After more than two decades out of sight, Yusuf has recorded an album of pop songs and is in Dublin to bring his new show – and his Cat Stevens back catalogue – to his devoted fans
ONCE UPON a time there was a pop singer called Cat Stevens. He sounded great. He looked gorgeous. He sang gentle songs about love and angst and world peace. Then, to all intents and purposes, he disappeared. In his place was a robed figure called Yusuf Islam, a somewhat stern individual who explained that as a devout Muslim he could no longer appear on Top of the Pops.
And for more than two decades, that was pretty much that – until three years ago, when an album called An Other Cupreintroduced the artist now known simply as Yusuf. This weekend the same Yusuf arrives in Dublin with another new album, Roadsinger, and a live show which will give his fans the opportunity to hear him sing all the old favourites – Wild World, Peace Train, Father and Son– but which will also give the world a sneak preview of a new musical on which he has been working for almost a decade.
If it were fiction, the story of Yusuf would be more Harry Potter-esque fantasy than hard-rock history. It's a story of contrasts, that's for sure. Put Roadsingerinto the CD player and you hear – in this collection of mildly bluesy pop songs "to warm you through the night" – the sweet-voiced Cat Stevens of old. Look at photos and you see a dignified, 60-something Muslim paterfamilias. Listen to him speak, however, and his voice still has the cheeky chappie cadences of his native city.
Does Yusuf get tired of people listening to his album and telling him he sounds just like he used to when he was Cat Stevens?
“No, it’s nice to hear that,” he says. “It’s welcome. Because a lot of people might have thought – because of the way that my image per se had changed through the media – that my actual persona would change as well. But, in fact, you never really stop being yourself, you know? Your voice is the main conveyer of who you are. So it’s really good to hear that.”
The album, then, is about the continuity of his life as much as the changes he has lived through. "Yeah. It's also about the world. I've been writing about the world, and things have changed, yet the same problems seem to affect most people. The same things touch us, with regard to relationships. Father and Son, for instance, has always been the song of mine that everybody relates to, because they've all felt those things. And Wild World. It's still that way. The world is still incredibly wild, if not wilder than when I wrote it."
But what about the new songs? Thinking 'Bout You, for example. With James Morrison on backing vocals, acoustic guitar intro and lines such as "when I hold your hand, I could fly a zillion miles with you", it could be filed happily under "straightforward love song". That's if one hadn't read up on Yusuf's Islamic beliefs, which lead one to suspect that it might also have a theological meaning. "Well, it's open to interpretation," says Yusuf. "For me, it's a divine love song. But it's also a recognition of love for a person who makes this world better. And that could be your wife, you know, your son, your daughter. It could be anyone."
Only time will tell whether his new songs will generate as much affection as his old ones. But the impulse behind the songwriting still seems primarily a melodic one. Many years ago, in his Cat Stevens days, Yusuf told an interviewer that when writing a song he always began with the melody. Is this still the case? “Yeah, I can’t get away from that,” he says. “I get excited and inspired by a mood, or by harmony, or by a chordal sequence. That will take me in a new direction, where I’ll explore something I’ve never done before. Usually it’s the music that takes me there. The words . . . sometimes I can jot down an idea and that might fall into place somewhere along the line. But when it comes down to it, when I write songs I sort of . . . I do these vowel sounds. The words don’t really mean anything, you know? It’s mumbo-jumbo. But in the end I’ll go, ‘Oh – that sounds like I’m saying this’. And then it gives me an idea and my mind just picks up on it.”
HIS MOST AMBITIOUSidea at the moment is Moonshadow. At the 02 tomorrow, his Dublin audience will get the first peek at part of what will one day be a fully-fledged musical. "It tells the story of a world not unlike ours," he says. "The difference is that this planet is locked in a permanent night. There's only one singular moon providing permanent light – and therefore everybody has to work incredibly hard to pay for the light and heat to keep themselves alive." And of course the power and energy are controlled by a shadowy organisation on a remote mountain. "But there's one young boy – a dreamer, really – and he has this vision of another world where there's a glorious ball of light suspended in the sky, providing free light and heat to everybody on the planet. At one point, when everything goes terribly wrong for him, he meets his moonshadow – it's kind of like meeting your conscience – and he's inspired to take the step to find the lost world."
