Dedicated Cat Stevens Guitar Tab Website

[Leonard]

This might of interest to some: I just lovingly touched up the tab for The Wind, adding Alun's original intro as well as author's commentary. catstevensguitar.wordpress.com/teaser-and-the-firecat-1971/the-wind/

[Deleted]

Thanks Leonard,

This reminds me. I was at the movies last week and they ran a preview which featured "The Wind" in it:

collider.com/gifted-trailer-chris-evans/

(scroll down to click on link to preview video)

[Leonard]

New guitar tab: If Only Mother Could See Me Now (Demo)

One of those early demos Steve recorded somewhere between NEW MASTERS and MONA BONE JAKON and which he slaved away at East London Recordings. While on the face the song deals with a man’s dream of flying (like an angel), its moral is ever so strongly influenced by Christianity’s guiding idea of perfecting Man by overcoming one’s devilish tendencies and develop into a higher character in order to eventually embrace one’s angelic qualities.

[coolcat]

Mar 2, 2017 13:33:19 GMT -5 @t4tillerman said:

Thanks Leonard,

This reminds me. I was at the movies last week and they ran a preview which featured "The Wind" in it:

collider.com/gifted-trailer-chris-evans/

(scroll down to click on link to preview video)



Yes, I watched the trailer on my local television. I was like "Awe", A W E S O M E ! . . .  Finally, I have found back the movie I have been searching for so long that has been aired on the TV and it featured "Oh Very Young" in it. AND one good foreign film I saw on Youtube years ago which I forgot its title has featured the soundtrack (mostly) all of the songs from the 1978's album BACK TO EARTH! Oh where is it again?  #comeonpeacetrain!

[Leonard]

New guitar tab: Sad Lisa

One of the most beautiful ballads for piano there is, “Sad Lisa” is perhaps as much about a real fan of Steve’s as it is about himself really. The grand piano was run through an Hammond organ amp (called a Leslie) with its rotating speakers giving the whole a more dreamy, watery sound. Steve worked out the main riff upstairs on the piano alone at home until the song eventually started flowing and becoming its very own thing. Capoing up the guitar at the 7th fret gets surprisingly close to the piano original while keeping the whole thing playable. I have also included Alun Davies’ original guitar solo from the Majikat Earth Tour 1976 (capoed and uncapoed version) for the instrumental verse.

[Leonard]

New guitar tab: The Tramp (1967)

Just Steve’s guitar, bass, and a single trumpet make up all the accompaniment. This is perhaps why “The Tramp” seems closer in style to his later work than most of his other early songs. The transcription wasn’t without issues since there’s so little reference material out there to work with. You’ll probably find that play-wise it’s very Cat Stevens.

[Leonard]

Boy with a Moon and Star on His Head (1972)

An acoustic magnum opus, "Boy" has one of the most fleshed-out fantastical stories Steve ever told in his songs. Given the scope of the work and in order to keep the tablature compact and readable, I had to forego some of the intricacies of how the song is played since it can vary a little bit from verse to verse, motif to motif. In the latter half, for instance, the filler bits get much shorter each time the riff ends. Overall this tablature should give you a good idea, though, what Steve was aiming for acoustically, and it captures Steve's fingerpicking style quite accurately. Unfortunately, the video reels of only this song are lost from his 1973 ABC Concert (Moon & Star Concert) for some reason (not so for the audio).

EDIT: Fleshed out the outro and corrected some formatting error on the site.

[Leonard]

Newest guitar tab: I've Got A Thing About Seeing My Grandson Grow Old (1970)

“Grandson” was written during Steve’s transitional phase from big-band arrangements—his first career—to a softer, more reflective type of song—his second career starting with the original album MONA BONE JAKON (1970)—that came closer in sound to his own demos. Ultimately, the song ended up on the cutting floor for that album and remained in the archives of Olympic Studios, London, for 30 years until in the 2000s it got released (in various mixes) on two compilation albums only. The song features Steve’s own, prominent licks, without relying on session men anymore, as was often the case during his first career. In the chorus Steve does an unusual Buddy Holly impression, singing “Grow old, oh_____. Oh___________.”

[Leonard]

Well, I promised there would be new content for The Laughing Apple, so here we go:

New guitar tab: catstevensguitar.wordpress.com/yusuf-songs/you-can-do-whatever/

While deceptively simple due to the employment of a capo on guitar, the song is rather the result of highly sophisticated composing. One wouldn’t be wrong to state that the song consist of only chorus lines trumping each other.

[Leonard]

New guitar tab: Where Are You (1969)

catstevensguitar.wordpress.com/other-songs/where-are-you/

"Where Are You" serves as a swan song marking the end of the cooperation with Decca producer Mike Hurst. While it failed to chart, it stands as one of Steve's favorite track from that time with its tamer overall arrangement uncharacteristic of Hurst's prescribed big band sound. Its classical character is reminiscent of song arrangements heard in musicals. The influences of the melancholy French genre are apparent, not only in the lyrics. Its simplified arrangement serves as a look into the things to come for Steve starting with Mona Bone Jakon.

[Leonard]

New guitar tab:

I Wish, I Wish

With the advent of his second career and with it his new album MONA BONE JAKON (1970), Steve charted onto a new spiritual journey, and his growing sense of enlightenment is perfectly reflected in the lyrics of this song. Musically, this is a very catchy gigging song that keeps on rolling, one that guitarists can perhaps appreciate the most.

[Leonard]

New guitar tab:

Rubylove (1971)

Had I known before how complicated the song structure would turn out to be, I would probably have let this one go. This marks Cat's second song in Open E (besides the sublime "If I Laugh"), and it's a tour de force no doubt. Be sure to get the time signature down first (see notes at bottom). With this one tabbed out, I have the complete Teaser & the Firecat on the site now. Yay!

