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Cat Stevens

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Cat Stevens (born Stephen Demetre Georgiou on July 21 1948, and now named Yusuf Islam) is best known for his tenure as a popular British singer-songwriter.

At the outset of his musical career, Georgiou adopted the Cat Stevens moniker, and as Stevens he sold forty million albums, mostly in the 1960s and 1970s. His most popular songs include "Morning Has Broken", "Peace Train", "Moonshadow", "Wild World", "Father and Son", "Matthew and Son", and "Oh Very Young".

Stevens became a convert to Islam in 1978 after a near-death experience. He adopted the name Yusuf Islam and became an outspoken advocate for the religion. A decade later, controversy arose when he was reported to have made comments supporting a fatwah against author Salman Rushdie, and in 2004 returned to the public eye when he was denied entry into the United States after his name appeared on a no-fly list.

Yusuf Islam currently lives with his wife and five children in London, where he is an active member of the Muslim community. He founded the charities Muslim Aid (former trustee) and Small Kindness to assist famine victims in Africa.[1] Small Kindness now also supports thousands of orphans and families in the Balkans, Indonesia, and Iraq.

Early life

Steven Georgiou was the third child of a Greek-Cypriot father and a Swedish mother. The family lived above the restaurant that his parents operated on Shaftesbury Avenue in the West End of London. Although his father was Greek Orthodox, Georgiou was sent to a Catholic school. When Georgiou was about eight years old, his parents divorced, although they both continued to live above the restaurant. Later, his mother moved back to Sweden and took him with her, where he attended school for six months. At age 17, he attended art school.

Early music career

Eager to move his music career forward, Georgiou sought the help of manager-producer Mike Hurst by knocking on his door and asking to play some of his songs for him. Not wanting to be rude, Hurst let him and when Georgiou was finished, Hurst told him, "You're bloody great! What's your name?" Georgiou answered, "My name is Stephen but they call me Cat Stevens." (He claimed that the name had been given to him because a girl told him he has eyes like a cat). Stevens published several songs, and in 1966, at age 18, he had his first hit with "I Love My Dog". He then toured with moderate success, and placed several single releases in the British pop music charts over the next two years.

On August 14 1967, his voice joined with other recording artists on the airwaves of Wonderful Radio London bemoaning the loss of the pirate radio station which had helped create his first hit record. (See IFPI 'Conflicts of Interest'.) It was around this time that Variety editor Peter Bart referred to Cat Stevens as "looking like a homeless person".

In early 1968, at the age of nineteen, Stevens contracted tuberculosis. After several months in the hospital and a year of convalescence, Stevens returned to recording, but his attempts at a comeback single were poorly received.

Comeback and international success

In 1970 Stevens signed with a new record company (Island Records) and released Mona Bone Jakon, an introspective, folk music-based album that was markedly different from his earlier work. The album featured the songs "Lady D'Arbanville", written for Stevens' girlfriend at the time, actress Patti D'Arbanville and "Pop Star", a commentary on his mixed success as a '60s teen hitmaker. The album presaged the coming singer-songwriter boom and set the stage for Stevens' international breakthrough album, Tea for the Tillerman. Tillerman combined a brighter sound and subject matter with Stevens' new folk style, and became a hit on both sides of the Atlantic, highlighted by the top-10 single "Wild World".

Having established a signature sound, Stevens enjoyed a string of successes over the following years. Teaser and the Firecat (1971) reached #2 in the US and yielded several hits, including "Peace Train", "Morning Has Broken", and "Moonshadow".

Subsequent releases throughout the '70s met with consistent success; the final album under the name Cat Stevens was released in late 1978.

Conversion and life as Yusuf Islam

When Stevens nearly drowned in a freak accident in 1976, he pleaded with God to save him. Stevens described the event in a VH1 interview some years later: "I said 'please, God, I'll do anything for you, I'll work for you...'" The near-death experience intensified his long-held quest for spiritual truth; when his brother David gave him a copy of the Koran, Stevens began to find peace with himself and began his transition to Islam. He formally converted to the Islamic faith in 1977 and he legally changed his name to Yusuf Islam.

Muslim faith and musical career

Following his conversion, Islam abandoned his previous career as a pop star. At one point he wrote to the record companies asking that his music no longer be distributed, but his request was denied.

In 1985, 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.[2]

He has since resumed making recordings featuring Islamic lyrics accompanied only by basic percussion instruments in his compositions. He also produced an album called A is for Allah as an instruction for children. He also established a record label called Mountain of Light (see link below.)

