For most people paying attention, Al Stewart's classic first Top 40 hit, "Year Of The Cat," draws similarities to the famous Humphrey Bogart movie Casablanca. It's hard not to think that way when the opening lyrics start, "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."
The movie came out three years before the Scottish singer-songwriter was born, but had a profound effect on Stewart as he composed this mysterious tune. However, there's an even bigger inspiration to "Year Of The Cat" that has a much darker story to it than the one woven in Casablanca.
Ten years before the recording of the song, Stewart, who was 21 at the time, saw a British comedian named Tony Hancock. Hancock's act would include threats of "ending it all here on stage" as he came off as a depressed individual who would call himself "a complete loser."
Hancock made a name for himself in Great Britain on the radio as host of the BBC show, Hancock's Half Hour, in 1954. Two years later, that show made its way from radio to television and Hancock hosted it until 1961, building a bond between the star, the audience and his co-star, comic actor Sid James. But starting in 1960, Hancock began his way down a self-destructive path, first granting an interview with former Labour MP John Freeman, who Hancock liked, and being frank with him, saying that he was a bit of a perfectionist and was always self-critical of his own work.
To many, including his own family, that was the start of his own end. He had snubbed James and others on the show in later years, including show writers. The mix of Hancock's own ego along with self-doubt began to rule his life. After the show ended, Hancock needed an outlet or an answer to his own troubles. He reportedly spent his spare time reading self-help books, classic novels or political pieces to find those seemingly lost answers.
In 1961, his show's main script writers, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, wrote Hancock three screenplays to potential movies, but eventually rejected all three, reportedly never reading the scripts. The relationship between Hancock and the two script writers all but ended and another writer, Phillip Oakes, was hired to write a script for the next Hancock project, a television pilot for the show Steptoe And Son and then created the script for The Punch And Judy Man, a 1963 movie Hancock would star alongside actress Sylvia Sims.
Alcohol began to overrun his life and a number of failed projects by the mid-1960s began to ruin Hancock. He did a series of advertisements for Britain's egg marketing board in 1966, and soon after did two TV series that didn't do well. Still, the comedian-actor had gotten a gig to do a 13-show series on Australia's Seven Network called Hancock Down Under and flew to Australia to start work in early 1968.
Of the 13 shows he was to do, Hancock completed only three of them, episodes that were kept secretive for years. The alcoholism grew worse and on June 25, 1968, Hancock took his own life, mixing amylo-barbitone tablets with vodka, leaving a note for those who found him that read, "Things just seemed to go too wrong too many times." Hancock was 44 at the time of his passing.
In 2002, a poll was taken for favorite British comedian of all time for which Hancock was voted tops on the list. Actor Alfred Molina portrayed the troubled comedian in the 1991 movie Hancock, a BBC network television production.
Stewart, though, saw Hancock at the lowest of his lows in 1966, and began to write a composition with the title "Foot Of The Stage." In Neville Judd's book, Al Stewart: Lights... Camera... Folk Rock: A Life In Pictures, Stewart told the story of that show: "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 it 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.'"
By the time Stewart was to record his seventh studio album, Stewart had the old melody of that song he never finished. He finally put words to it, but turned it from that downtrodden comedian he saw in 1966 and made it into a mini-mystery movie thanks to Casablanca, directed by Michael Curtiz and written about an American expatriate during World War II, played by Humphrey Bogart, who has to decide between helping a Czech Resistance leader, played by Paul Henreid, escape Vichy-run Casablanca to continue his fight against the Nazis, or the love of an old flame and that leader's wife, played by Ingrid Bergman. The film ended up winning three Academy Awards. The narrative of Stewart's song is done in the second person voice of a tourist who visits an exotic market and is approached by a mysterious silk-clad woman, who takes him away on a romantic adventure. By the end of the song, the tourist wakes up alongside the mysterious woman, but the other tourists are gone and both his tour bus and tickets are gone, too, leaving him to stay behind.
To set the tone of the tune, Stewart's piano player in his band, Peter Wood, developed the opening with his work on the instrument. It made the song recognizable for generations to come and gave Wood a co-writing nod alongside Stewart. From there, Stewart and his band worked with producer Alan Parsons on the track. Recognized as the engineer behind famous Beatles records "Abbey Road" and "Let It Be" and Pink Floyd's epic "Dark Side Of The Moon," Parsons had Stewart and the band put the tune together almost like a jigsaw puzzle. Each part of the song -- from Wood's piano opening to the percussion to the acoustic guitar work of Stewart and Peter White to Andrew Powell's string arrangement that included Bobby Bruce's memorable violin work -- came together. This was important for the 6-minute, 40-second album version of the song, four of the minutes spent on the instrumental track.
When Stewart began writing the song, it was the "Year Of The Cat" on the Vietnamese calendar for 1975 and corresponds to the rabbit on the Chinese calendar.
"Year Of The Cat" debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at an auspicious No. 98 on December 11, 1976, and got to No. 84 by New Year's Eve. But as 1976 turned to 1977, the single took off, leaping from No. 84 to No. 64 to No. 50 and then No. 36, where it debuted in the Top 40 on January 22, 1977. From there, it vaulted to No. 24, then No. 20, No. 15, No. 13, No. 11 and on March 5, 1977, leaped from No. 11 to No. 8 to become Stewart's first Top 10 hit single.
"Year Of The Cat" would hold at No. 8 on March 12, 1977 before falling all the way back to No. 26 the next week. The smash single became an endearing part of the winter 1977 as the weather began to turn from being cold to brightening up as spring got closer.
A year later, Stewart would have his second and last Top 10 hit with his No. 7 late fall smash "Time Passages." Overall, Stewart would have four Top 40 hits in his career, one that continues to this day as he continues to play to sold out smaller venues with guitarists Dave Nachmanoff and former Wings guitarist Laurence Juber.
And the highlight of the show near the end is always "Year Of The Cat," the song that became the Scottish star's signature hit.
"Year Of The Cat" may have come from a dark place when it was first penned, but it has been a bright part of pop radio for three generations.
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