I've read somewhere that what inspired Yusuf to take an interest in Islam was the adhan, or call to prayer. Is that true? "No," he says. "I mean, there are so many myths that it would be difficult to go through and tick off all of them. No, my approach to Islam came through reading. In 1975 I was given a copy of the Koran by my brother. I had been studying Eastern philosophies and religions for many years, but I'd avoided Islam – subconsciously, I suppose. I mean, my father was Greek, and Muslims were Turks as far as we were concerned, and so I didn't even bother. And then here was the Koran. When I began to read it, it began to dawn on me that this wasn't actually a new religion. It was instead going back to the Abrahamic faith from which the Christian and Jewish faiths also sprang. It was the final piece of a puzzle which had eluded me for a long time."
He has, however, recorded the call to prayer on the album Footsteps in the Light. It's a collection of Islamic traditional songs and hymns, some written as teaching guides for his own children, including A is for Allah.
As it turns out, Yusuf was writing and singing gentle songs about love, angst and world peace all through his 20-year “silence” – they just weren’t on the radar of western secular society. There has been much debate about why he gave up the music business and why he took it up again but as he told the BBC interviewer Alan Yentob when he “reappeared”, it’s quite simple. “You can argue with a philosopher, but you can’t argue with a good song. And I think I have a few good songs. In the end, that’s what I do best,” he says. “I love melodies; I love stories; and I love storytelling. I go back to the old tradition of folk music, where people documented life in their songs. They sang about work, and at work. They sang about family and life and God.”
Speaking of family tradition, Yusuf's son has also taken up a musical career. "He has formed this group called Noxshi, and they have quite an interesting avant-garde sound. A bit space-rock, you know? Not quite Daddy's music." He laughs. "But nevertheless exciting." As for Yusuf, he plans to keep writing and recording new songs. "I seem to be quite prolific these days," he says. At the moment I'm concentrating on the gigs – but I've got a lot of songs and ideas which I want to record as I go." This, despite the kind of reservations about the music industry which took him out of it in the first place? "Well, I'm one of what you might call the heritage artists, so I have a pretty comfortable time," he says. "These days, with rapid star-making through X Factorand other things, you know, it has become quite crude. But because I happen to have this status I don't need to go that way.
“There are still things about this business whereby it’s easy for things to get out of hand. One of the things I’m trying to do right now – through my concerts – is try to get closer to my audience. There’s nothing better than being live in front of your friends and fans and those who want to listen to you. And that’s great. And that bypasses all the other rubbish.” So the journey continues? “Yeah – and it is a journey. It is exactly that. You don’t stop till you reach there. And in the end, it’s gonna be God that you face.”
A CAT'S NINE LIVES
1948Born Steven Demetre Georgiou into a Greek-Cypriot family in London and grows up above a restaurant not far from Piccadilly Circus
1966Bursts on to the music scene as fresh-faced teenager Cat Stevens with the hit song I
Love My Dog. His follow-up single,
Matthew and Son, hits the charts running.
1967At 19, he is very ill with tuberculosis and a collapsed lung. During many months recuperating in hospital, he begins to question his celebrity lifestyle, and develops an interest in matters spiritual.
1970Armed with a beard and a batch of new songs, he signs to Island Records and records Tea
for the Tillermanand
Teaser and the Firecat.
1977In December 1977 he converts to Islam and announces that he is quitting the music industry for good. The following year, he takes the name Yusuf Islam. He marries, has five children and donates great swathes of his royalties to charitable causes. He founds the Small Kindness charity, which supports orphans and families in the Balkans, Indonesia and Iraq.
2004he records
Father and Sonwith Ronan Keating – Boyzone had had a hit with the song a decade earlier – with proceeds going to Band Aid.
2006Releases
An Other Cup, his first pop album in more than two decades.
December 2006he performs at the Nobel Peace Prize concert in honour of Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank.
July 2007he plays a fundraiser for Archbishop Desmond Tutu's Peace Centre, and is on the German Live Earth.
Yusuf plays at the O2, Dublin, tomorrow
