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Yusuf (Cat Stevens): Tell 'Em I'm Gone

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Legacy Recordings
Released: 2014.10.27
Time:
 35:57
Category: Folk Rock
Producer(s): Rick Rubin & Yusuf
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.yusufislam.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2012
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] I Was Raised In Babylon (Yusuf) - 3:53
[2] Big Boss Man (Luther Dixon-Al Smith) - 3:10
[3] Dying To Live (Edgar Winter) - 3:47
[4] You Are My Sunshine (Jimmie Davis / Charles Mitchell, arr. Yusuf) - 3:13
[5] Editing Floor Blues (Yusuf) - 3:42
[6] Cat And The Dog Trap (Yusuf) - 3:22
[7] Gold Digger (Yusuf) - 4:34
[8] The Devil Came From Kansas (Gary Brooker / Keith Reid) - 3:42
[9] Tell 'Em I'm Gone (originally "Take This Hammer," arr. Yusuf) - 3:12
[10] Doors (Yusuf) - 3:22

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Yusuf - Art Direction, Composer, Design, 12 String, 12 String Electric-, Acoustic & Electric Guitar, Liner Notes, Mixing, Percussion, Producer, Synthesizer, Vocals

Iyad Ben Abderahmane - Electric Guitar
Eric Appapoulaye - Electric Guitar
Eyadou Ag Leche - Electric Guitar
Mike Sweeney - Electric Guitar
Richard Thompson - Acoustic Guitar
Pete Adams - Keyboards
Peter Adams - Hammond B3, Piano, Wurlitzer
Adam MacDougall - Keyboards, Wurlitzer
Neville Malcolm - Bass
Trevor Barry - Bass
Stefan Fuhr - Bass
Jason Lader - Bass
Lenny Castro - Percussion
Yoriyos - Percussion, Background Vocals
Chris Dave - Drums
Frank Tontoh - Drums
Ian Thomas - Drums
Charlie Musselwhite - Harmonica
Tinariwen - Clapping, Percussion, Vocal Drone
Nick Ingrams - String Arrangements

South African Vocal Choir:
Saïd Ag Ayad - Choir
Complete - Choir
Elaga Ag Hamid - Choir
Bubele Mgele - Choir
Bonginkosi Motha - Choir
Happy J. Motha - Choir
Linda Thobela - Choir

Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Background Vocals
Abdallah Ag Alhouseyni - Background Vocals
Monique Harcum - Background Vocals

Rick Rubin - Producer
Al Carlson - Engineer
David Hefti - Engineer
Grant Katzin - Engineer
Greg Koller - Engineer
Sean Oakley - Engineer
Patrick Votan - Engineer
Paul Samwell-Smith - Mixing
Mazen Murad - Mastering
Yoriyos Adamos - Art Direction, Design
Gretchen Brennison - Project Director
Frank Harkins - Creative Director
Jennifer Kirell - Project Manager
William Stout - Illustrations
Assaleck Ag Tita - Translation

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Cat Stevens quietly retired from his career as a pop star after the release of 1978's Back to Earth to pursue a spiritual path. Stevens became a devout Muslim and adopted the name Yusuf Islam, quietly making spiritually oriented recordings but avoiding the mainstream, especially after the controversy that followed his comments about the fatwa declared against author Salman Rushdie in 1989. However, Yusuf has been quietly inching back into the public eye since he released the album An Other Cup in 2006 and set out on an extensive concert tour documented on the 2009 live disc Roadsinger. Released in 2014, Tell 'Em I'm Gone finds Yusuf in part paying homage to the blues and R&B sounds that inspired him as a young man while also looking back to the canny mixture of pop and folk that informed his best work of the '70s. For the most part, Tell 'Em I'm Gone works best when Yusuf follows the latter path; while he remains a committed and canny vocalist, Yusuf's voice has never boasted the force or grit of an R&B shouter, and he seems far more comfortable with the gentle fable of "Cat & the Dog Trap" or the parables of "I Was Raised in Babylon" than the Lead Belly-influenced title cut or the blues-shot reworkings of "You Are My Sunshine" and "Big Boss Man." Tell 'Em I'm Gone also seems curiously long on covers, especially since Yusuf has a great deal to say in his originals; "Editing Floor Blues" is an autobiographical piece that ponders the ebb and flow of fame (as well as the Rushdie controversy), "Gold Digger" rails against corruption in the South African mining trade, and "Doors" quietly but eloquently deals with his spiritual beliefs. Rick Rubin produced the bulk of the album (and brought in guests who include Richard Thompson, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, and Charlie Musselwhite), and while the dry, spare sound of the sessions works for the band, it doesn't always make the most of Yusuf's vocals, which could use a bit of sweetening. (It's worth noting that Paul Samwell-Smith, who produced Cat Stevens' best albums, was brought in to mix this material, perhaps in an effort to give it more of a vintage sound.) Tell 'Em I'm Gone confirms that Yusuf still has the talent and passion that made him a star as Cat Stevens, but the efforts to find a new sound for him don't quite work, and Rubin doesn't quite catch the light but emphatic touch of Yusuf's salad days; maybe a full reunion with Paul Samwell-Smith would be worthwhile for Yusuf's next album.

