Yusuf Islam
(formerly Cat Stevens) |
| Birth name |
Steven Demetre Georgiou |
| Born |
July 21 1948 (1948--) (age 59) |
| Origin |
London, England |
| Genre(s) |
Folk rock
Pop |
| Occupation(s) |
Singer-songwriter |
| Instrument(s) |
Vocals, guitar, classical guitar, ovation guitar, bass guitar, electric mandolin, bouzouki, keyboards, harpsichord, polymoog, penny whistle,
drums, percussion |
| Years active |
1966–1978, 2006–present |
| Label(s) |
Island Records, A&M, Polydor, Mountain of Light, Jamal |
| Website |
www.catstevens.com
www.yusufislam.org.uk |
Yusuf Islam[1] (born Steven Demetre
Georgiou on 21 July, 1948 in London), who was known as Cat Stevens from 1966 to 1978, is an English musician, singer-songwriter, educator, philanthropist and prominent convert to Islam.
Under the name "Cat Stevens", he has sold over 60 million albums around the world since the late 1960s. His albums
Tea for the Tillerman and Teaser and the Firecat were both certified by the RIAA as having achieved Triple Platinum status in the United States (three million sales each); his album
Catch Bull at Four sold half a million copies in the first two weeks of
release and was Billboard's number-one LP for three consecutive weeks.
His songwriting has also earned him two ASCAP
songwriting awards (for "The First Cut Is the Deepest", which has been a
hit single for four different artists.)
At the height of his fame, in 1977, Stevens converted to Islam. In 1978, he
adopted the name Yusuf Islam, leaving his music career to devote himself to educational and philanthropic causes in the
Muslim community. As a high-profile voice for Islam, he caused controversy in 1989 with public
statements[2] that were widely interpreted as support for
the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, an interpretation which
he has denied. In 2006, he returned to pop music, with his first album of new pop songs in 28 years, entitled An Other Cup.
He has been given several awards for his work in promoting peace in the world, including the 2004 Man for Peace award and the 2007 Mediterranean Prize for Peace. He lives with his wife, Fauzia Mubarak Ali,
and five children in Brondesbury Park, London, and spends part of each year in
Dubai.[3]
Early life (1948–1965)
Steven Georgiou was the third child of a Greek-Cypriot father (Stavros Georgiou) and a
Swedish mother (Ingrid Wickman). The family lived above Moulin Rouge, the restaurant that
his parents operated on Shaftesbury Avenue, a few steps from Piccadilly Circus in the Soho area of London. His whole family worked in
the restaurant.
Although his father was Greek Orthodox and his mother Baptist, Steven was sent to a Catholic school, St. Joseph Roman Catholic
Primary School in Macklin Street.
When Steven was about eight years old, his parents divorced, but both continued to run the restaurant and live above it. At
age 12, Steven, who already played the piano, began to play guitar and write songs. A few years later, his mother returned to
Gävle, Sweden, taking Steven along, where he started developing
his drawing skills, influenced by his uncle Hugo, a painter.
At age 16, he left school and was accepted by, then later dismissed from, Hammersmith Art
School. Although he enjoyed art — his later record albums would feature his original artwork on the covers — Steven wanted
to establish a musical career. It was during this period he was first influenced by folk
music.[4]
Musical career (1966–1978)
Early musical career
He began to perform his songs in coffee houses and pubs. Thinking that his Greek name might not be memorable as a stage name,
he sought a new one. He said, "I couldn't imagine anyone going to the record store and asking for that Stephen Demetre Georgiou
album. And in England, and I was sure in America, they loved animals."[5] He adopted the name Cat Stevens, reportedly chosen because a girlfriend said he had
eyes like a cat. In 1966, at age 18, he impressed manager/producer Mike Hurst,
formerly of British vocal group The Springfields, with his songs and Hurst arranged for
him to record a demo and then helped him get a record deal. The first singles, "I Love My
Dog" and "Matthew and Son" (the title song from his debut album, released in the
beginning of 1967) reached Britain's Top 10, and the album Matthew and Son itself
began charting.
