As the most influential group in musical history, The Beatles can be heard within the sound of countless bands and artists. Famously, the Fab Four were some of the first pop stars to normalise writing their own material. The songwriting partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney has substantially impacted the face of popular music. One such artist the Beatles influenced was none other than folk and pop icon Yusuf/Cat Stevens.
Cat Stevens, who later changed his name to Yusuf after converting to Islam in 1977, is an incredibly influential artist in his own right. One of the most well-renowned songwriters of his generation, Stevens gained notoriety during the folk revival and singer-songwriter boom of the 1960s and 1970s alongside the likes of Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell. The songwriter found early success with ‘Matthew and Son’, which reached number two on the UK singles charts.
Over the next few years, Stevens followed up on his early success with tracks like ‘Wild World’ and ‘Father and Son’. Although his musical style changed and developed, thanks in part to a near-death experience whilst suffering from tuberculosis in 1969, his songwriting ability never dwindled.
Now in his seventh decade, Stevens revealed some of his major influences last year during an interview with Red Bull. Among his picks was the early Beatles track ‘There’s a Place’. “It would be impossible not to mention the impact of The Beatles,” explains the singer, a sentiment likely shared by the vast majority of musicians who were around at the height of Beatlemania. The Liverpool quartet impacted virtually every aspect of the music industry in the 1960s, from fresh-faced pop stars on The Ed Sullivan Show to mature and well-respected artists recording Abbey Road.
It was that early period that Stevens picked out as being influential in his own work. ‘There’s a Place’ is taken from The Beatles’ debut studio album, Please Please Me and has that signature optimism inherent in most of the band’s earlier work. Described by Lennon as his attempt at writing in the Motown style, the song is perhaps not their greatest effort.
Nevertheless, Stevens spoke about his love of the track, “What songs represent The Beatles for me? Well, one of them is about a place, which I think is a [theme that links] all the songs I love. There’s a Place was written [primarily] by John Lennon, and I adore it because, for me, it depicts the destination we all want to end up in: that one place where everything is fine.”
Cat Stevens abandoned music for a while after converting to Islam in the late 1970s. The songwriter instead chose to focus on his faith and philanthropic endeavours. Gradually returning to performing in the 1990s, Stevens reentered the public consciousness this year after his brilliant set at Glastonbury Festival. Playing a mixture of old classics and new material, the musician proved that his songwriting ability never went away when he stopped performing.
