Why America wanted to ban Cat Stevens forever: “Ridiculous”
America can always get very sniffy whenever rock stars say something that they didn’t like back in the day.
From the first time Elvis Presley graced television screens to the beginnings of metal starting up, there was no shortage of conservative parents who were convinced that rock and roll was the work of demonic forces and that kids were being brainwashed by even thinking about listening to such filth. It’s one thing for anyone to go a little bit overboard when they hear Black Sabbath for the first time, but it takes a special kind of crazy to think that Cat Stevens was one of the most dangerous men in the world.
Because, really, what is there to be disgusted with when hearing his tunes? Sure, there are more than a few songs that are a bit more dozy than others, but when combing through his vast catalogue of hits, any number of his songs have the same sensation of a warm blanket wrapping around you, whether that’s him singing ‘Wild World’ or talking about the relationship between a family on ‘Father and Son’.
That kind of mood was exactly what the singer-songwriter scene was all about to begin with. There were some nefarious habits that every rock and roll band indulged in, but no one was seriously looking at someone like James Taylor and convincing themselves that they were dealing with a menace, either. But the entire music world started to look a lot more stupid once it reached the 2000s.
And that doesn’t just apply to some of the bands of the time. Though there was a unique balance of bands that were coming to fruition around 2001, it’s not like Nickelback or The Strokes are to blame for rock getting a spanking. It all had to do with one horrific day in September, and while everyone alive to see 9/11 will tell you the melancholy that day had, it had a much more negative impact on the rock and roll world than a lot of people realised.
Case in point: the Clear Channel Memorandum. Sure, the entire country was in mourning and clearly heartbroken by what had happened, but the idea of forcing some songs off the air because they were too close to a tragedy was more than a little bit concerning. And it was tough luck for Stevens when he showed up on the list, and especially when you look at the fact that he had just converted to Islam and was going by the name Yusuf.
After the Department of Homeland Security deemed Yusuf to be in line with promoting terrorism, all that he could do was laugh off the whole thing as America was preparing to go to war in the Middle East, saying, “Half of me wants to smile, and half of me wants to growl. The whole thing is totally ridiculous. Everybody knows who I am. I am no secret figure. Everybody knows my campaigning for charity, for peace. There’s got to be a whole lot of explanation.”
What makes the whole thing even more disgraceful is which of his songs were actually put on the memorandum. For someone that was potentially believed to have intent to inflict violence on people strictly because of his name and what God he decides to pray to, the fact that they were banning songs like ‘Morning Has Broken’ is almost laughable, especially considering the actual song was the translation of a religious hymn about giving glory to God.
It’s one thing for countries to practice extreme caution, but looking at it with 20 years of hindsight, there are a lot more questionable things surrounding their investigation of everything than anything remotely connected to terrorism. Yusuf only wanted to play his music whenever he could, and it’s hard to think of a worse candidate for a harbinger of danger than the guy who’s famous for the song ‘Peace Train’.
