On his 1970 album Tea for the Tillerman, Cat Stevens managed to touch a nerve with the wider culture with a set of songs featuring lovely melodies and piercing lyrics. “Father and Son,” one of the standouts from that record, has stood the test of time as one of the best explorations of familial dynamics ever put on tape.
What is the song about? How did the song emerge from an unfinished project? And what clever technique did Stevens utilize to embody two members of the same family? Here are all the answers on this enduring song about how competing impulses regarding the love for family and the need for freedom can test the bonds between “Father and Son.”
The Years of the Cat
Cat Stevens emerged from London at the tender of age 18 with his debut album Matthew & Son in 1967. He was an immediate smash in his home country with his charismatic vocals and songs that were clever well beyond the years of their creator.
But Stevens never quite felt comfortable as a commodity within the music machine. His artistic ambitions were a bit too broad to be contained by the simple songs often coveted by pop radio. When he contracted a serious case of tuberculosis in 1969, it gave him the opportunity to recalibrate the direction of his career.
Stevens decided to try his hand at writing a musical with Nigel Hawthorne, who would go on to become a popular actor on stage and film. The focus of the show was the Russian Revolution, and as Stevens explained in an interview with GQ, that was the genesis for “Father and Son”:
“Essentially, it was about Nicholas and Alexander, the last tsars of Russia, and against that there’s another story about this family in the farmland, in the country. And the father, of course, basically wants to keep things as they are, while the son is really inspired by the revolution. He wants to join. And so that’s the inspiration for that song. That’s why I’m able to represent both sides—though I feel that my preference, my emphasis, was on the son’s side, and the father’s arguments were not quite as strong as the son’s, which is interesting. Change is basically the theme of the song.”
The musical never came to fruition, but when Stevens returned to his recording career, he left behind the strings and pop-oriented arrangements of his first two albums. He focused instead on a sound that owed much more to folk music and concentrated on his vocals and work on acoustic guitar. As it turned out, the timing was just right, as there was a general move in the music world toward authentic singer/songwriters.
Tea for the Tillerman proved to be a breakthrough for Stevens in the United States. “Father and Son” was one of the highlights. To make the song sound like a dialogue, Stevens embodied the father by singing in a lower register in subdued fashion. He then took the part of the son by raising his voice an octave and singing with much more passion.
What is the Meaning of “Father and Son”?
“Father and Son” wouldn’t work as well as it does if Stevens hadn’t allowed the father to make his case as sensibly as he does. The dad shows a sly sense of humor in his advice to the boy: You’re still young, that’s your fault / There’s so much you have to go through. He totally understands the tempestuousness of youth, because he’s been there: I was once like you are now and I know that it’s not easy.
The headstrong youth displays his own clarity in explaining himself. Only he has to get a third party to hear him out, suggesting the father has settled into an intractable stubbornness: Oh, how can I try to explain? / ‘Cause when I do he turns away again. He makes the point that there’s an inherent difference between his elders and himself that has nothing to do with age: If they were right I’d agree / But it’s them they know not me.
The son has the last word: Now there’s a way and I know that I have to go away. That Cat Stevens was willing to embody both sides of the story on “Father and Son” showed that he had advanced beyond the clichés about the older generation so prevalent in rock music at the time. That’s part of the reason why this song keeps speaking to listeners discovering its wonder and wisdom for the first time.
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