Outcast alienated and almost literally lost at sea before being Outcast again here are a few tragic things about Cat Stevens that you may not know born Stephen Demeter Georgio in 1948 to a Greek cypriot father and Swedish mother Kat Stevens was exposed to many cultures and religions at an early age his parents owned and lived above a Greek restaurant in London's Soho District inspired by Big Greek weddings Nina Simone and musicals he overheard across the street young Stevens soon developed an ap
titude for music he began learning piano and guitar inspired by Lead Belly and the Beatles he admitted later that it was a lonely life with his unique Heritage isolating him from his peers he had dreams of becoming a painter or cartoonist but he struggled with less creative subjects and became something of a troublemaker telling stereo Review magazine in 1972. in school I was the artist boy I was beat up but I was noticed he also never felt particularly masculine telling Melody Maker magazine I
saw these Idols like Spartacus and Kirk Douglas and I thought I'm not of that when I was very young I never really felt one sex or the other other gradually I was brainwashed into thinking I was a fella but maybe when I write a song or a story about a relationship it has many more areas Cat Stevens started performing songs at local bars in the early 60s under the name Steve Adams and it wasn't long before he caught the ear of local record producer Mike Hurst who signed him to Deca records accord
ing to a 2002 interview with the Australian women's weekly Stevens chose the catchier stage name Cat Stevens because a girlfriend once told him he had cat-like eyes by 1966 he had scored his first hit with the offbeat love song I Love My Dog Steven's original career plan was to write songs for other artists his 1967 song The First Cut is the Deepest became a Smash Hit for soul singer p p Arnold and countless others over the decades but with the 1967 release of his album Matthew and son he became
a Bonafide pop star by the time he turned 18. the introverted Stevens was thrown into a hectic world of non-stop interviews production and performance that year he embarked on a tour with Jimi Hendrix which introduced him to a destructive lifestyle involving smoking drugs and alcohol in a 2020 interview with the guardian he admitted to drinking to ease extreme stage fright and later wrote in his 2004 essay how I came to Islam they made me Larger than Life so I wanted to live Larger than Life an
d the only way to do that was to be intoxicated Cat Stevens first album Matthew and son saw immense Commercial Success on Deca records under the direction of producer Mike Hurst naturally Hearst was eager for a similar follow-up and that's where the trouble began as Stevens told voxpop in 1972 it's not as easy as that because the songs aren't like that life isn't like that you just don't do the same thing over and over again it was just a business after a while the whole music element the thing
that made me want to create music was suddenly shoved aside even sought a more authentic folk sound while Hearst pushed for more polished pop songs with heavy instrumentation in 2004 Stevens recalled to Classic Rock magazine there were a bunch of musicians in the studio who interpreted your own music for you it seemed to me that I had to get more control the result of this tension was Steven's second album 1967's new Masters which failed to live up to the hype of its predecessor Hearst later adm
itted to making mistakes noting the intense legal battle that ensued telling renowned music journalist Chris Charlesworth we did the second album with lawyers actually in the studio it was horrendous Hearst explained to cherry red records in 2020 that everything was eventually settled out of court and Stevens was released from his contract with Deca records in 1968 at the age of 20 Cat Stevens pop star lifestyle caught up with him everything that one could do I think I did it after years of over
working himself smoking and drinking heavily and enduring a stressful legal battle with his record label he fell dangerously ill he lost an alarming amount of weight and developed a persistent cough he finally sought medical advice after he started coughing up blood Stevens was diagnosed with Advanced tuberculosis which had caused a collapsed lung and severe pneumonia and was immediately hospitalized he spent three months in intensive care suffering through painful lung procedures and around a y
ear recovering from the life-threatening illness Stevens told Charlesworth TB ruined my career and put a halt to my dream I was back on Earth stuck in hospital and that was a big lesson I had a lot of time to reflect death was on my mind during his long convalescence he wrote around 40 songs which would provide the material for his next three hours albums 1970s Mona bone jacking and Tea for the Tillerman and 1971's teaser and the fire cat in 2021 he told Goldmine magazine that the despair-laced
song Trouble was directly inspired by his struggle with tuberculosis its title and lyrics being a play on TV the colloquial term for the illness shortly after recovering from tuberculosis Cat Stevens met American model and actress Patty darvinville at a party in London as darbinville recalls in an interview with famous groupie Pamela Debarr in her book let's spend the night together she found Stevens approachable and became close with him after the two rode a roller coaster together they dated f
or around two years watching the 1969 moon landing and spending time in his red painted bedroom which contained only a bed and a piano darbinville's Career frequently forced her to travel extensively and eventually into the arms of Mick Jagger heartbroken Stevens penned the haunting ballad lady darwinville in which he professes his love to her corpse darbinville admitted to dabar I cried the first time I heard it because that's when I knew it was really over Steven's relationship with darwinvill
e inspired a few other songs as well including maybe your right and most notably 1970s sweet and candid Wild World which became a breakout hit for the newly reinvented Steven ends when he was 25 years old Cat Stevens put himself in voluntary Exile having become a superstar with several successful albums he began to feel lost and uninspired in the bustle of Fame at excess and suffered an identity crisis I mean I left a music music business in a way not just music but um because I'd wanted to get
