On the other hand, I suppose I should consider myself lucky that this rare animated video is now so easily available for all to see - something Stevens could never have foreseen when he released it in 1977! Nevertheless, if you're a hardcore Cat Stevens fan, the book and video combination will bring you great joy as you take a journey inside of young Steve's creative mind, and wonder what factors led him to write the song and create the accompanying book and short film. THAT animated short is truly a masterpiece, and perhaps I feel a bit resentful that this book doesn't contain more of what is in the short film. If you search for "Cat Stevens Moonshadow animated video," you should be able to find it with a minimum of futher searching (the animated video for "Moonshadow" is a portion cut from the middle of the short film). Second, there is a video available on YouTube which contains this entire storyline, and the animation is even more amazing than this illustrated book. You can feel yourself nearing the end before you're even halfway through (based on physical book size, not on the storyline itself). I give it only 4 stars for two reasons: first, it's just SO short. Anyone else will probably think it a cute childrens' story, and little more. So this book gives the devoted fan even more to think about when pondering Stevens' tumultuous early life - which included not only alien abduction, but near-death from tuberculosis and drowning, and the feeling that he was being bought and sold like a slave in the music industry - and his decision to seek refuge in the order he eventually found in Islam.įor a devoted fan, this is a priceless addition to your collection. Several of his songs document that he believed himself to be the victim of an alien abduction. A friend of mine has since told me that the song "Moonshadow" - the animated video for which features part of this story - was about Stevens being followed by a UFO. But to his fans, it is not just a testament to his unbridled creativity, it may also be a look into his soul.
The story itself is about how the moon fell out of the sky one night, and Stevens' fictional (?) character Teaser, along with his somewhat clumsy red cat, Firecat, endeavour to put it back up in the sky where it belongs.įor most non-Cat Stevens and Yusuf fans, this will be a cute childrens' book, and nothing more. The French and Spanish subtitles are a nice additional nod to diversity and cross-cultural understanding, which is, it seems, one of the central themes of Stevens' life. It's really a childrens' story, at least in this format, but the fact that all of the illustrations were also done by the author, who loved art growing up as a boy in 1960s London, make it all the more interesting. I read it cover to cover the moment it arrived, which wasn't hard, given that it'a only 36 pages long, and most of those pages contain a sentence or two at most. Unfortunately, both boyfriend and book soon exited my life, never to be seen again.įast-forward to 2015, when I was lucky enough to find a well-worn but inexpensive copy of this very rare book on Amazon. Given my new-found fandom, I was absolutely enthralled by the book when I first saw it in 1987. Between 19, though, Stevens' 1971 LP, "Teaser and the Firecat," would become the soundtrack to my life as I studied at university, both in the U.S. I'd grown up listening to his music in the 1970s, and while I'd liked his music as a child, and it had touched me in certain ways, I hadn't paid a huge amount of attention to it during my adolescence.
#CAT STEVENS TEASER AND THE FIRECAT MOVIE#
I had been a true-blue Cat Stevens fan since 1985, when I first saw the movie "Harold and Maude," and fell in love with both movie and soundtrack. Between 19, though, Steven I first saw this book when a college boyfriend showed it to me back in 1987. I first saw this book when a college boyfriend showed it to me back in 1987.
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