Biography
by William Ruhlmann
Cat Stevens, born Steven Demetre Georgiou, was the son of a
Swedish mother and a Greek father who ran a restaurant in
London. He became interested in folk music and rock &
roll in his teens while attending Hammersmith College and in
1965 began performing under the name Steve Adams. Mike
Hurst, a former member of the folk-pop group the
Springfields, who had become a record producer, heard him
and took him into a recording studio to cut his composition
"I Love My Dog." This demo caused Decca Records to sign him
under the name Cat Stevens and assign him to its newly
formed Deram subsidiary. "I Love My Dog" reached the British
charts in October 1966, peaking in the Top 40. Stevens' next
single, "Matthew & Son," entered the charts in January
1967 and just missed getting to number one (in America, it
grazed the bottom of the charts). It was another
self-written effort, and Stevens' reputation as a writer was
further enhanced by the success of his song "Here Comes My
Baby," which was recorded by the Tremeloes and entered the
British charts in February, reaching the Top Five. (In
America, it peaked just outside the Top Ten.)
Stevens' third single, "I'm Gonna Get Me a Gun," entered the
British charts in March and reached the Top Ten, preceded by
his debut album, Matthew & Son, also a Top Ten entry. In
May, P.P. Arnold got into the British charts with Stevens'
composition "The First Cut Is the Deepest," peaking in the
Top 20. (Ten years later, Rod Stewart topped the U.K. charts
and reached the U.S. Top 20 with his revival of the song.
Sheryl Crow revived it for an American Top 20 hit in 2003.)
Stevens' fourth single, "A Bad Night," was in the charts in
August, peaking in the Top 20. That was a disappointment,
considering his recent success, and his next records did
even worse: "Kitty," his fifth single, barely made the
charts in December, while New Masters, his second album,
didn't chart at all. Even worse, in March 1968, Stevens
contracted tuberculosis and was hospitalized for three
months. He spent a year recuperating. After the failure of
an intended comeback single, "Where Are You," released in
July 1969, he parted ways with Deram.
Disillusioned by his experience in the music business,
Stevens began writing more personal, introspective material.
He signed a new contract with Island Records and released
his third album, Mona Bone Jakon, in April 1970. Drawn from
the album, the single "Lady D'Arbanville" was issued in June
1970 and became his third Top Ten hit in the U.K., causing
Mona Bone Jakon to chart modestly in July. Stevens' talent
as a songwriter for others had not deserted him; in August,
Jimmy Cliff entered the British charts with his composition
"Wild World," reaching the Top Ten. With a backlog of
material, Stevens had a second Island album, Tea for the
Tillerman, out in November; it made the U.K. Top 20. In
America, where his Island recordings were licensed to
A&M Records, Mona Bone Jakon had not charted, but Tea
for the Tillerman marked his American LP chart debut in
February 1971, followed shortly by the single release of his
own recording of "Wild World," which appeared on the album;
it peaked in the Top 20. With that, Stevens suddenly became
a major star in the U.S. Tea for the Tillerman reached the
Top Ten and went gold; Mona Bone Jakon finally reached the
charts (it was belatedly certified gold in 1976); and Deram
reissued Matthew & Son and New Masters as a two-LP set,
which also charted. Stevens was hailed as one of the most
important figures in the currently popular folk-rock
singer/songwriter trend, along with James Taylor, Carole
King, and others.
In June 1971, Stevens released a new single, "Moon Shadow,"
which made the Top 40 in the U.S. and the U.K. This was
followed in September by "Peace Train," which hit the pop
Top Five and reached number one in the easy listening charts
in the U.S., just in advance of Stevens' fifth album, Teaser
and the Firecat. An immediate gold-record seller, the LP
just missed the top of the U.S. charts and hit the Top Five
in the U.K. In addition to "Moon Shadow" and "Peace Train,"
it contained "Morning Has Broken," an adaptation of a hymn,
which became Stevens' second consecutive easy listening
number one and reached the pop Top Ten on both sides of the
Atlantic. Meanwhile, Deram compiled another collection of
juvenilia, Very Young and Early Songs, which peaked in the
U.S. Top 100 in early 1972, as did a belated American
release of the single "Where Are You."
