Today’s classic song of the day that packs an emotional punch is Cat Stevens’ “Father and Son”—although I admit it packs a different kind of punch now than it did when I first heard it fifty or so years ago.
“Father and Son” was the next-to-last track on side two of Mr. Stevens’ album, Tea for the Tillerman. That album, released in November of 1970, included the hit single “Wild World” (#11 on the Billboard Hot 100) along with FM radio stalwarts “Where Do the Children Play?,” “Hard Headed Woman,” “Sad Lisa,” and “Miles From Nowhere.” “Father and Son” was another one of those tracks you heard a lot on FM radio, although it was never released as a single. It should have been.
“Father and Son” relates a dialog between a father and his son, told from different viewpoints in alternating verses. The son wants to break away and experience the world; the father doesn’t quite understand and wants his son to slow down and take it easy. “You’re still young, that’s your fault,” the father intones, “there’s so much you have to go through.”
When I was younger, I identified with the son’s verses, wanting to head out on my own and do something, anything, but feeling stymied by my father and the whole older generation. Now that I’m older, I identify more with the father, older and presumably wiser, not necessarily stifling the younger generation but wanting to impart some of the life lessons I’ve learned. Both voices are equally valid and equally limited.
I don’t have any children of my own but I do have a bustle of grandchildren, the oldest of whom is now a hard-headed junior in high school. Collin, though not a blood relative (I’m technically his step-grandparent), is so much like me at his age that it’s scary. There I times I just want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him and tell him “don’t do that!,” because I know he’s going to run into the same brick walls I did lo those many years ago and I want to spare him some of the trouble and the pain and the heartbreak. But I can’t tell him that and even if I could he wouldn’t listen to me; he has to experience life and learn things on his own. He can’t be told, just as I couldn’t be told back when I was his age, he has to find out himself.
That, ultimately, is the emotional core of “Father and Son.” It’s about approaching life from two ends of the same timeline. The son has much to learn and is eager to do so; the father has already learned and wants to spare his son at least some of the travail:
Take your time, think a lot
Think of everything you’ve got
For you will still be here tomorrow
Though your dreams may not
As they say, I wish I knew then what I know now. Not that it would have mattered
Cat Stevens started writing “Father and Son” as part of a proposed musical project called Revolussia, about the Russian Revolution. The project got shelved when Mr. Stevens caught tuberculosis in 1969 and was sidelined for almost a year, but “Father and Son” remained. Mr. Stevens ultimately reworked the song to be more universal in nature and you know the rest.
Back in 1970, Mr. Stevens sang both the father and the son parts, the former in a deeper baritone and the younger in a slightly higher tenor. When he released Tea for the Tillerman 2, a 2020 reenvisioning of the original album, Mr. Stevens recorded new vocals for the father’s part but kept the original tracks for the son’s verses. An older Cat singing with his younger self added even more emotional depth to what was already an emotion-packed song.
