When Yusuf/Cat Stevens teamed-up with a prog-rock giant in 1972
On the face of it, Yusuf/Cat Stevens and prog-rock are not two things that would typically go together.
Yet at the same time, this could be the product of a baseless assumption that the pieces of the puzzle don’t fit, or the thought that the pair couldn’t go together, while not necessarily meaning that they couldn’t. Essentially, this is to say not to judge a book by its cover, because there is really so much more to Stevens than meets the eye.
You could have given countless examples of this when it comes to the folk singer, but it seems most appropriate in the prog rock context to tell the story of his 1972 hit ‘Morning Has Broken’. No, it wasn’t the instant making of a classic – not many traditional Christian hymns are – but with the help of a future icon, the song transformed into something transcendental.
Having said that, there were natural issues that came along with transitioning ‘Morning Has Broken’ from the feeble church pews to a folk-pop anthem, not least for the fact that the original version consisted of only four verses and was a mere 44 seconds long. It hardly screams hit with a staying power in the top ten of the charts, does it?
But this was where a young Rick Wakeman stepped in, without any of the airs and graces that would later be bestowed on him as the genius prog-rock creator of Yes. Instead, here, he was only in his early twenties and hired as a session musician to play the piano for the song. He may have turned up thinking it was an easy day’s pay, but Stevens had other ideas.
As Wakeman was warming up, Stevens heard him play some rather stirring, jangling melodies that immediately caught his attention. They had, in fact, been written by Wakeman for what would go on to be his second album, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, which was released in 1973, but for the purposes of ‘Morning Has Broken’, it was exactly what they needed.
And so, perhaps a little ungraciously and not very in-keeping with the sacred spirit, Stevens asked Wakeman if he could take the work he had already made for himself and tag it on to the start of the song, at the very least for the reason that it padded it out a fair amount from the measly 44-second mark.
Thankfully, Wakeman obliged, meaning those suspiciously prog-sounding notes you hear at the start of the song are all his. There was no denying that this was the real secret ingredient that made it a success, because it was unrecognisable as just a sleepy hymn. It was an early ‘70s anthem with a little prog flair, and it was all thanks to an imaginative dose of ingenuity.
It was notable that Stevens followed this era up with the album Foreigner in 1973, which marked a notably more progressive stance than anything he had ever done before. The piano melodies of Wakeman were evidently still ringing in his ears, and after briefly dipping his toes into that world on ‘Morning Has Broken’, he clearly found himself ready to dive headfirst.
