Pushkin. Since debuting in the late sixties, use of Kat Stevens has made a sizeable contribution to the folk cannon with tender, contemplative songs like wild World, Moonshadow, and the Wind. I listen to the Wind, to the wind of my soul, where I'll lend up well? I think only God really knows. Use of Kat stevens journey as a seeker and a musician is closely tied to his near death experience fighting to berculosis as a young man in nineteen sixty nine. After spending a year recovering, Stevens began to write songs at a staggering rate. By the mid seventies, he had released eight studio albums and become one of the defining singer songwriters of the decade. Teaser in the Firect, one of those classic seventies albums, was recently reissued to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. The new edition features remastered versions of the original album, along with forty one previously unreleased demos and alternate mixes. On today's episode, Bruce Heedlam talks to Yusef about what it was like to perform his old songs after he converted to Islam in the late seventies. They also talk in detail about how Stevens wrote and recorded Teaser in the Fire Cat, and they talk about how he came to love some of the rough versions of his songs that appeared on the soundtrack for the movie Harold and mod which was also just recently re released for its own fiftieth anniversary. This is broken record liner notes for the digital Age. I'm justin Richmondson. Here's Bruce Edlam with Yusef Kat Stevens. I want to talk about everything in this whole new package for Teaser in the Fire Cat. It's got demos and nice little remembrances from Rick Wakeman and Carly Simon. But before that, I just would like to know what was your life like. You'd had a couple albums, but then you had your big album T for the Tillerman and I'm not sure if Harold and Maud was out yet by the time you were writing this album, But what was the sort of the state of your life before going in to do Teaser in the Firect. First of all, I was re emerging, if you like, finding my new identity, because I'd gone through a very initial spell of pop stardom, you may say, and I was writing very different kind of songs really. I mean, those those early songs which were released on Decca were very poppy, and they always had an arrangement, you know, so it wasn't me playing the guitar. It was always session man, you know, being paid to do this. And I had a producer who was just infatuated with pat sounds, but he could never create pet sounds with my music. So it was kind of a little bit. I was feeling a little bit odd, not really being myself, not able to be myself. So now time progresses and really I find myself after after having contracted tuberculosis and going into hospital, and suddenly, you know, I looked at life completely differently. I said, this time, I'm gonna I'm going to try and take charge at least of my music. And so then I started writing, and that's where plethora of songs just k flooded out of me. They more or less formed the basic song list of my next three albums, you know, which included Mona Bone, Jakan, and Teeth for the Tillerman and of course Teasing the Firecat. Although yeah, there were other songs which I had yet to be write, you know, and yet to find like Morning is Broken for instance. You know that wasn't mine. Yes, So I was in this state where i'd come back and I was really really happy that I found a label, which is Island Records, that allowed me to just be myself and producer and a bunch of musicians that really just supported me and let me just be myself. And that was great. It was a miracle, you know, compared to what I sounded like before that, this was totally different. And so some people, I suppose in UK because that's why I said my first career really began and Europe, who you know, is this true? You know, is it really the same guy? So I'd made quite change in my life, and then that became my modus up or endi. You know, I was continuously walking through thresholds and trying to reach a new height, you know, somewhere better than where I was. So Teaser came off the back of if you like Teefa Tilamu. Now that was kind of pretty much a milestone record, although I didn't really realize it at the time, but in retrospect you can see it now. But you know a lot of people were saying, well, is he going to be able to do something as good? You know? And so this was me sort of riding a wave and inspired and I think forfeiting taking all the boxes to anybody, you know. But in front of me, were you feeling pressure after tea for the tellerman to come up with something as successful? No, I was. It was kind of easy. Was something I was doing anyway, you know, So I don't think I had to try. It was people were absorbing my music as fast as I could make it, you know. I was having a great reception with my music. You mentioned in the introduction to the booklet that's included with this new edition that there were a lot of people around James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Elton John. I think you mentioned Carol King and you said there was a competition at least sort of listening through the walls at the recording studio. I don't know if you meant that literally or figuratively. Were you listening to those people and thinking, huh, I've got to pick it up, I've got to do something different. No, no, no. When we talk about competition, it