The creativity of the Scottish singer Ela Stewart was well acquainted Folk Tusovka in the early 1970s. However, he achieved the present mass popularity after he began to cooperate with Alan Parsons.
In 1973, Parsons was already a great prestige in the field of recording. Still would! He participated in the work on the epocheral disc Pink Floyd "The Dark Side Of The Moon". Also, a thorough producer approached the songs of Stuart, expanding their sound palette with different tools. In essence, it was no longer Puritan Folk, but a soft rock with rich arrangements and long solo.
However, to attribute all the merits to Parsonus unfairly - rather, he played the role of a diamond coastal. After all, Ela Stewart's songs were allocated by diversity and bright sophisticated melodies whose potential Parsons and tried to reveal as much as possible.
As for the meaningful part, then with this Stewart and without Parsons had a full order. First, he purposefully tried to avoid in his texts of banal topics and poetic revolutions. Secondly, Stewart very much wanted his songs to resemble sound movies ("I want to show you a movie when I play a song ...") With a series of bright images and an interesting story. And this was the story in every sense of the word - the singer often took the plots directly from historical books.
For example, he has the song "Road to Moscow" ("Road to Moscow"), dedicated to the invasion of Nazi troops in the USSR. By giving tribute to the heroism of our army, Stewart could not resist at the end to write about how after the war freed from captivity, Soviet soldiers immediately sent to Siberian camps. However, is it worth blaming the Scots, if, writing a song, he was based on the writings of such a "prominent historian" as Solzhenitsyn?
One way or another, it was during the period of cooperation with Parsons (1975-78) Al Stewart recorded his best albums and hits. In the most famous and commercially successful Single of 1976 with the mysterious name "Year of the Cat" ("Year of Cat"). In the history of the song there is a second author - Pianist Stewart, Peter Wood. Its participation is difficult to overestimate, because it was Wood that he composed that the most clinging piano party, on the basis of which the song was written. It happened in many ways unintentionally ...
Once, at the end of the American tour of 1975, Stewart attended the sounds of his group and heard Wood playing a beautiful melody - clean for warm-up. I liked the melody, and she decided to develop in a full-fledged song. In two months, the phonogram was already practically ready, but there was still no text.
At first, Stewart tried to use the old sketch of 1966 called "Foot of the Stage" and with the words:
Your tears have raged the rain at the foot of the scene ...Poems were a reaction to the tragic destiny of the English comedian Tony Hancock. At the end of his career, Hancock worried a terrible depression and even tried to speak about it before the public. However, all his suicidal escapades in habit were habit with a loud laughter. While in 1968 the comedian really did not bother the scores with life ...
Al Stewart: - He went on stage and said: "I do not want to be here. I'm just angry with my life. I am a complete loser, and why should I just do not finish all this right here. " And everyone laughed, seeing only the character he played. And I looked at him and thought: "My God, he means what he says."However, the record company said that no one knows about Tony Hancock in America, and in general the topic is too dark for a commercial single. Work on the text continued ...
The song received his new name when Stewart came across the book on astrology, from where he found out that, according to the Vietnamese horoscope, the current 1975 is the year of the cat (in the Chinese horoscope instead of a cat appears rabbit). The name has taken place, but a new text with the words:
I used to have a red tabby, and now I have a redhead ...... was rejected by the author himself ("You can not write about cats, it's funny").
The last source of inspiration was the classic film "Casablanca", published in 1942 - in the midst of the Second World War. The film developed in Morocco, where the owner of the local Nightclub Rick Blake (performed by Humphrey Bogart) helped to cover people who fled from Europe from the Nazi regime. Not by chance and Bogart, and Peter Lorrre, who played in the film of the criminal, are mentioned at the beginning of the song.
Translation author - Alexandra:
In the morning, as if from the film with Hamphri Bogart, in the village, where the time they turned to reverse, you are dismissed through the crowd, like Peter Lorre, a plotting crime ...However, if you do not consider these mention and place of action, the further plot of the "Year of the Cat" is completely unrelated to "Casablanca". The hero of the song is a tourist who came to the North African country. In this exotic setting, he sees a mysterious girl who is fascinating the hero behind him. As Stuart spoke, the girl "must be, herself from California, because she wanders and tells about the years of cats and the like."
