I think this song is about a nightmare Cat had during his commercial pop star days.
"The house of freezing steel" is an airplane. For some period of years, Cat was touring, on the road all the time, practically living in an airplane going from place to place, hence the airplane was his "house." Not even whatever hotel room he stayed in on any given night was his house, because he only crashed there, after each gig, so he would not even remember the scenery of those brief lights-out rest intervals between gigs. He would only remember the "winding-up" he surely had to do, to get ready for the next gig, wide awake, probably with the help of drugs at least from time to time, while on his flight. (What a GRIND that would be! SO GLAD I wasn't a pop star! All the money, all the easy access to places, cities, venues, all the easy chicks, all the adoring crowds, would not have been enough to keep me happy forever (or for long), either, as I suspect Cat might have already known would be his experience as well, even before he immersed himself in that "life-style.") He played the same songs over and over again, in city after city - remember, one definition of "insanity" is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results - so Cat saw how the touring life as a pop star was a taste of insanity: never satisfying, always draining, even exhausting, always leaving him unfulfilled, even feeling trapped as in a prison or insane asylum, even feeling suffocated, even as the illusion of that kind of show business was (to many) that anyone living like that was "on top of the world."
The "house" Cat flew in only added to that trapped, suffocating feeling. So he had a bad dream about it all. So he turned it into a song about the "pop star grind." That's my theory, for what it's worth.
I have an album of Cat Stevens before he hit the really big time - where he looked more like a "clean-cut" (for the 1960s) pop singer-performer like the Tom Joneses and Engelbert Humperdincks of that time. I have not listened to that album for decades! But, I am almost certain that in the brief interludes in this song, where we hear Cat singing in the background, almost like a faint echo, he is repeating within the rhythm and accompaniment to "Freezing Steel" one of the nonsense, "doo-wop"-like sounds that he sang on one of the tracks on that old album:
["bah-pah-bah, bah-pah bahhh, bah-pah-bah-bah...bah-pah-bah, bah-pah-bah-bah, bah-pah, bah-pah"]
I see on YouTube that there is belief or suspicion that this song is about Cat being abducted by extraterrestrials. A "close encounter" with a UFO and its occupants. I do not subscribe to that interpretation. Cat might have titled a later album "Back to Earth," but, that didn't have anything to do with a UFO or abduction by ET. It had to do with resuming a life as a real and normal person, instead of as some pop music icon.
I see on YouTube that there is belief or suspicion that this song is about Cat being abducted by extraterrestrials. A "close encounter" with a UFO and its occupants. I do not subscribe to that interpretation. Cat might have titled a later album "Back to Earth," but, that didn't have anything to do with a UFO or abduction by ET. It had to do with resuming a life as a real and normal person, instead of as some pop music icon.
I think this song is about a nightmare Cat had during his commercial pop star days.
"The house of freezing steel" is an airplane. For some period of years, Cat was touring, on the road all the time, practically living in an airplane going from place to place, hence the airplane was his "house." Not even whatever hotel room he stayed in on any given night was his house, because he only crashed there, after each gig, so he would not even remember the scenery of those brief lights-out rest intervals between gigs. He would only remember the "winding-up" he surely had to do, to get ready for the next gig, wide awake, probably with the help of drugs at least from time to time, while on his flight. (What a GRIND that would be! SO GLAD I wasn't a pop star! All the money, all the easy access to places, cities, venues, all the easy chicks, all the adoring crowds, would not have been enough to keep me happy forever (or for long), either, as I suspect Cat might have already known would be his experience as well, even before he immersed himself in that "life-style.") He played the same songs over and over again, in city after city - remember, one definition of "insanity" is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results - so Cat saw how the touring life as a pop star was a taste of insanity: never satisfying, always draining, even exhausting, always leaving him unfulfilled, even feeling trapped as in a prison or insane asylum, even feeling suffocated, even as the illusion of that kind of show business was (to many) that anyone living like that was "on top of the world."
The "house" Cat flew in only added to that trapped, suffocating feeling. So he had a bad dream about it all. So he turned it into a song about the "pop star grind." That's my theory, for what it's worth.
I have an album of Cat Stevens before he hit the really big time - where he looked more like a "clean-cut" (for the 1960s) pop singer-performer like the Tom Joneses and Engelbert Humperdincks of that time. I have not listened to that album for decades! But, I am almost certain that in the brief interludes in this song, where we hear Cat singing in the background, almost like a faint echo, he is repeating within the rhythm and accompaniment to "Freezing Steel" one of the nonsense, "doo-wop"-like sounds that he sang on one of the tracks on that old album: ["bah-pah-bah, bah-pah bahhh, bah-pah-bah-bah...bah-pah-bah, bah-pah-bah-bah, bah-pah, bah-pah"]
I see on YouTube that there is belief or suspicion that this song is about Cat being abducted by extraterrestrials. A "close encounter" with a UFO and its occupants. I do not subscribe to that interpretation. Cat might have titled a later album "Back to Earth," but, that didn't have anything to do with a UFO or abduction by ET. It had to do with resuming a life as a real and normal person, instead of as some pop music icon.
I see on YouTube that there is belief or suspicion that this song is about Cat being abducted by extraterrestrials. A "close encounter" with a UFO and its occupants. I do not subscribe to that interpretation. Cat might have titled a later album "Back to Earth," but, that didn't have anything to do with a UFO or abduction by ET. It had to do with resuming a life as a real and normal person, instead of as some pop music icon.
@Hipnoticed I like your comments, they certainly fit Cat from what I have heard of him elsewhere.
@Hipnoticed I like your comments, they certainly fit Cat from what I have heard of him elsewhere.