Steven
Georgiou was the third child of a Greek-Cypriot father, Stavros Georgiou and a
Swedish mother, Ingrid Wickman. He has an older sister, Anita, and brother,
David. The family lived above Moulin Rouge, the restaurant that his parents
operated on the north end of Shaftesbury Avenue, a short walk from Piccadilly
Circus in the Soho theatre district of London. All family members worked in the
restaurant. His parents divorced when he was about 8 years old, but they
continued to maintain the family restaurant and live above it.
Although
his father was Greek Orthodox and his mother a Swedish Lutheran Protestant,
Georgiou was sent to a Catholic school, St. Joseph Roman Catholic Primary
School in Macklin Street, which was closer to his father's business on Drury
Lane. Georgiou developed an interest in piano at a fairly young age, eventually
using the family baby grand piano to work out the chords, since no one else
there played well enough to teach him. With the popularity of The Beatles,
at age 15, he extended his interest to the guitar, and convinced his father to
pay £8 for his first instrument, and began playing it and writing songs. He
would escape at times from his family responsibilities to the rooftop above
their home, and listen to the tunes of the musicals drifting from just around
the corner; from Denmark Street, which was then the centre of the British music
industry. Later, Stevens has emphasized that the advent of West Side Story
in particular affected him, giving him a "different view of life", he
said in 2000, on a VH1 Behind the Music programme. With interests in both art
and music, he and his mother travelled to Gävle, Sweden, where he started
developing his drawing skills after being influenced by his uncle Hugo Wickman,
a painter.
He attended other local West End schools, where he
says he was constantly in trouble, and did poorly in everything but art. He was
called "the artist boy" and mentions that "I was beat up, but I
was noticed". He went on to take a one-year course of study at Hammersmith
School of Art, as he considered a career as a cartoonist. Though he enjoyed art
(his later record albums would feature his original artwork on his album
covers), he wanted to establish a musical career and began to perform
originally under the stage name "Steve Adams" in 1965 while at
Hammersmith. At that point, his goal was to become a songwriter. Among the
musicians who influenced him were Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, blues artists
Leadbelly and Muddy Waters, John Lennon and Paul Simon.
He also wanted to emulate composers who wrote musicals, like Ira Gershwin and
Leonard Bernstein. In 1965 he signed a publishing deal with Ardmore &
Beechwood and cut several demos, including The First
Cut Is the Deepest.
Georgiou
began to perform his songs in coffee houses and pubs. At first he tried forming
a band, but soon realised he preferred performing solo. Thinking that his given
name might not be memorable to prospective fans, he chose a stage name Cat
Stevens, in part because a girlfriend said he had eyes like a cat, but
mainly because he said, "I couldn't imagine anyone going to the record
store and asking for that Steven Demetre Georgiou album. And in England,
and I was sure in America, they loved animals." In 1966, at age 18, he
impressed manager/producer Mike Hurst, formerly of British vocal group The
Springfields, with his songs and Hurst arranged for him to record a demo
and then helped him get a record deal. The first singles were hits. I Love My Dog charted at n°28, and Matthew and Son, the title song from his debut album,
went to n°2.
Over
the next two years, Stevens recorded and toured with artists ranging from Jimi
Hendrix to Engelbert Humperdinck. The music business hadn't yet
begun targeting specific audiences, so he frequently toured with what now would
be considered an unusual array of celebrities. Stevens was considered a
fresh-faced teen star, placing several single releases in the British pop music
charts. Some of that success was attributed to the pirate radio station Wonderful
Radio London, which gained him fans by playing his records. In August 1967,
he went on the air with other recording artists who had benefited from the
station to mourn its closure.
His
December 1967 album New Masters failed
to chart in the United Kingdom. The album is now most notable for his song The First Cut Is the Deepest, a song he sold for £30
to P.P. Arnold that was to become a massive hit for her, and an
international hit for Keith Hampshire, Rod Stewart, James
Morrison, and Sheryl Crow. Forty years after he recorded the first
demo of the song, it earned him two back-to-back ASCAP Songwriter of the
Year awards, in 2005 and 2006.
