No, not the nutjob he turned out to be – the early sensitive troubadour.
I’m listening to “Tea/Teaser,” as my scribbled label has it – Tea for the Tillerman and Teaser and the Firecat burned onto a single CD – and I am reminded once again what lovely, lovely songs the man wrote and performed.
I’m not one to be overly nostalgic about the music of my youth – there was oodles of crap back then, just as there is now. And Cat Stevens was not at the top of my faves list back then [I owned neither of these albums on vinyl]. So I’m not going to oversell him as A Great Musician.
But, damn, these two albums are just one pretty folkie-poppie two-minute piece of delight after another.
Stevens was awesome. And I’m young enough for him to be my parents’ music.
He had ongoing themes in his music of questing, looking for a place to fit, looking for Truth, for the right path - I suppose it’s not surprising that once he found the one that worked for him, he didn’t need to write/perform anymore. Still, his gain is our loss.
I saw a concert of his back in the olden days (which is odd, because I can count on one hand the number of live pop music concerts I’ve been to). It was great. Those two albums were really good.
To be perfectly fair, he is not a nutjob, he is simply a devout religious follower. He became a devout Muslim because he was looking for some meaning in his life and, like many converts he believed he could show his devotion by giving up something that meant a lot to him, i.e. his music. It’s worth noting that his Imam encouraged him to continue, but he was really down on the music industry at the time…
He has gradually gotten back into performing and has released several pop albums in the past few years.
Here is his interview with Stephen Colbert last year, and
Steven Georgiou was and is a great musician. (I don’t know what additional status capitalization would denote, but I don’t speak lightly of greatness.) His embrace of Islam was a natural continuation of the spiritual seeking evident in his early (post-TB) recordings. See “On the Road to Find Out,” etc.
He still records music, and occasionally performs. He’s put out about a dozen records since 1995. Much of that is explicitly Islamic themes, but not all. He still plays versions of his oldsongs.
Hey, check out the set list from a show earlier this month. The man has not exactly turned into something unrecognizable.
Oh, I totally agree. Sometimes when I’m gonna be on the computer for a while, and I’m in the right mood, I go to YouTube and put Into White on a repeat loop that plays in another tab for 10 or 20 replays. Not too many songs can stand up to that.
He’s certainly not a fanatic, though, obviously some of his statements on Rushdie sound that way. He has regretted them and clearly doesn’t feel that way toward Rushdie now.
In any case, Tea for the Tillerman is a great album and he’s a fine singer and songwriter.
Cat Stevens had a lot of good albums. In addition to Teaser and Tea, I heartily recommend Catch Bull at Four, and Buddha and the Chocolate Box and Mona Bone Jakon are both good overall even if they each have a couple of clunkers.
By the way, the remastered CDs of the old albums were really done well. (I’m listening to Catch Bull at Four now because of this thread.) If you have old tapes or first-generation discs or lossy downloads, these are worth the upgrade.
Aww, three songs that have never gotten old and dated: Peace Train, Moon Shadow, and Morning Has Broken. I should put them on my list, thanks for reminding me… The early Cat Stevens is like a picnic of tea and scones on a warm October day.
I only learned a month or so ago that it was Rick Wakeman playing piano on Morning Has Broken. Groovy.
I believe he is still on the no-fly list. What a shame.
Growing up, I thought his love songs were just those, love songs. After his conversion, a few of those songs made even more sense:
His early albums make it really clear he was searching for faith. I’d quote all of Tea for the Tillerman, but it’s a short song:
This is a guy who really, really wanted to believe in something. I’m glad he found it.
Also. Back when I was in high school, we had a cool enough of a drama department that we were going to do Harold and Maude one semester. While we were still in rehearsals, a good friend of many of us did something really stupid by himself and died.
His gravestone says “Thank You For Eighteen Years”
So, the play was switched to Harvey at the last minute, and twenty years later I still get passionate whenever the Cat = Islamic Hate thing pops up…