Cat Stevens Eac

Cat Stevens quietly retired from his career as a pop star after the release of 1978's Back to Earth to pursue a spiritual path. Stevens became a devout Muslim and adopted the name Yusuf Islam, quietly making spiritually oriented recordings but avoiding the mainstream, especially after the controversy that followed his comments about the fatwa declared against author Salman Rushdie in 1989. However, Yusuf has been quietly inching back into the public eye since he released the album An Other Cup in 2006 and set out on an extensive concert tour documented on the 2009 live disc Roadsinger. Released in 2014, Tell 'Em I'm Gone finds Yusuf in part paying homage to the blues and R&B sounds that inspired him as a young man while also looking back to the canny mixture of pop and folk that informed his best work of the '70s…

Mona Bone Jakon only began Cat Stevens' comeback. Seven months later, he returned with Tea for the Tillerman, an album in the same chamber-group style, employing the same musicians and producer, but with a far more confident tone…

Between 1970 and 1972, Cat Stevens recorded four albums in the same manner, using the same producer and many of the same musicians, painting the album covers, and assigning the records ponderous titles. Things changed with his next album, Foreigner. The recording itself had been produced by Stevens, and while a couple of Stevens' usual backup musicians had been retained, New York session musicians appeared, and second guitarist Alun Davies was gone. With him went the acoustic guitar interplay that had been the core of Stevens' sound, replaced by more elaborate keyboard-based arrangements complete with strings, brass, and a female vocal trio featuring Patti Austin. It's easy to look at the 18-plus minute "Foreigner Suite" that took up the first side and accuse Stevens of excess and indulgence. What should be kept in mind, however, is that his peers in 1973 were acts like Jethro Tull and Yes, who in turn were taking their cue from the Beatles' Abbey Road and the Who's Tommy. Call Foreigner ambitious, then, rather than indulgent…

This expanded collection includes a bonus CD which features 10 bonues tracks including rarities, demo versions and previously unreleased live performances from the BBC. Also included is an extensive booklet which features complete original artwork, plus new liner notes.
Even as a serious-minded singer/songwriter, Cat Stevens never stopped being a pop singer at heart, and with Teaser and the Firecat he reconciled his philosophical interests with his pop instincts. Basically, Teaser's songs came in two modes: gentle ballads that usually found Stevens and second guitarist Alun Davies playing delicate lines over sensitive love lyrics, and up-tempo numbers on which the guitarists strummed away and thundering drums played in stop-start rhythms…

Remember Cat Stevens: The Ultimate Collection features 24 tracks culled from the popular singer/songwriter’s '60s and '70s heydays, including radio staples like “Moonshadow,” “Wild World,” “Morning Has Broken,” and “The First Cut Is the Deepest,” as well as fan favorites “Another Saturday Night,” “Here Comes My Baby,” “Oh Very Young,” and the Harold & Maude classics "Where Do the Children Play” and “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out.” The only glaring omission is “The Wind,” but there are enough hooks in this anthology to convince listeners to dig further.

Tea for the Tillerman is a highly-regarded album by singer-songwriter Cat Stevens. This album, Stevens' second during 1970, includes many of Stevens' most memorable and beloved songs by his fans, including "Where Do the Children Play?," "Hard Headed Woman," "Wild World," "Sad Lisa," "Into White" and "Father and Son." Four of the tracks ( "Where Do the Children Play?", "On the Road to Find Out", "Tea for the Tillerman" and "Miles from Nowhere" ) were featured in the Hal Ashby and Colin Higgins' black comedy film entitled Harold and Maude, in 1971, gaining Stevens more fans long afterward. The track "But I Might Die Tonight" was featured on another 1971 film: Deep End by Jerzy Skolimowski. Stevens, a former art student, created the artwork featured on the record's cover. With "Wild World" as an advance single, this was the album that brought Stevens world-wide fame. The album itself charted into the top 10 in the United States, where he had previously had few listeners.