Wild world (Cat Stevens) (LP 3971 - 3974)

Cat Stevens  Tea for the Tillerman (CD, Island Records, 1970) *****  

Cat Stevens  Teaser and the Firecat (CD, Island Records, 1971) *****

Cat Stevens  Catch Bull at Four (Vinyl, Island Records, 1972) ***

Cat Stevens  Numbers (Vinyl, Island Records, 1975) ****    

Genre: Folk-rock, pop 

Places I remember: JB Hi Fi, Little Red Bookshop

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Father and Son (Tea for the Tillerman)

Gear costume: Moonshadow (Teaser and the Firecat)

They loom large in his legend (The Album Collection playlists): Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6

Active compensatory factors: I am mostly content with a compilation of the hits - he's had a lot of them! However, I am also keen to keep supplementing that compilation with his albums.

Along the way I've accumulated these four, beginning with two classics from the early seventies. Tea for the Tillerman was his fourth album and includes a fair portion of his best known songs: Where Do the Children Play?, Hard Headed Woman, Wild World, and Father and Son.

It became a hit album for Cat Stevens - making him a pop star again (even though he was beginning to reject mass adulation in favour of a more spiritual path). Quite a quandry. 

Teaser and the Firecat was an even bigger seller! More great Cat Stevens songs were on this album - among them Morning Has Broken, Moonshadow, and Peace Train. The musicians on these two albums were totally in sympatico with Cat Stevens. Most notably his fellow guitarist Alun Davies.

The follow up to these two extraordinary records was Catch Bull at Four. Sitting, and Can't Keep It In continued the hits on a set of songs that hinted at his dissatisfaction with the pop world. It must be said, it doesn't have the inspired pop songs of his previous albums.

Numbers is a concept album from 1975. It is subtitled A Pythagorean Theory Tale (yes, really), and is based on a fictional planet in a far-off galaxy named Polygor. The story is set in a castle that has a number machine and at that point my eyes glaze over. 

But wait! Don't write this album off - although Banapple Gas is the only really catchy song to emerge from the confusing concept, the music is gorgeous and the singing by Cat and his choir is sublime. This is an under-rated gem in his catalogue.

Of further note: the one, the only, Suzanne Lynch appears on backing vocals. Yay! Suzanne!!

Where do they all belong? A few to catch up on at some stage - Mona Bone Jakon, Foreigner, Buddha in the Chocolate Box.