Background and career
Yusuf Islam (born Steven Demetre Georgiou; 21 July 1948), commonly known by his stage names Cat Stevens or Yusuf/Cat Stevens, is a British singer-songwriter and musician. He has sold more than 100 million records and has more than two billion streams. His musical career has explored folk, rock, pop, and, later in his career, Islamic music. Following two decades in which he performed only music which met strict religious standards, he returned to making secular music in 2006. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. He has received two honorary doctorates and awards for promoting peace as well as other humanitarian awards. His 1967 debut album reached top 10 in the UK charts, with its title song "Matthew and Son" peaking at No. 2, becoming Stevens's highest charting single in Britain to date. Stevens's albums Tea for the Tillerman (1970) and Teaser and the Firecat (1971) were certified triple platinum in the US. His 1972 album Catch Bull at Four went to No. 1 on the US Billboard 200 and spent weeks at the top of several other major charts. He earned ASCAP songwriting awards in 2005 and 2006 for "The First Cut Is the Deepest", which has been a hit for four artists. His other hit songs include "Father and Son", "Wild World", "Moonshadow", "Peace Train", and "Morning Has Broken". Stevens converted to Islam in December 1977, and adopted the name Yusuf Islam the following year. The same year he released his album Izitso before announcing his conversion with hits such as "(Remember the Days of The) Old School Yard", "(I Never Wanted) to Be a Star", and "Sweet Jamaica". In 1979, he auctioned his guitars for charity, and left his musical career to devote himself to educational and philanthropic causes in the Muslim community. He has since bought back at least one of the guitars he sold as a result of the efforts of his son, Yoriyos. Stevens was embroiled in a controversy regarding comments he made in 1989 about the fatwa placed on author Salman Rushdie in response to the publication of Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. He has explained the incident stating: "I was cleverly framed by certain questions. I never supported the fatwa." In 2006, Stevens returned to pop music by releasing his first new studio album of new pop songs in 28 years, titled An Other Cup. With that release and subsequent ones, he dropped the surname "Islam" from the album cover art – using the stage name Yusuf as a mononym. In 2009, he released the album Roadsinger and, in 2014, he released the album Tell 'Em I'm Gone and began his first US tour since 1978. His second North American tour since his resurgence, featuring 12 shows in intimate venues, ran from 12 September to 7 October 2016. In 2017, he released the album The Laughing Apple, now using the stage name Yusuf / Cat Stevens, using the Cat Stevens name for the first time in 39 years. In September 2020, he released Tea for the Tillerman 2, a reimagining of his album Tea for the Tillerman to celebrate its 50th anniversary, and in June 2023, King of a Land, a new studio album.
Steven Demetre Georgiou, born on 21 July 1948 in the Marylebone area of London, was the youngest child of a Greek Cypriot father, Stavros Georgiou (1900–1978), and a Swedish mother, Ingrid Wickman (1915–1989). He has an older sister, Anita, and a brother, David Gordon. The family lived above the Moulin Rouge, a restaurant 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 eight years old but continued to maintain the family restaurant and live above it. Stevens has a half-brother, George Georgiou, born in Greece, presumably from his father's first marriage in Greece. Although his father was Greek Orthodox and his mother was a Baptist, Georgiou was sent to St Joseph Roman Catholic Primary School, Macklin Street, which was closer to his father's business on Drury Lane. Georgiou developed an interest in piano at a 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. At 15, inspired by the popularity of the Beatles, he became interested in the guitar. He persuaded his father to pay £8 (equivalent to approx. £145 in March 2026) for his first guitar, and he began playing it and writing songs. He occasionally escaped his family responsibilities by going to the rooftop above their home and listening to the tunes of the musicals drifting from around the corner on Denmark Street, then the centre of the British music industry. Stevens said that West Side Story particularly affected him and gave him a "different view of life". With interests in both art and music, he and his mother moved to Gävle, Sweden, where he attended primary school (Solängsskolan) and started developing his drawing skills after being influenced by his uncle Hugo Wickman, a painter. They subsequently returned to England. 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 said, "I was beat up, but I was noticed". He took a one-year course at Hammersmith School of Art, considering a career as a cartoonist. Though he enjoyed art (his later record albums featured his original artwork), he decided to pursue a musical career. He began performing under the name "Steve Adams" in 1965 while at Hammersmith. At that point, his goal was to become a songwriter. As well as the Beatles, other musicians who influenced him were the Kinks, Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, blues artists Lead Belly and Muddy Waters, Biff Rose (particularly Rose's first album), Leo Kottke and Paul Simon. He also sought to emulate composers of musicals, such as George and Ira Gershwin, and Leonard Bernstein. In 1965, he signed a publishing deal with Ardmore & Beechwood and recorded several demos, including "The First Cut Is the Deepest".
