CaTNiP
Turning Points: Yusuf/Cat Stevens' 13 Favourite Albums
[Yousif Nur , October 11th, 2017]
In my early teens, my uber-religious dad brought home an audio CD of Yusuf Islam narrating the life of the Prophet Mohammed. Little did I know that later on that Yusuf had a previous alias as a singer-songwriter named Cat Stevens.
I learned that in 1977, Cat Stevens converted to Islam, which subsequently changed his musical listening habits, reflected in the time scope of his Baker's Dozen. “I was very selective over what records I bought in terms of what I allowed to enter my audio domain,” he remembers. “So I would be listening generally on the airwaves or other people’s collections. When it came to embracing Islam, Elvis had just died, which probably symbolically meant it was the death of rock ‘n’ roll! I was more interested in studying my faith and the records I was interested in at that time were Quran cassettes and that took all my listening time up. I used to play my own music from the very beginning. I hardly sang anybody else’s songs. I’d be focused on my music and I more or less stopped writing. I didn’t have the inspiration anymore. Things changed.”
What changed, exactly? “That’s a big question,” Yusuf answers. “But essentially the first song I wrote when my daughter was born was called 'A For Allah'. I wanted my child to grow up learning that A is not only for apples. And then the big change happened when the Bosnian war happened. When I visited Bosnia, I found that there was an overwhelming connection between the struggle there and music. There was still singing, even though they were being bombed out of existence. It gave them spirit, and I realised that that was a turning point in my life.
I was listening to very conservative voices in Islam about being careful with music, frivolity and time wasting. But this was not time wasting, this was survival! It opened up a whole new understanding for me about the role of music in Islamic civilisation. Then I discovered later that the guitar was probably introduced to Europe via the lute, which came from the Arabic Oud. The Oud came from Baghdad to Andalucía and from there it entered Europe. In fact, the word troubadour means 'to entertain' in Arabic. So when you see all these pictures of medieval England with lute players, they were actually getting these from Islamic civilisation.
But with regards to the decision to pick up the guitar again, my son one day brought one home and that was the beginning of my coming together with music again. Music for me evokes so many emotions but I would hear how artists would stretch the boundaries, particularly in the seventies. Today, there’s so much repetition, cut and paste and sample sounds that it just makes you appreciate the days of analogue and how inspired many of those groups and artists were, including me of course.”
Not only is Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam’s presence in music colossal, it also ventured into tech: “I was told by one of the originators of the mp3 who was working with Apple at the time, that the first mp3 experiment was with the song 'Father And Son'. And if you look at Steve Jobs' top ten songs on his iPhone, three of my songs were on it. Without being too boastful, I’m sure I would feature on many other people’s all-time lists too!
With my new albums, some of the songs date back to 1967 and I wanted to record them the way I wanted to hear them.”
From Beethoven to The Beach Boys via King Kong: The Musical, these are the 13 pieces of music that shaped Yusuf/Cat Stevens as an artist:
Todd Matshikaza and Pat Williams - King Kong, The Musical
King Kong was a musical from South Africa that had an all-black cast. It was a fusion of South African traditional music, soul and jazz. It was so powerful
when I listened to it for all those nights. I fell in love with that musical, which was a very big part of my life.
I think [I was drawn to] the authenticity of the voice of what people call world music or ethnic music coming from the earth, of the people, the hope and their struggle. South Africans are so strong with their emotions and I think Africa itself is an amazing, inspirational place for music, because they live and breathe it. It was for me, a connection with the soul.
Leonard Bernstein and Steven Sondheim - West Side Story
Westside Story was probably the biggest thing in my life as teenager walking along the streets of London, me and my friends were always trying to imitate the Jets’
dancing! My favourite songs? There were so many, but Leonard Bernstein was a genius and I just thought if I could be anybody, I would be a composer like Bernstein because his music was just so
powerful and it also has a jazz tilt. He was doing things with music that I discovered much later. a lot of it was inspired by The Planets by Holst, with this jagged, staccato, kicking in
the music with songs like ‘America’. And I thought, yeah I wanted to be in America, although I wanted to avoid all the gang fights!
There were so many messages in that film and my all-time favourite song would probably be ‘Somewhere’. That reflects that ultimate aim in life to find a place away from the turmoil, pain and suffering to a place of peace, happiness.
The Band - The Band
The Band – they happened at a time when I was in my most purpose driven period, which was after I came out of hospital having being cured of tuberculosis. I was
looking up everything that was going on and one of the albums I got was this one. It was just amazing how this authentic expression of folk rock or electrified folk complemented unique
songwriting. It’s like if you listen to the Dubliners – that’s almost the equivalent of this American style. So yeah, that was big.
