THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,458) Cat Stevens — “Bring Another Bottle Baby”
Swinging London “bossa nova . . . my favourite track”, says Mike Hurst, producer of Cat Stevens’ first album Matthew & Son (original sleeve notes, https://majicat.com/recordings/MatthewLP.htm), a “smooth Latin shuffle” (Andy Neill, liner notes to the CD reissue of Matthew & Son), that actually “should have been included in the Austin Powers soundtrack.” (teddysutphin3502, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SavTIfoINW0) Oh man, I would love to hear Mike Myers sing “Bring another bottle baby cuz I really want to make this little bell ring”!
Dave Connolly writes that “[w]ith modish pop arrangements from Alan Tew and producer Mike Hurst, Matthew and Son is a product of the times, yes, but more importantly it’s the product of a fertile imagination that combines clever melodies with sympathetic storytelling. . . . [T]he musical arrangements . . . are steeped in the pop sound of the 1960s.” (https://progrography.com/cat-stevens/review-cat-stevens-matthew-and-son-1967/amp/ Mike Hurst says that “Full marks here to Alan Tew. I do many of the arrangements with Alan but this one in particular is his baby.” (original sleeve notes to Matthew & Son, https://majicat.com/recordings/MatthewLP.htm)
Bruce Eder writes about the LP:
Cat Stevens’ Matthew & Son was among the handful of releases that introduced Decca Records’ “offbeat”-oriented (but ultimately largely psychedelic/progressive) Deram label in England. Actually, Stevens’ “I Love My Dog” launched the label in fine style by climbing to number 27 on the U.K. charts, and its follow-up, “Matthew & Son,” hit number two, resulting in the release of the original album of the same name. The latter was not only a fine account of Stevens’ early folk-influenced pop/rock sound, but was also a beautiful, candid audio “snapshot” of one side of Swinging London’s musical ambience in late 1966 and early 1967. It melds tinkling harpsichords (“Matthew & Son”) and moderately ambitious orchestrations (mostly horns and strings) on some songs (“I Love My Dog”) with folky acoustic guitar on others (“Portabello Road”), a lot of it carrying highly expressive, weirdly personal lyrics. . . . It’s very distant from the sound that Stevens was ultimately known for, and in many ways, it’s more dated than what he did for Island/A&M, but it’s much more self-consciously accessible, arranged in different styles, ranging from vaudeville-style band accompaniment . . . to trippy Donovan-esque ballads . . . .
John Kutner tells us of Cat Stevens’ early years:
Cat [now, of course, Yusuf Islam] was born Steven Georgiou to a Greek Cypriot father and a Swedish mother and has an older sister and a younger brother who all lived in a flat above the Moulin Rouge restaurant [London, not Paris!] which his parents ran. His parents divorced in the mid-fifties yet they remained under the same roof and ran that same restaurant. Cat explained what got him going, “I think I was 15 when the big impact of life like The Beatles happened and, of course, it was then every young guy’s dream just to get a guitar and join a band. I lived in London and was lucky enough to be on the edge of Tin Pan Alley which was about 100 yards away from where I lived and there was all these guitar shops and it became my very first ambition to get a guitar. My father finally agreed and succumbed to give me eight pounds to buy my first Italian guitar. I had a lot of ideas and I found it easier to write my own material rather than sing other people’s and also I might get it wrong. Also, I had a lot of ideas I think because of the background and the musical textures I was surrounded by being in an area where there was a lot of Spanish and South African music as well rock, R&B and bluebeat, everything was here. When Dylan came along he made it all possible because of the poetry. Not everything had to be about love songs.” . . . [After h]is debut hit, “I Love My Dog” . . . . “Matthew and Son”, which also became the title of his debut album released in April 1967, reached number two in the UK singles chart, only held off by The Monkees’ I’m A Believer. . . . Cat loved living in London, he said, “It was all very exciting, every day there was something new, a different challenge. I felt I thoroughly deserved it. I lapped it up.”
Mike Hurst, formerly of the Springfields, is the unsung hero in this story. He and Andy Neil explain:
[Hurst] I was on the point of emigrating to America where I’d been offered a job in Los Angeles with Vanguard Records. I’d even bought the air ticket for myself and my family but one Saturday in June, there was a ring at my front door and Steve [Cat Stevens] was standing there. He told me he’d been to every record company in London and no one would touch him, so I decided to hustle some money and make a single before I left for America.
[Neil] After securing finance from Chris Brough . . . Hurst hustled Decca A&R chief Dick Rowe into giving him free studio time on the auspices that Hurst was recording a Mike D’abo composition . . . . Instead, Hurst used the three hours . . . to record “I Love My Dog” . . . . When learning of Hurst’s deception, Rowe was not amused.
[Hurst] He was furious but at least he listened to it and at the end he called up Sir Edward Lewis, the head of Decca Records. I thought I was in for big trouble from the great man himself but then it dawned on me that they actually liked it. We did a deal there and then for three singles over the next twelve months.
[Neil] Hurst cancelled his emigration plans to become Cat’s manager/producer . . . .
liner notes to the CD reissue of Matthew & Son
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