Backed up by a couple of other musicians, the concert is all acoustic, and Stevens plays some of his most beautiful, memorable, and classic songs, including: “Moonshadow,” “Wild World,” “Where Do the Children Play?,” and “Hard Headed Woman”, among others. “Father and Son,” particularly, reminds us of how brilliant Stevens was, with its back and forth dialogue and its stunning lyrics which include “You will still be here tomorrow but your dreams may not.”
Stevens laconically introduces each song (“this one was a hit,” “this one I wrote before I became a pop star”) in his British accent and then just plays, reminding the viewer what was so wonderful about his music and his lyrics, but also how accustomed we have become to sound engineers playing around with our music. He is listened to with rapt attention and applauded enthusiastically but not wildly, by a small audience of, well, hippies, sprawled out in front of him.
The DVD ends with a short animated film of Teaser and the Firecat pulling down the moon and chasing it around the world in a seemingly Peter Max-inspired psychedelic journey to the music of “Moonshadow.”
The concert itself is a trip down memory lane: beautiful, sad, and interesting, but all in all it is an odd bit of filmmaking and one doesn’t know quite what to make of it, as charming as it is. I suppose, I for one, shall give Cat Stevens - Tea For The Tillerman Live to my fifteen-year-old singer-songwriter daughter, so that she can see what brilliance is. She has, after all, attended her share of concerts, but never with a strange young man her mother has just met. At least, not yet.
Article comments
1 - Mark Saleski
there's no doubt he was a great songwriter. the whole fatwa thing was just plain weird.
2 - Lisa Solod Warren
I can always count on you, Saleski.
3 - Mark Schannon
He was/is one of the greats from those good old days. Thanks for reminding me. I've still got some LPs of his I can listen to.
4 - Lisa Solod Warren
Me, too, IF i still had a turntable. Gotta get one at some point.
5 - Mark Saleski
good, solid turntables are not hard to come by these days.
6 - Laurence A Berment.
I am 59yrs and still today I listen to my inspirational master CAT STEVENS and now YUSUF ISLAM even greater. The world should turn on him and we would have a great place for harmonious living.