Music Monday/Lyric Lundi

Is it possible to have grown up a child of the seventies and not to have a certain (I'd say it's an 8-track tape, but that's such a cliché at this point), background soundtrack that includes the likes of Elton John, James Taylor, Carol King, Joan Baez, and Jim Croce? Even if you didn't happen to like them (which I did, the way most of us love the foods we were given at a young age, so that this music has become "comfort music" to me at this point in my life), they were just there. Another one was Cat Stevens.

I was madly in love with Cat Stevens, or at least madly in love with his lyrical genius, his voice, and those pictures of a dark-haired, gentle-eyed, "goatee-ed" man who graced the covers of his albums. My eleven-year-old heart skipped a beat or two every time I sneaked one of his albums out of my sisters' collections to listen to when they weren't around. Probably, my rapid heartbeat was due more to my fear that I was going to get caught and reamed out by one of them (which, because I hadn't quite grasped the concept yet that if I didn't want to get caught, it just might be a good idea to put the album back where I'd found it instead of leaving it on the turntable), but I chose to interpret it as my heart beating rapidly for this man who most definitely was singing to me.

Of course he was singing to me, because I so understood the magic and mysticism of his words in ways that no other girl possibly could. He wanted a hard-headed woman, and well, you know, I was hard-headed enough to keep listening to my sisters' albums without their permission, willing to risk consequences for the man I loved. But then he broke my heart. He decided to run off and join some cult (okay, so I happened to confuse a major world religion with a cult. Many still do). He quit making his beautiful music for me. How could he do this to me? He'd told me what to do, how to feel if I ever lost my mouth or if I ever lost my legs, but he had not given me any instructions if I lost my heart. He'd just stolen it and left me with nothing.

Fickle woman that I am, I had forgotten all about my former flame until I was recently looking through our CD collection and came across his Greatest Hits. It seemed like a good thing to take along in the car with me when I was running errands that day. I grabbed it, stuck it in the CD player, and was immediately swept back to the 1970s and that converted old farm house I called "home" until I was 22.

When I talk about my favorite Cat Stevens song, it is very easy for me to confuse my own favorite with my father's favorite, "Oh Very Young." I can still remember my father listening to that song -- and it's a beautiful song -- when I was about thirteen or so, being so into it, and telling me that I was the "oh very young." Now that I'm about the age he was when he said that, I understand it far better than I did when I was a dismissive teenager, embarrassed by my father's outburst of emotion. Until then, I don't think I understood why that song hit home with him. And as much as I'd like to say that "Moonshadow" is my favorite, if I am completely honest, I have to admit that my real favorite, the song for which the young me would gladly risk my sister's ire, is not a song about romantic love, but, rather a very different kind of love, "Father and Son."

I don't know why this song grabbed me so much, being neither a father nor a son. Some of it was probably just natural pre-teen and teen rebellion, what all children feel about their parents. However, I can't help thinking that maybe it was an early influence on a theory I've adopted over the years, based on personal observation, one vociferously argued against by some of my female friends, by the way, but unanimously supported by my male friends. This is that the single most difficult human relationship is that between fathers and sons. This song encapsulates the struggle, so often addressed in much longer works of art, so well. Stevens did a wonderful job in singing it in such a way that he captured the father's "bland" advice as interpreted by the angry son. The lyrics don't do it justice. You have to listen to the song to hear it.

Funny, isn't it? When I was younger, I so empathized with the son. Now, I have far more empathy for the father. That last parenthetical line from the father is so poignant, no?

Father and Son
By Cat Stevens

Father
It's not time to make a change,
Just relax, take it easy.
You're still young, that's your fault,
There's so much you have to know.
Find a girl, settle down,
If you want you can marry.
Look at me, I am old, but I'm happy.

I was once like you are now, and I know that it's not easy,
To be calm when you've found something going on.
But take your time, think a lot,
Why, think of everything you've got.
For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not.

Son
How can I try to explain, when I do he turns away again.
Its always been the same, same old story.
From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen.
Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away.
I know I have to go.

Father
It's not time to make a change,
Just sit down, take it slowly.
You're still young, that's your fault,
There's so much you have to go through.
Find a girl, settle down,
If you want you can marry.
Look at me, I am old, but Im happy.

(Son-- away away away, I know I have to
Make this decision alone - no)

Son
All the times that I cried, keeping all the things I knew inside,
It's hard, but it's harder to ignore it.
If they were right, I'd agree, but it's them they know not me.
Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away.
I know I have to go.

(Father-- stay stay stay, why must you go and
Make this decision alone? )