Cat Stevens (Official Thread)

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Re: Cat Stevens

Lord Grendel wrote:

I disagree with you vehemently CP/M,,,it was well documented when he left England and ended up in Turkey and Iraq and other places as a beggar...Do you really think people made this up??

I do because it doesn't make sense how someone with such fame would simply become a begger overnight! Even if it was true, why do people hold that against him? He made a personal choice with regards to what he really wanted to do and had to work hard to get it. You try changing your career and see how hard it becomes to archieve a status in something which is totally different - personally for myself I had no trouble proving how good I am on a computer, but trying to convince people how much I know about the Natural Environment is a completely different story. People generally don't believe anyone until the experts confirm it and to be an expert you need degrees and PhDs just have a status.

He made a decision to renounce his pop/rock star status and live a simple life pursuing his religious ideals, and that took him many years to accomplish. Whatever he found he returned to his normal life after his journey and started making music again.

Yeah that just goes on what I said about trying to prove yourself and accompanishing something, but I don't understand why people call that strange, he simply made a decision that he wanted to do something different. He was only around 18 when Cat Stevens came onto the scene in 1966 and was only around 28 when he decided there was more life than music - as a young man I can relate to that cause when you are 16, 17, 18 or 19 you have to make a decision about where you want to go with your life, but the reality is it can take much longer to discover what you really want to do. It's a debate which has two sides of the coin cause there are people in the world who will say "You should Do What You're Good At" and others will say "You Should Do What You Love".
 

LG

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Re: Cat Stevens

Here is my all time favorite Cat album an obvious choice admittedly but this was the gateway to his music for me and the first album of his that I bought.



Cat_Stevens_-_Tea_For_The_Tillerman.jpg

Cat_Stevens_-_Tea_For_The_Tiller-1.jpg
 

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Re: Cat Stevens

CP/M User said:
Even if it was true, why do people hold that against him?

Nobody in this thread said anything about holding that against him. Lord Grendel and I are simply saying that the decisions Cat Stevens took had an extremely adverse impact on his musical career - which is all we are discussing in this thread.

:drums:
 

LG

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Re: Cat Stevens

:grinthumb,,,exactly my point Hepcat, how much great music did he leave on the table? We'll never know now.
 

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Re: Cat Stevens

Perhaps but LG and myself were discussing this earlier and perhaps I was reading too much into it at the time, but people generally frown upon beggers, but it still leaves the question of how did he become a begger when he must of had so much before he decided to do something else and how come I've never heard about this before, I've watched documentaries about Yousaf Islam and there were certainally no discussion about him being a begger, so it's still debatable in my mind if he was or not.

True, I envy the guy for having such a talent at an early age, I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do in my 20s and even my first jobs are completely different from what I do today cause they weren't exactly great jobs to have.
 

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Re: Cat Stevens

The bottom line is that no music collection is complete without a classic album or two by Cat Stevens.

d27b729fd7a0452a5ea7d010.L.jpg 782281b0c8a03e19333da110.L.jpg

:****:
 

LG

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Re: Cat Stevens

Have all three of those Hepcat...:D I'll post my others later.
 

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Re: Cat Stevens

I thinks his two earlier albums are good, but I still feel his zenith was the early-mid 70's, right up to Izitso, which was a disappointment when I bought it.
 

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Re: Cat Stevens

When I think about it now, I reckon Cat Stevens is one of those driving forces which got me into all the old music in the first place. Sure I had other influences as well from TV Shows, other groups, and I'm not quite sure if I got interested in Cat Stevens from a Cassette tape I got or my Dad's copy of Tea For The Tillerman Cassette - which I always remember trying to fix cause the tape snaped at the end - though I always remember listening to all the album without any problems. My Cat Stevens cassette consisted of:

Side 1:

1. Here Comes My Wife
2. Granny
3. Matthew And Son
4. Here Comes My Baby
5. Lovely City
6. I'm Gonna Get Me A Gun

Side 2:

1. I Love My Dog
2. Kitty
3. The First Cut Is The Deepest
4. A Bad night
5. School Is Out
6. Where Are You

Which are obviously all his 60s songs, though it probably got me interested in 60s music and how it was constructed! :)
 

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