Monthly Archives: October 2022

Music

Cat Stevens’ Tea For The Tillerman (1970)

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One of the advan­tages of hav­ing old­er sis­ters in the ear­ly sev­en­ties when I was just start­ing to dis­cov­er music was the inher­i­tance from them of cer­tain clas­sic albums. In ret­ro­spect, I admire their gen­eros­i­ty, because it’s not every­one who relin­quish­es large parts of their music col­lec­tion to younger sib­lings (I’m not sure I would have, had I had any). Nonethe­less, I came to own and appre­ci­ate at a young age such sem­i­nal records as David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Zig­gy Star­dust and the Spi­ders of Mars, the Moody Blues’ In Search of the Lost Chord, and Led Zeppelin’s Led Zep­pelin II. Oh, and also three clas­sic albums by the sub­ject of today’s blog, Cat Stevens, name­ly Mona Bone Jakon, Tea for the Tiller­man, and Teas­er and the Fire­cat.

These three albums sprung out of what was an impres­sive­ly rich peri­od of out­put from Cat: in order, they had been released in April 1970, Novem­ber 1970 and Octo­ber 1971. Not that I knew the order of release back then – I wasn’t yet a geek – they were sim­ply records, but records chock-full of warm, catchy folk-pop, occa­sion­al­ly with a Greek tinge in homage to his part-Hel­lenic her­itage (his father was Cypri­ot, his moth­er Swedish, and Cat him­self – Steven Geor­giou — was born in Maryle­bone, Lon­don).

Songs that res­onat­ed: Kat­man­du from Mona Bone Jakon, a lilt­ing, mys­ti­cal acoustic song awash with flute from a 19-year-old Peter Gabriel, and a paean to all things sim­ple and peace­ful, a metaphor­ic Eden away from West­ern civil­i­sa­tion. Years lat­er I would be rid­ing a bus into the real Kath­man­du in Nepal with this track play­ing mean­ing­ful­ly on my Sony Walk­man.

From Teas­er and the Fire­cat: Peace Train, and its hope­ful, anti-war lyrics (Out on the edge of dark­ness, There rides a peace train, Oh peace train take this coun­try, Come take me home again). Ide­al­is­tic, sure, but it cer­tain­ly struck a chord with me at the time, and if you can’t be ide­al­is­tic as a young teenag­er, when can you be (the gim­let eye of expe­ri­ence hadn’t yet been acquired)?

And from Tea for the Tiller­man, the beau­ti­ful­ly craft­ed Father and Son, a poignant exchange between a father fail­ing to under­stand his son’s desire to break away, and the son strug­gling to artic­u­late the dri­ve he feels to seek his own des­tiny. I always had trav­el in my soul, and dreamt of tak­ing off into the wider world, so this spoke to me in vol­umes, even though I didn’t actu­al­ly have to deal with any such cul­tur­al mis­align­ments with my own dad.

After famous­ly con­vert­ing to Islam and chang­ing his name to Yusuf Islam in 1978, and drop­ping out of the spot­light for many years, Cat returned to pop music in 2006 and released an album of new pop songs (for the first time in 28 years), under the name Yusuf. In Sep­tem­ber 2020, and now under the com­bi­na­to­r­i­al name Yusuf/Cat Stevens, he released Tea for the Tiller­man 2, a reboot of the orig­i­nal to cel­e­brate its 50th anniver­sary.

Anoth­er great song from that album was Where Do The Chil­dren Play? and here is Cat play­ing a sim­ple acoustic ver­sion of it and prov­ing that he’s still got a voice like warm molasses. A shout out to my mate Gra­ham for send­ing me this and inspir­ing this week’s blog!

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Cat Stevens
Film, TV, and Theatre

Patrick McGoohan as The Prisoner (1967)

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Although I was too young at the time to watch the orig­i­nal 1967 air­ing of this British TV series, I guess it must have been re-run in the eight­ies or per­haps my friend Alec had it on video and shared it with me? What­ev­er, at some point in the eight­ies I dis­cov­ered The Pris­on­er and, hooked from episode one, I became, with Alec, a big fan. Here was a TV series that was not only enter­tain­ing but actu­al­ly made you think. Noth­ing was ever what it seemed, no-one had a real name, you nev­er knew who the good guys were and who the bad; it had a unique, sur­re­al vibe, and it incor­po­rat­ed ele­ments of sci­ence fic­tion, alle­go­ry, spy fic­tion and psy­cho­log­i­cal dra­ma.

The show was cre­at­ed while Patrick McGoohan and George Mark­stein were work­ing on spy dra­ma Dan­ger Man (fun fact: Ian Flem­ing worked in the devel­op­ment stage of Dan­ger Man, and its pro­tag­o­nist, played by McGoohan, announces him­self as “Drake…John Drake”). The exact details of who cre­at­ed which aspects of The Pris­on­er are dis­put­ed though major­i­ty opin­ion cred­its McGoohan as the sole cre­ator of the series, and it’s cer­tain­ly true that it was McGoohan who pitched the idea ver­bal­ly to sta­tion boss Lew Grade. One can only imag­ine the inner work­ings of Grade’s mind as the con­cept and plot were laid down for him; how­ev­er, he went with it and the project was born.