Stevens was living the fast-moving life of a pop star,
and in early 1968 at the age of 19, he became very ill with tuberculosis and a
collapsed lung. Near death, at the time of his admittance to the King Edward VII
Hospital, Midhurst, he spent months recuperating in hospital and a year of convalescence.
During this time Stevens began to question aspects of his life, and
spirituality. He later said, "to go from the show business environment and
find you are in hospital, getting injections day in and day out, and people
around you are dying, it certainly changes your perspective. I got down to
thinking about myself. It seemed almost as if I had my eyes shut."
He
took up meditation, yoga, metaphysics read about other religions, and became a
vegetarian. As a result of his serious illness and long convalescence and as a
part of his spiritual awakening and questioning, he wrote as many as 40 songs,
which were much more introspective than his previous work. Many of those songs
would appear on his albums in years to come.
The
lack of success of Stevens' second album mirrored a difference of personal
tastes in musical direction, and a growing resentment at producer Mike Hurst's
attempts to re-create another album like that of his debut, with heavy-handed
orchestration, and over-production, rather than the folk sound Stevens was
attempting to produce. He admits having purposefully sabotaged his own contract
with Hurst, making outlandishly expensive orchestral demands and threatening
legal action, which resulted in his goal: release from his contract with Deram
Records, a sub-label of major Decca Records. Upon regaining his health at home
after his release from the hospital, Stevens recorded some of his newly-written
songs on his tape recorder, and played his changing sound for a few new record
executives. After hiring agent Barry Krost, who had arranged for an audition
with Chris Blackwell of Island Records, Blackwell offered him a "chance to
record his songs whenever and with whomever he liked, and more importantly to
Cat, however he liked". With Krost's recommendation, Stevens signed with
Paul Samwell-Smith, previously the bassist of the Yardbirds, to be his new
producer.
Healthy,
sporting a new beard, Stevens was armed with a catalogue of new songs that
reflected his new perspective on what he wanted to bring to the world with his
music. His previous work had sold in the United Kingdom, but Stevens was still
relatively unknown by the public across the Atlantic. To rectify this, after
signing with Island Records in 1970, an American distribution deal was arranged
with A&M Records' Jerry Moss in North America. Stevens began work on Mona Bone Jakon, a folk-rock based album that was
quite different from his earlier "pop" style records, drawing on his
new, introspective work. Producer Paul Samwell-Smith paired guitarist Alun
Davies, who was currently working as a session musician, with Stevens. Alun
was the more experienced veteran of two albums which already had begun to
explore the emerging genres of skiffle and folk rock music. Davies was also
thought a perfect fit in particular for his "fingerwork" on the
guitar, harmonizing and contributing backing vocals with Stevens. They
originally met just to record Mona Bone Jakon, but developed a fast friendship;
Davies, like Stevens, was a perfectionist, appearing after all the sound checks
had been completed, just to be sure that all the equipment and sound were
prepared for each concert. He recorded on all but two of the succeeding pop
music albums Stevens released, and continued performing and recording with him
until Stevens' retirement. The two remained friends, however, and years later,
when Stevens re-emerged as Yusuf Islam after 27 years, Davies appeared
again performing at his side, and has remained there.
The
first single released from Mona Bone Jakon was Lady
D'Arbanville, which Stevens wrote about his young American girlfriend
Patti D'Arbanville. The record, with a madrigal sound unlike most music played
on pop radio, with sounds of djembes and bass in addition to Stevens' and
Davies' guitars, soared to N°8 in the UK. It was the first of his hits to get
real airplay in the United States. Other songs written for her included Maybe You're Right, and Just
Another Night. In addition, the song, Pop Star,
about his experience as a teen star, and Katmandu,
featuring Peter Gabriel playing flute, were featured. Mona Bone Jakon
was an early example of the solo singer-songwriter album format that was
becoming popular for other artists as well.
