Still a mystery to me
More than a half century has passed, and I still have a pressing question. What is a tillerman, and why did Cat (Stevens) make that term serve as an album title. Was it the tea? What type of tea, because I really have so many questions.
Yes, I slipped into another rabbit’s hole, this morning. Listening to an album that was very popuar at a time in my life when I was unable to drive. No car. Too young. No place to go, really. The album was everywhere; OK, not in my home, because we had a K-Tel budget for vinyl. But many of my friends had a copy in their stacks, right alongside the Beatles.
By force of contact, we all knew all the lyrics. Understood most of them. The Tillerman, not so much. This wasn’t even his most popular album, in retrospect. Remember, we had very little access to “album radio”, and a lot of time to read the Top 40 lists available at the local record store. An inexpensive buyer’s guide. Printed weekly by a big voice (CHUM-AM). Oh, the good times.
Did I have a favorite track. I’ll go with “all of them”, with no preference shown for Side A vs Side B. After all, the album belonged to the host, and we didn’t get to choose a particular tune. Life was subject to the order of the songs.
None of my gang had the licks to actually learn any given tune on a guitar. We were a clarinet and trumpet subset of the virtual concert band. I can’t tell you if any of my gang evolved, because I moved away. And that half-century detail…
