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62 of 66 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of my all-time favorites, June 4, 2001
Cat Stevens had two absolutely great albums, and this is one of them. The other was _Tea for the Tillerman_, and _Mona Bone Jakon_ was darned close. If you have those three, skip the "very best of" collections; you have most of the "very best of" Cat Stevens already. Borrow _Buddha and the Chocolate Box_ from somebody and tape "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"?) Since this album is so solidly written and produced (and its quality, in my opinion, more evenly distributed than that of _Tea_), it's hard to single out any highlights; besides, it's been one of my absolute favorite albums for about thirty years, and who can be objective after that long? Heck, I learned to play the guitar from Cat Stevens, James Taylor, and Jim Croce, with some help from Lightfoot and Fogelberg and CSN+/-Y and a handful of others. I can't step back now and pretend I'm hearing this stuff for the first time. But like all of its longtime listeners, I have my personal favorites. One of these is "The Wind," which is just about the most perfect "spiritual-seeker" song ever written in all of human history. (Hey, I said I wasn't going to be objective.) His take on the old hymn "Morning Has Broken" is just stunningly gorgeous. If you even _know_ this hymn, he's probably responsible at least indirectly; it enjoyed an amazing popular resurgence in the liturgies of the 1970s after he turned it into a hit. And "Moonshadow" also made quite a few appearances in religious programs during that same decade -- not to mention around campfires in various altered states of consciousness. (Moreover -- voice of experience here? you guess -- the song is sufficiently simple that it can be played convincingly in almost any of those states.) But my real favorites are some of the less popular cuts. "If I Laugh." "Changes IV." "Tuesday's Dead." "Bitterblue." And the great "Rubylove," a challenge in seven-eight meter and one of the man's few recorded nods toward his Greek heritage. (After he converted to Islam and adopted the name "Yusuf," i.e., Joseph, I fell briefly into the not-quite-nice habit of referring to him as "Bouzouki Joe.") Which reminds me -- here's a little history for the uninitiated: "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.
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~ Yusuf/Cat Stevens
~ Yusuf/Cat Stevens
~ Yusuf/Cat Stevens
~ Yusuf/Cat Stevens
~ Yusuf/Cat Stevens
by Cat Stevens 