Mona
Bone Jakon was the precursor for Stevens' international breakthrough album, Tea for the Tillerman, which became a top-10
Billboard hit. Within 6 months of its release, it had sold over 500,000 copies,
reaching gold record status in the United States and in Britain. The
combination of Stevens' new folk-rock style and accessible lyrics which spoke
of everyday situations and problems, mixed with the beginning of spiritual
questions about life, would remain in his music from then on. The album
features the top 20 single Wild World; a
parting song after D'Arbanville moved on. Other album cuts include Hard-Headed Woman, and Father
and Son, a song sung both in baritone and tenor, about the struggle
between fathers and their sons who are faced with their own personal choices in
life. After the end of his relationship with D'Arbanville, Stevens noted the
effect it had on writing his music, saying,
"Everything
I wrote while I was away was in a transitional period and reflects that. Like
Patti. A year ago we split; I had been with her for two years. What I write
about Patti and my family... when I sing the songs now, I learn strange things.
I learn the meanings of my songs late..."[
Stevens
later was romantically linked to popular singer Carly Simon while both
were produced by Samwell-Smith. Stevens and Simon had a love affair from 1971
to 1972, during which time both wrote songs for and about one another. Simon
wrote and recorded at least two top 50 songs, Legend
in Your Own Time and Anticipation about
Stevens. He reciprocated in his song to her, after their romance, entitled, Sweet Scarlet.
Having
established a signature sound, Stevens enjoyed a string of successes over the
following years. 1971's Teaser and the Firecat
album reached number two and achieved gold record status within three weeks of
its release in the United States. It yielded several hits, including Peace Train, Morning Has
Broken (a Christian hymn with lyrics by Eleanor Farjeon), and Moon Shadow. When interviewed on a Boston radio
station, Stevens said about Teaser and the Firecat:
"I
get the tune and then I just keep on singing the tune until the words come out
from the tune. It's kind of a hypnotic state that you reach after a while when
you keep on playing it where words just evolve from it. So you take those words
and just let them go whichever way they want... 'Moonshadow'? Funny, that was
in Spain, I went there alone, completely alone, to get away from a few things.
And I was dancin' on the rocks there... right on the rocks where the waves
were, like, blowin' and splashin'. Really, it was so fantastic. And the moon
was bright, ya know, and I started dancin' and singin' and I sang that song and
it stayed. It's just the kind of moment that you want to find when you're
writin' songs."
His
next album, Catch Bull at Four, released
in 1972, was his most rapidly successful album in the United States, reaching
gold record status in 15 days, and holding the number-one position on the
Billboard charts for three weeks. This album continued the introspective and
spiritual lyrics that he was known for, combined with a rougher-edged voice and
a less acoustic sound than his previous records, utilizing synthesizers and
other instruments. Although the sales of the album indicated Stevens'
popularity, the album did not produce any real hits, with the exception of the
single Sitting, which charted at N°16.
In
1973, Stevens moved to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to avoid taxation from the
United Kingdom. During that time he
created the album Foreigner, an album
which was a departure from the music that had brought him to the height of his
fame. It differed in several respects: entirely written by Stevens, he dropped
his band and produced the record without the assistance of Samwell-Smith, who
had played a large role in catapulting him to fame, and instead of guitar, he
played keyboards throughout the album. It was intended to show the funk/soul
element that he had come to appreciate. One side of Foreigner was continuous,
much different than the radio friendly pop tunes fans had come to expect. He
performed the album on an uninterrupted ABC network television broadcast titled
the Moon and Star concert. The album produced a couple of singles
including The Hurt, but did not reach the
heights he had once enjoyed.
The
follow-up to Foreigner was Buddha and the Chocolate
Box, largely a return to the instrumentation and styles employed in Teaser and the Firecat and Tea for the Tillerman. Featuring the return of
Alun Davies and best known for Oh Very Young,
this album reached platinum status in 2001. However, Stevens' next album was
the concept album Numbers, a less
successful departure for him.
In
1976 Stevens nearly drowned off the coast of Malibu, California and claims to
have shouted: “Oh God! If you save me I will work for you.” He says that right
afterward a wave appeared and carried him back to shore. This brush with
mortality intensified his long-held quest for spiritual truth. He had looked
into Buddhism, Zen, I Ching, Numerology, tarot cards and Astrology.
