Cat Stevens: ‘The St George’s flag was once a symbol of compassion and Christianity’ – The Telegraph

The veteran singer-songwriter on the dark side of early fame, finding his Islamic faith and being refused a US visa
Copy link
twitter
facebook
whatsapp
email
Copy link
twitter
facebook
whatsapp
email
Copy link
twitter
facebook
whatsapp
email
Copy link
twitter
facebook
whatsapp
email
For a man of peace, Cat Stevens sure gets into a lot of trouble. The veteran singer-songwriter, who goes by the name of Yusuf Islam, should be on tour in America right now, but has been refused a visa. “It’s a little bit sinister,” the 77-year-old suggests, cheerfully. “It’s definitely not a spelling issue any more.”
The first time he was denied entry at a US airport in 2004, Yusuf thought it was a spelling mix-up with his stage name. But it later transpired he was on a No Fly List. “It’s a real success on the War On Terror,” Jon Stewart joked on The Daily Show. “We finally got the guy that wrote Peace Train.”
It took diplomatic intervention from Senator Hillary Clinton’s office and face-to-face interviews with FBI agents to get a visa, and he has subsequently toured America to great acclaim. Now, it appears that President Trump’s administration don’t want him. “That’s the games people play in politics,” shrugs Yusuf. “I think that I’ve been made an example of. I’ve been sanctioned, basically.”
He doesn’t seem unduly perturbed, bathed in sunshine as he chats to me via video call from his home in Cyprus (where he likes to spend time when it gets too hot in his other home, in Dubai). “There’s a lot of sensible people still trying to battle (on my behalf) and widen the door for normality to return. And a lot of fans are waiting for me to come out there and sing my songs again. It’s so simple, really, so simple.”
Yusuf is by now used to drama and controversy – he doesn’t shy away from the topic of British patriotism and the meaning of the St George’s flag a little later in our conversation. Criticism from some quarters has dogged him since he first renounced the music world to dedicate himself to his newfound Islamic faith, auctioning all his guitars for charity in 1979. He did not perform again for over 25 years but became a prominent spokesman for British Islamic charities and causes, frequently portrayed as a figure of ridicule or worse.
“I was pretty green, and told things straight from the heart, because that’s how I did it in my songs. Then people took aim. They possibly saw me as an influencer, you know, and that I could be dangerous to their plans and strategies. So they’d try and make me look as if I was a kind of unhinged product of a very overly indulged pop star life.”
It took a more sinister turn when he was falsely accused in newspaper headlines of supporting the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989. Yusuf likens the response to an early example of “cancel culture”, which he describes as “a dangerous form of personality murder. It is another way of silencing opinions you don’t agree with.”
He has written his autobiography, Cat on the Road to Findout, to set the record straight. For the most part, it is a lot of fun, especially the first half where he is revealing about his colourful childhood growing up as Steven Georgiou in the West End of London.
He lived above his parents’ café (Greek Cypriot father, Swedish mother), and ran pretty wild on the streets, obsessing over pop music, clothes and girls. He became a teenage star singing his own preternaturally brilliant songs, including The First Cut is the Deepest, Matthew and Son, I Love My Dog and I’m Gonna Get Me a Gun.
Yusuf has come to consider the latter “one of my mistakes, lyrically” and gifts all royalties to Muslim charities, along with other early songs that no longer fit his adult faith. He quite cheerfully writes about the drink, drugs, love affairs and occasional orgies of his first flush with fame. “I’m a kind of unrepentant child of the Sixties. And I’m not apologising for that at all, because I think it opened up the door to exploration and adventure, certainly in the musical sense.”
He was a habitué of The Speakeasy Club and hung out with London’s pop elite. “I remember knocking around a little bit with Keith Moon, he was a pal. I knew Gary Brooker, the Manfred Mann lot, Paul Rodgers from Free, that clique who were all having hits at the same time. I was pretty close to Jimi Hendrix. We liked to hang out and chill together. And then I took a really unfortunate trip into the LSD universe with his bass player, Noel Redding, and that taught me a lot about how to be cautious, not going too far into that direction.”
