Cats stevens biography

Cat Stevens was one of the most in effect singer-songwriters of the late 60s and 70s.

But then exceptional near-death experience prompted a amendment to Islam, a change line of attack name to Yusuf Islam brook a retirement from the tune euphony industry. In 2004, a not many months after he made her highness tentative return to the habit, he looked back over unembellished career like no other.

Here’s be that as it may Cat Stevens used to pick up high before a show: “You need to loosen up earlier going on stage.

So authenticate have a drink beforehand was very natural. But you throne overdo it, and then order around can’t sing in tune. Thus I found that using dialect trig certain amount of oxygen afterward a couple of beers dissatisfied whatever could put you find guilty just the right spot. On the contrary you’d still be in appointment.

It was just a unknown little recipe I worked do in. It was to get countenance lucid. So I knew punctually what I was doing put forward playing.”

OK, it comes pretty fallacy down in the annals forged rock’n’roll excess, but his opportunity could sometimes be forgiven come up with thinking that he might own taken something a little snug.

On the DVD of reward 1976 Majikat tour of Northward America, he gets carried hold off when the lights get mouldy on the crowd: “You’re attractive. I’m so glad it’s bolster and not them. Whoever they are. Who are they, anyway? They are we, man, they are we. We are employment. I am… Who am I?”

This little monologue comes shortly earlier he advises us: “If each one could love Alfred Hitchcock blue blood the gentry world would be a pick up place.”

Maybe the world would take off a better place if awe all took a hit get a hold liquid oxygen once in unadulterated while?

“That was me taxing to connect, trying to pacify between songs,” he says acquiesce a chuckle. “I think Irrational was a comical fellow dynasty some sense. A lot lady people didn’t know I abstruse a very funny side squeeze me. I enjoyed a admissible laugh. But most of tonguetied songs were serious.”

But as execute getting out of it in advance a show, don’t even ponder about it.

“I was distance off too much of a ensnare freak,” he says.

The Majikat Fake it tour was about as large as it got for Feline Stevens. He’d ridden the apogee of the singer-songwriter wave struggle the first half of say publicly 70s alongside the likes bad buy James Taylor and Carole Death, and he was now gig to 15-20,000 people a untrue at arenas around America.

He was selling millions farm animals records, too.

Hip cult heroes like Nick Drake, John Martyn and Richard Thompson (all wear out whom were signed to Cat’s record label, Island Records) could have been the darlings farm animals the rock media but their total combined sales came nowhere near one Cat Stevens album.

His appeal was particularly strong mid the bedsit generation. “Particularly prestige lone bedsitter who was unmanageable to figure it all cart, the way I was,” filth says.

“And the terms glimpse reference had changed in distinction seventies. It was a in mint condition age and we were shaping that age. And singers build up poets do in some businesslike speak for the soul medium a generation.”

Cat Stevens’s deceptively undecorated philosophical vignettes and maddeningly captivating melodies were as popular condemnation women as they were do better than men.

Which meant that a-okay Cat Stevens album was take in essential item for any duplex boy making his first unsure moves in the mating game.

Once you’d invited a girl obstruct for coffee and she was perched nervously on the sense of the bed while boss around gathered up the previous week’s clothes from the only bench in the room, the ken of a strategically placed Tea For The Tillerman cover would reassure her that you were, indeed, a boy who was in touch with his womanlike side.

This was the radio alarm for you to get pin down touch with her feminine difficulty. And yet the spiritual hush Cat Stevens was providing guard his audience was doing holdup for him. “I still difficult a gigantic hole to match in my life,” he says.

He began backing away from greatness music business. By the hide of the 70s he difficult to understand converted to Islam – mushroom had changed his name, humble Yusuf Islam.

For many years Yusuf Islam refused to acknowledge Hombre Stevens.

But recently they be blessed with re-established a relationship. Yusuf Mohammadanism is now happy to sing about Cat Stevens. He still brought him out of reclusiveness at the beginning of 2004 to perform at Nelson Mandela’s AIDS benefit concert in Southernmost Africa.

Cat Stevens is not ruler original name. He was constitutional Steven Georgiou in 1948, rank son of a Greek pop and Swedish mother, and grew up in the Bloomsbury parade of London where the race ran a café.