was like only after you when you've made the record, you know. So you're seeing how well your record company to do with your music. It wasn't really that I've got to write a better song than Elton John. It wasn't anything like that. It was just seeing whether or not people were hearing you. And that was the competition, you know. So yeah, the charts, you know, it's like a track race. You know, you're trying to get to the top. But it's it's not that you want to necessarily downbeat the person in front of you. You know, you just want your record companies to make sure that everybody gets gets to see you win. That's all. What did Ireland Records see that Decca didn't see when you started with Island Records, Well, it was really a very introspective new approach to lyric writing. I was writing my autobiography, if you like, through my music and you know, my lyrics. It was whatever I was learning, whatever I was reading. You know, I was into metaphysical books and trying to find out, you know, the eye behind me or with in me. Buddhist books. You know, I was reaching out then and so therefore anything that I was discovering I kind of like wrote about it very quickly. So if you listen to the wind. You know, there you have a perfect example of my state of mind, you know, waiting for the inspiration, which is the wind. You know, it's a symbol of the wind. And in fact, it's interesting that that word is very close to the wind. Inspiration is like a wind. Did you know that's what you were feeling at the time or did it just sort of come out of you and then once you wrote the song, you said, oh, this, this must be what I'm feeling, This must be what I'm thinking. Well, you know I was thinking. I was I was trying to lay it down that was that was what I was doing, and I think I did pretty well. You know, a lot of people really connected. I mean I wrote most of these songs in a little bedsit you know where my father gave me this little flat above the cafe, my Dad's cafe in London, and it was just one little beds and that was really the epitome of the kind of the audience that I had because they were all inspectives listening to me too, and there was a kind of this community of introspective people looking at the world and looking at what the challenges are out there, and there's a whole lot of competition going on. But actually, when I talked about competition, I didn't mean that that's why I wrote songs. I mean, god, no, it was just that that was just the business side. As I said, it was really my internal journey that I was really concentrating on, and that connected very very deeply. Was the Win the first song you wrote for this album. I note you wrote a lot of songs when you were recovering, but because it's it's such an interesting song to begin an album with. Teaser is a much rockier, harder edged album than TFA the Tellerman, at least I think some of the songs and you start on a very kind of pensive note. Did that song come to you first or did you just feel it introduced the album best. I think it represented who I was better than any other because the other songs were a little bit more arranged, you know, there was more sounds, more drums, more everything. This was really scaled down me, you know, peeled down to the call. And that's why we loved it. And that's and that's why I think people also appreciate when they listen to the album, this is the beginning. This is the beginning. Of this journey. And it's funny because it's not even me playing guitar at the beginning. That's actually Alan. He plays this lovely little arpeggio thing and then I come in. But the words of that song are so so profound, you know, I think just keep reflecting on them, and they mean so much. When I talk about I'll never make the same mistake, Well, that's our problem, you know, as human beings were always making mistakes, and but that's the other characteristic of human beings is that we try to develop and get over them and do something better. And you know, so that's it's great. It's got so many aspects to that song. It also introduces this the to the record, which is in some of the sort of rockier songs as well of putting the past behind Changes four, particularly Tuesday's Dead. It runs throughout this album, this feeling that you've got to put the past behind you. Is that something you felt strongly at the time about your career or your life? Yeah, I mean I was looking back at Decca, you know, the old Decca days, and that was more like looking looking back at Dickens, you know, the times of Dickens. That's what it felt like to me, but the past. I mean, when you look at a song like Changes, I knew there were a few other songs called Changes, So that's that's why I called it Changes four. I didn't know if there were three before that where there were twenty, I don't know, but I call it Changes four just to distinguish this's this one from what David Bowie had one too. So therefore Changes. You know, we were really we had high expectations and we were definitely in the political mood. The generation, our generation was trying to really change things around everything, to leave the past and go forward. But you know, political barricades were not easy to overcome. This album also has a strong gospel feel. It is Morning is Broken, which is a hymn, not gospel. Particularly growing up was what were your influences when you were first starting to