Over the next two years, Stevens recorded and toured with artists ranging from Jimi
Hendrix to Engelbert Humperdinck. Stevens was considered a teen
pop sensation, placing several single releases in the British pop music charts. Some of
that success was attributed to the pirate radio station Wonderful Radio London, which played his records. In August 1967, he went on the air with other
recording artists who had benefited from the pirate station to mourn its closure.
His December 1967 album New Masters failed to chart in the United Kingdom. The
album is now most notable for his song "The First Cut Is the Deepest" which
has become an international hit for P.P. Arnold, Keith
Hampshire, Rod Stewart and Sheryl Crow, and has
won several song-writing awards.
Stevens was living a fast-moving pop-star life and in early 1968 at the age of 19, he became very ill with tuberculosis. During several months in the hospital and a year of convalescence, Stevens began to question
aspects of his life, took up meditation, read about other religions and became a vegetarian.[5] During that time, as part of his spiritual awakening and questioning, he
wrote as many as 40 songs, which were much more introspective than his previous work. Many of those songs were to appear on his
albums in years to come.[6]
Comeback after tuberculosis
Now healthy and armed with a new perspective on what he wanted to bring to the world with his music, and a catalog of
introspective songs, the stage was set for international stardom. He landed a new record contract with an American distribution
deal in 1970, signing with Island Records (then rival A&M Records in North America), and released Mona Bone
Jakon, a folk-based album that was much different from his more "pop" style
earlier records, drawing on his new, introspective work. The album featured the songs "Lady D'Arbanville", which was written for
Stevens' girlfriend at the time, actress Patti D'Arbanville; "Pop Star", about his
experience as a teen star; and "Katmandu", featuring Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel playing flute. Mona Bone Jakon was an early example of the solo singer-songwriter album that would later become very popular for other artists as well.
Mona Bone Jakon was followed by his international breakthrough album, Tea
for the Tillerman, which became a top-10 Billboard hit and
reached Gold record status within six months of release (at least 500,000 sales) in the United States and in Britain, combining
Stevens' new folk style with accessible lyrics that spoke of everyday situations and problems, mixed with some spiritual imagery.
Tea for the Tillerman features the top-20 single "Wild World", "Hard-Headed Woman",
and "Father and Son", a unique, double-voiced autobiographical song. In 2001, this
album was certified by the Recording Industry Association of
America (RIAA) as a Multi-Platinum record, meaning it had sold 3 million copies in the United States at that time.[7] It is included at #206[8] in Rolling Stone's 2003 listing of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".
With the success of Tea for the Tillerman, Stevens was no longer opening for other acts on tour. He launched his own
tour and became a star. During this period, he was romantically linked to singer Carly Simon
whose top 50 songs "Legend in Your Own Time" and "Anticipation" were written about Stevens.[9]
Success
Having established a signature sound, Stevens enjoyed a string of successes over the following years. The Teaser and the Firecat LP album (1971) reached number two and achieved gold record status
within three weeks of its release in the US. It yielded several hits, including "Peace
Train", "Morning Has Broken" (a Christian hymn with lyrics by Eleanor
Farjeon), and "Moonshadow". This album was also certified by the RIAA as a Multi-Platinum record in 2001, with over three million US sales up
until then.
When interviewed on a Boston radio station, Stevens said about Teaser:
"I get the tune and then I just keep on singing the tune until the words come out from the tune. It's kind of a hypnotic state
that you reach after a while when you keep on playing it where words just evolve from it. So you take those words and just let
them go whichever way they want... 'Moonshadow'? Funny, that was in Spain, I went there alone, completely alone, to get away from
a few things. And I was dancin' on the rocks there... right on the rocks where the waves were like blowin' and splashin'. Really,
it was so fantastic. And the moon was bright, ya know, and I started dancin' and singin' and I sang that song and it stayed. It's
just the kind of moment that you want to find when you're writin' songs."[10]
Also in 1971, several of his songs were used in the soundtrack to the movie Harold and
Maude, including at least one that had not been on any album prior to its inclusion on a second "greatest hits"
collection many years later. Harold and Maude would go on to become a cult hit, popular for decades, bringing Stevens'
music to a wide audience, long after he stopped recording.