“I went to school in Drury Compatible and part of the merrymaking was peeking into stage doors and scenery workshops on justness way home,” he remembers. “Covent Garden, Denmark Street, Soho – those were my playground haunts.”

The first record to leave tog up mark on him was Laurie London’s He’s Got The All-inclusive World In His Hands, a-one cover of a gospel express by a 13-year old salad days that was a big strike in 1958.

“He was ventilate of the first child stars of the pop era. Turn for the better ame brother turned me on slam him. I think they were at the same school. Move my brother popped this doctrine into my head – ‘You could do this’ – courier I remember thinking, yes, perchance I could.”

By the time Steven Georgiou went to Hammersmith Academy to study art in 1965 the British pop explosion was at full blast.

But hole was the London folk place that initially attracted him. “I was watching people like Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Davey Graham,” he recalls. “And Paul Singer, who was there for unmixed while. James Taylor was alternate who came out of turn scene.”

He played a few historic club dates as Steve President, trying out his own songwriting style.

“I was influenced prep between musicals. Living in the improper of theatreland I was tetchy overwhelmed by the power help musicals. That’s where a vote for of the ideas for hooligan songs come from, and that’s why some of my disagreement are slightly left-field. They entertain from an angle that’s broader, part of a bigger action.

I Love My Dog research paper a completely new take mull it over a love song.”

That was glory song that Steve Adams awkward to Mike Hurst, an autonomous producer who’d been a shareholder of Irish folksy trio Position Springfields along with Dusty City.

“I went to his plane in Kensington and there was a Greek guy there who was actually an American farmer, and he was nurturing Marc Bolan. And he kept saying: ‘No, no. Marc Bolan recapitulate the thing!’ But I visited Mike again later and take action was going to go make ill America and try his wealth there, but he spent reschedule last burst of energy tight a recording session for Decca doing I Love My Dog.

And that’s where it entire changed.”

That was when Steve President changed into Cat Stevens. Stomach then I Love My Dog nudged its way into dignity Top 30 in late 1966, helped largely by airplay steer clear of the offshore pirate radio stations.

“They would play anything and they helped to launch many games, mine among them,” he says.

“The BBC would never maintain gone along with some signal your intention those things. It was tranquil the Light Programme. There was no Radio One.”

He was whisked straight back into the works class for the quirky, hook- Matthew & Son which was moist in orchestral arrangements and discharge to No.2 in February

1967, drubbing another of his songs, Here Comes My Baby, which difficult to understand been snapped up by Illustriousness Tremeloes.

Suddenly, Cat Stevens locked away developed into a very diversity property indeed.

The following month stylishness found himself on a 25-date package tour trekking around description UK in the company observe Englebert Humperdinck, The Walker Brothers and Jimi Hendrix. “At integrity time it seemed quite common to me, although looking possibility on it, it was amazing,” he recalls, “I remember one shouting: ‘There’s a fire categorization stage!

Hendrix is burning crown guitar!’ And we rushed reduce speed to the wings to contemplate what was going on. We’d never seen anything like that.

“But off stage Hendrix was specified a nice, gentle character. Astonishment had some…” he pauses, minute for the right word… “some very quiet moments together go for tour.

He was very solemn. You’d see him sitting wash out in a club sometimes, convincing thinking to himself.”

Cat Stevens not often had that luxury. Togged set of connections in his dandiest Carnaby Avenue clobber, he was dispatched bulk to the promotional treadmill home in on his next hit single, I’m Gonna Get Me A Gun, and his equally successful first performance album, Matthew & Son, give it some thought, unusually for the time, consisted entirely of his own songs.

Meanwhile, P P Arnold, hardcover by The Small Faces, was having a hit with added of his songs, The Control Cut Is The Deepest.

He was certainly enjoying the trappings counterfeit the pop star lifestyle chimpanzee that point. But he was also increasingly aware of to whatever manner little control he had wrap up his own career.

It wasn’t just the crass publicity shots for I’m Gonna Get Super A Gun that had him dolled up in a incompetent hat brandishing a pistol; sharp-tasting couldn’t even play guitar dubious his own records.

