Yusuf / Cat Stevens

Born in London on July 21, 1947 to a Swedish mother and a Greek restaurateur father, Steven Demetre Georgiou was introduced to traditional Greek music, before taking up folk music as a teenager and practicing the guitar. He made his stage debut under the name Steve Adams when one of his classmates introduced him to his father, producer Mike Hurst (ex-Springfields), who invited him to audition for the Deram label. Now Cat Stevens, he scored his first hit with the single "I Love My Dog" (1966) and other tracks on the pop albums Matthew & Son and New Masters. In a typically folk vein, the curly-haired, bearded singer was propelled up the charts worldwide by a series of classics surrounding the albums Mona Bone Jakon (1969), Tea for the Tillerman - the album of an entire generation released in 1970 - and its successor Teaser and the Firecat (1971): "Lady D'Arbanville", "Wild World", "Sad Lisa" and "Father and Son" established him as one of the decade's greatest songwriters and performers. His change of direction to a more muscular pop-rock musical style was less appreciated by the public, who turned away from the following albums Catch Bull at Four (1972), Foreigner (1973) and Buddah and the Chocolate Box (1974). After composing the soundtrack to the film Harold and Maude (published only in 2007) and converting to the Islamic faith in 1975, Cat Stevens tried his hand at synthesizers and eventually withdrew from the music scene. Named Yusuf Islam on December 23, 1977, he sold his equipment and personal belongings four years later to open an Islamic school. In 1989, he was back in the news when he spoke out in support of the fatwa against the writer of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie, and was boycotted by Western radio stations. Returning to recording through albums of religious poetry and children's stories, Yusuf Islam then campaigned for peace and returned to a folk-pop formula with the album An Other Cup (2006), followed by Roadsinger (2009) and Tell 'Em I'm Gone (2014), produced by Rick Rubin, with contributions from Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Richard Thompson, Charlie Musselwhite and Malian band Tinariwen. After the release of The Laughing Apple (2017), it's under the double name Yusuf/Cat Stevens that the musician records a contemporary version of his hit album, entitled Tea for the Tillerman² (2020), half a century later.

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