The legendary singer/songwriter Yusuf / Cat Stevens released his first album in 1967. He’s a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and his albums have sold millions. In 2020, he released Tea for the Tillerman², a re-imagining of his hit 1970 album Tea for the Tillerman. In the song “Father and Son,” he sings a duet between the two title characters, doing both voices. But in the 2020 version, he approached this song in a kind of astonishing way — he recorded the part of the father, but for the part of the son, he used a live recording of himself from 1970, taken from a show he played at The Troubadour in Los Angeles. So the two parts are still both sung in his voice, but 50 years apart. In this episode Yusuf / Cat Stevens tells the story of how he created, and then re-created “Father and Son.”
You can buy or stream the 2020 version of “Father and Son” here and the original version of “Father and Son” here.
Illustration by Carlos Lerma.
For a transcript of this episode, click here.
footnotes
The West End, neighborhood
Nigel Hawthorne, actor and collaborator
Mona Bone Jakon
Morgan Studios
Chris Blackwell, Former Head of Island Records
Island Records
Paul Samwell Smith, producer
The Yardbirds
Moonshadow, The Musical
