How Cat Stevens’ biggest album went “terribly wrong” and caused him to flee
Even though many of his songs are known around the world, Cat Stevens, also known by the name Yusuf, has always been a relatively private person, trying to share very little information about his private life.
It’s not a problem being a shy and retiring figure in pop music, as plenty of other artists, such as Nick Drake, have managed to achieve significant success while remaining shielded from public scrutiny by choice, and in the case of Stevens, this has hardly ever presented itself as a barrier for audiences who try to connect to his music.
You don’t necessarily need to be able to understand the deeper context of what’s going on in the artist’s life for the music to resonate with you, and with Stevens, the sheer talent that went into his songwriting allowed his work to speak for itself. Feeling like you knew Stevens on a personal level was never important, and as long as he was able to connect with his own internal feelings, the music would end up being sufficiently impressive.
The thing is, Stevens’ insistence on remaining a private figure was what drove and inspired him, giving him the space to tap deeper into his subconscious and come up with lyrics that felt fitting for the mindset he was in at any given time. Becoming more successful wasn’t going to help him in maintaining this level of privacy, and would place him under the magnifying glass for a wider audience to peer through.
That being said, after the worldwide acclaim that his 1971 album Teaser And The Firecat brought him, he found himself still able to cloak himself from view, which was something that he found kept aiding him in his work. During a 2004 interview with Classic Rock, he touched upon how this continued to be his preferred way of working, and how solitude ended up being more of a blessing for him.
“I was still very much on my own,” he argued, “But my songwriting thrived on that very introspective condition. I didn’t feel so alone when I was writing. I guess I was in some kind of place where there was an unseen audience. But they were there – whatever that means, whatever that symbolises. I remember when I wrote those words in ‘Sitting’. That’s the kind of feeling I had.”
‘Sitting’ is the opening track of Catch Bull At Four, the sixth studio album from Stevens released in 1972, and it ended up being his most successful in the US, even managing to score a number one while he failed to do so in his home of the UK. Despite this, he came to the realisation that even more success would mean he would have to make a bold life decision in order to not lose his creative flow.
“I realised it was all going terribly wrong,” Stevens joked. “Or a little bit out of control. So I did another whole ‘let’s do something different’ thing, and I went to Jamaica and made Foreigner.”
Foreigner may not have brought him the same levels of success as the previous string of records, but it did allow him to continue recording with ambition, and the same level of privacy on his new island home that offered him the opportunity to write in solace, just how he liked things.
