- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- Cat Stevens is an exceedingly talented singer-songwriter who has been repeatedly disillusioned by the music business over the years.
Cat Stevens – Greatest Hits (1975): As the son of a Swedish mother and a Greek father who ran a restaurant in London, Cat Stevens (born Steven Demetre Georgiou) is an exceedingly talented singer-songwriter who has been repeatedly disillusioned by the music business over the years. Mike Hurst, who was formerly a member of the folk-pop group the Springfields, became a record producer and made a demo of Cat Stevens’ song “I Love My Dog” that got him signed to the new Deram Records subsidiary of Decca Records. “I Love My Dog” was a Top 40 hit on the British charts in October 1966. Besides his own success on the charts, other recording artists began covering Cat Stevens songs: In 1967, the Tremeloes had a Top 5 U.K. hit with “Here Comes My Baby” (just missing the Top 10 in the U.S.); while in the same year, P. P. Arnold was the first of many artists to cover one of Cat Stevens’ best-known songs, “The First Cut is the Deepest”.
Cat Stevens – Greatest Hits (1975): As the son of a Swedish mother and a Greek father who ran a restaurant in London, Cat Stevens (born Steven Demetre Georgiou) is an exceedingly talented singer-songwriter who has been repeatedly disillusioned by the music business over the years. Mike Hurst, who was formerly a member of the folk-pop group the Springfields, became a record producer and made a demo of Cat Stevens’ song “I Love My Dog” that got him signed to the new Deram Records subsidiary of Decca Records. “I Love My Dog” was a Top 40 hit on the British charts in October 1966. Besides his own success on the charts, other recording artists began covering Cat Stevens songs: In 1967, the Tremeloes had a Top 5 U.K. hit with “Here Comes My Baby” (just missing the Top 10 in the U.S.); while in the same year, P. P. Arnold was the first of many artists to cover one of Cat Stevens’ best-known songs, “The First Cut is the Deepest”. Rod Stewart had the greatest success with his 1977 version of “The First Cut is the Deepest”; it topped the U.K. singles chart and made the U.S. Top 20. Sheryl Crow also made the Top 20 with her cover of “The First Cut is the Deepest” in 2003. When Cat Stevens’ next several releases after “I Love My Dog” were less successful, and after being sidelined for a time with tuberculosis, he became disenchanted with the direction of his career and began writing more personal and introspective songs and albums. His fourth album, Tea for the Tillerman (1970) made Cat Stevens a star in America and was acclaimed as one of the finest folk-rock albums of the era; the album includes the hit single “Wild World” and also “Hard Headed Woman” and “Father and Son”. But his next album Teaser and the Firecat (1971) almost made #1 on the album charts and contributed mightily to his string of hit songs: “Peace Train”, “Moonshadow”, and “Morning Has Broken” were all major hits. The latter song is adapted from an English hymn, and I have sung Cat Stevens’ version of “Morning Has Broken” myself at Sunday services. Cat Stevens’ Greatest Hits includes these songs plus other later hits like “Oh Very Young”, “Another Saturday Night” (an effective cover of the Sam Cooke song), and one new song, “Two Fine People”. The album eventually sold three million copies. In late 1977, Cat Stevens became a Muslim, taking the name Yusuf Islam; he announced his retirement from the music industry the following year. He was little heard from until the end of the 1980’s, when Yusuf Islam commented publicly several times on the fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran calling for the death of Salman Rushdie due to the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses (1988). Yusuf later explained he was not calling for the novelist’s death but only defining Islamic law in the same way a Christian might “quote the legal punishment of a person who commits blasphemy in the Bible”. He also later said that some of his comments were “stupid and offensive jokes” that were in “bad taste”. Still, there was major backlash against Cat Stevens, and many if not most classic rock radio stations quit playing his songs. As recently as 2004, the U.S. government refused to allow Yusuf Islam to enter the country; and in the same time period, Yusuf’s name was added to the anti-terrorism “no-fly” list. Following the somewhat favorable response to his public denunciation of the 9/11 attacks in September 2001, Yusuf Islam began edging his way back into the music mainstream. Using the name Yusuf, he recorded several albums of children’s music and a couple of pop albums. As noted in Allmusic: “In 2010, Yusuf appeared at The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, an event hosted in Washington, D.C. by American satirists Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert; Yusuf sang ‘Peace Train’ as a counterpoint to Ozzy Osbourne’s ‘Crazy Train’, while both were followed by the O’Jays’ performance of ‘Love Train’.” Also, in 2012 Moonshadow, a musical based on Cat Stevens’ songs, premiered in Melbourne, Australia. In April 2014, he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame; and in October 2014, a third album using the Yusuf name came out, Tell ’em I’m Gone. This album of blues and R&B music was produced by Rick Rubin and featured guitar by Richard Thompson of the Fairport Convention. On the 50th anniversary of its release, Cat Stevens/Yusuf released Tea for the Tillerman 2 in 2020, with new arrangements and performances of all 11 tracks, as produced by Paul Samwell-Smith, formerly of the Yardbirds.