Condition: New
Cat Stevens - Tea For The Tillerman
Label: A&M Records
Catalog#: SP-4280
Format: Vinyl, LP
Vinyl: 80`s Issue Sealed
Cover is SEALED has slight cut near top right. (see our picture)
Country: Canada issue
Released: 1970
Genre: Rock
Style: Folk Rock, Pop Rock
Tracklisting:
A1 Where Do The Children Play? 3:48
A2 Hard Headed Woman 3:42
A3 Wild World 3:15
A4 Sad Lisa 3:39
A5 Miles From Nowhere 3:30
B1 But I Might Die Tonight 1:51
B2 Longer Boats 3:07
B3 Into White 3:23
B4 On The Road To Find Out 5:07
B5 Father & Son 3:36
B6 Tea For The Tillerman 1:00
Credits:
Bass - John Ryan
Drums - Harvey Burns
Guitar - Alun Davies
Guitar, Keyboards, Written-By - Cat Stevens
Producer - Paul Samwell-Smith
Violin - Jack Rostein
Notes:
Manufactured and distributed by A & M Records Of Canada Limited.
Tea for the Tillerman is a much better introduction to Cat Stevens than any of his "greatest hits" collections. He had two absolutely great albums; this is one of them. The other was Teaser and the Firecat, and Mona Bone Jakon was very close. If you have those three, you have most of the "very best of" Cat Stevens already; borrow Buddha and the Chocolate Box from somebody and get "Sun/C79" and "Oh, Very Young," and you'll have the rest.
(Not that his other stuff isn't good, but it's mostly not of the same quality -- though portions of Catch Bull At Four come within inches of it. I don't have much patience with "fans" who tell us that the rest of us aren't "true" fans if we find "Foreigner Suite" to be much ado about nothing and don't especially care for Izitso. If we have to suspend our powers of discrimination and uncritically adore everything an artist emits, who wants to be a "true" fan of anybody? And what genuine artist would want such "fans"?)
I think the quality of Teaser is a bit more evenly distributed than that of Tea. But Tea seems to me to hit higher heights. For example, I can take or leave "Miles From Nowhere" -- but "Into White" is probably the most hauntingly gorgeous thing the man ever wrote. (On the "haunting gorgeousness" scale, it's up there with Wendy Waldman's "Mad Mad Me" as recorded by Maria Muldaur on her self-titled debut LP.)
He had some hits here, too, of course. After the aforementioned "Into White," my personal favorites (in no particular order of favoriteness) are "Sad Lisa," "But I Might Die Tonight," and "Longer Boats" (which is indeed, as one reviewer surmised, about UFOs). And one nice feature of the production is that this entire album is recorded with John Ryan on the acoustic bass. That's why there are all those cool growly bits down in the lower register.
"Cat Stevens" was the stage name of Steven Georgiou, who was born in the U.K. in 1949 of a Cypriot father and a Swedish mother. Something of a musical prodigy, he released his first two albums well before he was twenty years old as was on his way to becoming a "pop star." He then fell victim to a terrible case of tuberculosis. When he returned to singing and songwriting, he had taken a decidedly more reflective turn and found himself delivering absolutely beautiful stuff with no apparent commercial potential. That was fine with him; he was no longer particularly interested in commercial success. But, perhaps ironically, his delicate confessional songs and his deliberate avoidance of "commercial-ness" turned him into a huge international star.
Well, he eventually (1977) became a Muslim and adopted the name "Yusuf Islam" (after the biblical dream-interpreter Joseph). At that time he also left the music industry. He has since recorded a couple of albums about Islam, but his last collection of commercial music was Footsteps In The Dark_ (ostensibly a second volume of his "greatest hits," but in fact a set of lesser-known favorites and a handful of tunes not available elsewhere).
You can feel safe in ignoring the comments from people who think he has become "rigid" and/or "intolerant." The simple fact is that nearly every Cat Stevens album (the exceptions being his first two) are filled with "spiritual seeking," and he eventually found what he was looking for in Islam. His "recent" (actually, 1990) remarks on Salman Rushdie were not what you probably think they were (and in particular he didn't call for Rushdie's death). He's no more "rigid" or "intolerant" than the rest of us; he's simply a religiously observant Muslim, that's all. There's a problem here only for people who think seekers should never get around to finding, or that traditional religion is more "dogmatic" than irreligion.
Tea and Teaser are still great albums, and they don't need to "transcend" their creator in order to be great; there's no need to run down Yusuf in order to elevate Cat. And since these albums were written during his "seeker" stage, they're suitable for everybody -- future Muslims or not.
Cat Stevens - Wild World
Cat Stevens is amazing.
Cat Stevens - Where Do The Children Play (live)
Amazing performance!
Cat Stevens - Miles From Nowhere
He Rocks on Piano!
Cat Stevens - Father & Son
such a poignant song...one of my favourites. just beautiful
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