Twee Magazine

"Teaser and the Firecat," Cat Stevens, 1971

"Teaser and the Firecat" was, as far as I can tell, Cat Stevens' best-selling album. It produced three songs that charted and, to this day, are seen as three of Stevens' best: The metaphysics-meets-children's-book "Moonshadow," the piano-driven hymn "Morning Has Broken," and the hippy dippy antiwar anthem "Peace Train."

There is a terrific pop sensibility to the album, and so I can understand its appeal. Stevens always had a talent for memorable melodies, and he tends to build entire songs around a few musical phrases and then repeat them until they've locked themselves into your head. Stevens rarely has choruses to his songs, but he manages to keep his songs from sounding repetitive through dynamic arrangements and often devastating climaxes to his musical stanzas. Take, as an example, "The Wind," the song that opens this album. These are the first four lines:

I listen to the wind to the wind of my soul
Where I'll end up well I think only God really knows
I've sat upon the setting sun but never, never never never
I never wanted water once, no, never, never, never

 The first two lines, sung over a joyous, plucked guitar part, are dreamy and liliting, and both lines are sung exactly the same way. The second two lines change the melody radically, starting as though climbing a hill with leaden footsteps and then interrupted by Stevens' repetition of "never. The final "never" lands back on the tonic note, as though with a satisfied nod. There are no verses, no chorus -- just two intriguing, satisfying musical phrases. It's no wonder that Wes Anderson used this song in "Rushmore" to represent the moment Max Fischer decides his path toward redemption -- as with Stevens' best songs, "The Wind" tells a story of a troubled, uncertain journey with a worthwhile conclusion, and does so with remarkable economy.

The album also represents a satisfying mix of musical styles, including one borrowing from Stevens' Greek heritage, "Rubylove." The song is not only written in the 7/8th time of Greece's kalamatianós dance, it also features dueling bazoukis and Greek lyrics. "Tuesday Dead" revisits Stevens' interest in Caribbean music, while the "Morning Has Broken" hymn originates as a Scots Gaelic song.

The arrangements alternate between dreamy ballads and acoustic-guitar-driven pop, but, despite having the same arranger as his previous albums, they strike me as unexpectedly straightforward. The songs on this album rely very heavily on a pair of rhythm guitars, one played by Stevens, one by folk rocker Alun Davies. Both are superb rhythm players, and the album has an almost Flamenco sensibility, relying on sometimes frantic strumming and sometimes startling syncopations. At the same time, the album pares back the use of other instruments to color songs -- even the bouzoukis seems unexpectedly subservient to the melody, supporting the song without driving it. Gone are the signature piano fills that pushed one section of a song into another. Gone are the perplexing string sections.

There is some eccentric percussion work hither and yon, especially handclaps (they drive the song "Peace Train"). But if there is anything that defines this album, it is the use of choral harmony. Often it is Stevens' own voice, providing little supportive phrases, but sometimes it is great blasts of vocals that sometimes are oversweet. And I think this represents a shift in Stevens' songwriting -- with this album, he has started to move away from the character he most often played in previous albums, as the wide-opened wanderer. Instead, he has taken on the role of the knowing elder. There were hints of a sort of pomposity in earlier songs. His treatment of women in his melodies often felt paternal, and one of his roles in "Father and Son" is quite literally that of a father. But these characters had a certain helplessness, their advice tempered by the idea that everyone has their own difficult journey to make, their own wisdom to gain.

Previous protest songs, such as "Where So the Children Play," revolved around questions. But on "Teaser and the Firecat," Stevens has answers. "Let's all start the living for the one that's going to last," he suggests on the song "Changes IV," but it doesn't sound like a request. The song is jubilant, propulsive -- it sounds as though it were intended to sweep you up and take you along with it. Likewise, the Calypso-flavored "Tuesday's Dead" finds Stevens' giving directions: "We must try to shake it down. Do our best to break the ground. Try to turn the world around one more time." And, most famously, "Peace Train" presents itself as a visionary moment for Stevens, with him moving between optimism and pessimism for the future, but encouraged by a metaphoric vision of a "peace train" that is approaching. At the song's most impassioned moment, Stevens and his choral backers cry out "Everyone jump upon the peace train!" He even tells us to pack our bags.

It may be a matter of personal taste, but I prefer the music in which Stevens is an ambiguous searcher to the songs in which he's an unambiguous seer. I just don't think he's that good at the latter, and he would prove this in 1989, many years after he recorded this album. Upon Ayatollah Khomeini calling for a death fatwa against author Salman Rushdie, Stevens made a series of comments that seemed to support this religious death sentence. Stevens has since backtracked, claiming he intended to be funny and it came out wrong, and that he was simply explaining the laws of Islam, but I have heard the original comments and they seemed in earnest. Rushdie has not forgiven Stevens, and I can't blame him -- there was real reason for Rushdie to believe his life was in danger, including a failed assassination attempt that leveled two floors of hotel in London. Rushdie spent many years in hiding, and, to the best of my ability to tell, Stevens has never apologized directly to the author.

The band 10,000 Maniacs also took Stevens at his word: They had included a version of "Peace Train" on their breakthrough album "In My Tribe"; they subsequently struck the song from the US CD releases of the album. It wasn't the only song from "Teaser" album to be controversial after-the-fact, by the way: The lovely, baroque piano on "Morning Has Broken" was by Yes keyboardist Rick Wakemen. He went uncredited and unpaid, and, while Stevens eventually made up for this fact, he blamed the studio for the confusion, which, true or not, seems a bit blame-shifty.

So Stevens is a fallible man, and ordinarily that wouldn't mean much. Pop musicians are often prickly, difficult people, and sometimes they are absolute monsters, but we can enjoy their music nonetheless, because we know that it is possible to recognize human limitations and yet enjoy human creativity nonetheless. It's harder to do this, though, when the artist casts themselves in the role of teacher or spiritual guide, and surrounds his songs with ecstatic voices agreeing with him and encouraging listeners to do likewise. For me, it's unsurprising that the arrangements on this album are less interesting than on previous albums. The songs themselves are shallower.

That being said, this album produced a pair of incidental products that are thoroughly delightful, both based around the song "Moonshadow." With its fingerpicked guitar and childlike lyrics, "Moonshadow" is one of the strongest songs on the album, and Stevens used it as inspiration for both a children's book and an animated film.

Both tell the same story, written and illustrated by Stevens. The title characters of the album, who appear on the cover, witness the moon falling from the sky and set out to return it to its proper place, chasing it across English hillsides and increasingly surreal settings.

This was animated by Charlie Jenkins, who had worked on "Yellow Submarine," and narrated by the great Irish comic performer Spike Milligan with a combination of very British fustiness and a growing twinkle, and it debuted at 1977's Fantastic Animation Festival. It's currently available on YouTube, so I shall include it at the end here.