play the piano and the guitar. Oh well, I had all kinds of influences because I lived in the center of London and so you can imagine, you know, I had a theater across the road on my doorstep. I went to school in Drury Lane, you know, I mean there were all the cinemas, all the clubs, tin pan Alli my best friend. Actually his father had a restaurant too, and he was just on Tin Pallet that was about four hundred yards away, you know, so it was all where I lived, soho it was just a little bit further. Piccadilly was the other end of my road. So because of that, I picked up all the genres there were, you know, buzzing around. But Westside story was it? You know that that really broke or all the barriers for me as far as as I could see as in music, it had everything. And then came the Beatles, you know, and wow, and they were getting sourced or their inspiration was also coming from this, you know, from the state side. Black artists, you know, a little little singles were coming across the water and they were listening to them, and you were getting you know, Muddy Waters and John Lee Hook and all these people, so all that stuff. I was soaking it all up. When you were writing these songs, How did there come? Was it you and a guitar just finding a key? And yeah, it was mostly like that. I mean I had a new guitar. I mean, every new guitar has its own you know, song within it. And that's another thing. But that was a favorite guitar of mine, which was black Everly Brothers, you know, Gibson, and I wrote most of my songs on there. But then of course I had a little Italian organ which sounded really crappy, you know, but it gave me so many ideas. I just pressed a button. It was another one. And of course when the arp synthesizer came out, wow, that was another whole, you know, kaleidoscope sound for me to play with. But really I kind of jumped from guitar sometimes the piano at a piano upstairs in the house, and you know, my little organ, and that was it in my little tape recording and I was off. You know, no obstacle to me writing at all. You're a very muscular guitar player and very rhythmic. Unlike a lot of folk music of the day. You've got a really strong beat in what you do, and the same thing on piano. Like when I think of Miles from Nowhere, I hadn't realized you'd played that piano part. It's a really great bluesy part. Who were the players that influenced you? Because you've got such an aggressive rhythmic sound on both instruments. I don't really know. I mean that was you know, I suppose Ray Charles, you know, if you listen his voice, I mean, to be honest, that's that's the voice for the blues, I mean, incredible. So and so I was influenced by him. I was also influenced by Nina Simon, but I couldn't play piano like her, you know, but she did play wild piano though. Sometimes you listen to you know, Mississippi Goddamn you know bang you know, she does it as well. So in those kinds of songs. And then of course you've got sad Lisa. You can you can go to my classical side and you can see I'm sort of very soft, very gentle, you know, on the piano as well. So I took on different moods. But I with a rock song, of course, you've got to bang it out. That's that's why I feel. And were there any guitarists that influenced you, particularly guitarists are I suppose, looking back at the time, Peter Green, you know, oh well, I mean that song, I think you can hear a little bit of Lady Darbon feeling the way that I play that you know that little on the guitar. I'm pretty sure it was influenced by Peter Green when it came to the groups. I mean, I thought Keith Richards was a terrific guitar player. His riffs and he loved a riff. You know. You go back to kind of Harley and Wall for that kind of thing. Down down, down, dud down. Were you the kind of kid who sat there with the radio and figured out riffs as you heard them? No, in fact, that was one of the real I would say motivations for me to write songs that I could not work out the chords and it was just too tedious to even bother to you know, Oh no, he's changing, Oh too quick? Oh that what's that word? Oh no, I can't even hear it, you know. So I'd write my own songs forget about learning anybody else's. We're taking a quick break here, but we'll be right back with more from Bruce Helen's conversation with yusef Kat Stephens. We're back with more from the use of Kat Stephens. So you set down to record this album, and I want you to talk about two people who you'd worked with before. Paul Samuel Smith. First of all, can you just talk a little bit about his influence on you, well, Paul. You know, i'd actually seen him in the clubs, you know, because when when I was, you know, getting into music, I was going to the clubs and he was in the Yardbirds. So I saw him at the Hundred Club, which was just down the road from where I lived, and I used to dance his music, you know, and there was other groups there. The Animals used to come down. Manfred Mann an awful lot, the who dropped into the market. I mean, it's all that going on, but he was the baseball. I didn't really notice him, to be honest, at that time. It just, you know, you felt it. You felt the base didn't really know what he was doing. But then, of course, when Chris Blackwell of Ireland Records sort of discovered me, he kind of brought Paul on board and I listened to an album he had made with Renaissance as the kind of British sort