So for some reason this morning, Amazon Music decided today was the day to line up Father and Son for me. And it got me thinking about how music can freeze time, and act as a time machine to other places. My Dad had a record player and maybe about eighty records or so – and every so often we would have a Saturday night music night, where he would play the music he loved, so a mix of 70s Glam Rock (yes, he did do thumb in belt buckle dancing, yes I was increasingly embarrassed), mixed up with some 70s Christian music (hello Keith Green) and almost always Cat Stevens in there.
But he did really love Cat Stevens – he definitely had Tea for the Tillerman album – and this was a song I remember him playing and having in the car. I have a surprising lack of things of Dad – a few short video clips – lots of photos, but not very much more than that. No recordings of him talking really, and in some ways I’m not sure whether I can remember it or I’m remembering what I remember (does that make any sense? like the echo not the actual sound).
But something about this one song, Father and Son, kind of knocks me for six every time. I remember when his father died, we were clearing the attic, and we discovered that his Dad had been slowly purchasing his railway gauge (the size of railway track he used, not his Dad). And I remember Dad being genuinely puzzled at why his admittedly shop-a-holic father had done this, and I said, well he was buying it for you. I remember Dad speechless, which didn’t happen very often. And just holding it and looking at it.
I know… that I have to go.
So as you might imagine, I avoid listening to Father and Son, because you know, I cry at music at the best of times. But I did go on a bit of Yusuf Stevens spiral this morning and even found myself listening to one of Dad’s true favourites, Morning Has Broken (seriously – check out the 1970s ah choir in the background). And I was thinking that even though I don’t have very much of Dad’s physically left (I have his cycling proficiency test certificate, not even sure why), I do have this toy theatre that was my pride and joy when I was about 9. It was a plastic amazing spectacular that had LIGHTS and MAGNETS and little people you could move around.
Anyway the batteries leaked and it was gross and sticky and I was heart broken, and there was no way to get any of it off. I had assumed that it had been thrown away – and while it’s fair to say my Dad was not what one would call, minimalistic, in his attitude to belongings, sometime after he died, it turned up in the back of the attic. He kept it for me.
Listening to Cat Stevens made me think of that.
Sarah Whitfield 