The Year of the Cat by Al Stewart

From Wikipedia:
"Year of the Cat" is the title track of the 1976 album Year of the Cat by
singer-songwriter Al Stewart, recorded at Abbey Road Studios, London in
January 1976 by engineer Alan Parsons. Parsons had Phil Kenzie add the
saxophone part of the song — and by doing so transformed the original folk
concept into the jazz-influenced ballad that put Al Stewart onto the charts.
Co-written by Peter Wood, "Year of the Cat" is a narrative song written in
the second person whose protagonist is a tourist in an exotic market where a
mysterious silk-clad woman appears to carry him away for a gauzy romantic
adventure. On wakening the next day beside her, the tourist realizes, with
equanimity, that his tour bus is gone and he has lost his ticket. He will be
staying on for a while.
The song "Year of the Cat" began as "Foot of the Stage" a song written by
Stewart in 1966 after seeing a performance by comedian Tony Hancock whose
patter about "being a complete loser" who might as well "end it all right
here" drew laughs from the audience: Stewart's intuitive response that
Hancock was in genuine despair led to the writing of "Foot of the Stage". It
was the melody for this never recorded song which Stewart set the lyrics of
"Year of the Cat" to in 1975: pianist Peter Wood was given a co-writing
credit on the song in recognition of his constructing the classic piano riff
on the recorded track.

Lyrics:
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 watercolour 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

She looks at you so cooly
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 the choice and lost your ticket
So you have to stay on
But the drum-beat 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.