Year of the Cat - 2001 Remaster

When he played Royal Albert Hall on May 16, 2015, Stewart talked about this song: "This one came about in a really strange way. Tim Renwick previously played in a band called The Sutherland Brothers, and they had a keyboard player called Peter Wood. I was touring in America in 1975 and Peter Wood continually, at every soundcheck I ever went to, he played this riff on the piano. After I heard it about 14 times I said, 'You know, there's something about that. It sounds kind of haunting and nice. Can I write some lyrics to it?" And he said: "Sure, go and write some lyrics.' But that was the easy bit. The difficult bit was writing the lyrics. Eventually, I came up with a set of lyrics about an English comedian called Tony Hancock and the song was called 'Foot of the Stage.' He committed suicide in Australia and I saw him right before he went there and I knew there was something terribly wrong. And so, I wrote this song about him and the chorus was: Your tears fell down like rain At the foot of the stage The American record company said, 'We've never heard of Tony Hancock. We don't know who he is.' So, then I thought, 'Well, that's annoying so I'll take the piss out of them.' So, I wrote a song about Princess Anne called "Horse of the Year" Princess Anne rode off On the horse of the year They didn't like that either. I was beginning to lose my mind because I had this piece of music forever and I couldn't think of any words. I had a girlfriend at the time and she had a book on Vietnamese astrology, which was kind of obscure, and it was open at a chapter called 'The Year Of The Cat.' Now that's, I think, the year of the rabbit in Chinese astrology. I'm not too sure. I don't know a whole lot about a whole lot of things but I recognize a song title when I see one and that was a song title. But then another problem: what do you do? 'The Year Of The Cat.' OK, well: I used to have a ginger Tabby And now I have a ginger Tom The first one made me crabby The new one... I thought, 'You can't write about cats, it's ridiculous.' And I was absolutely lost and then the Casablanca movie came on television and I thought, 'I'll grab Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre and see where it goes.' Somehow or other, in between all of that and Vietnamese astrology, we came up with this. Thank you, Peter Wood, for writing the music. He's no longer with us but thank you, Peter."

The 1942 Humphrey Bogart movie Casablanca produced a huge hit with "As Time Goes By," but "Year of the Cat" is the most popular song that is based on the film itself (another Bogart movie inspired the 1981 Bertie Higgins hit "Key Largo").

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.