Who plays the flute on ‘Mona Bone Jakon’?
Yusuf/Cat Stevens was a very different man from how he started when he released his third album, Mona Bone Jakon, in 1970.
The early years of his career had been marked by an unexpected but seismic and massive rise to fame. He was only 18 when he released his debut record Matthew and Son in 1966, and with it came a whole string of hits, between the eponymous title track, ‘I Love My Dog’, and ‘I’m Gonna Get Me a Gun’.
But a near brush with death in 1969, when Stevens contracted tuberculosis, left the singer to consider what was truly important in life – and he realised it wasn’t the sugar rush of a chart hit, no matter how intoxicating it proved for a short time. The true key to success was for his music to truly say something, and this led him back to the drawing board.
He eventually emerged with the basis for Mona Bone Jakon, being something far darker and more foreboding than the heights of pop stardom could ever have achieved. However, this transition hardly took place overnight: Stevens had to call in backup from musicians who knew a thing or two about that state of affairs, to really pierce the heart of the bubble he was trying to burst.
For this, the reinforcements included the likes of the former Yardbirds bassist Paul Samwell-Smith, guitarist Alun Davies, and drummer Harvey Burns, the latter two of whom would go on to make up the inner workings of his band. But one perhaps unexpected addition to the line-up was the choice of flautist: a young Peter Gabriel.
How did Peter Gabriel end up playing flute on Mona Bone Jakon?
The unsuspecting star-crossed connection came as no greater surprise to anyone than Gabriel himself, who was merely 19 years old at the time, fresh out of school and only in the fledgling days of Genesis. But nevertheless, his network and spark of talent were enough to land him in the recording studio, playing the reeds of the flute on ‘Katmandu’.
“I was a big fan of Yusuf or Cat as he was,” the former Genesis frontman later recalled. “It was his songwriting and then his singing that drew me in. The unconventional way he would use rhythm, melody and song structure was fascinating to me. He found it so easy to break the convention of songwriting without losing any heart or soulfulness.”
Yet in terms of the actual recording session, he was forced to put his money where his mouth is. “I was very excited when Paul Samwell-Smith invited me to play flute on the Mona Bone Jakon session [on ‘Katmandu’],” he continued. “I was never much of a flute player and was very nervous. In fact, I believe they played my track back in solo and had a good laugh at the anxious breathing of a 19-year-old would-be flute player.”
Even still, despite the fact that his own sense of trepidation may have got the better of him in the moment, the Gabriel connection to Mona Bone Jakon was something that stood the test of time and became a musical trivia nugget passed down through the ages. His breathy flute technique may have been laid bare, but nothing was going to pull him away from the spotlight now.
