Steven Georgiou was the third child of a Greek-Cypriot father (Stavros Georgiou) and a Swedish mother (Ingrid Wickman). The family lived above Moulin Rouge, the restaurant that his parents operated on Shaftesbury Avenue, a few steps from Piccadilly Circus in the Soho area of London. His whole family worked in the restaurant.
Although his father was Greek Orthodox and his mother Baptist, Steven was sent to a Catholic school, St. Joseph Roman Catholic Primary School in Macklin Street.
When Steven was about eight years old, his parents divorced, but both continued to run the restaurant and live above it. At age 12, Steven, who already played the piano, began to play guitar and write songs. A few years later, his mother returned to Gävle, Sweden, taking Steven along, where he started developing his drawing skills, influenced by his uncle Hugo, a painter.
At age 16, he left school and was accepted by, then later dismissed from, Hammersmith Art School. Although he enjoyed art — his later record albums would feature his original artwork on the covers — Steven wanted to establish a musical career. It was during this period he was first influenced by folk music. http://youtube.com/watch?v=Jek6iP6AuAQ FATHER AND SON 
He began to perform his songs in coffee houses and pubs. Thinking that his Greek name might not be memorable as a stage name, he sought a new one. He said, "I couldn't imagine anyone going to the record store and asking for that Stephen Demetre Georgiou album. And in England, and I was sure in America, they loved animals." He adopted the name Cat Stevens, reportedly chosen because a girlfriend said he had eyes like a cat. 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, "I Love My Dog" and "Matthew and Son" (the title song from his debut album, released in the beginning of 1967) reached Britain's Top 10, and the album Matthew and Son itself began charting.
Over the next two years, Stevens recorded and toured with artists ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Engelbert Humperdinck. Stevens was considered a teen pop sensation, 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 played his records. In August 1967, he went on the air with other recording artists who had benefited from the pirate 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" which has become an international hit for P.P. Arnold, Keith Hampshire, Rod Stewart and Sheryl Crow, and has won several song-writing awards.
Stevens was living a fast-moving pop-star life and in early 1968 at the age of 19, he became very ill with tuberculosis. During several months in the hospital and a year of convalescence, Stevens began to question aspects of his life, took up meditation, read about other religions and became a vegetarian. During that time, as 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 were to appear on his albums in years to come. MILES FROM NOWHERE .. http://youtube.com/watch?v=lNId6M4SSNk 
Now healthy and armed with a new perspective on what he wanted to bring to the world with his music, and a catalog of introspective songs, the stage was set for international stardom. He landed a new record contract with an American distribution deal in 1970, signing with Island Records (then rival A&M Records in North America), and released Mona Bone Jakon, a folk-based album that was much different from his more "pop" style earlier records, drawing on his new, introspective work. The album featured the songs "Lady D'Arbanville", which was written for Stevens' girlfriend at the time, actress Patti D'Arbanville; "Pop Star", about his experience as a teen star; and "Katmandu", featuring Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel playing flute. Mona Bone Jakon was an early example of the solo singer-songwriter album that would later become very popular for other artists as well.
Mona Bone Jakon was followed by his international breakthrough album, Tea for the Tillerman, which became a top-10 Billboard hit and reached Gold record status within six months of release (at least 500,000 sales) in the United States and in Britain, combining Stevens' new folk style with accessible lyrics that spoke of everyday situations and problems, mixed with some spiritual imagery. Tea for the Tillerman features the top-20 single "Wild World", "Hard-Headed Woman", and "Father and Son", a unique, double-voiced autobiographical song. In 2001, this album was certified by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) as a Multi-Platinum record, meaning it had sold 3 million copies in the United States at that time. It is included at #206[ in Rolling Stone's 2003 listing of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".
With the success of Tea for the Tillerman, Stevens was no longer opening for other acts on tour. He launched his own tour and became a star. During this period, he was romantically linked to singer Carly Simon whose top 50 songs "Legend in Your Own Time" and "Anticipation" were written about Stevens. WILD WORLD.. http://youtube.com/watch?v=1KRw0Yhuqtk 
Having established a signature sound, Stevens enjoyed a string of successes over the following years. The Teaser and the Firecat LP album (1971) reached number two and achieved gold record status within three weeks of its release in the US. It yielded several hits, including "Peace Train", "Morning Has Broken" (a Christian hymn with lyrics by Eleanor Farjeon), and "Moonshadow". This album was also certified by the RIAA as a Multi-Platinum record in 2001, with over three million US sales up until then.
When interviewed on a Boston radio station, Stevens said about Teaser:
"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."
Also in 1971, several of his songs were used in the soundtrack to the movie Harold and Maude, including at least one that had not been on any album prior to its inclusion on a second "greatest hits" collection many years later. Harold and Maude would go on to become a cult hit, popular for decades, bringing Stevens' music to a wide audience, long after he stopped recording.