Cat wanted to introduce his Greek influences into his music, and so some friends of his father, who ran a Greek restaurant, came down to the studio to play on the record with their bozoukis. Alun's daughter, then four years old, asked Cat to sing "the Rubylove song" and so the name stayed, but he song was originally called "Who'll Be My Love?" and did not contain the Greek verse until later. Together with "If I Laugh", this song is a tour de force through all kinds of Open E voicings. Even the advanced player will have to overcome the unusual time signature of the song first so be sure to read the bottom notes on rhythm first.

[Leonard]

Despite my not posting any updates here, there are lots of new and revised tabs on the site now.

catstevensguitar.wordpress.com/

[Leonard]

Plenty of tabs new and revised including songs from Back to Earth.

[Leonard]

More tabs including "Ruins."

catstevensguitar.wordpress.com/

[Leonard]

Two Fine People (1975)



The original 1975 studio recording, which shortly aired on radio networks, didn’t age well due to fairly weak instrumental arrangement with mostly keyboards and synthesizers employed. That the song was written on and for guitar can perhaps best be glimpsed at from Steve’s various life performances of this piece on the Majikat Earth Tour in 1976, where he performed the song several times improving upon the original studio recording. This guitar tab takes the live version into account. In terms of composition, while this song is based on “Wild World,” as Steve has stated multiple times on stage, it quickly trails off into its own direction.

[Leonard]

Can't Keep It In (1972)



Clocking in at fourty hours, the time spent on the recording of this one album track was enormous. Co-guitarist Alun Davies went even so far to say, “It hung like a cloud over us for ages. I nearly went mad. I’d go out of the studio, pace up and down and end up banging my head against the coffee machine out of sheer frustration. I couldn’t see anything wrong with the first take, but I was really impressed that, after all that time we spent on it, Steve could still make it better.” Guitars and vocals were recorded in the upstairs studio at Morgan Studios, London, while for some reason for the recording of Gerry Conway’s drums the musicians had to transfer to the downstairs studio. For the metallic sound at end of the song, Steve threw a miked up metal tea tray from the canteen at the floor, the timing of which was so difficult to get down that the effect alone took a couple of takes. In terms of playing the song makes excessive use of palm-muting in a percussive rhythm which takes some getting used to.

[Leonard]

Lots of new and revised guitar tabs, freshly reorganized, among them All Kinds of Roses.

catstevensguitar.wordpress.com/

[Leonard]

A new guitar tab with a classical touch inside:

Here Comes My Wife (1968)

After his contracting, and subsequent convalescing from, tuberculosis Steve apparently did one more recording session with Mike Hurst in 1968. The arrangement is the usual bombastic big band sound Hurst prescribed Steve during his entire time with the Dekka label. Steve was heavily influenced by classical music and musicals (e.g., the fanfare intro he wrote for this is inspired by Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture”), so the arrangement is not entirely unfitting, although one has to wonder how a tamer instrumentalization might have impacted the more petite lyrics. Much less so than in his later works, the lyrics here already contain so-called universal mini-truths (“It just makes him better to be there.”) that would prove to be invaluable for pop songs such as this to better stand the test of time.

[harry0616]

Thanks for all the hard work . I haven't checked. Every song out yet but I will you did a great job transcribing and the couple songs I got to were dead on .

[Leonard]

I started this guitar tab in 2006 but must have quickly given up (the intro and bridge parts are difficult to figure out) realizing it went way over my head. Fourteen years later and I managed somehow. Life doesn't seem so bad.

Best played on a J-180/185, J-45 or L-00.

Heaven / Where True Love Goes (2006)

The intro and outro of “Heaven” are pure acoustic heaven and played by Steve on a classical guitar no less; the middle part is very upbeat. For this song, Steve took inspiration from the “Heaven” part of his “Foreigner Suite”, a set of songs more firmly coupled together than he might think and touring through a variety of musical genres. The intimate chords Steve used for this piece (transcribed here as played by Steve on guitar) are quite rare to see for this stringed instrument in standard tuning and definitely take some getting used to when playing (cf. fingering at bottom).

[Leonard]

New guitar tab:

Moonstone (1967)

The classical influences in this almost Middle Eastern fiction, which is similar in tale to Aladdin’s lamp, are felt the clearest in the intro. Cat was having fun with lyrics and storylines at the time; that he lived right around the corner of the British Museum certainly had some influence here. The song is very upbeat and has the prescribed Decca big band sound en vogue at the time, but Cat’s composition and, to an extend, the song structure are actually more complex beneath the surface. The key change in the second chorus heightens suspense, and the song ends on a drawn-out outro. We have tried to adapt the song to a guitar playing style that would mirror Cat’s in theory.

Other guitar tabs have been much revised in the meantime.

[Leonard]

A new guitar tab and something a little different:



The Wind East and West (2007 version)



This song first debuted in 2006 in Abu Dhabi on national television in a much different form, with Arabic-English verses and a much more complex song structure including a chorus section. But perhaps the most famous reincarnation of the song is a medley with “The Wind” as opener for Yusuf’s Cafe Session concert in 2007, with a hauntingly beautiful vocal performance by Yusuf. The song is also meant as direct follow-up to “The Wind,” and to be understood in its most symbolic reading, with the wind meaning spirit or Holy Spirit. It also tells the rare story of the artist having seen both worlds, the East and the West. Since chord changes happen on the upbeat, timing your vocals to your guitar playing can be difficult.