of progressive folk group, and wow, I loved it. It was so clean and English, you know. I loved the ambience which he created with that. It's like, you know, sometimes if you hear the timbre of a guitar. It's would and that's what he tried to capture. He tried to capture the nature of the wood of the guitar that I was playing, and that was extraordinary. And the other person you started working with was Alan Davies. Yeah, so Alan, I mean Alan was brought on board kind of like as a replacement for someone who Paul actually wanted. It was John Mark, but he was busy, so then he's that he recommended Alan come along. Alan was kind of thinking, you know, this is like cut steam as he was sort of this black velvet suit guy, and what's it going to be? And then of course he listened to the new songs and wow, is blown away and then he became my perfect companion. All those little intricate gaps that he used to fill and you know, and enhancement. It was just incredible how it worked. And so we we've been together ever since, ever since those early days in Olympic where we first started recording Monamo and Jackin was it that made you go so compatible? Well, he was blond and I was dark. Here, I mean that's basically you know, we just went together. It was a great combination. Yin and Yang Sun and Moon. Yeah, but you would do all the chords and the strumming, and he would do the patterns. Yes, and what it came to something like Wild World and you know, you've got a few licks which I'm doing, which which he wasn't. He was doing more strumming actually on Wild World. So we kind of changed around here and there. But you know, if you listen to Father and Son, you can hear that beautiful response to my first guitar chords. You know, down da da da and he goes da da da beautiful. Would you just sit and play together to work out those things? Is that something you did in studio or while you were writing? Oh? No, that was always done in the studio. I'd come kind of with a ready made well not all the time, they weren't all finished. Like, for instance, the first recording of Wild World, I kind of had oh, Darling, Darling, it's the world World. No, that didn't work. Next day I changed it to oh Baby Baby. But usually the songs were formed. You know, they've got their character, and I was trying to teach them some of these. Occasionally I'll do something on the timing that would be slightly different, and that that was the thing which stumped them, and so we'd have to stop and start again until we got that right. But usually it would be in the studio that we worked this out. Yeah, one of the songs on the album is is in seven eight I think you have un usual time signature sometimes. Yeah, that was the Greek in me, you know, so my father was from Cyprus, so they often do this. They do an eleven one too, you know, eleven eight time signature too, and sometimes they swap it around. Well, actually Allen didn't play on that one, to be honest, it was you know, Andreas Tumazi, you know, a friend I met, a buzuki player who, of course, you know, did that so naturally, you know, like in his sleep. Did you listen to Greek music growing up, Well, yeah, because we went to weddings and that's the new music they had, you know, for sure. My brother also my half brother my father's first marriage. His name was George and he was a bazooki player and he actually played violin. So I used to go and see him play at the weddings. But you never played yourself the bazooki. No, it was very difficult to hold because it's kind of like a bowl um and you know it's balancing that thing is not easy. So guitar is much better, much easier. When I was talking about your guitar playing and you mentioned you had the Everly Brothers Gibson, it makes me think your guitar playing is a little like the Everly Brothers. Yeah, you could say that. I mean also, yeah, you Eddie Cochran, you know, if you know d you know, I love that kind of thing, the riffs. M we're using full chords, you know what I mean, Like he listened to UM, I wasn't electric, but you know it's the same kind of thing that Kinks did. I love all that, all those kind of h cordy riffs. Did you see the Kinks as well live? You saw so many great bands live, Yeah, Kinks as well. Yeah, for sure they were. They were doing the circuits as well. I have to ask you what it was like to see the Kinks back then. Well, they were very odd, you know, and but they were more kind of R and B in the beginning. You could hear that for sure. You know, they were listening to all the songs that were coming over, you know, from Stateside and the sort of Martown influence as well. You could hear that Fortune Teller I Reckon was an inspiration for You Really Got Me Too? You know so well, all those kind of songs influenced them and they interpreted it their way, sort of their British way, in a British sound. I want to talk to you about a couple of specific songs on the album. It's one of these albums I grew up with, so I know it so well. There's much more than for the Tellerman. There's a couple of very direct love songs. If I laugh, how can I tell you? They were much more kind of sort of yearning and much more direct than other stuff you've done. Tell me about those songs. Well, you've got to find someone you know you can you can love. That's that's the whole that's the whole joy of you know, and the search is the thing. You know, when you find