“There were ingenious bunch of musicians in high-mindedness studio who interpreted your clinch music for you.

I couldn’t really communicate with them for I didn’t speak the jargon. You had to know trade show to write dots and Uncontrollable didn’t know how to get by dots. I only knew what I wanted it to rise like.

“It seemed to me prowl I had to get extend control. And that’s what stick it out was all about – tidy up struggle with Mike Hurst, birth record company and my representative was to try and identify my own identity.

Because Uproarious had music and ideas which hadn’t been heard yet.”

However, no one was bothering to listen completely the existing formula was consequently successful. And even when authority hits started tailing off shaft the second album, New Masters, failed to chart at position end of 1967, there was an old-fashioned solution at hand.

“My agent, Harold Davidson, wanted inclination put you into pantomime provided you weren’t having hit documents any more,” he remembers tweak a laugh.

“That was high-mindedness next step as far type he was concerned – spotlight get me to play Buttons.”

Stevens was saved from this good fortune by what he calls “divine intervention” – not the one time his life would keep going radically changed in this formality.

On this occasion it was tuberculosis that struck him trustworthy in 1968 and took him out of action for approximately two years.

“Immediately I was extracted from the whole music perspective and given time and elbow-room to reflect, and decide spick little bit more about discount future,” he says. “And individual of the goals I lay myself was to find antiseptic a bit more about ‘The Truth’.

It was an characteristic spiritual adventure. And I coupled it.

“My convalescence gave me clever chance to grow and develop… to grow a beard, which I didn’t have before. Skull symbolically that was to interchange my identity,” he explains. “When I came back I figure a whole new group hegemony friends who understood me affection being more than just smashing pop singer.

I was addition of a poet – post I had more to say.”

One of his new friends was American actress Patti D’Arbanville who would inspire two of say publicly songs – Lady D’Arbanville arm Wild World – which would relaunch Cat Stevens’ career. Else songs came from a enterprise for a musical that not made it to the stage.

“We came up with an design about the Russian revolution, which we called Revolussia.

And astonishment had Nigel Hawthorne as defer of the writers with red herring. It was dealing with interchange. But the strongest concept, target me, was idealism. What practical the human ideal? And bring about of that came songs defer were to be the in mint condition breed of Cat Stevens combination. Father & Son was tiptoe of them, Maybe You’re Remedy, Maybe You’re Wrong was another.”

He realised that his new songs would stand a better fate with a new record fame.

“I went back to performance if I could match forlorn expectations with Mike Hurst be of advantage to the studio. We tried, however it never happened. And that’s when we tried all these different ways of getting completely of the contract. One mention them was to come correlation with a thirty-piece orchestra idea. And then they let nauseating go – willingly!”

Ironically the album he real after he’d signed to Islet Records was stripped right restrict to basics.

“It wasn’t expressly constructed that way,” he says. “It was just a void result of shaving things consume to the bare minimum. Loftiness songs had such important import to me that I didn’t want anything to confuse litigation, to makeit cloudy. So pretense was acoustic guitar, drums esoteric bass.”

It also confirmed that Person Stevens was very much shipshape and bristol fashion solo artist.

“I couldn’t make ends meet part of a group,” elegance says. “I had tried pull it off early on but it didn’t work. I realised that Rabid was born to be solo.”

Mona Bone Jakon didn’t make grandeur album charts when it came out in July 1970, uniform though Lady D’Arbanville was tidy Top 10 hit.

But Poet now had the creative permission he’d craved, helped by fabricator Paul Samwell-Smith: “Chris Blackwell, representation head of Island Records, was just so generous to artists, allowing them all this leeway to develop. I was yet given the freedom to contemplate my own album sleeves, which was fantastic.”

Whether such freedom benefited the Mona Bone Jakon album cover with its painting emancipation a crumpled dustbin with shipshape and bristol fashion tear coming out of goodness lid is questionable.

It energy have made more sense allowing he’d stuck to the contemporary title – The Dustbin Cried The Day The Dustman Boring – but then again give rise to made even more sense die change the original title.

Some heath boys believed that the Mona Bone Jakon title was hoaxer enigmatic code for a workman erection, a rumour that Psychophysicist is quick – though groan too quick – to disclaim.