So, what was that plot? An unnamed British intel­li­gence agent is abduct­ed and wakes up in a mys­te­ri­ous coastal loca­tion known to its res­i­dents as the Vil­lage. His cap­tors des­ig­nate him as Num­ber Six and try to find out why he abrupt­ly resigned from his job, some­thing he stead­fast­ly refus­es to divulge. His chief antag­o­nist is styled Num­ber Two (and no, we nev­er sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly learn who is Num­ber One), the iden­ti­ty of whom changes with near­ly every episode, allow­ing a ros­ter of well-known six­ties’ actors, like Leo McK­ern, Anton Rodgers and Peter Wyn­garde, to play their part.

Most of the res­i­dents are pris­on­ers them­selves, while oth­ers are embed­ded as spies or guards. The Vil­lage is sur­round­ed by moun­tains on three sides and the sea on the oth­er, and any would-be escapees who make it out to sea are tracked by CCTV and recap­tured by Rover, a huge mobile translu­cent white bal­loon-thing. Every­one uses num­bers for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, and most of the vil­lagers wear a stan­dard out­fit con­sist­ing of coloured blaz­ers, mul­ti­coloured capes, striped sweaters, and a vari­ety of head­wear such as straw boaters. They are gen­er­al­ly very polite, though that tends to make you very sus­pi­cious of them.

Catch­phras­es abound, and I remem­ber Alec and I glee­ful­ly repeat­ing them ad infini­tum: “I’m not a num­ber, I’m a free man!”, “Be see­ing you” and the glo­ri­ous­ly lib­er­tar­i­an “I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or num­bered!”. The lat­ter phrase I had embla­zoned on a t‑shirt bought from the gift shop at Port­meiri­on in North Wales, where The Pris­on­er was filmed and which I vis­it­ed on pil­grim­age in 1987.

Let’s enjoy the open­ing cred­its, enhanced by the excel­lent sound­track from Ron Grain­er.

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Num­ber Six

 

Art

Edwin Landseer’s The Monarch Of The Glen (1851)

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Sir Edwin Land­seer (1802–1873) was a Lon­don-born painter and sculp­tor whose artis­tic tal­ents were recog­nised ear­ly on: at age thir­teen he exhib­it­ed works at the Roy­al Acad­e­my as an “Hon­orary Exhibitor” and was elect­ed as an Asso­ciate there at the min­i­mum age of twen­ty four. He was able to paint extreme­ly quick­ly and per­haps these days would have attract­ed a cool nick­name like snook­er play­ers Hur­ri­cane Hig­gins and Whirl­wind White (Light­ning Land­seer, per­haps); he was also reput­ed to be able to draw simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with both hands. One biog­ra­ph­er wrote:

…upon the occa­sion of a large par­ty assem­bled one evening at the house of a gen­tle­man in Lon­don, the con­ver­sa­tion hav­ing turned upon the sub­ject of feats of skill with the hand, one of the ladies present remarked that it would be impos­si­ble for any­one, how­ev­er skil­ful, to draw two things at once.
“Oh, I can do that,” said Land­seer qui­et­ly; “give me two pen­cils and I will show you.” The pen­cils were brought, and Land­seer, tak­ing one in each hand, drew simul­ta­ne­ous­ly and unhesi­tat­ing­ly the pro­file of a stag’s antlered head with one hand, and with the oth­er the per­fect out­line of the head of a horse.

Cer­tain­ly, Landseer’s renown stemmed from his paint­ings of ani­mals, par­tic­u­lar­ly hors­es, dogs and stags, although his most famous work is undoubt­ed­ly the set of four bronze lion sculp­tures at the base of Nelson’s Col­umn in Trafal­gar Square. Today’s sub­ject is prob­a­bly his next most famous work, though, being, as it is, the ulti­mate bis­cuit tin image of Scot­land: The Monarch of the Glen.

The Monarch of the Glen is an oil-on-can­vas paint­ing depict­ing a red deer stag, set against the steamy rugged hills of the Scot­tish High­lands. It was com­plet­ed in 1851 as part of a series of three pan­els intend­ed to hang in the Refresh­ment Rooms of the House of Lords, although that com­mis­sion nev­er came off due to some dis­pute or oth­er and it was sold into pri­vate own­er­ship. It also, how­ev­er, sold wide­ly in repro­duc­tions and became one of the most pop­u­lar paint­ings of the 19th cen­tu­ry. It prob­a­bly helped that Queen Vic­to­ria was a big fan.

The paint­ing was pur­chased in 1916 by the Pears soap com­pa­ny and this kicked off the Monarch’s career in adver­tis­ing. It was sold on to John Dewar & Sons dis­tillery and became their trade­mark before sim­i­lar­ly being used by Glen­fid­dich on their whisky bot­tles. A deriv­a­tive of the Monarch graced the shelves of Har­rods and Fort­num & Mason via the cans of Bax­ter’s Roy­al Game Soup, and of course, as implied, it adorned many a tin of short­bread bis­cuits. In 2017, the paint­ing was final­ly sold by its last own­er Dia­geo to the Nation­al Muse­um of Scot­land in Edin­burgh, where it can now be viewed by the pub­lic in all its majesty.

The stag has twelve points on his antlers, which in deer ter­mi­nol­o­gy makes him a “roy­al stag” not a “monarch stag”, for which six­teen points are need­ed, but let’s not quib­ble; he’s a mag­nif­i­cent beast.

The Monarch of the Glen