Year Of The Cat was Al Stewart’s only hit single in the UK, but in America it wasn’t even his most successful. It made No.31 in Britain but No.8 across the Atlantic in 1976, whereas 1978’s Time Passages got to No. 7.
In 2015 the folk prog veteran explained that, the first time he wrote Year Of The Cat, he’d been inspired by a man who was once regarded as Britain’s funniest man.
“It started out as a song inspired by seeing Tony Hancock performing in Bournemouth during 1966,” Stewart said. “I was struck about how depressed he was at the time – this was just before he committed suicide – and the way he told the audience that he wanted to die.
“Everyone thought it was part of his act and was laughing at him. No-one understood he was serious. I called the song Foot Of The Stage, but my label felt it was too bleak, so they refused to release it.”
The recording was done during the Vietnamese Year Of The Cat. The full song is just under seven minutes long, but there were various edits done for the single versions in different countries. In fact, the Italian one is a little over half the full length.
“I tried different approaches, because I really thought the melody worked well,” Stewart said. “Then one day, my Vietnamese girlfriend of the time was reading a book about the Vietnamese signs of the zodiac, and it was open on a chapter about the Year Of The Cat. That gave me the title, and everything else fell into place.”
He admits it took a while to convince his label, and credits colleague Peter Wood with helping it happen. “He came up with the riff on piano, and that helped to win people over. But in Britain it didn’t chart for a long while. It wasn’t an overnight sensation.”
For an artist like Stewart, having a hit single wasn’t all positive. “Success has never meant stardom to me, so it never turned my head,” he reflected. “I became known as a one-hit wonder, which was annoying.
“There are a lot of people who know me just through Year Of The Cat. That’s the curse of having the one hit. You are defined by your career through this solitary song.”
Of course, there’s much more to his musical output over the decades; and his attitude to his career had always been somewhat avant-garde. In 2014 he’d given Prog a prime example.
“I grew up just outside Wimborne, in Dorset. I used to take the bus with another kid who was roughly my own age, and I ended up taking 10 guitar lessons from him.
“I never managed to learn very much, but he was always trying to teach me. It was Robert Fripp. I did a radio show around ’68 where Fripp came in and played guitar, so I have actually performed live with Robert!
“He didn’t say this to me – it was an interview he did or something. He’s got a lot of students in the League Of Crafty Guitarists, and they said, ‘Have any of your pupils been successful?’
“He said, ‘Only one of them ever made it, and that was Al Stewart – and he did it by ignoring everything I ever tried to teach him!’”