Salman Rushdie

On February 21 1989 Yusuf Islam addressed students at Kingston Polytechnic, where he was asked to describe the controversy in the Muslim world and the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie. While newspapers including the New York Times quickly denounced Stevens for supporting a possible assassination of the writer, he released a statement shortly afterwards clarifying that he was not personally encouraging anybody towards vigilantism. His most recent clarification of this issue appears to be an article titled "Yusuf Islam Talks about the Satanic Verses Controversy" written in 2003.[3]

Among the backlash over the Rushdie incident, Natalie Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs, who had included a cover of "Peace Train" on their 1987 In My Tribe album, deleted the song from subsequent pressings of their album, as a protest against Stevens' alleged remarks.

New recordings

In 2003 Yusuf Islam once again recorded the song "Peace Train" for a compilation CD which also included performances by David Bowie and Paul McCartney. He performed in Nelson Mandela's 46664 Concert with Peter Gabriel, for which he both performed and recorded in the English language for the first time in twenty-five years. Islam explained that the reason why he had stopped performing in English was due to his own misunderstanding of the Islamic faith:

"This issue of music in Islam is not as cut-and-dried as I was led to believe," he said. "I relied on hearsay, that was perhaps my mistake."

In December 2004, he released (with Ronan Keating) a new version of Father and Son. It 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 also had a hit with a cover version of the song a decade earlier. In 2005 Islam released a new song called "Indian Ocean" via iTunes and other digital music stores. Proceeds of the song were used to benefits victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Denial of entry into the United States

On 21 September 2004 Yusuf Islam was traveling on United Airlines Flight 919 from London to Washington. While the plane was in flight, the Advanced Passenger Information 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.

The following day Islam was deported back to England. 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 Islam had provided funding to the Palestinian Islamic militant group Hamas, although it did not offer any proof of its allegation. The allegations were repeated by journalists in The Sun and The Sunday Times, and as a result Yusuf Islam sued for libel, and received a substantial out-of-court settlement and apology from the newspapers.[4]

Yusuf Islam wrote about the experience in a newspaper article titled "A Cat in a Wild World".[5]

Islam's deportation provoked a small international controversy and led British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to complain personally to 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."

On 1 October 2004 Islam was reported to have requested the removal of his name:

"I remain bewildered by the decision of the US authorities to refuse me entry to the United States."

His identification as being on the watch list may be in error. According to an official statement by Islam, the man on the list was named Yousef Islam, indicating that Yusuf Islam himself was infact, not the suspected terror supporter.

Man of Peace award

On 10 November 2004 Yusuf Islam was presented with a Man of Peace award by the private foundation of former USSR president Mikhail Gorbachev for his "dedication to promote peace, the reconciliation of people and to condemn terrorism". The ceremony was held in Rome, Italy and attended by five Nobel Peace Prize laureates.

Doctorate Award

On 4 November 2005, Yusuf Islam was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Gloucestershire 5 for services to education and humanitarian relief.

Libel case

As a footnote to the actions taken by the U.S. government in deporting Yusuf Islam as a terrorist, The Sun and The Sunday Times British newspapers had published reports in October 2004 which stated that the U.S. was correct in its action. On 15 February 2005 a British court ruled that both newspapers had defamed Yusuf Islam by publishing false statements about him. Both newspapers acknowledged that Islam has never supported terrorism and that, to the contrary, he had recently been given a Man of Peace award. 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."

He added that he intended to donate the financial award given to him by the court to help orphans of the recent Indian Ocean Tsunami.

Discography (albums)

This list excludes the many compilation albums which have been made.

As Cat Stevens:

As Yusuf Islam:

In March 2005 he released the first single, and the first song he has recorded with music, in over twenty years. The single was called "Indian Ocean" featured Indian composer/producer A.R. Rahman, A-ha keyboard player Magne Furuholmen and Travis drummer Neil Primrose and was about the tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean on 26 December 2004. Proceeds from the single went to help orphans in Banda Aceh, one of the areas worst affected by the tsunami. The single was not released on CD, but could be purchased through several online music sellers. Stevens said he had recorded other songs, but wanted to see if he still had an audience; the song did not receive major radio air-play. At the time he also announced that plans were under way to create a musical based on his life and music.

In mid 2005, Yusuf Islam played guitar (but did not contribute vocals) to the Dolly Parton album of cover songs entitled, "Those Were The Days". (Parton herself had recorded a cover of "Peace Train" a few years earlier.)

See also

References

  1. ^ Chairman's mission statement for the Small Kindness charity he founded.
  2. ^ Worlds Apart: People thought I was mad when I stopped being Cat Stevens the rock star — but I've never been happier, Daily Mail March 24 1998
  3. ^ Yusuf Islam Talks about the Satanic Verses Controversy, Catstevens.com, March 12 2003
  4. ^ Singer Islam gets libel damages, BBC. February 15 2005
  5. ^ A cat in a wild world , The Guardian, October 1 2004
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