Wendy Carlos - Switched-On Bach
If I were stuck on a desert island, I’d find it hard to let go of this record! It encapsulates every part of the perfect beauty of classical music, particularly
Bach, yet it uses that with electronic synthesiser. It’s a totally new world, bringing the future and I think it’s fantastic. It also featured on A Clockwork Orange, which featured the 9th
Symphony by Beethoven and is also one of my all-time favourite records. But that wasn’t on Switched On Bach, so I had to source the origin of that later.
Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan obviously turned the wind around for many of us, almost like The Beatles did making it possible to not have to be a smoochy crooner. Here he was in a black
suit, representing a break from the establishment and everybody in my generation just wanted to say and do the same thing, removing the shackles of the past. He represented a new dawn for the
protest movement, which was extremely important for my generation.
Gustav Holst - The Planets
It was a very powerfully influential piece of music because it was very advanced and futuristic in the way the arrangements are so unique, and in the way that they
were breaking all kinds of rules. It was probably the template for most film music, which many musicians ended up borrowing the style of and introducing into cinematic media. So it was a very,
very important piece of music. I loved it when I discovered it, especially when I found out there were little links between this and Bernstein.
The Beatles - Please, Please Me
Nobody can underestimate the world changing impact that The Beatles had on my generation. It was so powerful and revolutionary. It enabled us all to see the
possibility of picking up a guitar and expressing ourselves in any way you wanted. And they were the pioneers of change and innovation. They were symbolic in the sense that we were all looking
for something new and they provided it.
When I heard Please Please Me, it was like it was from another world. This album represents the beginning, when they had been playing clubs and were first capturing that creative energy and raw vocals. This was the bare naked, early origin of many of these artists in this piece of music and I loved it. Of course, they went on to do many things after that, but this was the kernel, the seed of what they were to do later.
Stevie Wonder - Talking Book
Talking Book blew me away when I was going through a dry period in my writing. I heard Stevie Wonder and thought that I couldn’t improve on what he’s done,
he’s such a genius! I just fell in love with it, it was black soul music from that era, but sounds totally, totally now.
One of things he developed was the protection of funk through the electronics of synthesiser, keyboard and singing. I think Sly had a lot to do with influencing Stevie at the time as well.
Yusef Lateef - Eastern Sounds
Eastern Sounds is historically a very important record for me because it contained a riff, which I stole for what was to be my first hit single, ‘I Love My
Dog’! I just couldn’t get that melody out of my mind! Eventually I wrote my song based on this record and thought nobody would find out. Later I owned up to it and paid Yusef his royalties for
that song. Interestingly he also took his name from the Prophet Joseph/Yousef. We both embraced Islam, but he converted much earlier than I had, I didn’t think about religion at the time.
Ray Charles - The Ultimate Collection
He was the great innovator and the forerunner to make black music ‘acceptable’ to the general white population of America, and the world. When he came out, you just
couldn’t ignore the impact of his voice and delivery of music with piano and arrangements. Putting him and Little Richard together, they’re kind of similar in a way because they had such a big
influence. But I can’t ignore the contribution that Ray Charles has made to soul and music at large.
If there’s one person that I could emulate with my voice, it would be Ray Charles, perhaps with a little bit of Nina Simone thrown in. I never saw myself as a white boy singer.
Ludwig Van Beethoven - 9th Symphony
I discovered this via Wendy Carlos and it was her version in A Clockwork Orange that just woke me up to that sort of music ever since. It’s just the most
amazing song. This is the one perfect pop song and a brilliant piece of music. This is probably my no.1 pop song of all-time as far as I’m concerned.
The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
Nobody had been doing intricacy and harmony, arrangements and detail in the recording studio as much as Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys. He just made us all think
again, certainly to stand up and listen again too, just like The Beatles did with Sgt. Peppers.
Pet Sounds was also influential in my career because Mike Hurst, the producer who discovered me if you like, was absolutely infected with this album. So when it came to recording me, he tried his best to make it sound like Pet Sounds. That’s why I have such large arrangements in my early songs. It was not really something that was connected to me, but rather to that record, so it was quite interesting about the history of that.
Procol Harum - A Salty Dog
They were a contemporary of mine and were the British equivalent of The Band. They were incredibly original with songs that still sound good today. I record very few
covers, but one of them is on my new album – a Gary Brooker and Keith Reid song called The Devil Came From Kansas. I just wanted to pay a tribute to a great British band.
[thequietus.com]