Georgiou began performing his songs in London coffee houses and pubs. At first he tried to form a band, but realised he preferred performing solo. Thinking his birth name might be difficult to remember, he chose the stage name Cat Stevens, partly because a girlfriend said he had eyes like a cat, but mainly because "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, Stevens was heard by manager/producer Mike Hurst, formerly of British vocal group the Springfields. Hurst was impressed by Stevens's song, "I Love My Dog", however his superior was not. Stevens walked away "looking quite dejected". Despite this, three months later Stevens returned to Hurst claiming to have been rejected by every record company in London. Hurst arranged for free studio time for Stevens to record a demo, deceiving Decca A&R chief Dick Rowe under the pretense that Hurst was recording a Mike D'Abo composition titled "Going, Going, Gone". Rowe was not amused by Hurst's deception, but after hearing the record he contacted Edward Leeds, the head of Decca Records, who was pleased by the song and signed Stevens to a record deal. Stevens's first singles were hits: "I Love My Dog" reached number 28 on the UK Singles Chart; and "Matthew and Son", the title song from his debut album, reached number 2 in the UK, his highest charting single there to date. In March of 1967, Stevens released his album Matthew and Son, which peaked at number 7 on the UK Albums Chart.
His 3rd single, "I'm Gonna Get Me a Gun", attracted controversy over the lyrics, which tell the story of a man who is tired of being "demoralised" and decides to buy a gun to take revenge on those who "put me down". The song was condemned by Jimmy Savile after it was played on the show Juke Box Jury, who felt it could incite violence among listeners. Stevens later apologized, saying he did not mean to entice children to purchase guns; also explaining the context and that he had written it for a Western musical, hence the lyrics. Nevertheless, the song became Stevens's second UK top 10 single, reaching number 6.Over the next two years, Stevens recorded and toured with an eclectic group of artists ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Engelbert Humperdinck. He 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 was one of several recording artists who had benefited from the station to broadcast messages during its final hour to mourn its closure. While on tour, Stevens began to "drink and smoke heavily" as his career began to "nosedive". Additionally, Stevens found himself struggling to write another hit song, feeling worn down by the show business. His next single, "A Bad Night", did not reach higher than no. 20 on the charts, with even Hurst calling it "totally outlandish" and "over the top". The single "Kitty" was Stevens's final charting release in the UK for three years, with his next album New Masters not even charting in the United Kingdom upon release in December 1967. New Masters is now most notable for "The First Cut Is the Deepest", a song he sold for £30 (equivalent to £500 in 2025) to P. P. Arnold and which became 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 back-to-back ASCAP "Songwriter of the Year" awards, in 2005 and 2006.
The lack of success of Stevens' second album mirrored a difference of personal tastes in musical direction. He felt a growing resentment of producer Mike Hurst's attempts to re-create the style of his debut album, with heavy-handed orchestration and over-production, rather than the folk rock sound Stevens was attempting to produce. Stevens finally decided to terminate their association after an agent Hurst had appointed attempted to book Stevens onto a Christmas pantomime. After Stevens's refusal, Hurst's agent told Stevens that he was making "the biggest mistake of [his] life". Stevens later admitted to having purposely sabotaged his own contract with Hurst by making outlandishly expensive orchestral demands and threatening legal action, which achieved his goal: to be released from his contract with Deram Records, a sub-label of Decca Records. Hurst described 1968 as a "long interminable legal wrangle"; New Masters was recorded with lawyers present in the studio. "Lovely City (When Do You Laugh?)", a sixth single, failed to crack the top 50. In September of 1968, it was reported that a new Cat Stevens single, titled "Here Comes My Wife", was to be released the upcoming month alongside a new album. The single did not reach the top 50; the album never materialized. Stevens's last single with Deram, "Where Are You", was also considered a failure. After Stevens left Decca Records, they bundled his first two albums together as a set, hoping to ride the commercial tide of his early success; later his newer labels did the same, and Stevens also released compilations. On 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 several new record executives. He hired an agent, Barry Krost, who arranged 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 Paul Samwell-Smith, previously the bassist of the Yardbirds, as his new producer.
