Songfacts®:

• This Al Stewart/Peter White composition appears on the Last Days Of The Century album wherein it runs to 5 minutes 57 seconds; it can also be found on the CD seemed like a good idea at the time... a collection of demos and outtakes on which it runs to 4 minutes 36 seconds. In the liner notes to this latter, Al writes: "The original demo, recorded in Peter White's garage. I think Peter plays everything on this. I always preferred it to the studio version."
• The song opens:
  
  I sent my crack divisions through the early morning mist
  When they fell on your positions you were powerless to resist
  Encircling and probing for the weakness in your line
  By night you were surrounded, your territory mine
  
  This military metaphor sounds less like a relationship than an act of rape, but those au fait with the Al Stewart story will recognize it for what it is, yet another song about the love of Al's life, Mandi, though this is the last one he ever wrote about her, many years after their relationship had ended, a relationship that he documented in early songs like "Manuscript", "Night Of The 4th Of May" and "The News From Spain".
  Martin Turner alluded to his composition "Cosmic Jazz" as "a musical exorcism"; there is probably no better description of this intensely personal track, which very likely only two people, and possibly only one, can ever fully understand. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England, for above 2