Wild World

Well, Zoo Freaks, the Zoo Crew has got that soft acoustic strum of Cat Stevens rolling out of the speakers right now with "Wild World," pulled straight off the 1970 album Tea for the Tillerman. That record sits right there in the middle of his big creative stretch, the one that turned a London kid with a handful of early pop hits into a worldwide name. The song itself carries that gentle warning in the chorus, the part where he sings about it being a wild world and how hard it can be to get by just upon a smile. Stevens has told interviewers over the years that the tune started as a kind of semi-obituary to a love affair that was simply drifting in two different directions. He and the American actress and model Patti D’Arbanville had shared some good times, but the paths were splitting, and he found himself writing a farewell that was also a caution. He has said the message went out to her and at the same time bounced right back at himself, because he was stepping into a fresh wave of success after nearly losing it all once already.

Funny thing is, Stevens did not even want the song out as his own single at first. He felt it leaned a little too commercial, too much like the verse-and-chorus stuff from his earliest days, and he was trying to move past that. So he handed it over to reggae man Jimmy Cliff, who was on the same label, and even produced the version for him. Cliff’s take scored well, and only after that did Stevens circle back, finish his own recording, and let it ride. In later talks he has called it a warning signal about the dangers waiting even when everything looks bright and full of fancy clothes and good times. That double edge is part of what keeps Zoo Freaks coming back to it on THE ZOO. The melody rides a chord sequence he once described as something common in Spanish music that he turned around until it fit the sadness of leaving and the open question of what waits on the other side.

The whole track sits on Tea for the Tillerman, the album that really pushed him into the bigger leagues after he had already scored a few UK hits in the mid-sixties. Producer Paul Samwell-Smith, who had come out of the Yardbirds, kept the sound close and clear, with Alun Davies laying down those steady second-guitar parts that locked in so well with Stevens’ own playing. Davies had a way of damping the strings with the flat of his hand while he struck them, giving the rhythm a pump that made the simple arrangement jump out of the speakers. Stevens has looked back on that period and noted how the album era was taking over, and he was not chasing singles the way he once did. Still, once the American radio stations latched onto "Wild World," it climbed to number eleven on the Billboard chart and helped the record itself crack the US top ten. He has said in interviews that the song was talking about losing touch with home and reality, home especially, while he was himself heading out into the world again.

That sense of heading out traces straight back to how the man got started in the first place. Born Steven Demetre Georgiou in London in 1948, he grew up above the Moulin Rouge restaurant his parents ran in the West End. His father was a Greek Cypriot and his mother Swedish, so the household mixed languages and food and hard work from the start. As a boy he washed dishes and listened to the sounds drifting up from the streets, then later climbed out onto the rooftops for a quiet place he called the Upper World. When he was around fifteen his father bought him an Italian-made guitar for about eight pounds after the Beatles had lit a fire under him. He taught himself chords, started writing his own songs early because it was easier than copying someone else’s complicated ones, and began hanging around the coffee houses and pubs near Denmark Street. A girlfriend once told him he looked like a cat when he was stretched out on a couch, and the name stuck. He tried Steve Adams for a while, then settled on Cat Stevens so people would not have to stumble over the full Greek name when they walked into a record shop.

By the mid-sixties he had signed a publishing deal, cut demos that included the song that would later become a big hit for other artists as "The First Cut Is the Deepest," and caught the ear of producer Mike Hurst. The first single under the Cat Stevens name, "I Love My Dog," landed in the UK charts in 1966, followed by "Matthew and Son" which climbed all the way to number two. He was still a teenager when the touring and the late nights and the whole pop-star life caught up with him. In 1968 a bout of tuberculosis put him in the hospital for months. That forced quiet stretch changed everything. He read, he thought, he started writing songs that felt more personal and less aimed at the hit parade. When he came out the other side he signed with Island Records, teamed with Samwell-Smith, and put out Mona Bone Jakon in the spring of 1970. Tea for the Tillerman followed that same November, and the rest is the long road that carried him through the big albums, the spiritual search that eventually led him to Islam and the name Yusuf, and the years he stepped away from the spotlight before finding his way back.

You can still catch the full story and the latest word from the man himself over at his official site, catstevens.com, where the discography still lists Tea for the Tillerman right alongside the later records. He keeps an active presence on the social side too: the official Facebook page at Yusuf / Cat Stevens, the Instagram account @yusufcatstevens, and the X handle @YusufCatStevens. Fans who want a place to swap stories and old concert memories have a few active Facebook groups running, including the Cat Stevens/Yusuf Fan Club page and the bigger gathering called the Cat Stevens Rainbow Choo Choo Peace Group. Those spaces stay lively with folks trading photos, trading stories about the first time they heard "Wild World" on the radio, and keeping the old album art circulating. Stevens himself has never stopped circling back to the idea that the wild world keeps turning, and that a simple song about watching someone head out into it can still land like a quiet piece of advice years later. The Zoo Crew keeps the needle on the vinyl and lets that acoustic guitar keep talking, the same way it has for the Zoo Freaks who have been riding along since the beginning.