Yusuf Islam FKA Cat Stevens learns from his mistakes. At the London Apollo a month ago at the start of the “Peace Train… Late Again” tour, Cat (which is what I”ll call him for this review) played a first set of hits, a second set of his new album, the blues based Tell ‘Em I’m Gone, and a handful of oldies to take us home. By the time the Peace Train arrived at Philadelphia’s Tower Theatre, Cat had cut five songs off the new one and reworked the entire set into a career spanning testament not to faith (his wife got more shout outs than Allah) but to melody.
This is what Cat does, he finds out. In 1977, after not waving but drowning in the Mediterranean he quit his position as sensitive singer songwriter superstar to fulfill a promise to God for saving him from drowning and has devoted his life to Islam ever since. In 1989 he was misquoted on the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Fatwa on novelist Salman Rushdie and was considered a cultural pariah for years. Post 9-11 he was denied entrance to the States, since rectified.
And in the 2000s there were small Cat eruptions, first a child’s album of songs, next Islamic verses, and finally in 2006 the excellent An Other Cup followed by the less successful Roadsinger and earlier this year an actual sighting at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame Induction at Barclay Center” where he performed “Father And Son”, “Wild World” and “Peace Train”. It was superb, a charming and controlled performance and not nearly enough.
So here we are in Philly because he couldn’t find a New York theatre willing to adhere to his no tickets policy. After waiting an hour to get in, and missing the first song of the evening despite a 45 minute delay in the concerts start, Cat was singing “you’re never walk alone and you’re forever texting on the phone” when I got to my seat, finally a full concert by a hugely popular songwriter for anybody 15 years old in 1972. “What’s a few minutes between friends” he cracked as people tried to get to their seats. Fair enough but let’s hope he has learnt another lesson.
With a full band behind him, Cat commanded the stage with an off handed self-confidence which had the audience jumping up and down like izitsos and a seriously great set list, the show highlighted everything we loved and a couple of things we don’t love about him. It was the picture of soft rock, it lacked the rigorous rhythmic discipline of rock or the blues. This became clear during a cover of Jimmy Reed’s “Big Boss Man”, an intense but unsatisfying version which pales into obscurity compared to Presley’s on That’s The Way It Is”. Cat can’t do anger, he can’t do sex (the girl is always sleeping beside him), he can’t rock, coming out of the same scene that brought us Graham Gouldman, he is great at pop rock and folk, piano ballads, a sort of spiritual yearning. It stops Cat from being one of the true greats, he has his limits.
But within those limits he is a uniquely gifted songwriter with a voice so sweet it seems to always have a certain sadness on it and a master tune guy. I came in to “Here Comes My Baby” followed by its thematic follow up “The First Cut Is The Deepest”. Standing before a gorgeous stage, a railroad station like it’s off the set of Oklahoma, Cat looked incredible for any age, slim, white beard, healthy and very into it. This was neither re arranged not phoned in, but impassioned channeling of the young Cat, he then threw in a new one before sitting behind the piano for “Sitting”, a great vocal which had the audience on their feet for the first but not the last time. You can’t fake pleasure and Cat was evidently pleased.
Still in the first set we got “Where Do The Children” before Cat performed the freedom train masterpiece “People Get Ready” a great meeting of man and song. The first set ended with maybe the most exulted song in his entire career, the stupendous “Harold And Maude” track “If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out”. Of course this night was a nostalgia trip, it comes with the territory, but listening to this self-fulfilling prophecy of freedom and hope 40 years after the fact by the man who wrote it was like a remembrance of what you planned to do and what you did do: like Stevens we went on the road to find out.
The second set was a little iffier, starting with “Big Boss Man” it had its valleys here and there but the “Moonshadow” was for the ages, both “Trouble” and surprisingly enough “Oh Very Young” got huge responses and after an uncomfortably placed (three songs before the encore) “Peace Train” he dubbed us a wonderful crowd. “Another Saturday Night” had a re-written lyric –a little cheeky since it isn’t his song, because his wife didn’t want him singing about picking up girls, she’d rather he sang about being jobless apparently. The encore was “Sad Lisa” and “Miles From Nowhere”, two fine songs but the encore? So I bet in three months he will have ironed out the last wrinkle from the set, stuck “Car And The Dog Trap” back in, found a place for “Into White” and realized “Tea For The Tillerman” is the rightful last song of the evening.
Still, it was a great gift to see Cat performing his wonderful songs in person. He isn’t a Dylan or Lennon or Bruce, but he is just a tier behind them, and his career is the embodiment of freedom through discipline. If you want to do is become a man of God, become a man of God.
Grade: B+
Setlist
The Wind
(Cat Stevens cover)
2.
Here Comes My Baby
(Cat Stevens cover)
3.
The First Cut Is the Deepest
(Cat Stevens cover)
4.
Thinking ‘Bout You
5.
Sitting
(Cat Stevens cover) (Yusuf on piano)
6.
Last Love Song
(Cat Stevens cover) (Yusuf on piano)
7.
Katmandu
(Cat Stevens cover) (Yusuf and Alun only)
8.
Where Do the Children Play?
(Cat Stevens cover)
9.
Roadsinger
10.
Dying to Live
(Edgar Winter cover)
11.
Don’t Be Shy
(Cat Stevens cover)
12.
People Get Ready
(Curtis Mayfield cover)
13.
If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out
(Cat Stevens cover)
Set 2:
14.
Big Boss Man
(Jimmy Reed cover)
15.
Trouble
(Cat Stevens cover)
16.
Oh Very Young
(Cat Stevens cover)
17.
I Was Raised in Babylon
18.
Moonshadow
(Cat Stevens cover)
19.
You Are My Sunshine
(Jimmie Davis cover)
20.
Foreigner Suite / Heaven / Where True Love Goes
(Yusuf on piano)
21.
Wild World
(Cat Stevens cover)
22.
Editing Floor Blues
23.
Another Saturday Night
(Sam Cooke cover)
24.
Morning Has Broken
(Cat Stevens cover)
25.
Peace Train
(Cat Stevens cover)
26.
Father and Son
(Cat Stevens cover)
Encore:
27.
Sad Lisa
(Cat Stevens cover) (Yusuf on piano)
28.
Miles from Nowhere
(Cat Stevens cover)
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