... Morning comes, and you are still with her. The bus with tourists left, and you have no alternative, you lost a ticket, so I have to stay. But the drum melodies of the night remain in the rhythm of the updated day. You know that you will once be forced to leave her, but for now you will stay in a cat.Personally, I personally have a story about a person who dared to succumb to feelings and with his head plunged into a romantic adventure, it seems less interesting than the story of the comic suicide. But the song itself did not spoil this.
In addition, Parsons, as usual, has enriched the arrangement with a multitude of tools, including string. Then it seemed to him that in the song a lot of guitars, and it was decided to add instead of an excess guitar solo - saxophone. Stuart didn't really like this idea - he still considered himself a folk rock singer, and then some "jazz" was obtained. However, then he changed his mind.
Working on the song went for so long that by the time of the release of the single the year the cat has already ended. Nevertheless, Parsons, and Stewart were confident in success.
Al Stewart:
"When I finished" Year of the Cat ", I thought:" If it is not a hit, I can't write a hit. "Hope was justified. The single with the abbreviated version of the song (the original lasts 6 minutes. 37 seconds) reached the 8th place in the United States and the 31st in Britain.
"Year of the cat" - the song is certainly good, but personally I like the other hit Stewart - "on the border" (by the way, the author himself also agrees with this opinion). He came out in 1977 and reached 42 places of American charts. According to Stuart, the name of the song is "on the border" - reference to the gloomy phrase of the Prime Minister of Great Britain Edward Hita that even "the civilian population will be on the front line."
Not by chance in the song Stewart so much reference to specific political events. Here and the hint of the baking separatists who were regularly satisfied with the attacks regularly in Spain ("fishing boats go through night water, secretly carrying a weapon through the Spanish border ..."). And sending to the partisan war in Rhodesia, which will end in 1980 by the creation of an independent Republic of Zimbabwe.
Translation - Dmitry Popov:
Paints drove on my wall maps. Winds from Africa foreshadow change. Torches flare up in the night, a hand, an igniting village, gives a signal to those who await on the border ... Al Stewart: - Yes, there are things in the song, which turned out to be true. For example, a line "Hand, igniting villages" ... they really set fire to farms belonging to white people, and expelled them from the country to Mugaba (Zimbabwe Prime Minister - S.K.) could transfer the farm to his supporters.Since Spain was mentioned in the song, Alan Parsonsus unexpectedly wanted to add a little Spanish guitar to the arrangement. When the producer asked if someone from the in the studio played on the Spanish guitar, silence reigned. While Peter White (who, actually, was a pianist), did not say uncertainly: "Well, I can try ..." - and played the party "under Flamenco" literally for two doubles. Parsons did not calm down and added to the phonogram also the sound of kastannet.
Al Stewart wrote so many wonderful songs that it would be wrong to limit his story just two chart hits. For a more complete picture, I would like to draw your attention to at least several other compositions.
"Carol" (1975). Inspired by the red-haired fan, which Stewart met in New York. The singer himself did not sleep with her, but he was sure that she often did it with other celebrities.
"The Dark And The Rolling Sea" (1975). According to Stuart, this is a song about "relationships turned into a metaphor."
Broadway Hotel (1976)
Al Stewart: - This is a song about people who live in hotel rooms. This is a song about an attempt to understand people who live in such conditions - people who are rich and can afford the house, but prefer to live in a hotel room. This is how to live without the past, not to have anything tangible, what you can bind them."Flying Sorcery" (1976). The song about Amy Johnson is the first English woman-flyer who alone flew to Australia. She died at the beginning of World War II, when she transported supplies for the British army.
"Midas Shadow" (1976) Al Stewart: - She is about a business man who earns money reflexively, intuitive, just like you breathe. Such a person must have a shadow of Midas.Midas - Frigian king, famous for wealth. Perhaps, many remember the myth about the magical ability of the mids to turn everything into gold, which he touched.
"One Stage Before" (1976). Mysterious song. According to Stuart, she is about reincarnation.
"Palace of Versailles" (1978). Music is based on the composition "Count Salisbury" of the English composer of the XVI century William Berda. The text is held parallels between the Great French Revolution and Student Rights in France in 1968.
"ALMOST LUCY" (1978). About the singer (or stripter) and her fruitless search for success.
"MERLIN'S TIME" (1980). Stewart said that he was not at all about Tom Merlin, who was the wizard and mentor of King Arthur, but about the Scottish Warrior Poet, who is mentioned in the song Robin Williamson "Five Denials on Merlin`s Grave".
Author - Sergey Kuriy
Source - Springzhizni.ru.