Stevens' brother David Gordon brought him a copy of the Qur'an as a
birthday gift from a trip to Jerusalem. Stevens took to it right away, and
began to find peace with himself and began his transition to Islam.
During
the time he was studying the Qur'an, he began to identify more and more with
the name of Joseph, a man bought and sold in the market place, which is how he
says he had increasingly felt within the music business. Regarding his
conversion, in his 2006 interview with Alan Yentob, he stated, "to some
people, it may have seemed like an enormous jump, but for me, it was a gradual
move to this." And, in a Rolling Stone Magazine interview, he
reaffirmed this, saying, "I had found the spiritual home I'd been seeking
for most of my life. And if you listen to my music and lyrics, like Peace Train and On The Road
To Find Out, it clearly shows my yearning for direction and the
spiritual path I was travelling." Stevens had been seeking inner peace and
spiritual answers throughout his career, and now believed he had found what he
had been seeking.
Stevens
formally converted to the Islamic religion on 23 December, 1977, taking the
name Yusuf Islam in 1978. Yusuf is the Arabic rendition of the name Joseph. He
stated that he "always loved the name Joseph" and was particularly
drawn to the story of Joseph in the Qur'an. Although he discontinued his pop
career, he was persuaded to perform one last time before what would become his
twenty-five year musical hiatus. Appearing with his hair freshly shorn and an
untrimmed beard, he headlined a charity concert on 22 November 1979 in Wembley
Stadium to benefit Unicef's International Year of the Child. The concert closed
with a performance by Stevens, David Essex, Alun Davies, and Stevens's brother,
David, who wrote the song that was the finale, Child
for a Day.
Yusuf
married Fauzia Mubarak Ali on 7 September, 1979, at Regent's Park Mosque in
London. It was the 1,000th such ceremony to take place at the mosque. They have
five children.
Following
his conversion, Yusuf abandoned his career as a pop star. When he became a
Muslim in 1977, he said, the Imam at the mosque was told that he was a pop
star, and he told Yusuf that it was fine to continue as a musician, so long as
the songs were morally acceptable. But Yusuf says he knew there were aspects of
the music business, such as vanity and temptations, that did go against the
teachings of the Qu'ran, and this was the primary reason he gave for retreating
from the pop spotlight. In his first performance on the television show
Later... with Jools Holland, 27 years after leaving the "pop" music
business, and in other interviews, he gave other reasons for leaving the pop
stage. "A lot of people would have loved me to keep singing," he
said. "You come to a point where you have sung, more or less ... your
whole repertoire and you want to get down to the job of living. You know, up
until that point, I hadn't had a life. I'd been searching, been on the
road."
In
1981, he founded the Islamia Primary School in Salusbury Road in the north
London area of Kilburn and, soon after, founded several Muslim secondary
schools and devoted his energy to providing an Islamic education to children
and to donate the rest to charitable causes. He is the founder and chairman of
the Small Kindness charity, which initially assisted famine victims in Africa
and now supports thousands of orphans and families in the Balkans, Indonesia,
and Iraq. He served as chairman of the charity Muslim Aid from 1985 to 1993.
The
singer attracted controversy in 1989, during an address to students at
London's Kingston University, where he was asked about the fatwa calling for
the death of author Salman Rushdie. Newspapers quickly interpreted his response
as support for the fatwa, but he released a statement the following day which
said that he had not been supporting vigilantism, and was merely explaining the
legal Islamic punishment for blasphemy. In a BBC interview, he displayed a
newspaper clipping from that time period, which quotes from his statement.
Subsequent comments made by him in 1989 on a British television programme were
also seen as being in support of the fatwa, but in a statement in the FAQ
section of his web site he says that he
was joking and that the show was improperly edited. In the years since these
comments, he has strongly denied ever calling for the death of Rushdie or
supporting the fatwa
Immediately
following the 11 September 2001, attacks on the United States, he said:
“I
wish to express my heartfelt horror at the indiscriminate terrorist attacks
committed against innocent people of the United States yesterday. While it is
still not clear who carried out the attack, it must be stated that no
right-thinking follower of Islam could possibly condone such an action. The
Qur'an equates the murder of one innocent person with the murder of the whole
of humanity. We pray for the families of all those who lost their lives in this
unthinkable act of violence as well as all those injured; I hope to reflect the
feelings of all Muslims and people around the world whose sympathies go out to
the victims of this sorrowful moment.”
