Songfacts®:

• Cat Stevens once said about the style of violins played at Greek weddings, "It's just the feel of the note." You can hear those violins at the end of this song.
• Stevens told Mojo magazine June 2009 that this song was the result of "an amazingly bad trip." He explained: "I was at Noel Redding's house, we were on tour and he introduced me to this substance… That was the worst night of my life! It was in his flat in Clapham Common. By the time I got to dawn and I was able to get out of the door it had snowed and it was like looking at an angelic gift from heaven! It was beautiful. Now, the song represents a recapturing of that moment where after darkness comes light."
• The song is a betrothal between Stevens and a personified spirit, The Light. Through all the albums that follow, Stevens consistently uses this color symbol, white. He divides the female figures in his life into spirit, light - white - and flesh, blood - red. "Into White" from his next album, Tea For The Tillerman, defines this view of his world. The division starts with his lyrical burial of Patti d'Arbanville on the song "Lady D'Arbanville," where he sings, "This rose will never die," and carries on in "Ruby Love" from Teaser And The Firecat and in "Sweet Scarlet" from Catch Bull At Four.
  
  You might ask where are they in Tea For The Tillerman? Alice's chess board has two sides, the wooden Red Queen is a very Hard Headed Woman, and you can find Alice (white) in "Sad Lisa," if you listen carefully (and there are those violins again).
• The verses of "Lillywhite" use two more symbols: "The Dial"/"Wheel Of Change," which is a reference to the Buddhist concept of cycle, and the "mended road," which is Steven's path/way. Stevens uses numerous examples of "roading" terminology to symbolize the path, starting with his song "On the Road to Find Out."
  
  He wrote the Mona Bone Jakon album while recovering from tuberculosis, a near-death experience that sent the already inquisitive Stevens on a spiritual quest that found him exploring Buddhism. He eventually settled on Islam in 1977 and changed his name to Yusuf Islam.
• The songs that complete Mona Bone Jakon - "Katmandu," "Time," "Fill My Eyes" and "LillyWhite" - are the most personal and saddest songs Stevens ever wrote. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Glenn - Dunedin, New Zealand, for all above
• This is British comedian Ricky Gervais' favorite song. He told Stevens that if he ended up on a desert island with one song, it would be this one.
• The album was Stevens' first produced by Paul Samwell-Smith of The Yardbirds, a collaboration that lasted for his next three albums. It was also the first Cat Stevens album the guitarist Alun Davies played on - he became one of Stevens' most trusted musical companions.