New Masters

This is his second album, with an additional 7 bonus tracks for a total of 19 tracks in all. It was prepared from the original master tapes.Producers: Mike Hurst, Noel Walker, Cat Stevens.New Masters is as uneven musically as its predecessor, Matthew & Son, was bold. It was recorded after Cat Stevens had enjoyed a trio of hit singles of his own and a pair of hits ("Here Comes My Baby," "First Cut Is the Deepest") as a songwriter, but also after he'd started drinking regularly and the hits had stopped coming as easily. As he had also broken with his producer, Mike Hurst, it was -- according to Andy Neill -- truly a lawyers' record, in the sense that attorneys were all over the studio during the recording, representing both sides of the dispute. And with the record label caught in the middle, the resulting album was allowed to die on the vine in 1967/1968 (though Decca was able to sell it in profusion when it was reissued [especially in America] when Stevens re-emerged as a popular s