He
appeared on videotape on a VH1 pre-show for the October 2001 Concert for New
York City, condemning the attacks and singing his song Peace
Train for the first time in public in more than 20 years, as an a
cappella version. He also donated a portion of his box-set royalties to the
Fund for victims' families, and the rest to orphans in underdeveloped
countries.
On
21 September 2004, Yusuf was on a United Airlines flight from London to
Washington, travelling to a meeting with singer Dolly Parton, who had recorded
"Peace Train" several years earlier and was planning to include
another Cat Stevens song on an upcoming album.[ While the plane was in flight,
the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System flagged his name as being
on a no fly list. Customs agents alerted the United States Transportation
Security Administration, which then diverted his flight to Bangor, Maine, where
he was detained by agents from the Department of Homeland Security.
The
following day, Yusuf was deported back to the United Kingdom. The
Transportation Security Administration claimed there were "concerns of
ties he may have to potential terrorist-related activities". The Israeli
government had deported Yusuf in 2000 over allegations that he provided funding
to the Palestinian organisation Hamas; he denied doing so knowingly. "I
have never knowingly supported or given money to Hamas," says Yusuf, who
repeatedly has condemned terrorism and Islamic extremism. "At the time I
was reported to have done it, I didn't know such a group existed. Some people
give a political interpretation to charity. We were horrified at how people
were suffering in the Holy Land." However, the United States Department of
Homeland Security added him to their FBI watchlist. The US deportation provoked
a small international controversy, and led British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw
to complain personally to US Secretary of State Colin Powell at the United
Nations. Powell responded by stating that the watchlist was under review, adding,
"I think we have that obligation to review these matters to see if we are
right".
Yusuf
believed his inclusion on the watch list may have simply been an error: a
mistaken identification of him for a man with the same name, but different
spelling. On 1 October 2004 Yusuf requested the removal of his name, "I
remain bewildered by the decision of the US authorities to refuse me entry to
the United States". According to a statement by Yusuf, the man on the list
was named "Youssef Islam", indicating that Yusuf himself was not the
suspected terrorism supporter. Romanization of Arabic names can easily result
in different spellings: the transliteration of the Islamic name for Joseph
(Yusuf's chosen name) lists a dozen spellings.
Two
years later, in December 2006, Yusuf was admitted without incident into the
United States for several radio concert performances and interviews to promote
his new record. Yusuf said of the incident at the time, that, "No reason
was ever given, but being asked to repeat the spelling of my name again and
again, made me think it was a fairly simple mistake of identity. Rumours which
circulated after made me imagine otherwise.
Yusuf
has written a song about the 2004 deportation experience, entitled Boots and Sand, recorded in the summer of 2008 and
featuring Paul McCartney, Alison Krauss, Dolly Parton, and Terry Sylvester.
In
October 2004 the British newspapers The Sun and The Sunday Times voiced
their support for Yusuf's deportation by the US government, claiming that he
had supported terrorism. Yusuf successfully sued for libel and received a
substantial out-of-court financial settlement and apologies from the newspapers
stating that he had never supported terrorism and acknowledging that he had
recently been given a Man of Peace award from the private Nobel Peace Prize
Laureates Committee. However The Sunday Times managing editor Richard
Caseby said that while there was an "agreed settlement", they
"always denied liability" and "disagreed with Cat Stevens'
lawyers interpretation", but took a "pragmatic view" of the
lawsuit.
Yusuf
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", and added that he intended to
donate the financial award given to him by the court to help orphans of the
tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Yusuf wrote about the experience in a newspaper
article titled "A Cat in a Wild World".