someone, they'd never usually turn out exactly the way you expected. So there's always that kind of disappointment because the perfect person isn't there, you know, it's it's not what we project from what we expect from others. And so how can I tell you? Was really a song about an invisible girl, you know someone who well, no, I was going out with someone at the time, but I use that as a kind of a sort of jumping board if you like to to then write this song about another girl which wasn't her. I suppose was the other girl a real girl or just an imaginary girl? That would always be imaginery, always imaginer. Yeah, that's the thing, no limits to my imagination. Tell me the story about the song moon Shadow, Well, Moonshadow is of course very special to me because while I was the city lad, and therefore I was used to looking at the moon from the street with lab lights, you know, with street lights, and so therefore I never ever saw my shadow until I took a holiday in Spain. This was just before I was making the record, and lo and behold, I looked down there, I am you know, it's me. It's my shadow. I couldn't believe it, and I had a few melodis, you may say, and I developed this one particular song to suit the moment, and it was perfect. It was just it was all in d and therefore the moon Shadow was born. I think that's a funny story because for me, Tifa the Tillerman is such a pastoral album. It seems like an album of someone who lives in the country, seems very about nature and boats. And then when you said, well you were a city kid, I mean I think most people would think you were some kid from the country because because of that pastoral feel as some of your music. Yeah, well that was the imagination at work, you know. So so yeah, we had patches of green, you know, which we would go to. They're called parks in London and you take a bus and you know, you have to go quite a way to get there, get off and you're in the park. But there was always this you know, dream of the land of green. And so therefore I wrote where do the Children Play? For instance, based on the fact that you know, where I lived was all Cement and that impacted me. Yeah, so it was it was more like the ideal within my mind, within my sort of creative songwriting mind, that that helped me see all these things and paint them with my music, with my words. It's like England, this green and pleasant land. I don't know. If I know you went to Catholic school, you may not have listened to Jerusalem when you that him when you're at school I'm not sure if it's a Catholic or a Protestant song. Now and now you're confusing me. I'm not sure where that lies. But yes, you're right by the way. William Blake he was born in Soho, if you know, around the corner from the clubs where I used to go no zab Rain. Yeah, William he wrote the words, of course of that song. So he's another city boy who just wrote about the country. Yeah. Well look at what he wrote too, you know, talk about the Satanic mills. He was talking about the New Industrial Revolution, which was on the doorstep and which I wrote about later when I wrote Matthew and Son, for instance, Were you influenced by Blake when you were young as well? I like Blake, but I think I was more influenced by well. I loved, let's say, Van Gogh. He was my favorite artist apart from the cartoons, because I did actually spend more time looking at cartoons than I did in the National Gallery or anything. But yeah, cartoons was a much quicker way of expressing yourself and you know, having a few laughs as well, because I used to like cartoons. Did you start drawing around the same time you started playing music, No, no, no. I began with the pen and that was actually going to be my few. I really felt I was going to be an artist or a cartoonist or whatever, you know. That was my ambition. And then along came all this music, you know, the Beatles changed everything. And then I realized a lot of artists actually didn't die very rich. And the only you know, the painting started selling for millions or whatever it was when they died. I thought, well, that's no good, because here's the Beatles earning money right now, you know, you know, so there's a clear road to where I wanted to go at that time. And tell me about the song Morning has Broken, Morning is Broken is a beautiful him, which I just happened to fall upon. I was looking for inspiration, and I was in a bookshop and I aided up in the religious department, and I fiddled around there and I found this hymn book, you know, and I m there, I go, I got some nice interesting words, took it back and I couldn't really read music, but I slowly I deciphered you know, doo doo doom doom doom. Wow, this is great, you know, And then I put my own cause to it because they didn't have the cords and there was just a top line and then and that that that became you know, part of My My Cannon, which people think, well I wrote it. Of course I didn't. I just arranged it. And I've called a Rick Wakeman happened to be in Morgan Studios where we were recording Teaser, and he dropped in and we asked him to just you know, instead of it being just only acoustic, I wanted something really flowery and magnificent, you know, and he did it. He did it so beautifully. We couldn't put his name on the album because it was like it was taboo in those days to do that. Oh, because he was on another label. He was on Warner