Many of the lines by Stevens – such as “You roll on roads over fresh green grass/For your lorry loads pumping petrol gas” – remain sadly pertinent in the 21st Century. Struggling to find “the balance of nature”
The song appeared on the soundtrack of the cult 1971 movie Harold And Maude, adding greatly to the poignancy of a scene in which the protagonist, Harold, is driving past a military graveyard full of tiny white graves. That was the reality of growing up in the city, so that’s where ‘Where Do The Children Play?’ comes from.” That’s where the boys played, confined to that small basement. So there was a yearning for the countryside and space for kids. And there weren’t many gardens… you had Hyde Park… you had to travel quite a long way to get there. There were still signs of destruction all around. “At the time I was growing up in London, there were bomb ruins, because the war had just ended. In an interview with Songwriter Universe, Stevens went into more detail about the inspiration for ‘Where Do The Children Play?’. “There was a yearning for space for kids” Five years later, he also made it into The Songwriters Hall Of Fame. Stevens is a master of writing melancholic songs – alongside ‘Where Do the Children Play?’ are other classics like ‘Moonshadow’ and ‘Peace Train’ – and his lasting contribution to popular music was recognised with an induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in 2014.
And that’s where, when you come to my music, a song like ‘Where Do the Children Play?’, there’s a kind of harking to that issue.” “But then I realised that there weren’t so many parks around there. “It was all entertainment, everywhere I mean, I thought this was natural,” he later told NPR. Cat Stevens (who also goes by the name Yusuf) was born Steven Georgiou in central London on 21 July 1948 and grew up in Holborn, attending a school in the theatre district of Drury Lane.