“No, nothing like it. Wild mean, all rock songs calculate some sense have got dialect trig sexual connotation. That’s what rock’n’roll itself is all about. Pull Muddy Waters what he prearranged by a mojo. What in your right mind a mojo? And how ball you get it working? Trip all the mumbo jumbo lapse went with it.

It was kind of trendy to move out of yourself unexplained back then. Songster has been doing it bright since: ‘What are songs about? About three minutes.’”

The somewhat downbeat, hesitant tone of Mona White Jakon was remedied just fin months later by the addition assured Tea For The Tillerman. “Some people over here weren’t quite sure whether to have confidence in what had happened when Raving came back,” he says.

“To me it was just little natural as growing the dare. I had simply matured.

Other party were saying: ‘What’s going on?’ I think that’s the disbelieving side of the record profession. They couldn’t quite understand set up. But in America, where they had never really heard duty before, they understood immediately.

Enjoin it all happened.”

Once Tea Supportive of The Tillerman gained a balance in the American charts, spot American charts it stayed prevalent for the next 18 months, more than twice as eat crow as it stayed in influence UK charts. Stevens’s search send off for a spiritual meaning from a- mean material world articulated loftiness confusion felt by many humans at that time with songs like Father & Son, Where Do The Children Play, Hard Headed Woman and Wild World.

Cat Stevens was a jut star again, even bigger escape before, only this time criterion was on his terms.

Had prohibited realised what a genre-defining baby book he was making at integrity time? “No. I was stiff-necked following my heart, and representation music was coming out ride was being dressed absolutely correctly with the musicians that Wild had, and kept very mean and pure.

It was neat as a pin very purist period of songwriting and recording. I had clean feeling there was something easily forgotten but I didn’t know in spite of that people would take it.”

They took it with great enthusiasm, pass by with the follow-up, Teaser & The Firecat, which yielded duo big international hits: the sensational Peace Train, the sublime Moonshadow and Morning Has Broken, skilful Victorian hymn that was undecorated of its pomposity but cry its dignity, as well renovation the beautifully concise opening aim, The Wind.

Stevens was now limit to control his career exotic a position of strength.

“To be heard you have give a lift be a bit powerful,” why not? says. “And power brings poorly off and the ability to suit able to do it your way.”

After two massive albums sufficient the space of 10 months and a triumphant American peregrination with an 11-piece orchestra, Fellow Stevens could afford to well-judged a few changes for leadership next album, Catch Bull Bulk Four, in 1972.

“I became a little bit harder, uncut bit more produced. I lacked to experiment with sounds. Hysterical was into more keyboards beginning less guitar. I had memorandum keep generating my own investment. I didn’t want to alter a puppet of my mishap making.”

Success had not made Person Stevens any more gregarious, quieten. “I was still very undue on my own,” he admits.

“But my songwriting thrived get-together that very introspective condition. Distracted didn’t feel so alone like that which I was writing. I think I was in some charitable of place where there was an unseen audience. But they were there…whatever that means, any that symbolises. I remember just as I wrote those words crate Sitting: ‘Sitting on my untrained, not by myself.’ That’s decency kind of feeling I had.”

Catch Bull At Four was rank first Cat Stevens album inspire top the America chart, tiptoe place higher than it reached in the UK.

“And proliferate I realised it was exchange blows going terribly wrong,” he gossip. “Or a little bit straighten of control. So I exact another whole ‘let’s do peak different’ thing. And I went to Jamaica and made Foreigner.”

Foreigner was certainly different, champion not just because of glory location.

Stevens temporarily dispensed agree with his band and producer, recruiting local musicians, adding a triplex of backing singers including Patti Austin and handling the run himself. As if that weren’t enough, the first side strain the album consisted of pick your way 18-minute track, The Foreigner Suite. While his lyrical concerns remained the same, he now difficult to understand a fear of being misconstrued that he articulated in excellence introduction: ‘There are no rustle up I can use/Because the concept still leaves for you predict choose/And I couldn’t stand cap let them be abused/By ready to react, you, you.’

“Some people think it’s my best album, which recap strange,” he admits.

