Cat Stevens Research Paper

Cat Stevens was one of the most successful singer/songwriters of the first half of the ‘70s, and several of his soft, romantic, and sometimes mystical singles were Top 10 hits. After eight gold albums in a row, his star began to fade, and in the late '70s, following a near-drowning, he converted to Islam, changed his name to Yusef Islam, and dropped out of music.

The son of a Greek father and Swedish mother, Stevens spent his early youth developing a love of Greek folk songs and dances. By the time he entered secondary school, he had also taken an interest in rock & roll and English and American folk music. While attending Hammersmith College in the mid-'60s, he began writing his own songs and performing solo.

In 1966 independent producer Mike Hurst (formerly with the Springfields) produced Stevens' first U.K. hit single, "I Love My Dog." In 1967 "Matthew and Son" went to #2 on the British chart. Meanwhile, Stevens' tunes were British hits for other performers as well. P.P. Arnold hit with "The First Cut Is the Deepest" (later covered by Rod Stewart), the Tremeloes with "Here Comes My Baby." Stevens toured England and Europe, becoming something of a teen idol, and shared bills with Jimi Hendrix and Engelbert Humperdinck, among others.

But Stevens became
disenchanted with what he considered the shallowness of his ventures. After his 1968 hit "I'm Gonna Get Me a Gun" (#6 U.K.), he tried to work ambitious classical arrangements into his tunes, to his producers' chagrin. Stevens' career then came to a standstill when he contracted a near-fatal case of tuberculosis in late 1968 and was confined to a hospital for a year. He took that time to work on his new material, which was unveiled in Mona Bone Jakon, a critical success that yielded a British hit single in "Lady D'Arbanville" (#8 U.K., 1970) (purportedly about the actress Patti D'Arbanville). The muted accompaniment was by flutist Peter Gabriel (who would soon find his own fame in Genesis), percussionist Harvey Burns, and perennial Stevens collaborator guitarist Alun Davies.

Stevens' next album, Tea for the Tillerman, hit the U.S.
Top 10 and stayed on the charts for well over a year, yielding the hit "Wild World." Stevens was now a highly successful concert performer as well. The next album was another hit; Teaser and the Firecat went to #3, then gold, and contained the hits "Morning Has Broken" (#6), "Peace Train" (#7), and "Moon Shadow" (#30). Though Catch Bull at Four and Foreigner were also certified gold, they yielded no big hits. At that time, unbeknownst to many of his fans, Stevens was living in Brazil, donating much of his earnings to charities such as UNESCO. With Buddah and the Chocolate Box, featuring "Oh Very Young" (#10), and Numbers, Stevens' sales dropped
off.

In 1975 Stevens began studying the Koran and later converted to the Muslim religion. In late 1981 the rechristened Stevens announced, "I'm no longer seeking applause and fame," and auctioned off all his material possessions, including his gold records. By then he had married Fouzia Ali; as of the late '80s, they had five children, and he was running a Muslim school outside London. In 1987 10,000 Maniacs covered "Peace Train," and the following year Maxi Priest hit the U.K. Top 10 with a version of "Wild World." What might have grown into a Stevens revival, however, was nipped in 1989, when the media reported that the singer supported Iran's death-sentence condemnation of Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie, whose book had blasphemed the Muslim faith. American radio stations observed an airplay boycott of Stevens' material; 10,000 Maniacs removed "Peace Train" from later pressings of the album on which it appeared.

In the mid-'90s Yusef Islam founded his own label, Mountain of Light, on which he released spoken-word albums. The double-CD A Is for Allah contains several songs for children in addition to spoken performances. In 2000 Islam, who has supported humanitarian efforts in Bosnia, oversaw the release of a Cat Stevens retrospective and resurfaced in the music press. He claims to have been unfairly vilified and misquoted about the Rushdie incident.