Stevens contributed new and old songs to the film Harold and
Maude, a black comedy that became a cult success after its
release in 1972, though no soundtrack album was released.
(The previously unreleased songs from the film finally
turned up on his album Footsteps in the Dark: Greatest Hits,
Vol. 2 in 1984.) He also toured and worked on his sixth
album, Catch Bull at Four. A slightly harder-rocking effort,
the LP, released in October 1972, represented Stevens'
commercial peak: it hit number one in the U.S. and just
missed duplicating that feat in the U.K., earning
gold-record status immediately. Different singles from the
album were released in the two countries, in the U.S.
"Sitting" and in the U.K. "Can't Keep It In"; both reached
the Top 20.
By 1973, Stevens was again beginning to show signs of the
strain of being a pop star, even if he didn't become
physically ill. For tax reasons, he left the U.K. for a year
and moved to Brazil, but he donated the money he would have
paid in taxes to charity. He performed less often and
stopped granting interviews. In June, he released a new
single, "The Hurt," which made the U.S. Top 40. It was
followed in August by his seventh album, Foreigner, an
ambitious effort that featured an entire LP side given over
to a musical suite. The record was another massive
commercial success, peaking inside the Top Five in the U.S.
and U.K. and going gold instantly. His major appearance for
the year was a 90-minute performance on the American TV show
In Concert in November.
Stevens issued his eighth album, Buddha and the Chocolate
Box, in March 1974, preceded by the single "Oh Very Young,"
a Top Ten hit. As usual, the album made the U.S. and U.K.
Top Five and went gold upon release. In July, Stevens
released an independent summer single, a revival of Sam
Cooke's "Another Saturday Night," and it made the U.S. Top
Ten and the U.K. Top 20. In November, A&M extracted
"Ready" from Buddha and the Chocolate Box and released it as
a single that made the Top 40. Stevens' Greatest Hits LP was
released in June 1975 and predictably was a big success,
eventually selling over three million copies in the U.S.
alone. "Two Fine People," a new song featured on it, reached
the American Top 40. Stevens had his ninth regular album
release, Numbers, ready by November. As if in acknowledgment
that his greatest hits were now behind him, the album only
made the Top 20 in the U.S., though it was certified gold
within a couple of months, did not generate a Top 40 single,
and missed the charts entirely in the U.K. Stevens took 18
months to deliver his tenth album, Izitso, in May 1977. It
restored some of his commercial clout, hitting the U.S. Top
Ten and being certified gold in a month, while reaching the
U.K. Top 20, and the single "(Remember the Days of The) Old
School Yard" made the Top 40 in America and charted in Great
Britain.
On December 23, 1977, Stevens formally became a Muslim and
adopted the name Yusuf Islam. Notwithstanding this change,
there was an 11th and final Cat Stevens album, Back to
Earth, released in December 1978; it sold modestly. With
that, Yusuf Islam retired from the pop music business. He
entered into an arranged marriage that eventually produced
five children, auctioned off his possessions, and founded a
Muslim school near London. He was not widely heard from for
another ten years, until he shocked admirers at the end of
the '80s by supporting the death sentence ordered by the
Ayatollah Khomeini against novelist Salman Rushdie for
writing the book The Satanic Verses. Some "classic rock"
radio stations discontinued playing him as a result, and
10,000 Maniacs, who had covered "Peace Train" on their In My
Tribe album in 1987, had it removed from the record. He
later claimed that he had been manipulated by the media, who
were looking for a statement from a prominent British
Muslim, but he did not disavow his statement. Nevertheless,
his music remained popular. In 1990, for example, the
compilation album The Very Best of Cat Stevens reached the
U.K. Top Five. A different album with the same title charted
in the U.S. in the spring of 2000 as Yusuf Islam undertook a
promotional tour in connection with the reissues of
remastered versions of his Cat Stevens albums. Then in 2006,
nearly 30 years after the final Cat Stevens studio album,
Islam released a new studio effort, An Other Cup.
Content provided All Music Guide. Copyright 2008 All Media
Guide, LLC.
