I hadn’t heard this song in YEARS when I came across it today! What a joy to my ears, and an immediate flashback in my mind to my youth when this song was popular on the radio. I have to admit I watched the video several times and just couldn’t get enough of the Spanish guitar solo opening by Peter White. Doing research on this song, I found out an interesting  story attributed to Al Stewart:

The Spanish guitar on this track came courtesy of Peter White, who was brought in to play piano on the session. “First thing he ever recorded on a guitar,” Stewart said in the same BBC interview. “First time he was ever in a studio. I hired him as a piano player and Alan Parsons, of course, produced the record and we were sitting around in the studio and he said, ‘I can hear some Spanish guitar on this.’

None of us could play Spanish guitar. And then Peter said, ‘Well, I can play Spanish guitar.’ And like, ‘Wait, you’re a piano player.’ He said, ‘Well, I can play it.’

I had this really cheap Spanish guitar, it cost I think £30 or something and I gave it to Peter. What you hear is I think either the first or the second take. He just sat down and just played it and we’re looking at him going, ‘Wow, I didn’t know you could do that.'”

“On the Border” was off Stewart’s monster 1976 album Year of the Cat and most people are familiar with the title track which reached #8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1977. “On the Border” was not as big a hit, but certainly shared some genetics with “Year of the Cat.” I also found out that the song references both the Basque separatists in Spain and the crisis in the former republic of Rhodesia.

Here he is, from the famous Capitol Threatre, in 1978 is Al Stewart–with Peter White on Spanish guitar–singing “On the Border!”

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