Twee Magazine

Cat Stevens, "Matthew and Son," 1967.

Singer/songwriter Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, who was named Steven Demetre Georgiou at birth, is one of the great icons of twee. I don't think he set out to be, and he took a very long break from music after he converted to Islam in 1977, when he certainly wasn't pursuing any sort of a career as a twee avatar.

It doesn't really matter, though. The music of Cat Stevens has been a sort of hobo code marking the presence of twee almost since the start of his career. His music was quickly scooped up by two films, the very British "Deep End" and the very American "Harold and Maude," which effectively demarcated the difference between English and American twee. (The former is a serio-comic look at sexual confusion and tragedy, the latter is an especially morbid and eccentric manic pixie dream girl romance.) And ever since then, musicians have covered his songs and filmmakers have licensed his recordings to signal folksy quirkiness.

What is it about Cat Stevens? I will take an album-by-album look at his pre-conversion career to discuss his complicated legacy, starting with his first two albums, "Matthew and Son" from 1967 and "New Masters" from later the same year.

I was initially temped to skip these two albums, as they represent a very young and inexperienced songwriter who was then being marketed as a teen pop star, and whose albums, produced by former Springfield's member Mike Hurst, are very different than his later work. But there is a lot of the later Cat Stevens in these early albums, and at least two genuinely superb songs, and so they are worth revisiting.

First, a thumbnail biography, and the story of why Stevens' music changed so dramatically after these two albums. As mentioned, Stevens' name at birth was Steven Demetre Georgiou, and he was born in London in 1948, the son of two immigrant parents. His father was a Greek Cypriot, one of the ethnic Greek population of the island of Cyprus, and his mother was Swedish. His parents operated a restaurant very near London's Soho theater district and a block over from Denmark Street, which became known as London's Tin Pan Alley during the 50s and 60s for the amount of music that originated in the recording studios along the street.

Stevens studied fine art briefly in Sweden and London, but quickly began to pursue a career in music, influenced both by the developing folk scene and by the West End musicals he had grown up hearing. Stevens started performing in coffee shops in London, eventually giving himself the stage name Cat Stevens. He was discovered by Mike Hurst, who first arranged for Stevens to record demos, and then produced his first two albums.

Hurst's tastes tended toward the bombastic, and the first album, in particular, is unrestrained. Stevens seems not merely to be singing along to one Tom Jones backing track, but two, each in a different channel, each unaware of each other, one drunk. There are blaring horn parts, pounding kettledrums, and shouting backup singers. While Stevens' has a strong, distinctive voice, he wasn't a soul shouter, and so the arrangements often threaten to overwhelm his voice. Moreover, the arrangements were a poor match for his material, which tended to be wide-eyed and very young sounding. Stevens' first single, as an example, was called "I Love My Dog," and there isn't much more to the song than Stevens detailing his affection for his canine pet. He sings this over a string section, those damn kettledrums, and soaring brass stings, and it's too much, man.

As a whole, the album's lyrics feel especially jejune, although Stevens never completely got over being an awkward lyricist, and that's part of his charm. It may be that so many of his songs originate in what sound like spoiled snits -- the title track, "Matthew and Son," apparently originated from Stevens being irritated that his girlfriend spent so much time at work. The resulting song is about the drudgery of working at the same firm forever, without opportunity for advancement or even an increased salary, which is a pretty complicated tale to craft out of pure impatience.

Possibly the worst lyrics on the song were authored by Kim Fowley, the cult rock producer behind The Runaways. Fowley wrote a series of rhymed couplets about one of London's more moddish streets, named the song after the street -- Portobello Road -- and then passed the lyrics off to Stevens to write the music. But, oh, Fowley's lyrics are awful. Let me give an example:

Cuckoo clocks, and plastic socks
Lampshades of old antique leather
Nothing looks weird, not even a beard
Or the boots made out of feather.

"Matthew and Son" does offer one song that is utterly delightful, and has a hint of the sort of sprightly, memorable arrangements of Stevens' later albums. The song is called "Here Comes My Baby," and besides being a marvelous pop song features a bell-like opening riff and a charming piano part. It's all somewhat undermined by the remainder of the production, which is so saturated with reverb that it sounds as though Mike Hurst were attempting to drown the band in a swimming pool. But the song has an undeniably joyous, propulsive quality to it, and after years of refusing to license his songs following his conversion to Islam, this was the first song Stevens allowed to be in a film. Fittingly, that film was Wes Anderson's "Rushmore."

Cat Stevens, "New Masters," 1967

The production is far more restrained on Stevens' second album, also released in 1967 and titled "New Masters," but the style remains a sort of hallucinogenic baroque that is a poor match for Stevens' material, even if the album cover has the singer dressed like a 17th century fop. Lyrically, Stevens began to explore the decidedly mystical leanings he would show in later albums, which borrowed from Eastern spirituality and quaint children's literature in approximately equal measure. However, the results are bit embarrassing, such as in a song called "The Laughing Apple." The song is a sort of homily about an especially clever and joyous apple, and it is, frankly, incomprehensible.

Stevens fares better with a song called "Northern Wind," an anti-war melody played over a rattattat military drum, and "Ceylon City," a melancholy rumination in which a native of Sri Lanka recalls his childhood, which genuinely sounds like a song intended for children. There will be more of these in Stevens' career, many of them literally about the experience of children; it's like this album was a test run for the sorts of songs that would later dominate Stevens' career.

"New Masters" also offers a sample of the sort of song that I think Stevens does best, and it is a genuinely great song: "The First Cut is the Deepest," a searing R&B number about entering a new relationship scarred by the last. The song has gone on the be a genuine classic, covered by Rod Stewart, Sheryl Crow and an absolutely smashing version by P. P. Arnold. While I think Stevens' version suffers from an arrangement that is too Vegas-y, nonetheless his heartfelt rendition of it shows Stevens as a songwriter who had a talent for representing raw emotions in song.

Stevens spent a few years touring as a pop star, at the end of which he came down with a case of tuberculosis that nearly murdered him. He emerged from the experience with a massive collection of new songs, a different approach to arranging his music, a record contract with a different company, and a string of albums that represented a young man deeply wounded by love, searching for meaning in the universe, and frequently indulging in a prankish, boyish side to his personality -- a sort of record-store version of the male protagonists of every twee film ever made.