In
early 2005, Yusuf released a new song entitled Indian
Ocean about the 2004 tsunami disaster. The song featured Indian
composer/producer A. R. Rahman, a-ha keyboard player Magne Furuholmen and
Travis drummer Neil Primrose. Proceeds of the single went to help orphans in
Banda Aceh, one of the areas worst affected by the tsunami, through Yusuf's
Small Kindness charity. At first, the single was released only through several
online music stores but later featured on the compilation album Cat Stevens:
Gold. "I had to learn my faith and look after my family, and I had to make
priorities. But now I've done it all and there's a little space for me to fill
in the universe of music again."
On
28 May 2005, Yusuf delivered a keynote speech and performed at the
Adopt-A-Minefield Gala in Düsseldorf. The Adopt-A-Minefield charity, under the
patronage of Paul McCartney, works internationally to raise awareness and funds
to clear landmines and rehabilitate landmine survivors. Yusuf attended as part
of an honorary committee which also included George Martin, Richard Branson,
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Klaus Voormann, Christopher Lee and others.
In
mid-2005, Yusuf played guitar for the Dolly Parton album, Those Were the Days,
on her version of his "Where Do the Children Play?". (Parton had also
covered "Peace Train" a few years earlier.)
In
March 2006, Yusuf finished recording his first all-new pop album since 1978. In
May 2006, in anticipation of his forthcoming new pop album, the BBC1 programme Imagine
aired a 49-minute documentary with Alan Yentob called Yusuf: The Artist
formerly Known as Cat Stevens. This documentary film features rare audio and
video clips from the late 1960s and 1970s, as well as an extensive interview
with Yusuf, his brother David Gordon, several record executives, Bob Geldof,
Dolly Parton, and others outlining his career as Cat Stevens, his conversion
and emergence as Yusuf Islam, and his return to music in 2006. There are clips
of him singing in the studio when he was recording his new album..
The album, An Other Cup,
was released internationally in November 2006 on his own label, Ya Records
(distributed by Polydor Records in the UK and internationally by Atlantic
Records) — the 40th anniversary of his first album, Matthew
and Son. A single, called Heaven/Where True
Love Goes, was simultaneously released. The album was produced with Rick
Nowels, who has worked with Dido and Rod Stewart. The performer is noted as
"Yusuf", with a cover label identifying him as "the artist
formerly known as Cat Stevens". The art on the album is credited to
Yoriyos. Yusuf wrote all of the songs except Don't Let
Me Be Misunderstood, and recorded it in the United States and the United
Kingdom.
Yusuf
actively promoted this album, appearing on radio, television and in print
interviews. In November, 2006, he told the BBC, "It's me, so it's going to
sound like that of course ... This is the real thing... . When my son brought
the guitar back into the house, you know, that was the turning point. It opened
a flood of, of new ideas and music which I think a lot of people would connect
with." Originally, Yusuf began to return only to his acoustic guitar as he
had in the past, but his son encouraged him to "experiment", which
resulted in the purchase of a Stevie Ray Vaughan Fender Stratocaster in
2007.
Also
in November 2006, Billboard magazine was curious as to why the artist is
credited as just his first name, "Yusuf" rather than "Yusuf
Islam".
His
response was "Because 'Islam' doesn't have to be sloganized. The second
name is like the official tag, but you call a friend by their first name. It's
more intimate, and to me that's the message of this record." As for why
the album sleeve says "the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens", he
responded, "That's the tag with which most people are familiar; for
recognition purposes I'm not averse to that. For a lot of people, it reminds
them of something they want to hold on to. That name is part of my history and
a lot of the things I dreamt about as Cat Stevens have come true as Yusuf
Islam."
Yusuf
was asked by the Swiss periodical Das Magazin why the title of the album
was An Other Cup, rather than Another Cup. The answer was that
his breakthrough album, Tea for the Tillerman in
1970, was decorated with Yusuf's painting of a peasant sitting down to a cup of
steaming drink on the land. Yusuf commented that the two worlds "then, and
now, are very different". His new album shows a steaming cup alone on this
cover. His answer was that this was actually an other cup; something different;
a bridge between the East and West, which Yusuf explained was his own perceived
role. He added that, through him, "Westerners might get a glimpse of the
East, and Easterners, some understanding of the West. The cup, too, is
important; it's a meeting place, a thing meant to be shared."
