REVIEW: Yusef Cat Stevens Leaves An Indelible Mark On #Perth

Oh what a night!


Article heading image for REVIEW: Yusef Cat Stevens Leaves An Indelible Mark On #Perth

@PerthArena Twitter

Let's get this right out of the way.

Yusef Cat Stevens is a living genius.

It was no more evident than last night, when the man behind ALL those songs stepped out on the #Perth Arena stage to give the capacity crowd an almost three hour cavalcade of hits, with the odd new tune thrown in for good measure.

We were warned early to be there on time and thank God for that, because true to their word, Yusef/Cat stepped out on the stage just after 8pm.

What happened next was a massive trip down memory lane. Pretty much every song you wanted him to play, he played... apart from Another Saturday Night or Lady D'Arbanville, in my case anyways.

And that's the beauty of seeing someone like Yusef Cat Stevens. Despite the hefty price tag ($220 per ticket in our case), you just knew that there'd be at least 5 songs on the night that you either didn't realise or had forgotten that he had written.

 

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The real beauty of his show was his honesty. Yusef took the crowd on a historical journey of his career to date, even going to the lengths of recreating his attic from his beginnings in London, where he wrote many of the songs we all know and love.

 

And, he was genuinely funny. His banter with the crowd was on-point, having all the one liners ready for the inevitable song requests yelled out by the willing punters.

One thing that was completely evident was Yusef's love of The Beatles. It began in the aforementioned 'attic', where Yusef played us his very first Beatles record (on a record player, if you don't mind), and continued through the show with a nod to Here Comes The Sun, culminating in an encore performance of All You Need Is Love.

At one stage Yusef said to the crowd; "I am such a Beatles fan"... A punter, as 'ocker' as you like, yells back "Well, I'm a Cat Stevens fan!"

Yusef turned to the punter and genuinely laughed for a couple of seconds, then humbly thanked him for the kind words.

It seems that for all his body of work and his legacy on music, Yusef remains a humble, polite, charming man. And the crowd loved him even more for it.

Finally, it would be remiss of me to not mention the band. THE BAND. He had three guys backing him (plus an old mate, Alun Davis, who joined the band on stage from time to time), and these three musicians were simply unbelievable. The three of them backed Yusef perfectly, with brilliant harmonies and precision timing. Indeed, all three of them swapped out instruments over the night, from drums to keys to bass to that weird instrument that you blow into and play a mini keyboard type thing.

The whole lot.

Rubylove was NOTE perfect. Note bloody perfect.

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All in all, a massive night in Perth to celebrate a legend!

 


Written by: @dantheinternut

@dantheinternut

23 November 2017

Article by:

@dantheinternut




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