(Credits: Far Out / Protest Photos)
The remarkable funny in Hal Ashby’s 1971 romantic black funny motion picture Harold and Maude was considerably raised by Cat Stevens’ incredibly tender and poignant soundtrack, which included among the singer-songwriter’s best-loved tracks, ‘Tea for The Tillerman’.
Harold and Maude stars Bud Cort as Harold Chasen, a boy with a morbid fixation with death who routinely plays suicide tricks on his mom, who wishes for him to live a typical life. When going to a funeral service for somebody he doesn’t understand, he satisfies Maude, a spritely 79-year-old. The set establish a not likely relationship that ultimately turns romantic, and Maude reveals her young friend how to live life to the maximum in spite of its tough challenges.
In an Academy ‘Salute to Hal Ashby’, director Cameron Crowe when asked Stevens about the time he initially checked out the script for the movie and visited its set. “You were really on the ground floor with this movie,” he started. “I know you said you saw the script on a plane, and you immediately related to Harold.”
Crowe then asked, “Besides wondering if you really were ever that mischievous, I have to ask you what it was really like visiting the set of Harold and Maude as you did in San Francisco?” Stevens responded, “It’s true I was dark and mysterious at one time in my life; that’s why I was looking for the light so hard.”
The singer-songwriter went on, “When I first came onto the set, it was the first time I met Hal – I’d never seen a picture of this guy before, so I thought, ‘He looks like a guru, not a proper film director’. He was smoking these little cigarillo things and something else, many things.”
It sounds as however Ashby was constantly in the San Francisco spirit of the 1970s and delighted in more than the odd toke on a spliff. “I got brought into his world, San Francisco, blue sky, and on set, there was Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort, and it was just so amazing,” Stevens said.
Stevens likewise kept in mind how he initially pertained to provide the movie with his music, including, “I had a couple of songs, and he wanted something original. I went into the studio, cut these things which I always meant to re-record properly, but we never did because he wanted the film out, and they got stuck there like demos.”
Listen to Cat Steven’s soundtrack for Harold and Maude listed below.
