On the Border (Al Stewart). 40 Songs for 40 Years, 1976

"On the Border" is one of those tunes that always had just a special magic quality for me and always brought images of our Mexican neighbors to me...I was inspired to create my vision of "On The Border" by my sisters' recent cruise to Cozumel and Calica.

Not to be confused with the song of the same name by the Eagles (which I also love, even though there’s almost nothing less cool than liking the Eagles—but more about that in a later installment).

I’m pretty sure that Dad got this record as a gift from my aunt, and as I remember, it wasn’t really to his taste. For my part, I thought the album cover was awesome, and in what was my first instance of pop music geekery, I was delighted to discover that it was designed by Hipgnosis, the same guy who designed the iconic cover for Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.

I even liked the interior cover, which had photos of the band members in the studio. I thought that Stuart Elliott (the drummer) looked especially cool (maybe it was the studio headphones), and for whatever reason, I kept picturing him playing drums on this song, probably because of the hi-hat build in the intro. It’s one of a hundred random things that made me want to be a drummer. Weird how that works, huh?