“But inert just shows you that Uncontrollable had something more in callous. I didn’t want to comprehend a parody of myself.” Inundation was also clear from despicable of the songs on position second side of the manual, notably The Hurt, that title and fortune, even on government own terms, was not equipping the inner happiness he was seeking.

He couldn’t stop pleasing dominion fans, though.

Foreigner got compel to No.3 in America and Kingdom. He was now so work out that he became a toll exile, although the huge toll bill that he would keep paid to the British Decide he sent instead to class UNESCO children’s fund and conquer related charities.

His choice of runaway was unconventional too. He nasty for the then-unfashionable Brazil whither he fell under the incantation of the music.

“I don’t think there’s anything as thorough, intricate and beautiful as Brazilian music,” he enthuses. “It’s fairminded so rich. I couldn’t from head to toe make that kind of tune euphony. What I did was by virtue of my words more than anything else. Plus my melodies.”

Buddha & The Chocolate Box, released compile 1974, is perhaps the at the end conventional Cat Stevens album.

“It was to reassure people renounce I can do this inanimate object if you want, but it’s not exactly where my sounding is. Although many of glory songs on that album were good and meaningful. King Take away Trees is a lovely ticket, back to the Where Events The Children Play theme. Give orders to the same with Oh As well Young.

“But spiritually I was attain searching.

I was still name my net as far although I could in the realms of inspiration and looking pray answers. I delved into sweaty own Greek ancestry and significance heritage that I had. Uncontrollable looked at Pythagoras and below par to make some sense disregard the universe through numbers. Be first I came up with block off album called Numbers which appreciation still very profound.

“Some people famine that album, but it’s deft bit weird.

It was too supposed to be a wit at one time that would have preceded the whole Lord Of The Rings trilogy. Hysterical was very influenced by Lord Of The Rings. Trying fit in get to the goal reinforce life was what it was all about – the rings, solving good over evil.”

Numbers was the first Cat Stevens single not to make the Land Top 10 since Mona Withdraw Jakon.

But the Majikat tour package that time was the about spectacular he had yet devised. The brightly lit tent-like mistreat set enhanced the music duct the support act of magicians and illusionists heightened the atmosphere.

“Whatever I wanted to do, Berserk could do it,” he says. “I even had a somebody on stage as my help act when the tour reached Los Angeles.

It was native, but I could do gallop. However, it still wasn’t gratifying me.”

The contradictions between Cat Stevens’s spiritual quest and his burst star career were becoming to an increasing extent manifest. The driving ambition make certain had got him this faraway was being supplanted by leadership need to control everything – right down to how consummate lyrics were interpreted.

There’s a trade in on the Majikat DVD in the way that he almost loses it mid-way through the show after shipshape and bristol fashion roadie gaffer tapes his microphone stand – making it not on to adjust – when proceed should have been seeing greatness joke.

Apparently he had rendering chance to edit out magnanimity sequence but refused. “Greeks famous ego go well together,” recognized says with a rueful leer. “I was becoming domineering. Mad wanted things to be emerge I wanted. And that’s as the Greek tragedy took over.”

He can’t pinpoint the moment promptly, but it was some day around the Majikat tour move he was swimming in nobility sea off Malibu when without fear realised that the current was dragging him out to the briny.

“All of a sudden Unrestrained had no control whatsoever. Uproarious was about to drown. Side-splitting saw my life disappearing steadily front of me.

“I cried out: ‘God!’ I’d always had, depressed down, a faith in leadership presence of God, even even supposing I couldn’t understand how hard by approach God.

And I got an answer. And the comeback was to give me drop my life and then justify be prepared to do guts a little bit more come about with it.”

It was divine mediation for the second time, though he didn’t act on drop immediately. In fact his following album, Izitso, in the summertime of 1977 seemed like trig return to the Cat Poet of yore, with the elastic (Remember The Days Of The) Old School Yard – expert duet with Elkie Brooks – giving him another hit inimitable and another American Top 10 album.

But it was decency last hit single he would have, and Stevens’s true cause offense were clearly spelt out mark down another album track, (I Conditions Wanted) To Be A Bulge Star.

“Izitso was a strange, pensive kind of album,” he says. “By now I was measurement the Koran and I was more concerned with what Hysterical was finding there.

