Released - July 1970
Genre - Folk
Producer - Paul Samwell-Smith
Selected Personnel - Cat Stevens (Vocals/Guitar/Piano/Keyboards/Drums); Alun Davies (Guitar); John Ryan (Bass); Nicky Hopkins (Keyboards); Harvey Burns (Drums/Percussion); Peter Gabriel (Flute); Del Newman (String Arrangements)
Standout Track - Maybe You're Right
My obsessional immersion in the music of Cat Stevens occurred in the summer of 2009 as another personal Odyssey in a similar vein to my rediscovery of Peter Sarstedt later that same year, albeit one that was much easier to resolve given the significantly greater popularity of Stevens vs. Sarstedt. Both searches also stemmed, coincidentally enough, from the same source, but for very different reasons. The same friend who had inadvertently first played Peter Sarstedt and CocoRosie to me in 2007 without my realising I would one day pursue a bloody-minded agenda to track down all their work, had a very tragic loss in the family in May 2009, and a number of her friends, myself included, drove down to Salisbury for the funeral a few weeks later. On the way down, as a means of raising everybody's spirits and keeping things jovial on the journey, The Very Best Of Cat Stevens was blasted out of the speakers and, as "Father & Son" played, I felt I had discovered my next obsession. (As it happens, that journey also ultimately gave me Antony & the Johnsons, but more on them when we get to them). I'd been aware of Cat Stevens before as a name only, but for some reason had always assumed he was a late-70s disco star (possibly getting confused with Shakin' Stevens, I think). What I discovered instead was Britain's greatest folk singer, one of the richest voices in the genre and one of the best songwriting talents too.
While Stevens's initial arrival on the musical scene had granted him success, it took him time to develop the artistic pedigree to be considered a genuinely great singer-songwriter in his own right, an image he begins to cultivate for the first time on Mona Bone Jakon. Prior to this, Stevens had been signed to the Deram label, the same label that represented David Bowie for the first few years of his career, and, like Bowie at that time, had been urged to churn out novelty pop hits, usually fleshed out with a full orchestral backing and generally rather simple, novelty numbers about working in a factory all one's life ("Matthew & Son") or the imaginatively-titled "I Love My Dog." While these songs had garnered him some chart success (at the same time writing songs for other artists that would become big hits, such as "The First Cut Is The Deepest" for P.P. Arnold, though Stevens's own version on his second album New Masters will always be the definitive version for me). But none of these songs really channelled any depth or musical maturity. In 1969, however, Stevens contracted tuberculosis and suffered from a collapsed lung, and was prompted to rethink his career as he convalesced for a whole year. One gets the sense that the sudden realisation of his own mortality perhaps spurred Stevens to write the music he really wanted to write rather than being distracted into writing novelty pop hits to make money.
So the figure that emerges on this album, his first since having to retreat from the music scene in order to recover from his illness, is a very different one. Gone are the over-the-top brass fanfares or overbearing string arrangements (there are still string parts, but unobtrusive and tastefully arranged). Chiefly, this is a man wanting to be taken seriously as an artist in his own right, largely limiting the musical palette to just his own voice, his guitar and his piano, rounded out by a small band of suppot musicians (including, strangely enough, Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel on flute for "Katmandu"). Stevens's voice itself is notably different as well, as it would be after such an ordeal - it's lower, with a greater hint of gravel and rawness in it in places, while at other places being more mellow, rounded and assured than ever before. How much of this is purely down to the biological changes in his voice and how much is due to his own sense of satisfaction at singing what he really wanted to sing can't be said, but he had made the switch from another nondescript pop singer to a rich, mature folk singer.
There are still novelty pop songs here, of course - "Pop Star," a great vehicle for the new nuances in Stevens's voice, is a satirical swipe at the pop music machine, while "I Think I See The Light" is a fairly silly romp built around pounding piano and involving a few silly little trills and whistles from Stevens and his backing band. But what this album really excels at is delivering really beautiful acoustic folk songs unlike anything he'd released on the Deram label. "Maybe You're Right" is a brilliant account of a friendship or relationship reaching its tentative and downbeat end, and "Trouble" is a heartfelt plea for a longer life and for death to keep away, no doubt sprung from the very personal and troubled recesses of Stevens's mind during his battle with tuberculosis. The album closes with a double whammy of really profoundly affecting ballads in "Fill My Eyes" and "Lilywhite," the former feeling like the first of a series of songs charting for Stevens's search for spiritual fulfilment, hinting at an attempt to fill a hole within him and his difficulty in progressing down a road ahead of him, a road which would ultimately lead to his prominent conversion to Islam and his withdrawal from the music industry for several years.
Not everything here is brilliant - "Lady D'Arbanville," a melancholy paean to a former girlfriend, is a fairly tedious thing, while the title track is mercifully short given how close it comes to being actively irritating. But for people who had been following Stevens's career up to this point, this album must have been an immense surprise, announcing his sudden conversion into an artist to really be reckoned with, who would ultimately be able to stand up against a whole host of other great folk singers and emerge triumphant.
Track Listing:
All songs written by Cat Stevens.
1. Lady D'Arbanville
2. Maybe You're Right
3. Pop Star
4. I Think I See The Light
5. Trouble
6. Mona Bone Jakon
7. I Wish, I Wish
8. Katmandu
9. Time
10. Fill My Eyes
11. Lilywhite
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