Jim’s post Long Overdue tells us that this week’s theme for SLS is British music. Well, that’s a fairly wide one, isn’t it! I’ve had to think about this quite a bit, as the field of choice is so vast. I thought about giving you some songs about cricket, our national summer sport, just to befuddle you. Then again, I considered playing some songs by my favourite folk bands, but even that offered too wide a selection, even if I could have had some fun playing you songs you wouldn’t know. I looked back through my notes of what I have played in the year (and a week) that I have been taking part in this and was surprised to find that I hadn’t ever played anything by one of my all time favourites. He appeared in Tuesday Tunes a couple of weeks ago, as he has done several times before, but never here. Time to redress the balance! I’ve been a fan of his since his early pop days, ever since he released his first single (I Love My Dog) in September 1966, and after that early part of his career – and his near death experience with TB – he returned to give us a string of wonderful singer-songwriter albums. The second of those was Tea For The Tillerman, which came out in November 1970, and for its 50th anniversary he re-recorded it to bring it up to date, and issued it as Tea For The Tillerman 2 in September 2020. He made new videos to go with some of the songs, and I’m playing you three of those today. This is the one which opens the album:

The lyrics, which might have seemed prescient then but are sadly still all too relevant today, go like this:

Well, I think it’s fine
Building jumbo planes
Or taking a ride on a cosmic train
Switch on summer from a slot machine
Yes, get what you want to if you want
‘Cause you can get anything

I know we’ve come a long way
We’re changing day to day
But tell me, where do the children play?

Well, you roll on roads
Over fresh green grass
For your lorry loads
Pumping petrol gas
And you make them long
And you make them tough
But they just go on and on
And it seems that you can’t get off

Oh, I know we’ve come a long way
We’re changing day to day
But tell me, where do the children play?

Well, you’ve cracked the sky
Scrapers fill the air
But will you keep on building higher
‘Til there’s no more room up there?
Will you make us laugh?
Will you make us cry?
Will you tell us when to live?
Will you tell us when to die?

I know we’ve come a long way
We’re changing day to day
But tell me, where do the children play?

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam

Where Do The Children Play? lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

I saw him in concert in 2009 and he hadn’t lost it: the voice was still as mellifluous, as it is to this day. He opened with a new song and then played this. You could have heard a pin drop apart from the audience singing quietly along with him: we were all word perfect and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. A beautiful song which still carries so much meaning. On first release, the album made it only as far as #20 in the UK, though it peaked at #8 in the US. The 2020 version made up for that, getting to #4 here, though only #85 in the US. A reflection of changing tastes over time? Or maybe it wasn’t possible to promote it over there in those pandemic days? Like just about everything he has done I loved it back then and still do: it is one of my ‘go to’ albums. For the most part I like what he did with the reworkings, too, though this next one has divided opinion: it jazzed up a delicate song and this wasn’t to everyone’s taste. See what you think:

As I say, some didn’t like that all that much, but the video more than makes up for that: it is delightful the way the kids play their roles.

The final song I’m playing today has become a standard over the years. There have been many cover versions – even one by Cat himself duetting with Groaning Ronan, which reached #2 in the UK in 2004 – but I think this is the best version anyone has made since the original. It is, simply, superb:

Hopefully you can now see why I have loved this guy’s music so much for so many years. He has a new album coming out on Friday, and I’m looking forward to it very much. I met him briefly around thirty years ago, in a work context, and he just seemed a really pleasant guy. They say you shouldn’t meet your heroes, but he didn’t disappoint me.

I’m looking forward to seeing what others are playing for Jim’s Day of the Brits – we’ve produced a lot of good music over the years, albeit mixed with a load of rubbish too! I’ll see you again for Tuesday Tunes. Have fun 😎