Mark Deming - All Music Guide



Cat Stevens gave up music in 1979 after converting to Islam and changing his name to Yusuf Islam. This is his third album since his return to writing and performing in 2006.

Having already made a big musical and spiritual journey from Sixties pop idol to Seventies sensitive singer-songwriter, his current incarnation is as a kind of venerable elder statesman preaching peace and goodwill.

His winsome vocals have a nice flavour of aged grit and his acoustic guitar playing remains deft, but his original songs have become plainer, the simple messages at their core negating subtlety or complexity.

Perhaps his decision to explore the blues is a way of making a virtue of this directness, as well as allowing him to deal with timely themes of the repression and exploitation of the working man on 12-bar structured songs such as I Was Raised in Babylon and Gold Digger. Blues versions of traditional songs such as Big Boss Man and covers including Edgar Winter’s Dying to Live are delivered with skill and an understated, easy-flowing style, buoyed by fluid electric guitar work from Richard Thompson and the soulful blues harmonica of Charlie Musselwhite.

It can be a little underwhelming but it is music with its heart in the right place.

Neil McCormick - 25 Oct 2014
© Copyright 2015 Telegraph



Much of the excitement around the release of the erstwhile Cat Stevens’s third album since his 2006 comeback has centred around the role of producer Rick Rubin, renowned as he is for giving a contemporary sheen to third-age actsincluding Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond and Black Sabbath. And yet equally prominent here is the influence of Tinariwen, another of his collaborators, their desert blues informing the sound of several songs towards the start of the album. The rest of this strong collection – half covers, half self-penned – owes more to American blues and R&B, the likes of Gold Digger and I Was Raised in Babylon suggesting that, almost half a century into his career, there’s plenty of life in Yusuf yet.

Phil Mongredien, 26 October 2014
© 2015 Guardian News and Media



The former Cat Stevens recently released a memoir, and his first album in five years often feels like it should've been included with copies of the book: "I was born in the West End/In the summer of '48," he sings on "Editing Floor Blues," in which he describes his conversion experiences with rock & roll and, later in life, Islam. With Rick Rubin co-producing, there's a bluesy toughness to the anti-capitalist jeremiads "Big Boss Man" and "Gold Digger," while "Cat & the Dog Trap" recalls the simple folky prettiness and direct, easeful messages that made him a Seventies icon. "God made everything just right," he sings on the laid-back highlight "Doors."

Jon Dolan  - October 21, 2014
RollingStone.com



Most are familiar with the story of Cat Stevens’ conversion to Islam and seemingly abrupt, often misunderstood departure from the height of popular music in the late ‘70s. It’s been with less fanfare that he’s gradually returned to writing, recording, and performing music as Yusuf Islam (or simply Yusuf) over the last decade. In 2006, shortly after picking up a guitar again for the first time in over 25 years, he released An Other Cup, an album clearly trying to reconcile his folk star past with his present worldview. By 2009’s Roadsinger, however, Yusuf was comfortably immersed again in that classic Stevens archetype of seeker “on the road to find out.” If An Other Cup can be seen as the toe dip and Roadsinger the full plunge, then Tell ‘Em I’m Gone might best be thought of as the reemerged artist finding new waters to tread.

