Songfacts®:

• This one is for the harried office worker who diligently toils for the boss, doing his bidding so the company can stay on top while the rank and file never get very far. It's not the coal mines, but day after day grinding away with one five-minute break and a cup of cold coffee can make one miserable. Cat Stevens was born and raised in London, where he saw many of these operations and observed how workers could be treated like chattel while others reaped the rewards.
• According to Chris Charlesworth's book The Making of Cat Stevens, the specific company that inspired this song was a London firm called Foster Wheeler Power Products. Stevens got the title from sign he saw in a furniture shop window while riding a bus in London. By the time he got to his stop, he had thought up the story of the worker that became the main character in the song.
• This was Cat Stevens' second single, following "I Love My Dog." He was just 18 at the time and had recently adopted his stage name (he was born Steven Georgiou). Released on the Decca Records imprint Deram, "I Love My Dog" made a respectable #28 in the UK, but "Matthew And Son" did much better, climbing to #2. It was used as the title track to his first album, which contained another hit, "I'm Gonna Get Me A Gun," which reached #6. Stevens' next album didn't do nearly as well, and a bout of tuberculosis wiped him out for most of 1968. In the '70s, he emerged as one of the most insightful songwriters in the game, with songs that looked at the world with a wide lens, a reflection of his spiritual journey. He had a number of hits, but none charted higher than "Matthew And Son."
• About 25 musicians played on this track, including a pre-Zeppelin John Paul Jones on bass and session great Nicky Hopkins (The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks) on piano. Most of the players were part of the orchestra, which was arranged by Alan Tew.
• In America, this song and "I Love My Dog" both bubbled under on the Hot 100. Americans didn't take note of Stevens until 1971 when his song "Wild World" took off. His US audience, hungry for his brand of gentle, considered songwriting, soon outgrew his UK fanbase.
• In the UK, this spent two weeks at #2 (starting February 2, 1967), held off the top spot by The Monkees' "I'm A Believer." At the time, Stevens was a rarity in the UK: a solo artist who wrote his own songs.
• This is the first track on Stevens' 2000 Greatest Hits compilation. After converting to Islam in 1977, Stevens (who became known as Yusuf Islam) made only religious music, but came to accept that his previous work had a lot of meaning and agreed to release it as a Greatest Hits album.
• His dad owned a restaurant in London and Stevens worked there as a waiter right until he signed a record deal aged 17. This song was inspired by how he felt about a future confined to his father's restaurant. It describes "the angst I felt when looking at what kind of future I might have," he told Uncut magazine. "That links also to 'Father And Son' in a way. My father was never difficult with me. He always enabled me to do what I wanted, but there was obviously a distance between his world and my world. I didn't want to work in the caff all my life."