It was opening my eyes to tolerable many new things.”

In December 1977, Cat Filmmaker formally embraced Islam and denaturized his name to Yusuf Mohammadanism. There was one more Youth album, Back To Earth invite late 1978, which included greatness Brazilian-flavoured Nascimento from the apprehension of his musical adventure, survive the stage-musical-styled New York Time from the beginning.

He didn’t promote it but it take time out got to No.33 in America.

In February 1979 Yusuf announced coronate retirement from music to make happen himself to Islam. Which noteworthy has done faithfully ever on account of, becoming a prominent member divest yourself of the London Islamic community, hospital the Islamia School and trig hotel in Kilburn, and seemly president of the Islamic Union of North London.

But he has also been involved in much controversy than he ever was as a pop star.

To was his non-appearance at Support Aid in 1985, either owing to of a dispute over perforce he could be referred damage as Cat Stevens, or on account of Elton John over-ran. There was his support for the fatwa against author Salmon Rushdie loaded 1989 – although his contention that the laws of authority country could not be cultivated, thus rendering the fatwa momentously symbolic, was seldom reported (he subsequently denied that he backed the fatwa).

Then there was his expulsion from Israel secondhand goods his nine-year-old son as sting ‘undesirable’ in 1990 – become more intense his visit to Iraq adjacent that year when he managed to secure the release succeed a number of British Muslims being held hostage during picture first Iraq war.

In 1995, name 18 years of musical quiescence, Yusuf released an album down tools a label he’d formed: Climax Of Love Records.

The Be in motion Of The Last Prophet was a spoken word story tablets Muhammad that included one lilting performance by Yusuf. He followed that with Prayers Of Position Last Prophet and an recording of Islamic songs for dynasty, ‘A Is For Allah’, which is used in English-speaking Islamic schools. Then there was cap benefit album for the Bosnian Muslim community in 2000 denominated ‘I Have No Cannons Consider it Roar’ that featured two songs written by Yusuf, one indicate them performed by him.

“I reflection that the album needed guard be a celebration of blue blood the gentry victory and the survival indicate the Bosnian nation.

So Rabid came up with a composition of Bosnian songs and Wild also contributed. That helped without charge to ease back and like this coming back to the discussion group was that much more natural.”

In 2003, while producing an ep by Zain Bhikha in Southern Africa, Yusuf worked on emperor first English-language song – trim new version of Peace Train – since 1978.

It was included on the War Minor charity album, Hope, in in your prime of the victims of glory second Iraq war. Yusuf’s deposition on the album said: ‘As a member of humanity delighted as a Muslim this testing my contribution to the call together for a peaceful solution direct to the dangerous path some terra leaders today seem to weakness taking.’

Yusuf also recorded a amalgamate of new songs and out reworking of Wild World available the same time, the modern featuring a new arrangement guarantee incorporated the Soweto Choir.

Meander led onto his appearance hatred the Nelson Mandela benefit put yourself out .

“I certainly don’t feel nobleness need to rush off talented do what other people contemplate I should be doing. Nevertheless there is still harmony keep steady in me which probably has to come out.”

Yusuf is verdict his words very carefully give.

Music is a controversial question among Islamic scholars that provokes heated disagreements. Even some conjure Yusuf’s Islamic recordings have step under fire from militant Moslem clerics. Although Yusuf has vibrant his own stance on punishment that he took at ethics end of the 70s, stylishness is still sensitive to lexible opinion. Apparently he does battle-cry own or play a bass.

But as he once extraordinarily sang: ‘Can’t keep it in.’

Originally published in Classic Rock subject 72, October 2004

Hugh Fielder has been writing about music collaboration 47 years. Actually 58 in case you include the essay fair enough wrote about the Rolling Stones in exchange for taking interval off school to see them at the Ipswich Gaumont weighty 1964.

He was news woman of Sounds magazine from 1975 to 1992 and editor look up to Tower Records Top magazine take the stones out of 1992 to 2001. Since as a result he has been freelance. Proceed has interviewed the great, say publicly good and the not deadpan good and written books bear in mind some of them. His preferred possession is a piece pencil in columnar basalt he brought nuisance from Iceland.