“Although I was to venture through many lyrical terrains, melodious valleys and cadences during my 50-year musical and spiritual exploration, and though many would agree that I have covered a lot of ground, there was always one path I meant to take,” says Yusuf. “Hidden in the background behind my renowned troubadour persona lurked an R&B alter-self waiting to be let free.” To help coax out that inner bluesman, Yusuf enlisted, among others, legendary British guitarist Richard Thompson, who gives the album a gritty, fingerpicking authenticity, and producer Rick Rubin, who, having worked with the late Johnny Cash on his American Recordings albums, was the perfect choice to help him take on this mix of covers and originals. It’s to Rubin and Yusuf’s credit as co-producers that, at its best, Tell ‘Em I’m Gone sounds exactly like it should: Cat Stevens meets rhythm and blues.

In addition to Yusuf’s regular themes of self-discovery and being misunderstood, the struggle for personal freedom emerges throughout Tell ‘Em I’m Gone. “Music allows us to look beyond the bars of our existence,” explains Yusuf. “It may not last long, but it does help us to be free for a while.” It’s not a surprising sentiment from a man who fled to rooftops as a youth to escape the mundanity of London life; referred to the trappings of pop stardom as a type of slavery; and adopted the name of an Islamic prophet bought and sold as a slave in a marketplace. On cover “Big Boss Man” and the original song “Gold Digger”, Yusuf’s protagonists, a day laborer and miner, respectively, rise up against cruel and wicked overseers, the former bolstered by gospel-tinged backing vocals and Charlie Musselwhite’s squawking harmonica, the latter sparked by determined plucking and keys to drive out the foreman’s menacing riffs and rattling chains. A faithful rendition of Edgar Winter’s “Dying to Live” alternatively presents freedom as a mindset, a choice, with Yusuf concluding, “I’m dying to live until I’m ready to die” rather than merely “living to die.”

As always, Yusuf’s originals can be heard as pure or thinly veiled autobiography, and these moments are by far the most captivating on the album. “Editing Floor Blues” takes the listener from Yusuf’s adolescent dreams of stardom right through the public fallout surrounding the Salman Rushdie fatwa episode — highlighting how the truth is what’s so often left out of a narrative. The tale dramatically ends with a slow guitar breakdown and Yusuf comparing his ordeal to the trial of Socrates — over the top, perhaps, but still an imaginative allusion. The delicate parable “Cat and the Dog Trap” — easily envisioned in the palette and animation of the “Moonshadow” music video — finds him focusing on the flaws in his former lifestyle rather than media persecution. “There was a time when I was younger/ I’d chase the tail of any danger,” sings Yusuf, which, of course, is a guaranteed way to skin a cat.

The production and playing are beautiful throughout the album, and Yusuf’s voice remains remarkably preserved, still able to instantly spring from gentle introspection to emphatic eruptions. The record as a whole does suffer, though, from certain cover choices. While “You Are My Sunshine” brings a rootsy funkiness and “The Devil Came from Kansas” a bit of rock bluster, both feel like outliers and add little to the album’s arc. The traditional “Tell ‘Em I’m Gone” (originally “Take This Hammer”) definitely fits the theme of struggling for freedom, but that title can’t help but make one feel there was another autobiographical original waiting to be written. After hearing so little from Yusuf over the last 35 years, a covers-heavy album, no matter how lovingly rendered, will leave some disappointed, always preferring to hear his words telling his story.

“When a door is closed somewhere / There’s a door that’s opening,” sings Yusuf atop piano on the emotional, album-culminating original, “Doors”. It’s an idea that applies to every era of his life and a fitting sentiment to end on. Has he left the door open for another R&B album, or will that door close after he finishes his first North American tour in 35 years? And if it does shut, which door opens then? We’ll be impatiently waiting to see what this cat chases next.

Matt Melison  - October 27, 2014
© 2007-2015 Consequence of Sound



Tell 'Em I'm Gone is the fourteenth studio album by Yusuf (formerly known as Cat Stevens). The album was released on October 27, 2014, by Legacy Recordings. It is Yusuf's third mainstream release since his return to music and his first one since 2009's acclaimed Roadsinger. On 15 September 2014, Yusuf / Cat Stevens announced the forthcoming release on 27 October 2014 of his new studio album Tell 'Em I'm Gone and two upcoming tours: a November 2014 (9-date) Europe tour and a December 2014 (6-date) North America tour, the latter being his first one since 1976. On the album cover, the singer is credited as "Yusuf" with a promotional sticker identifying him also as "Cat Stevens".

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