53 – (I Never Wanted) To Be a Star – Cat Stevens – 1977

(I Never Wanted) to be a Star

            This song comes from the album that came out after Numbers, named Izitso, and it’s from the time period where Cat (Steven Georgiou) was becoming Yusuf.

            The song covers his career from pop star to breakdown to whatever he was searching for, working several song titles into the lyrics.

                        “I was seventeen, you were working for Matthew and Son,

                        “The Beatles met the queen, and I wrote, I’m gonna get me a gun, yeah yeah.”

            “Matthew and Son” being his first hit, in 1966 when he was 18, and the unfortunately titled,  “I’m Gonna Get Me a Gun” of a year later, about a kid who’s wants to use a gun “…for all those people who put me down, they better get ready to run.” In England, where this was a hit (it didn’t chart in the US), private gun ownership was illegal.

            He next mentions how the pop star existence led to his health collapse.

                        “I was on the road, sleeping between lorry lights, oh no,

                        “Stone drunk and cold, heading into a bad night, yeah, yeah.

                        “Just another bean in the star machine, here I go, here I go.”

            “Bad Night” (1967) is another song from the pop star period, prior to the health issues that led to him spending almost a year in a sanitarium to get over tuberculosis. When he came out he had written some of the beautifully introspective songs that became Mona Bone Jakon and his original songs written for “Harold and Maude”.

                         “Nature found a way, it picked me up off the dark side, yeah, yeah
                        “Showed me another day, it made me sing 'I think I see the light'”

            His conversion to Islam was going on when this song was written (based on interviews I’ve seen on VH1, “Behind the Music” (an unimpeachable source, no?)), so it’s interesting to me that he attributes his recovery to “Nature” and not Allah (or Yoda, viz. the reference to the dark side that pops up. 1977 was the year of “Star Wars”)

            It also references “I think I See the Light” (see #25) and ends with the nice thought…

                        “I never wanted to be a star, buy my mum a Ferrari car,
                        “I only wanted to run my own race,
                        “So I could win a small place in your heart”

            Call me a sap, but that he did and that he still does.