{"id":807868,"date":"2020-05-28T10:15:48","date_gmt":"2020-05-28T16:15:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=1005987"},"modified":"2020-05-28T10:15:48","modified_gmt":"2020-05-28T16:15:48","slug":"yusuf-cat-stevens-re-records-tea-for-the-tillerman-for-50th-anniversary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/yusuf-cat-stevens-re-records-tea-for-the-tillerman-for-50th-anniversary\/","title":{"rendered":"Yusuf\/Cat Stevens Re-Records \u2018Tea for the Tillerman\u2019 for 50th Anniversary"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This November will mark the 50th anniversary of Cat Stevens<\/a>\u2019 landmark album Tea for the Tillerman<\/em>, which features \u201cWild World,\u201d \u201cFather and Son,\u201d \u201cWhere Do the Children Play?\u201d and other classics. To celebrate, the songwriter (who now records under the name Yusuf<\/a>) has re-recorded the entire album with original producer Paul Samwell-Smith and original guitarist Alun Davies. He\u2019s called it Tea for the Tillerman\u00b2<\/em> and it comes out on October 18th, but you can hear the new version of \u201cWhere Do the Children Play?\u201d right here.<\/p>\n

The new renditions of the 11 Tea for the Tillerman<\/em> tracks are not note-for-note recreations. In many cases, they are lusher than the sparse originals and some take surprising left turns, like a funkafied \u201cLonger Boats\u201d featuring guest vocals from rapper Brother Ali. \u201cWild World,\u201d meanwhile, now sounds almost like a waltz. That said, Yusuf worked hard to maintain the same spirit of the originals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis album is very important because it\u2019s celebrating so many people,\u201d he tells Rolling Stone<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s their soundtrack and people\u2019s memories are so intertwined with the notes of this album and the music of this album. I hope a lot of people will love to grow this new album.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yusuf called Rolling Stone<\/em> from his home in Dubai to discuss the new album, his life during quarantine, his touring plans and the usage of his music in the films Rushmore<\/em> and Harold and Maude<\/em>.<\/p>\n

How is your quarantine going?<\/strong>
It\u2019s actually not too bad here. We\u2019re obviously kind of locked down and can\u2019t go very far. You need to wear masks and have gloves, but they\u2019ve just eased things up a little bit and some shops are open. It\u2019s quite well organized in the shops. I haven\u2019t gone in myself, but they apparently monitor you and measure your temperature. It\u2019s quite well controlled. Everything here is not too bad, to be honest. We haven\u2019t been affected so far.<\/p>\n

I know Ramadan just wrapped up. How was it different than usual for you?<\/strong>
We couldn\u2019t go to the mosque. Normally in Ramadan, you like to go to the mosque for the last prayer of the day. That wasn\u2019t possible since all the mosques are shut. We had to do everything at home, but that was good for me because it made it more intense and more concentrated. It\u2019s a spiritual month and you don\u2019t have to be going out and gallivanting everywhere. It kind of suited the month. I became more reflective. I read more during this Ramadan than I have during previous ones.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve really been enjoying the new version of Tea for the Tillerman<\/em>. Why did you decide to re-record<\/strong> it?
It\u2019s a collection of reasons, really. One of them was that we knew we were coming up to the 50th birthday of the friendly face, Tillerman, and we wanted to do something special for him. And we thought about it and my son Yoriyos came up with the idea of, \u201cWhy don\u2019t we record it again?\u201d I suddenly thought, \u201cHang on. We could. There\u2019s nothing to stop us.\u201d That was the first ignition of the idea.<\/p>\n

Another reason was I wanted to do more up-to-date versions of how I do it onstage and how I\u2019d like to do it onstage so I could update my catalog a little bit and show how I sound today. I also wanted to take some expeditions and adventures with the songs, which I certainly have done with some of them. I have taken them to a slightly different sphere of sonicality. That was another reason.<\/p>\n

And I got to sing a duet with myself after 50 years, which is incredible. In \u201cFather and Son,\u201d the voice of the son was taken from a recording of me in 1970 at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. And now here\u2019s me at 70 singing with myself when I was about 22. It\u2019s amazing. It\u2019s virtual reality for you.<\/p>\n

When many older artists re-record their classic albums, they tend to stick to the exact same arrangements and it\u2019s usually just an attempt to license them out when they don\u2019t own the publishing of the originals. That doesn\u2019t seem to be the case here.<\/strong>
There was also this idea of re-recording so you could circulate your own versions, but I don\u2019t think that was necessary. The original version is great. People are fond of that. But I wanted to do something original. We certainly did do that. If you listen to \u201cLonger Boats,\u201d nobody would have expected James Brown to jump in the middle of it and start funking around, but that\u2019s exactly how we did it.<\/p>\n

If you listen to \u201cOn the Road to Find Out,\u201d that to me is a beautiful departure from the original since it\u2019s gone into an area that I love, a sort of desert blues. We had a very, very good time making this record. It\u2019s something new.<\/p>\n