Here is an interesting article from a magazine called Rock Magazine.
It is quite interesting in the fact, the writer catches Cat right before a live
performance. This comes courtesy of Linda Crafar.
Rock Magazine January 29,
1973
Cat Stevens:
Success means, it's
time to start all over again.
-
There’s something a
bit sad and neglected about English seaside towns out of season. Once the buckets and
spades and the few rays of sun have been chastened away by the bite of those northern
winds, they are after all—just towns stripped of their bunting. But then maybe
that’s when they settle down.
Once the sightseers and
intruders go back home everything goes back to normal, and the Bed and Breakfast signs
left creaking in the wind are maybe not cleaned up again until early Spring.
Boumemouth—70 miles
along the motorway from London—huddles into itself on Wednesday night as high winds
and torrential rain pound at it incessantly. It’s raining so fiercely that the
Christmas lights in the town centre are a coloured blur.
Boumemouth is a kind of
middle class seaside town. Not as rich as Brighton, not as overloaded with toffee apples
and candy floss as Blackpool.
The people who pack the
Winter Gardens are very enthusiastic but not overly demonstrative. They’ve come out
to see Cat Stevens on a really filthy night and it’s enough to prove their devotion
and admiration that they did it. But then that’s the kind of artist Stevens
is—drawing people to him like a magnet when he’s certainly not a rabid rock and
roller in the true sense of the word, and certainly never comes up with any tricks to get
the audience off on him.
Stevens’ standing
right now is really huge. I know some people who, not being able to get a smell of a
ticket for the Royal Albert Hall, took to their wheels to go to Bournemouth without a
moment’s hesitation.
By the end of
Wednesday’s show—just 90 minutes after Cat walked on stage—the audience are
up on their feet and down at the front for "Lady D’Arbanville", singing
along too—but it’s taken Cat quite a lot of talking to get it:
"It’s
funny—they were loving it but they seemed scared to move," he says later,
sitting coolly on an amplifier backstage. "I have to do a lot of rambling.
It doesn’t matter
what rubbish I say, it’s just that all that talking makes them realise something.
That you’re really human".
These British dates are
the round off of four months on the mad—Cat Stevens’ World Tour. And everybody
in the Stevens entourage tonight, aside from Alun Davies, Gerry Conway and the others are
wearing T. shirts that give you an indication of just how long they’ve all been out
on the road.
There’s been
Australia and Japan and America before this lot, and yet tonight it’s very obvious
that something’s up. That instead of an enormous feeling of exhaustion and sheer
ploughing weight of so many live gigs, so many miles, there's an incredibly high energy
level with everyone.
Most of it is emanating
from Stevens himself. Everyone remarks on it backstage, but if you hadn’t noticed it
anyway you’d be pretty dumb. He’s really exuberant and happy—joking,
laughing, ribbing Conway, and whining "Dat little black dawg" with Jean Rouselle
in a send-up of Alun’s song.
With only ten minutes
before he’s due on stage, there’s none of the tension you normally get—not
just from Stevens, but from any artist that is noticeably jumpy before those first couple
of early numbers are tucked under his belt and he’s had time to gauge what the
audience is all about.
But there’s just
smiles and kisses and "let’s do the interview now", which is really odd
because it’s the unwritten law of rock and roll that nobody does interviews before
they go on—and any journalist who asks is a fool who just doesn’t know what
it’s all about.
But he really does want
to talk—urgently—he needs to explain this new-found emotional peak he’s
going through. Why this inexplicable resurgence of energy should suddenly have hit him,
three years after he came back to grow into the giant stature he’s at now.
Success is probably the
most sought after, most prayed for and certainly most admired quality in the twentieth
century. Western life is built, packaged and ribboned around success. Success is not just
the American dream anymore—it’s everyone’s dream. To the artist it’s
his incentive; to the outsider it appears to bring its own rewards.
But like everything
pretty and shiny and smelling good, it’s something of a tender trap that brings its
own problems. For three years Cat Stevens’ success growth has been rapid and
sure-footed. There hasn’t been a slip on the way, and now with four world-wide smash
albums tucked under his arm and the knowledge of his pulling power (he could have sold the
Albert Hall out twice with no problem at all) he is in an admirably secure
position—some would say.
But in fact it’s
this very security that he appears to be fighting with all his new found strength.