Brothers. The Enemy, the Enemy. You say, you're not competitive, but boy, he didn't like Warner Brothers. They didn't offer me enough money, to be honest, Well, shame on them. Did you work out the arrangement with him? Because it's got a beautiful little and I don't know if it's in the original, but it's got a beautiful little modulation that song. It starts in D and you go through the introduction and then you end up in ce you go back to D for I think one of the verses or maybe a chorus, but it's quite sophisticated, the way it moves back and forth between the keys. Was that something you worked out yourself? Did you work that out with him? Yeah? I kind of told him I want to change key here, and because I didn't want it to go like monotonously through four kind of verses or four choruses or whatever to the end. I wanted something to change so that therefore the third one kind of moved up, and he was able to do that. On my guitar. I had more difficult time to do things a little bit higher, so he managed it. Of course he was a wizard on that. It's become a sort of modern hymn. Were you trying to get that kind of him feeling for it? And think I didn't even think of it as a hymn. I just thought of it as a great song. And the words were so universal, they were not tied to any dogma or in particular denomination, and so therefore it was free. It was just beautiful, and I loved it. But it was spiritual, and that's what I wanted. I wanted that spiritual side. I actually pronounced the words wrong in there, because I didn't know that it should have been God's recreation of the New Day. Instead I sang God's recreation and complaints some as old grannies. You know here God say that it's anyway my fault. No, you're you're okay, because everybody just says the English they say everything, you're okay. I'm just wondering because it came in seventy one, which is just after Let it Be the song Bridge over Troubled Water. Suddenly there was a lot of gospel feel, a lot of hymns in the top forty mm. I never thought what about that until now when you've said it, and yeah, you're right, it's sort of fitted into a kind of inspirational moment of spirituality, I suppose at that point, Yeah, what was the state of your own spiritual journey? At this point? It was very jagged and nothing really quite I mean, if I liked something, it wouldn't quite go to the end, because there'd be something I'd find, a problem which I couldn't rationalize or I couldn't absorb, and so therefore I went to the next thing I was looking for. You know, you make your own. At that point, I made my own religion up and it was basically music, you know. It was just me writing best songs, trying to not to hurt anybody. And I suppose inspired by Christ as well, because I mean I had seven years at Catholic school. I mean that really has to imprint, you know, something on you. But then the church was something completely different I imagine Christ to be. So I was wandering, you know, through the woods of religiosity or spiritualism, and not finding yet my home. Were a good Catholic Roman Catholic student, No, absolutely, In fact, I wasn't even Catholic. They stuck me in that school because it was the best school around. But I was Greek Orthodox, so I couldn't. I couldn't even do things, you know. I was always wondering, what's that little white thing that they brought on their tongue. I always wanted to taste one of those things, but I couldn't because I was Greek Orthodox. We'll be right back after a quick break with more from Yusef Kat Stephens. We're back with the rest of Bruce Helen's conversation with Yusef Kat Stephens. I mean lots of songs on this album have lasted, but peace Train, you're very well known for. Tell me about the writing of peace Train. Well, peace Train was a ref It was kind of It's got a bit of a Greek feel to it. If you listen to it, you get strains of this Greek influence in my music. If you listen to Road to find Out, you'll actually hear it in the voices a bit there that I do. And peace Train was the same thing. It was like this toothing. It was like a first and a third, you know, And you can hear the on Lady Dub on Wheel two, I'm doing kind of like the same thing. And I really do remember being on a train going out north to Manchester or wherever on a tour, you know, when I was just launching monomone Jack and and I'm pretty sure that that's where I got the kind of the field for this. I probably pulled my guitar out and did it there and then and then went, oh this is good, and then I never forgot it, you know, then I just finished it. But however, it was one of the hardest songs to chase in the studio, and so therefore I'd already written it by the time I recorded T for the Tillerman, and we recorded Peace Train for TIF for the Tillerman, but it just never made it because I was not satisfied with the energy because I was singing it live and it was making the audio it's just explode. But I never achieved that in the studio. So therefore we had to add drums and the right bass fit, and I never got it until finally when Teaser came around, we did it and we finally got that bass part in Ireland Records in Paula Bell Road, that's where we did it. And it was the bass that made that song. Yeah, the bass riff is really really crucial. It was a pick, you know. And the drums as well. Now I've got to say that the drums were so tasteful because they weren't