Yes I’m going to be a pop star Yes fm going to be a pop star now Yes I’m going to be a pop star Oh mama, mama see me, mama mama see me I’m a pop star

Yes I’m going on my first gig Yes I’m going on my first gig Yes I’m going on my first gig Oh mama mama see me mama mama see me on my first gig

Such were the feelings of one Stephen Dimitri Georgiou when he first picked up a guitar at the ripe age of 13 and proceded to write his very first song, ‘Darling, No’. During the next two years he learned to master the guitar and wrote five more songs.

Before long, he and his brother began making the rounds of the record companies until he was finally “discovered” by Mike Hur^t who produced his fitst single, “I Love My Dog”.

The record was a smash, making Cat an instant sensation. He went on to write more hits like “I’m Gonna Get Me A Gun”, “Matthew ahd Son”, and “Here Cbmes My Baby”.

But life in the pop world was not an easy one for a naive boy of 18, and it wasn’t long before the pressures — both emotional (record company execs pushing to the limit and then son\e) and physical (ill-health in the form of tuberculosis) became unbearable.

Yes well, I’m going to the cold bank cold bank now Yes I’m going to the ©old bank oh mama mama see note mama mama see me at the cold bank.

So Cat disappeared from the music scene as completely and suddenly as he had appeared to recuperate for two years.

Well I’m coming comhig home now Yes I’m coming coming , coming home now Yes I’m coming coming coming home now Well mama mama see me mama mama see me I’m home

Now in 1971 Cat has indeed come home — home to the pop world, a new pop world where he has the control he wants and deserves over his own creativity. ,-

“It’s great being back in the music business again. What I’m doing now is exactly what I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve just never managed to do it before.

“The only, trouble is before I was not in control any thing. This time I feel that I’m doing exactly the things that I want to do and the people around me are just great people. There’s^no ego trips this time.”

He is also in no danger of being pressured — either to do too many performances in one night, to write for someone else-(he wrote “Here Comes My Baby” for the Tremeloes), or to write with someone else (he once collaborated with Kim Fowley).

Relating back to his early writing experiences, Cat recallsf ‘‘I was trying tp get my songs placed with artists about {pur or five years ago. I was with this really bad publishing Company. They just used to sign up every song and not do a thing with/ it; you know, just keep you hanging around. They had quite a few writers there: Mark Wertz and Kim Fowley and Elton was around there tod at the time. I just met Kim you know this mad guy, right? He showed me all his lyrics and he said, ‘Do something. Can you do something with it?1 I said ‘sure’. Arid I took these lyrics and worked on them and then I played it to him and changed a few things around and I did it as a B side. A very simple song it was called Portebello Road”.

Although Cat is faiiiy open' minded about writing with someone again (“if it happens, it happens,, but I’m not really thinking about ,it”), he isn’t all that keen on writing for someone again.

“I don’t think I can. I tried that once and I thirik I can only write for myself basically. If7someone else feels the same sentiments of the song, then it’s great for them to do it. But otherwise it would be ridiculous for me to try and write for someone else ‘cause that’s their trip.”

His feelings* are the same regarding doing someone else’s material.

“I’m very strange about, that because ever since I played guitar I’ve never sung anybody else’s sprigs. I mean, of course I started in beginning trying to, but it never worked out because I didn’t do it as well so I thought, ‘To hell with it, m ^Write my own.’ So I’ve never really sung anybody else’s. I’ve sung this hymn song tor the next LP which I really liked. It’s an old Welsh melody and it’s just beautiful. I just fell in love with the melody. I suppose it’s the first one.”

Anyone listening to the songs that Cat writes is well aware that they all stem from deeply personal experiences some more obviously so than others.

“I think ‘Sad Lisa’ reflects me very much. I say it’s Lisa, but I suppose basically I’m talking about myself on that one. It’s very, close to it. ‘Into White’ is wheri I’iri in my very naive child-like state where I just let anything come into my head and let it come out. ‘Hard Headed Woman’ is a strange one. I don’t really know who a hard-headed woman really is. I’ll find out one day. It’s weird. 1 mean, most of my songs I just let them come and I figure them out later.

“You see for me writing is an experience and it’s a discovery. Each time I get into song writing — each time it’s different. I mean It has to be otherwise I get bored. Otherwise I don’t want to do it — there’s no use in it. So each time I just twist it around all the time. You know, I get inspiration from the maddest things. It may start with one word and. then a melody with that word. And then it may go on from there. Or else I’ll get a melody or else I’ll just write chords and then I’ll put a tune on top of it. But, for me, it has to change all the time. I don’t enjoy writing two of the same style. That was the drag about the old time: they always kept on telling me that .1 had to do another ‘Matthew and Son’ which is completely ... I couldn’t believe, I mean, how could you do that? I’m always into this change thing. You really learn so much each second. Each second you grow up gigantically. It’s incredible.”

Cat feels that his Greek musical background (his father was Greek) has been a heavy influence on his music.

“It’s only lately that I realized how subconsciously my Work has always been affected by the forms of Greek music. You see, I get such a feeling just listening to Greek music ‘cause that was my fathers trip. It’s just natural. My half-brother from my father’s first marriage, George, he really used to play bazuki. He was one of the first bazuki players to come to London and play the clubs about 14 years ago. I used to go and listen to him. That was really, I think, one of the beginnings of music for me listening to that and the kind of timings they have. It’s natural to me to change the timing of the song halfway through, you know, and just take out a beat or whatever which technically doesn’t flow, but to me it does. Like in the middle of a song, if I suddenly stop playing, you know, that’s the same thing to me. Maybe I’m kidding myself, maybe it’s not at all. I use silence, I think, quite a lot. I like to hold silence for a bit and make it something else.”