my life fixed music is a luxury donating his tax money to Children's Charities rather than the British government he moved to Brazil and did some soul searching he told Melody Maker magazine in 1975. I had a house there and I stayed alone I couldn't even talk to the lady who cooked and kept the place clean I really felt alone and it hurt for a long time he also shaved his trademark long curly hair and beard rendering himself virtually unrecognizable and visited politically and socially troubled
places like Ethiopia Bangladesh and Kenya in order to explore his Humanity again the result was 1973's Foreigner and even more stripped down departure from his previous work the album centered around the theme of being misunderstood and Stevens recorded songs with local musicians and produced the entire album himself he told Melody Maker to be able to write with feelings you have to know yourself writing has to be an affair with yourself and you have to be able to live with yourself and get thro
ugh all your Hang-Ups and I did in 1976 the same year as his explosive magikat Earth Tour Cat Stevens experienced a pivotal moment in his life alone on a beach in Malibu California he decided that the water looked inviting and went for a swim where he found himself caught in a dangerous Riptide which was quickly pulling him out to sea as he told kqed's Michael krasny after I was swimming for about half an hour I couldn't get back to shore at that point quite simply there was no one to help me I
said oh God if you save me I'll work for you and at that moment a wave however big it was came from behind me and pushed me forward and suddenly I had all the energy I needed it was a miracle shortly after the near-death experience Stephen's older brother gifted him a copy of the Quran he told the independent in 2020 it became the Gateway after a year I could not hold myself back I had to bow down in 1977 Cat Stevens surprised the world when he converted to Islam and again in 1978 when he change
d his name to Yusuf Islam Stevens chose the name Yusuf after reading about the quranic Prophet Joseph finding the parable in which he is sold like a commodity similar to his own experiences in the music industry but the biggest shock came in 1979 when he decided to quit making mainstream music though being a musician was not expressly forbidden in Islam Stevens was already disenchanted with the music industry Fame and the Rockstar lifestyle and chose instead to embrace a more conventional existe
nce Stevens told Chris Anderson during a Ted interview in 2017. so if you did listen to my lyrics you would have heard that I was on a path and I was definitely looking he continued and if I was sincere at all about what I wrote it meant that if I found something I'd have to grab it otherwise I'd be a hypocrite to myself and to others and that would be a bad example fully committed to his new Faith Stevens sold all of his guitars and donated the money to charity in 1979 Kat Stevens married fauci
a Mubarak Ali A Pakistan native with a master's degree in literature many believed it to be a traditional arranged marriage but Stevens set the record straight on his personal website stating I had two prospective girls I was interested in marrying I had no intimate relationship with either before marriage therefore to Western standards and my own previous track record this was a stark departure from the norm the couple has five children together four daughters and a son their son Muhammad is a
singer-songwriter who goes by the stage name yorios adamos a nod to his Greek Heritage he also serves as his father's manager sadly as Stevens noted on his personal website their sixth child a son died at just 13 days old due to a heart condition the couple has been married for 44 years as of 2023 splitting their time between London and Dubai in 1988 author Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses a magical realist novel deemed offensive to Islam Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini plac
ed a death fatwa on Rushdie in effect ordering Muslims to kill the author as a result Rushdie endured several assassination attempts and the novel's translator was murdered Cat Stevens became involved in 1989 when he was asked about the fought while following a speech at Kingston University appearing to support it Stevens told Rolling Stone that his university comments were taken out of context claiming that he was merely quoting directly from scriptural texts later he made similar statements on
the Australian TV show Jeffy Robertson's hypotheticals following that he explained on his website that the incriminating television interview was the result of editing combined with his British sense of humor writing I never called for the death of Salman Rushdie nor back to the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini and still don't the book itself does destroyed the harmony between peoples and created an unnecessary International crisis he also claims to have released a statement immediately after
ward clarifying his opposition to the fatwa but this received little press nonetheless The public's outrage was great Steven's music was banned from many radio stations DJ smashed his records on air and 10 000 Maniacs removed their cover of his song Peace Train from their catalog Rushdie made his feelings on Cat Stevens clear I know there was a point when I was a college student but I had a copy of Tea for the Tillerman you know but he's not he hasn't beaten Cat Stevens for a long time accusatio
ns of terrorism didn't end there Cat Stevens was denied entrance into Israel in both 1990 and 2000 due to allegations that he had donated money to Hamas an Islamic terrorist organization during a visit in 1988. Stevens denied these allegations claiming he was only providing humanitarian Aid writing I have never knowingly supported Hamas or directed money to them and used my charity worldwide to help victims of war and natural disasters particularly children and orphans in September 2004 while fl
ying to Washington DC to meet Dolly Parton for a collaboration the name Yusuf Islam was identified on the no-fly list his plane was rerouted to Maine where he was interrogated by homeland security officers and deported back to London Stevens told ABC news that he believes it was a case of mistaken identity as he was repeatedly asked to spell his name he has since returned to the U.S several times without incident [Music]
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