there all the time, and they just highlighted the rhythm of the guitars. And so I think that that's what made it. After you converted to Islam, which was I think seventy seven, you stopped playing some of your old songs for a time. Do you remember what was it like to come back and start playing these songs from from Teaser? In the fire cat again. It's like it's yours and you can make it, you can update it and the way you want, you can sing it the way you feel. But actually it was still stood the test of time. I mean, most of those words are still so relative to our times and circumstances today. Change, you know, come on, we do need change every time a political you know, election comes along. We are dying to see this change. And then it falls back into the same or kind of groove. But anyway, you know, So then talk about the other songs. That peace Train still hasn't arrived. Maybe it hasn't even left the station. I don't know. But in fact, I call one of my tours when I first came back again, I called it peace Train late again, you know, and I had a little station you know where the train of course never arrived. It's such a personal album though about you questioning things. What was it like to come back to that. Do you put yourself in the mindset that you were back then or do the years allow you to sing it in a different way or think about them in a different way. Well, because they're poetic, Oh they don't really, they're not grounded, you know. You can't say it's exactly it means exactly this political point in time. It doesn't. It's generic but profound, and so therefore it lasts, and you can interpret it in so many different ways that you know, the way that you want to. Things like Tuesday's Dead still a bit of a puzzle. I'm thinking, why did I say Tuesday is dead? You know? I don't know, because Monday's a bore. I don't know. So there are still puzzles within those songs to work out. Are there some songs from this album that you just sing in a different way, in a different spirit. Now, if you listen to the new Box that you'll hear me doing Bitter Blue in a totally different tone. I've got very excited about singing that song again, but I couldn't do it with the same gusto you know that I did before and this so it's much darker. Why is that? Because the first version is a pretty it's a very kind of rocking song, but it's a slightly desperate song. How did you rethink it? Well? I was a little bit inspired when I heard Green Day, and I heard Green Day sing a song called Know the Enemy, and I thought, hang on that sounds an awful lot like a bit of blue and I thought, hmmm, I can do the same, And I thought I started developing a new approach to the song, and it was a bit darker, slower. Of course I wasn't Green Day, but but you know, I thought, well, this is great. It's flexible. It's flexible, and that that's the thing about my songs, actually a lot of them. If you if you try them in various ways, they work. They still work. So when you heard the Green Day song, you either picked up a guitar or picked up a phone and called your lawyer to see if no. I thought, let them let them off this one, let them off this one. You didn't let off Coldplay? I know, but let them off? Yeah, cold Play? Well, now hang on Coldplay. I let off as well. There was too many people claiming that they wrote that that song, so, but I was definitely there first. I would say, I think so with foreign a suite. But anyway, certain people I nab. I can't remember who they were. Oh, I think it was Flaming Lips, that was it, one of them. Well good for you. Yeah, they recorded a you know, a song called fight Test and it really sounded like father and son. Yeah, I couldn't let it go. Are you still rating? Yeah? Well I wrote a song maybe about two weeks ago, you know, and I recorded it in my studio. I'm the only one who's basically well, my family have heard it, but yeah, yeah, I'm still writing, yeah for sure. Is it still the same way the inspiration hits you or is it just you niddling with a guitar and something emerges? M well, this one is piano actually, So whenever I pick up a guitar, I always develops into some kind of new riff or new song or new chords. I can't just play old stuff. Although when I go touring, of course I know that people want to hear that song, so I do that. But when it comes to writing, I mean, I have a whole album of songs now ready to be released, but because of the teeth of the till Amound fiftieth, I kind of we delayed it. So we've got another blacket coming out next year. Okay. So people who are listening to this and have such fine memories of Teaser in the fire Cat I'm one of them. Tell me how the new music relates to this or does it relate to it. I think it relates to the spirit, to the to the soul, you know, because I think another word for my music is actually soul music is not. I mean, I don't think soul just is can be restricted to something with rhythm or you know, or to the black communities. It's it's soul is soul and uh. And the moment you express yourself deeply, you know that that's when it hits and that's when people get it. So I think it's it's still hitting those kind of those those areas of emotion and spirituality and consciousness. Yeah, I still see that. Well, I should ask about Harold Mode because the original Harold Mode it was not a great experience for you, Is that right? You didn't like the versions