His next album, Catch Bull at Four, released in 1972, was his most rapidly successful album in the U.S.A - 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. "Sweet Scarlet" was his response to Carly Simon's two songs about him. The single "Sitting" was released from this album, and charted at #16. Catch Bull at Four was Platinum certified in 2001. LADY D' Arbanville http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h61ffFRFmxw 
Subsequent releases in the 1970s also did well on the charts and in ongoing sales. His final album under the name Cat Stevens was Back to Earth, released in late 1978. Several compilation albums were released before and after he stopped recording. The most successful was the 1975 Greatest Hits which has sold over 4 million copies in the United States. In May 2003 he received his first Platinum Europe Award from the IFPI for Remember Cat Stevens, The Ultimate Collection, indicating over one million European sales.
In 1977, Stevens secured his last chart hit with "(Remember The Days Of The) Old Schoolyard", a duet with fellow UK singer Elkie Brooks, although she remains uncredited on the release.
His last performance before his subsequent return to music was at The Year of the Child concert in Wembley Stadium, on November 22, 1979. MOON SHADOW .. http://youtube.com/watch?v=221Wv4hnWNo 
WHERE DO THE CHILDREN PLAY http://youtube.com/watch?v=NXxcMw5PTDg
When Stevens nearly drowned in an accident in Malibu in 1975, he reports having pleaded with God to save him. Stevens described the event in a VH1 interview some years later: "I suddenly held myself and I said, 'Oh God! If you save me, I'll work for you.'" The near-death experience intensified his long-held quest for spiritual truth. He had looked into Buddhism "Zen and I Ching, numerology, tarot cards and astrology", but when his brother David gave him a copy of the Qur'an, Stevens began to find peace with himself and began his transition to Islam.
He formally converted to the Islamic faith in 1977 and took the name Yusuf Islam in 1978,saying that he "always loved the name Joseph" and was particularly drawn to the story of Joseph in the Qur'an. (Yusuf is the Arabic transliteration of the name Joseph.) PEACE TRAIN Islamic faith and musical career
Following his conversion, Yusuf Islam abandoned his career as a pop star. Song and the use of musical instruments is an area of debate in Muslim jurisprudence, considered harām by some, and is the primary reason he gave for retreating from the pop spotlight.
He decided to use the continuing wealth he earns from his music career on philanthropic and educational causes in the Muslim community of London and elsewhere. In 1981, he founded the Islamia Primary School in Salusbury Road in the north London area of Kilburn; after that, he founded several Islamic secondary schools and devoted his energy to providing an Islamic education to children and to charitable causes. He founded, and is 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 also was chairman of the charity Muslim Aid from 1985 to 1993.
In 1985, Yusuf Islam decided to return to the public spotlight, for the first time since his religious conversion, at the historic Live Aid concert, inspired by the famine threatening Ethiopia. Though he had written a song especially for the occasion, his appearance was skipped when Elton John's set ran too long.
Salman Rushdie controversy
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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 clarifying that he had not been supporting vigilantism, and was merely explaining the legal Islamic punishment for blasphemy.
While there has been an on-going debate over the degree to which the singer supported the call for the assassination of Rushdie, the incident left an indelible mark on his reputation as a "man of peace". He maintains that he was misinterpreted.
September 11 attacks
Yusuf Islam immediately and vehemently spoke out against the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, saying:
- "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 VH-1 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, an a cappella version. He also donated half of his box-set royalties to the September 11 Fund for victims' families, and the other half to orphans in underdeveloped countries.
Denial of entry into the United States
On 21 September 2004, Yusuf Islam was traveling on a United Airlines flight from London to Washington, en route 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 Transportation Security Administration, which then diverted his flight to Bangor, Maine, where he was detained by the FBI.
The following day, Yusuf Islam was deported back to the United Kingdom. The United States Transportation Security Administration claimed there were "concerns of ties he may have to potential terrorist-related activities". The United States Department of Homeland Security specifically alleged that Yusuf Islam had provided funding to the Palestinian Islamic militant group Hamas. However, he was admitted without incident into the United States in December 2006 for several radio concert performances and interviews to promote his new record.
Yusuf Islam's 2004 deportation provoked a small international controversy and led the British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Jack Straw, to complain personally to US Secretary of State Colin Powell at the United Nations. Powell responded by stating that the watch list was under review, and added, "I think we have that obligation to review these matters to see if we are right."
Yusuf Islam believes 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 Islam 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 Islam, the man on the list was named "Youssef Islam", indicating that Yusuf Islam himself was not the suspected terrorism supporter.
Libel case victory
After the U.S. government deported Yusuf Islam, The Sun and The Sunday Times British newspapers in October 2004 stated that the U.S. was correct in its action. Yusuf Islam sued for libel and received a substantial out-of-court "agreed settlement" and apologies from the newspapers. Both newspapers acknowledged that Yusuf Islam has never supported terrorism and that, to the contrary, he had recently been given a Man for Peace award from the private Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Committee.
Yusuf Islam 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 Islam wrote about the experience in a newspaper article titled "A Cat in a Wild World".
