Cat Stevens - Buddha And The Chocolate Box [23]

Title: Cat Stevens - Buddha And The Chocolate Box
Year/Genre/Sub-Genre/City: 1974, Folk Rock, Soft Rock, London, England 10/26
Matrix #: SP 3623 (A&M, US, custom bamboo label); runout not legible in photo
Condition: EX (LM) | Members: Cat S (48' - ) | Producer: Paul Samwell-Smith, Cat Stevens
Cultural Facts: [23]

1. Raised Above the Restaurant: Cat Stevens was born Steven Demetre Georgiou in London in 1948 to a Greek Cypriot father and a Swedish mother who ran the Moulin Rouge restaurant near Shaftesbury Avenue. He grew up living over the family business in the middle of the West End theatre district, and the stage musicals playing around him, West Side Story above all, were an early spark for his songwriting.
2. Buddha in One Hand: The title came from a plane ride where Stevens found himself holding a statue of Buddha in one hand and a box of chocolates in the other. He thought that if the plane went down, that was all he had, one thing spiritual and one thing material, and he decided that was the whole point.
3. He Drew the Back Cover: After the Foreigner album lost some of his casual fans, Stevens brought back producer Paul Samwell-Smith, the former Yardbirds bassist, and went back to his acoustic sound. He also did the illustrations himself, including the little painted panels on the back of this jacket, and the record went to No. 2 on the Billboard album chart with Oh Very Young reaching No. 10.