On
CBS Sunday Morning in December 2006, he said, "You know, the cup is there
to be filled ... with whatever you want to fill it with. For those people looking
for Cat Stevens, they'll probably find him in this record. If you want to find
[Yusuf] Islam, go a bit deeper, you'll find him."
Estimating
in January 2007 that he continues to earn approximately $1.5 million USD a year
from his Cat Stevens music, he decided to use his accumulated wealth and
continuing earnings from his music career on philanthropic and educational
causes in the Muslim community of London and elsewhere.
In July 2007, he performed at a concert in Bochum,
Germany, in benefit of Archbishop Desmond Tutu's Peace Centre in South
Africa and the Milagro Foundation of Deborah. The audience included
Nobel Laureates Mikhail Gorbachev, Desmond Tutu and other prominent global
figures. He later appeared as the final act in the German leg of Live Earth
in Hamburg performing some classic Cat Stevens songs and more recent
compositions reflecting his concern for peace and child welfare. His set
included Stevie Wonder's Saturn, Peace Train, Where Do the
Children Play?, Ruins, and Wild World. He performed at the Peace One Day
concert at the Royal Albert Hall on 21 September 2007. In 2008 Yusuf
contributed the song Edge of Existence to the Survival
International charity album Songs .
On
18 July 2008, Yusuf received substantial undisclosed damages from the World
Entertainment News Network following their distribution of the false rumour
that the singer did not speak to unveiled women. The allegations first surfaced
in German newspaper B.Z. after Yusuf's trip to Berlin in March 2007 to
collect the ECHO award for "life achievements as musician and ambassador
between cultures". Once again he was awarded damages after the World
Entertainment News Network allowed an article to be published on
Contactmusic.com, a "website said to have 2.2 million page views a
month", alleging that Yusuf would not speak to unveiled women with the
exception of his wife.
His
solicitor was reported as having said that "he was made out to be so
sexist and bigoted that he refused at an awards ceremony to speak to or even
acknowledge any women who were not wearing a veil,".[ The offending
news agency apologized, admitting that Yusuf has never had any problem in
working with women and, contrary to the article in question, never has needed a
third party as an intermediary to function at work. The money from this lawsuit
will go to Yusuf's Small Kindness Charity.
In
January 2009, Yusuf released a charity song in aid of children in Gaza. He
recorded a rendition of the George Harrison song The
Day the World Gets Round, along with the German bassist and former
Beatles collaborator Klaus Voorman. To promote the new single, Voormann
re-designed his famous Beatles Revolver album cover, drawing a picture of a
young Cat Stevens along with himself and George Harrison. Yusuf said that all
proceeds from the song will be donated to the U.N. agency in charge of
Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, and to the nonprofit group Save the Children to be
directed to aiding Gaza residents. Israeli Consul David Saranga criticized
Yusuf for not dedicating the song to all the children who are victims of the
violence, including Israeli children.
On
5 May 2009, a new pop album, Roadsinger,
was released. The lead track, Thinking 'Bout You,
received its debut radio play on a BBC programme on 23 March 2009. Unlike An Other Cup, Yusuf promoted the new album with appearances
on American television as well as in the U.K.. He appeared on the first episode
of the Chris Isaak Show on the A&E network, performing live versions of his
new songs, World O'Darkness, Boots and Sand, and Roadsinger. On 13 May he appeared
on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in Los Angeles, and on 14 May, on The Colbert
Report in New York City, performing the title song from the Roadsinger album.
On 15 May, he appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, performing Boots and Sand and Father
and Son. On 24 May he appeared on the BBC's The Andrew Marr Show, where
he was interviewed and performed the title track of Roadsinger. On 15 August,
he was one of many guests at Fairport Convention's annual Cropredy Convention.
He performed five songs with Fairport Convention as his backing band, including
Peace Train and Roadsinger.