Although Cat feels that Greek music has influenced his style, there are other influences present in his music that-are perhaps due to the type of music he listens to today.

“I love folk music, European, Old Russian, Greek. I like classical I like electronic — I don’t listen to that very much, but when I go to sleep sometimes I just put on a weird kind of — well it might be Stockhausen you know, just voices. I’ll listen to that and go to sleep or I’ll wake up to Bach or something like that. I don’t play that many records though I’m aware, of course, of what people are doing, possibly because there was a time when I just wouldn’t listen to any records at all; very stuck up about it all, you know, just dig my own music and that’s it. But I do dig a lot of music, I mean I can’t saturate myself with other people’s music too much because I’d lose my identity, so I take things that can transcend me into my own world.”

What does his own world consist of? Mostly seeking, discovering and finding things out for himself.

“I don’t read very much. I searched myself a long time ago about reading. It was partly laziness. I said to myself that I’d rather live and find out from my oWn experiences, what is going to happen and what it’s all about for me rather than take it from a book of someone else’s. That’s his experiences, you know. You can only light the way, but you can’t walk or show someone how to walk on it. That’s why Jy just started to do it all myself and figure it out myself for me. That’s the joy of living: finding out.” ^

There’s so much left to know and I’m on the road to find out. Then I found my head one day when I wasn’t even trying, and here I have to say ‘cause there, is no use in lying, lying. Yes the answer lies within, so why not take a look now . . .

“I used to meditate, but I don’t do it anymore. It was just a starting off for me. But now I find I’m constantly aware of just . . . I don’t know how to put it now, ‘cause when you meditate you can’t really think of anything anyway. It’s not anything you can say. It’s just that point that you reach. Nothing else really matters, you know, except this one thirig. 1 mean like now it just comes anytime and it comes a bit when I’m working, you know, ori stage. It’s very weird ‘cause I kind of jump out of my skin and kind of look at myself and it’s very Weird.

“Now my basic' philosophy is truth, that’s $U. I mean that runs through everything, you know; never underestimate anything or anybody from a rock to an elephant, anything. Don’t take it, for granted. That’s what a lot of people do like they take cheese for granted, but think about it — if you think, everything is just incredible. Then that shouldn’t get complicated, you shouldn’t think of everything as being incredible, just accept it . . .”

Lord my body has been a good friend

but I won’t need it when I reach the end

“I wouldn’t say I believe in reincarnation or coming back — but just a bashing about. I believe in a physical wall if you like. If you don’t have the right answer when you get to this wall, you’ll be bounced back again, , you know. If you don’t know what the wall is, you can see the wall but you can’t see over the topr*of it. And if you really see the top of it and then look over you see the whole wall and the wall disappears and you can go through. But there’s a definite kind of spectrum . . . I mean just keeping on being human and everything is a struggle for a start. I still' think I’ve got a long way to go — a long matter of lifetimes, I think.”

In between writing songs and philosophising, Cat spends his time painting. As a matter of fact, there was a time in his life when he thought he would be a painter until h^. bought his first guitar.

But even though music is now taking up much of his time, he has not let |t interfere with his artwork as evidenced by the covers of his two albums.

“I think I’ll be getting into my artwork again pretty soon, you know I’ll take a bit of time off to do some.

“As for the album covers, Mona Bone Jakon just came about naturally They said have you got any ideas, we’d be happy to use them. I said why not one of my paintings, you might be able to use them.

“I suppose the garbage can was just illogical. I was trying to fight off* the old image, if you like, and just put a garbage can on there and let people work it out for themselves, you know. So that was basically it. I was being a bit sneaky! I like garbage cans, I mean nobody thinks about garbage cans, so why-not. It’s a lonesome garbage can. ,

“I’ll also be doing the cover for the new album, but I don’t think the painting will be on the front — we may put a painting on the back.

“Once again, each one was done differently. On Mona Bone Jakon we already had the garbage can; I did Tea for the Tilierman when I knew that that song was going to be on it; and the painting for the new one, I just got the mood of the album and put it down:”

I'JoW that Cat is proving himself as an artist and composer, ngtahy people are asking him to branch out into the movie field. And Cat himself .has a couple of ideas about other ways in: which he would like to express himself in the . future. .

“I’m doing the score for a film ‘Harold & Maude’, about San Francisco. It’ll be finished about the end of June When 1 can start workingf-gp -the music.

“But I’d also like td do a film of my own because it’s hard,, to write for someone else. It’s a strange thing, either you do the whole film yourself or you can’t realiy have that much control over it — the vision’s already there. But I just love the idea of visual and music because it brings a spark to it. You can have the most diabolically boring piece of film and the same kind of music and when you put them together you get something else SA friction and a kind of movement, show and time and everything. It suddenly gives it more of a whole, you know, a roundness. Whereas just music on it’s own or just visual bn its own doesn’t work. It fits together so perfectly.

“I’ve got ideas for my own film, but I’m going to think it over first before I say anything ‘cause I’ll most likely change my mind. That’s one thing I must admit I do do. I change my mind an awful lot. I can be inspired abput something and then I look really into it and I say well, no, that’s wrong and I’ll change my mind on that. Most of the time I go back to the first idea. I know that and I know that when I start out. But I still enjoy going around it so I can see all sides before I do it.

“I’ve also got ideas of just doing loads of drawings and perhaps putting it together as a children’s book. I mean it’s not set or anything. It might happen. I’m also thinking about making a film for children. I don’t know if that will come off.”

Oh I’m going to be a pop star

Yes I’m going to be a pop star . . . .