Return to music
For several years during the 1990s, Yusuf Islam made recordings featuring lyrics about Islamic themes accompanied only by basic percussion instruments, which he felt were acceptable to his faith. In the late 1990s, he was featured as a guest singer of "God Is the Light" on an album by the Nasheed group, Raihan.
He produced a children's album in 2000 called A Is for Allah after realizing there were few materials designed to educate children about Islam.] He also established the record label called Mountain of Light Productions, which donates a percentage of its proceeds to Islam's Small Kindness charity.
On the occasion of the 2000 re-release of his Cat Stevens albums, Yusuf explained that he had stopped performing in English due to his misunderstanding of the Islamic faith. "This issue of music in Islam is not as cut-and-dried as I was led to believe . . . I relied on heresy (sic), that was perhaps my mistake."
In 2003, after repeated encouragement from within the Muslim world, Yusuf Islam once again recorded "Peace Train" for a compilation CD, which also included performances by David Bowie and Paul McCartney. He performed "Wild World" in Nelson Mandela's 46664 concert with his former session player Peter Gabriel, the first time he had publicly performed in English in 25 years. In December 2004, he and Ronan Keating released a new version of "Father and Son" that debuted at number two, behind Band Aid 20's "Do They Know It's Christmas?". The proceeds of "Father and Son" were donated to the Band Aid charity. Keating's former group, Boyzone, had a hit with the song a decade earlier.
In a 2005 press release, he explains his revived recording career:
After I embraced Islam many people told me to carry on composing and recording but at the time I was hesitant for fear that it might be for the wrong reasons. I felt unsure what the right course of action was. I guess it is only now after all these years that I've come to fully understand and appreciate what everyone has been asking of me. It's as if I've come full circle - however, I have gathered a lot of knowledge on the subject in the meantimeIn early 2005, Yusuf Islam 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 Islam's Small Kindness charity. At first, the single was released only through several online music stores but later highlighted the compilation album Cat Stevens: Gold.
On 28 May 2005, Yusuf Islam delivered a keynote speech and performed at the Adopt-A-Minefield Gala in Düsseldorf. The Adopt-A-Minefield charity, under the patronage of Sir Paul McCartney, works internationally to raise awareness and funds to clear landmines and rehabilitate landmine survivors. Yusuf Islam attended as part of an honorary committee which also included Sir George Martin, Sir Richard Branson, Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Klaus Voormann, Christopher Lee and others.
In mid-2005, Yusuf Islam 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 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 Islam, his brother, 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 An Other Cup as well as a few 2006 excerpts of him on guitar singing a few verses of Cat Stevens songs including "The Wind" and "On the Road to Find Out".
Yusuf has credited his 21 year old son Muhammad Islam, also a musician and artist, for his return to secular music, when the son brought a guitar back into the house, which Yusuf began playing. Muhammad's professional name is believed to be "Yoriyos" and his debut album was released in February 2007. Yoriyos also created the art on Yusuf's album An Other Cup.
Starting in 2006, the Cat Stevens song "Tea for The Tillerman" was used as the theme tune for the Ricky Gervais BBC-HBO sitcom Extras. A Christmas-season television commercial for gift-giving by the diamond industry aired in 2006 with Cat Power's cover of "How Can I Tell You".
In December 2006, Yusuf was one of the artists that performed at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway, in honour of the prize winners, Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank. He performed the songs "Midday (Avoid City After Dark)," "Peace Train," and "Heaven/Where True Love Goes." Yusuf also gave a concert in New York City that month as a "Jazz at Lincoln Center" event, recorded and broadcast by KCRW-FM radio, along with an interview by Nic Harcourt. Accompanying Yusuf on guitar was Alun Davies, who played guitar on many of his Cat Stevens records.
In April 2007, BBC1 broadcast a concert given at the Porchester Hall by Yusuf as part of BBC Sessions, his first live performance in London in 28 years (the previous being the UNICEF Year of the Child concert in 1979.) He played many new songs along with some of his classics, "Father & Son", "The Wind", "Where Do the Children Play?", "Don't Be Shy", "Wild World", and "Peace Train".
In July 2007, Yusuf 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 and Carlos Santana. The audience included Nobel Laureates Mikhail Gorbachev, Desmond Tutu and other prominent global figures. He later appeared as the finale 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".
Yusuf performed at the Peace One Day concert at the Royal Albert Hall on 21st September 2007.
An Other Cup
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In March 2006, Yusuf Islam finished recording his first all-new pop album since 1978. 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 was simultaneously released from the album, called "Heaven/Where True Love Goes". 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 Islam 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 and television and in print interviews. He was interviewed by the BBC in November 2006, "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." INTO WHITE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRKKVIkWCMM And HARD HEADED WOMAN http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ojNhtQOsHk 
Asked in a November 2006 Billboard magazine interview[about why the artist is credited as "Yusuf" rather than "Yusuf Islam", he said, "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 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."
On CBS Sunday Morning in December 2006, Yusuf Islam 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, go a bit deeper, you'll find him." ANOTHER SATURDAY NIGHT http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLeWB3C2cLo