that howshould be used in his film. I loved most of it, but it was just that these two new songs which I sort of recorded very roughly in Wally Hyde just down the road in San Francisco when he was doing the filming there. I mean, they were never meant to go in the film like that. I was always meant to do it properly, you know, with musicians or whatever beside me. But it was me doing all the little bits and pieces, but it ended up that he stuck that in the film and now it's it's there, like you know, it's history. But actually I love it now because it is so rough, it's so raw, and it was so fresh and spontaneous. You used to talk so much about music being wedded to visuals. You did your own illustrations on Tifa the Tillerman and on Teasering the Firect. The New Records has a sort of full book of Teasering the Firect with the entire story chaster do with the Moon, of course, what was it like seeing your music so tightly associated with this very particular story worry with Harold and mind, Well, it's always difficult in a way because you know, your vision of the song can never be repeated, and it's in your head, it's in your mind. But the genre that he created with that film, and and this the message of the film, just corresponded perfectly with my music. I mean, trouble. You know, at that moment when Maud is being carted into the hospital, she's taken, she's taken an overdose. I mean, you couldn't get anything more perfect. So he just did it. He he just I mean he was high most of the time. Maybe that's how he found a little key opened the door to my I I wasn't high when I said when I when I have puffed occasionally, I couldn't write anything. It was just well, if I did, it would never sound very good afterwards. That's all. You're a pretty clean living guy, even before you're a conversion. Well, that's because I learned my lesson in the early career. While I got TB and I said, how hold on, I want to hold onto my body a little bit longer, you know, I don't want to drop off this planet so early. Now I've watched some old interviews with you. You were still smoking like a chimney back in the seventies. Yeah, I was, that's true, and I finally gave that up. Actually, when I became a Muslim, it wasn't as if it was forbidden. But I'll tell you. The story was that I was actually in a cinema and I was puffing away, and then this woman next to me, she pulls the most horrible face and looking at me like I'm filth. I'll go, oh my god. If my smoking, you know, affects others to that degree, I'm going to give it up, and actually I did. I I was getting used to cutting down anyway, but that was the last straw. I said, no, that's it. I don't need this stuff anymore. You see, that's very English. And if someone gave a bad look at an American smoking, they'd light the whole path. This was I'm not sure if Tea or Teaser is your best selling album, because you continue to experiment through the seventies. You did some really early stuff with synthesizers, you did full bands on some of your like a full R and B treatment, You did some great, great albums, and you continue to do great music. What was it about these albums you think that just captured people so strongly. I think it was the soul, which was, you know, kind of shining, and I think it was like a very inspired and you know, when you hear inspired music, you just can't do anything but listen to it and become enraptured by it. And that's what happened. And I was just as much enraptured by my music as anyone else. I was the one. I was the first one who was hearing it, and I was going, this is great. I just hope other people like this, and it got to be that. You know that that's that's a miracle in a way that these things happen. And so I'm always happy and appreciative that, you know, I actually got through my music, made it through to people's hearts, and it changed a lot of people's lives as well. You later wrote the song I never wanted to be a rock star? Did you like? Being a rock star? At this point was the only thing I knew what to do? Actually, so yeah, Well that meant can I change my job in the middle of this thing? I don't think I could. It was like me saying I want to do something else. It was probably a prelude to what was going to happen. Okay, well, thank you so much. It's a fantastic, beautiful production. For people who love Teaser and the Firect, they should get it. And it was wonderful to talk to you. Thank you you too. Thanks the use of Cat Stevens for talking about the reissue his classic album Teaser and the Firecat. You can check it out on a playlist all of our favorite use of Cat Stephens songs at Broken record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast. We can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record broken Record. It's produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrell, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sadler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chaffey. Our executive producer is Mio LaBelle Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love the show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and uninterrupted ad free listening for four ninety nine of a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcasts subscriptions, and please remember to share, rate, and or view us on your podcast staff. Our theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Mitchment