His next album, Catch Bull at Four, released in 1972, was his most rapidly
successful album in the U.S.A - reaching Gold record status in 15 days, and holding the number-one position on the
Billboard charts for three weeks. This album continued the introspective and spiritual lyrics that he was known for,
combined with a rougher-edged voice and a less acoustic sound than his previous records. "Sweet Scarlet" was his response to
Carly Simon's two songs about him. The single "Sitting" was released from this album, and charted at #16. Catch Bull at
Four was Platinum certified in 2001.
Subsequent releases in the 1970s also did well on the charts and in ongoing sales. His final album under the name Cat Stevens
was Back to Earth, released in late 1978. Several compilation
albums were released before and after he stopped recording. The most successful was the 1975 Greatest Hits which has sold over 4 million copies in the United States. In May
2003 he received his first Platinum Europe Award[11] from the IFPI for Remember Cat Stevens,
The Ultimate Collection, indicating over one million European sales.
In 1977, Stevens secured his last chart hit with "(Remember The Days Of The) Old Schoolyard", a duet with fellow UK singer
Elkie Brooks, although she remains uncredited on the release.[12]
His last performance before his subsequent return to music was at The Year of the Child concert in Wembley Stadium, on November 22, 1979.
Conversion to Islam
When Stevens nearly drowned in an accident in Malibu in 1975,[13] he reports having pleaded with God to save him. Stevens described the event in a VH1 interview some
years later: "I suddenly held myself and I said, 'Oh God! If you save me, I'll work for you.'" The near-death experience intensified his long-held quest for spiritual truth. He had looked into
Buddhism "Zen and I Ching, numerology, tarot cards and astrology",[14] but when his brother David gave him a copy of the Qur'an, Stevens
began to find peace with himself and began his transition to Islam.
He formally converted to the Islamic faith in 1977 and took the name Yusuf Islam in 1978[15], saying that he "always loved the name Joseph" and was particularly drawn to
the story of Joseph in the Qur'an.[16][17] (Yusuf is the
Arabic transliteration of the name Joseph.)
Life as Yusuf Islam (1978–present)
Islamic faith and musical career
Following his conversion, Yusuf Islam abandoned his career as a pop star. Song and the
use of musical instruments is an area of debate in Muslim jurisprudence, considered
harām by some, and is the primary reason he gave for retreating from the pop
spotlight.
He decided to use the continuing wealth he earns from his music career[18] on philanthropic and educational causes in the Muslim community of London and elsewhere. In 1981,
he founded the Islamia Primary School in Salusbury Road in the north London area of Kilburn; after that, he founded several Islamic
secondary schools and devoted his energy to providing an Islamic education to children and to charitable causes. He founded, and
is chairman of, the Small Kindness charity, which initially assisted famine victims in Africa and now supports thousands of orphans and families in the Balkans, Indonesia, and Iraq.[19] He also was chairman of the charity Muslim Aid from 1985 to
1993.[20]
In 1985, Yusuf Islam decided to return to the public spotlight, for the first time since his religious conversion, at the
historic Live Aid concert, inspired by the famine threatening
Ethiopia. Though he had written a song especially for the occasion, his appearance was skipped
when Elton John's set ran too long.[21]
Salman Rushdie controversy
-
The singer attracted controversy in 1989, during an address to students at London's Kingston University, where he was asked about the fatwa calling for
the death of author Salman Rushdie. Newspapers quickly interpreted his response as
support for the fatwa, but he released a statement the following day clarifying that he had not been supporting vigilantism, and was merely explaining the legal Islamic punishment for
blasphemy.[22]
While there has been an on-going debate over the degree to which the singer supported the call for the assassination of
Rushdie, the incident left an indelible mark on his reputation as a "man of peace".[23] He maintains that he was misinterpreted.[24]
September 11 attacks
Yusuf Islam immediately and vehemently spoke out against the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, saying:
- "I wish to express my heartfelt horror at the indiscriminate terrorist attacks committed against innocent people of the
United States yesterday. While it is still not clear who carried out the attack, it must be stated that no right thinking
follower of Islam could possibly condone such an action. The Qur'an equates the murder of one innocent person with the murder of
the whole of humanity. We pray for the families of all those who lost their lives in this unthinkable act of violence as well as
all those injured; I hope to reflect the feelings of all Muslims and people around the world whose sympathies go out to the
victims of this sorrowful moment."[25]
He appeared on videotape on a VH-1 pre-show for the October 2001 Concert for
New York City, condemning the attacks and singing his song "Peace Train" for the
first time in public in more than 20 years, an a cappella version. He also donated half of his box-set royalties to the September
11 Fund for victims' families, and the other half to orphans in underdeveloped countries.[26]
Denial of entry into the United States
On 21 September 2004, Yusuf Islam was traveling on a
United Airlines flight from London to
Washington, en route to a meeting with singer Dolly
Parton, who had recorded "Peace Train" several years earlier and was planning to include another Cat Stevens song on an
upcoming album. While the plane was in flight, the Computer
Assisted Passenger Prescreening System flagged his name as being on a no-fly list.