By the age of 19, Yusuf’s first wave of fame was over, the hits had dried up, his money was spent, and he had contracted tuberculosis from “drinking, smoking and fast living”. But when I ask if he considers fame to be dangerous, he is equivocal. “If you burn the candle at both ends, for sure. However, fame can be enlightening. It can help you see through the glass ceiling, you know. But what’s up there and what’s beyond that is the problem for people of fame, people who are successful, generally – they meet their aspirations, and then they say, ‘Where the heck do I go from here?’”
A three-month spell in a sanatorium turned Cat Stevens’s life around. He meditated, read about different religious faiths and began writing songs about his search for the meaning of life. Heartfelt hits including Wild World, Peace Train, Moonshadow, Father and Son, Can’t Keep It In and Hard Headed Woman seemed to correspond to the questioning spirit of his generation.
A love affair with model Patti D’Arbanville inspired the gentle 1970 hit Lady D’Arbanville. “It was over quite quickly, that relationship, though it left an indelible mark on my music,” he says. “Wild World could have been written about her, but it could also have been written about myself as I entered this new phase of life and I had to keep hold of my moral compass.”
In the 1970s, Yusuf had an on-off relationship with fellow singer-songwriter Carly Simon and always assumed You’re So Vain was written about him. “I think she’s talking about a concoction of personalities. And probably I was one of them, yeah. I used to look in the mirror a lot.” (Her songs Anticipation and Legend in Your Own Time were written about Yusuf.) He readily confesses to the sins of vanity and jealousy. “It’s macho normality, really, especially if you have a little bit of a Greek streak in you, then it becomes quite prominent in your character.”
As with most subjects, he regards it all through the lens of faith these days. “Love is massive, isn’t it? It’s so important to our existence to have someone to love, and to be loved. But we’re all headed to one place, no matter who you are. Mortality becomes the great equaliser. What lies beyond the barrier of death, that’s something to be concerned about when you start thinking about jealousy or vanity on another level.”
His book changes tone with his conversion to Islam in 1977 and becomes entrenched in explaining and justifying his actions, with the slightly proselytising aspect of a man on a mission. “Whenever I do anything, it’s 100 per cent. When I was in music, I was devoted as you could be. So when I became a Muslim, it was that same urge for perfection, and a compulsion for the truth. Not to hurt anybody, but truth sometimes makes enemies.”
Yusuf made things harder by renouncing not just music but musical instruments, reflecting divisions within Islamic thought regarding secular music. He has come to take a more liberal interpretation. “There is no general law on the subject within the Koran, so people make up opinions, and that’s what a fatwa is, translated, it means opinion. It was very important to me to understand those opinions, but when you look at what God creates, my goodness, beauty unbounded! And do you think music and sound is excluded from that?”
In 2002, he literally picked up a guitar for the first time in over 20 years, one that had been left on a sofa in his house by a visiting relative. And he immediately started writing songs again. “It was good for my health. I think there was pent-up frustration, not being able to express myself lyrically or poetically.”
He resumed releasing records and touring (as Yusuf/Cat Stevens) in 2015 and feels the Muslim community has been broadly accepting. “For a lot of them, it’s a relief. If you listen to my albums, I don’t preach, but I do remind all sides about the illusion of prejudice. I use my music to open doors, for people to feel more free, and to see humanity rather than divisiveness. It’s a bridge-building thing.”
He claims to be wary about being drawn into political discussions these days, but it doesn’t take much to set him off, and several times he speaks about the mendacity of politicians. “Now they say migration is the problem in the UK, and it isn’t. The problem is the dysfunction of Parliament and democracy. You’ve got people who have got no homes, people who have a difficult time making ends meet. The ageing population, the NHS, all these things are problems.
“But then they turn things around and try and find a scapegoat in a sinister attempt to avoid responsibility. So you’ve got people waving a St George’s flag in front of other people’s faces and saying, “Go home!” And yet that flag was a symbol of compassion and Christianity at one point. I want to ask, ‘Tell me, how many times have you been to church?’”
He shrugs off fears that voicing such opinions might affect his attempts to get an American visa. “There’s this equaliser waiting for everybody. And do you have a visa for that? That’s my question to them. And if you don’t, what have you been wasting your life doing?”
Cat On The Road To Findout is published by Constable (£25)
Copy link
twitter
facebook
whatsapp
email
3/5

source