In his dressing room he
grins like a non-stop Cheshire cat. There is a friendly confusion in the air. Jean and
bass player Alan James are indulging in some fine souped up Bach/jazz improvisation; Alun
Davies is chatting with friends, Gerry Conway is drifting around as only he
can—looking earnestly as though he’s just lost some important train of thought.
The band’s soundman,
John, is working out who’s tuned what. Onstage, the Sutherland Brothers are three
minutes into the first half and their harmonies can just be heard along the corridor when
someone opens the door.
In the midst of the noise
and rabble rousing Stevens talks with great determination—sometimes having to yell
across the racket. Occasionally, during a conversation about how the four months on the
road have seemed like one year encapsulated, he turns to Gerry to ask how he feels
he’s changed. "Not much, not me" mutters Gerry thoughtfully."You just
get much more involved in the music—there’s no diversion of energies on the
road".
"Right", says
Stevens enthusiastically "There’s no wastage that’s what it is. I think
it’s become very noticeable to everyone how much I’ve changed. My friends really
expected me to be a wreck after the tour. They can’t believe that you can do
something you really dig and still come back digging it—and I did, I really did. I
feel now I have all the energy in the world. And yet four months ago I felt drained.
-
"Catch bull was a
determined effort. Now I feel like I’m starting all over again with all this
inexhaustible energy coming in. It’s so weird and yet so nice. I can’t explain
why it’s happened. I’m just thankful it has—because there’s this awful
fear of getting stale. All artists get it. When something like this happens you just thank
it for happening."
We get on to Catchbull
Cat says he sees it as the end ‘of a four album period, but it’s probably more
noticeable on that album that he was really trying to break away from a format that
he’s accidentally found himself trapped in on the previous three:
"I must admit I
remember reading somewhere how alike the material had become and how only three songs
stood out. I thought at the time that the fact that they didn’t even consider the
other seven…well it got me a bit wild. So I thought some kind of change was in order.
I’m fighting hard now not to be too predictable in my writing and that’s a
danger once it becomes easy—which it has for me.
"Now I have to
change something that comes naturally and that forces me to think why I’m doing it. I
think that’s why I haven’t started work on a new album yet—I’ve got to
figure out and go back to the roots of just singing and enjoying writing. Success does
effect your music and I’d like to come out with something now that’s freer and
more natural and I think I will."
Success too has affected
Stevens on a more personal level:
"I’m very
determined not to become an institution. It’s very easy to fall into that—put
out a record, promote it, do tours, interviews, all the things that are expected of you
and that everyone else does. It’s hard not to and of course I take part in
institutional things like everyone else.
"In the music scene
you’re branded once you start. The career tends to rule you. The Albert Hall
frightened me as being an institution. It took me a long time to make up my mind to play
there.
"You see to me I
only have two involvements. One is my music and the other is my family. As my career
develops so my life with my family and friends changes until you get to the point of
saying ‘well they’ve accepted me for doing what I’m doing and that’s
what I didn’t want.’ I wanted to break free of something that was already
organised always—like school, art school; work. I think that’s why I’ve
changed now because I’m against that kind of security so much. I just don’t
always want to do the accepted thing.
"No not like live
appearances. They’re very important. I wouldn’t stop those—that’s how
you keep communication. The only time I did stop I was writing and it was all the same
figures, the same chord structures. Live is the point where all things take place, it is
the one take and you know when you’re up there that if it takes off you’re going
to finish really well.
"I don’t think
that people who withdraw progress fast enough. Neil Young and Van Morrison? Yes
they’re both cases in point. I really like their work but I don’t feel
they’ve progressed very much musically and that may very well be because they
don’t appear live enough.
"I don’t think
you can ever rely on success---directly you do, it’s gone. But you do need a lot of
energy not to fall into that trap. Now, the way I use the success I’ve got and the
energy I’ve got has to be just right. And I feel that, maybe it’s a challenge in
a way and perhaps that’s why I feel this new enthusiasm so much."
- Bournemouth Winter Gardens. Full house. The
rain’s stopped just for an hour. Up on stage Cat Stevens is perched over his piano,
his black curls bouncing around and into "Miles From Nowhere,"… . ..
"I have my freedom" he rightly pounds into the mike, curling his growl round it.
"I can make my own road".
 |