Customs agents alerted the Transportation Security
Administration, which then diverted his flight to Bangor, Maine, where he was detained by the FBI.[27]
The following day, Yusuf Islam was deported back to the United Kingdom. The
United States Transportation Security Administration claimed
there were "concerns of ties he may have to potential terrorist-related activities". The United States Department of Homeland Security specifically alleged that
Yusuf Islam had provided funding to the Palestinian Islamic militant group Hamas. However, he was admitted without incident into the United States in December 2006 for several radio concert
performances and interviews to promote his new record.[28]
Yusuf Islam's 2004 deportation provoked a small international controversy and led the British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs,
Jack Straw, to complain personally to US Secretary of
State Colin Powell at the United Nations.
Powell responded by stating that the watch list was under review, and added, "I think we have
that obligation to review these matters to see if we are right."
Yusuf Islam believes his inclusion on the watch list may have simply been an error, a
mistaken identification of him for a man with the same name, but different spelling. On 1
October 2004 Yusuf Islam requested the removal of his name, "I remain bewildered by the
decision of the US authorities to refuse me entry to the United States."[29] According to a statement by Yusuf Islam, the man on the list was named "Youssef Islam", indicating
that Yusuf Islam himself was not the suspected terrorism supporter.[16][30]
Libel case victory
After the U.S. government deported Yusuf Islam, The Sun and The Sunday Times British newspapers in October 2004 stated that the U.S. was
correct in its action. Yusuf Islam sued for libel and received a substantial out-of-court
"agreed settlement" and apologies from the newspapers.[31] Both newspapers acknowledged that Yusuf Islam has never supported terrorism and that, to the
contrary, he had recently been given a Man for Peace award from the private
Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Committee.
Yusuf Islam responded that he was "...delighted by the settlement [which] helps vindicate my character and good name.... It
seems to be the easiest thing in the world these days to make scurrilous accusations against Muslims, and in my case it directly
impacts on my relief work and damages my reputation as an artist. The harm done is often difficult to repair", and added that he
intended to donate the financial award given to him by the court to help orphans of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean.[31]
Yusuf Islam wrote about the experience in a newspaper article titled "A Cat in a Wild World".[32]
Return to music
For several years during the 1990s, Yusuf Islam made recordings featuring lyrics about Islamic themes accompanied only by
basic percussion instruments, which he felt were acceptable to his faith. In the late 1990s, he was featured as a guest singer of
"God Is the Light" on an album by the Nasheed group, Raihan.
He produced a children's album in 2000 called A Is for Allah after realizing
there were few materials designed to educate children about Islam.[33] He also established the record label called Mountain of
Light Productions, which donates a percentage of its proceeds to Islam's Small Kindness charity.
On the occasion of the 2000 re-release of his Cat Stevens albums, Yusuf explained that he had stopped performing in English
due to his misunderstanding of the Islamic faith. "This issue of music in Islam is not as cut-and-dried as I was led to believe .
. . I relied on heresy (sic)[34], that was perhaps my
mistake."[33]
In 2003, after repeated encouragement from within the Muslim world, Yusuf Islam once again recorded "Peace Train" for a
compilation CD, which also included performances by David Bowie and Paul McCartney. He performed "Wild World" in Nelson Mandela's
46664 concert with his former session player Peter
Gabriel, the first time he had publicly performed in English in 25 years. In December 2004, he and Ronan Keating released a new version of "Father and Son" that debuted at number two, behind
Band Aid 20's "Do They Know It's
Christmas?". The proceeds of "Father and Son" were donated to the Band Aid
charity. Keating's former group, Boyzone, had a hit with the song a decade earlier.
In a 2005 press release, he explains his revived recording career:
After I embraced Islam many people told me to carry on composing and recording but at the time I was hesitant for fear that it
might be for the wrong reasons. I felt unsure what the right course of action was. I guess it is only now after all these years
that I've come to fully understand and appreciate what everyone has been asking of me. It's as if I've come full circle -
however, I have gathered a lot of knowledge on the subject in the meantime.[35]
In early 2005, Yusuf Islam released a new song entitled "Indian Ocean" about the 2004 tsunami disaster. The song featured Indian
composer/producer A. R. Rahman, A-ha keyboard player
Magne Furuholmen and Travis drummer
Neil Primrose. Proceeds of the single went to help orphans in Banda Aceh, one of the areas worst affected by the
tsunami, through Islam's Small Kindness charity. At first, the single was released only
through several online music stores but later highlighted the compilation album
Cat Stevens: Gold.
On 28 May 2005, Yusuf Islam delivered a keynote speech and
performed at the Adopt-A-Minefield Gala in Düsseldorf. The Adopt-A-Minefield charity,
under the patronage of Sir Paul McCartney, works internationally to raise awareness and
funds to clear landmines and rehabilitate landmine survivors. Yusuf Islam attended as part of an honorary committee which also
included Sir George Martin, Sir Richard Branson,
Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Klaus Voormann,
Christopher Lee and others.[36]
In mid-2005, Yusuf Islam played guitar for the Dolly
Parton album, Those Were the Days, on her version of his "Where Do the
Children Play". (Parton had also covered "Peace Train" a few years earlier.)
In May 2006, in anticipation of his forthcoming new pop album, the BBC1 programme "Imagine" aired a 49-minute documentary with
Alan Yentob called Yusuf: The Artist formerly Known as Cat Stevens. This documentary
film features rare audio and video clips from the late 1960s and 1970s, as well as an extensive interview with Yusuf Islam, his
brother, several record executives, Bob Geldof, Dolly
Parton, and others outlining his career as Cat Stevens, his conversion and emergence as Yusuf Islam, and his return to
music in 2006. There are clips of him singing in the studio when he was recording An Other Cup as well as a few 2006
excerpts of him on guitar singing a few verses of Cat Stevens songs including "The Wind" and "On the Road to Find Out". [37]
Yusuf has credited his 21 year old son Muhammad Islam, also a musician and artist, for his return to secular music, when the
son brought a guitar back into the house, which Yusuf began playing.[38] Muhammad's professional name is believed to be "Yoriyos"[39] and his debut album was released in February 2007.[40] Yoriyos also created the art on Yusuf's album An Other Cup.
Starting in 2006, the Cat Stevens song "Tea for The Tillerman" was used as the theme tune for the Ricky Gervais BBC-HBO sitcom Extras. A Christmas-season
television commercial for gift-giving by the diamond industry aired in 2006 with Cat Power's
cover of "How Can I Tell You".
In December 2006, Yusuf was one of the artists that performed at the Nobel Peace
Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway, in honour of the prize
winners, Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank. He
performed the songs "Midday (Avoid City After Dark)," "Peace Train," and "Heaven/Where True Love Goes." Yusuf also gave a concert
in New York City that month as a "Jazz at Lincoln Center" event, recorded and
broadcast by KCRW-FM radio, along with an interview by Nic
Harcourt. Accompanying Yusuf on guitar was Alun Davies, who played guitar on many of
his Cat Stevens records.
In April 2007, BBC1 broadcast a concert given at the Porchester Hall by Yusuf as part of BBC Sessions, his first live
performance in London in 28 years (the previous being the UNICEF Year of the Child concert in 1979.) He played many new songs
along with some of his classics, "Father & Son", "The Wind", "Where Do the Children Play?", "Don't Be Shy", "Wild World", and
"Peace Train".
In July 2007, Yusuf performed at a concert in Bochum, Germany, in benefit of Archbishop Desmond
Tutu's Peace Centre in South Africa and the Milagro Foundation of Deborah and
Carlos Santana. The audience included Nobel Laureates Mikhail Gorbachev, Desmond Tutu and other prominent global figures. He later appeared as the finale
act in the
