The return of the road singer

As Cat Stevens he defined a generation now he returns to the australian stage for the first time in 36 years and will tour new zealand for the first time ever with hits of a lifetime.

AUCKLAND – Tuesday 29 June – Vector Arena
CHRISTCHURCH – Friday 2 July – Westpac Arena

TICKETS ON SALE ON WEDNESDAY 12 MAY

When Yusuf last toured Australia, 36 years ago, it was as the enigmatic Cat Stevens, a powerful and evocative songsmith ever on ‘the road to find out’; an ingenious singer-songwriter who had touched millions with works that have been absorbed into the very fabric of his times ... and beyond - Peace Train, Where Do The Children Play?, Father & Son, (Remember The Days Of The) Old School Yard, First Cut Is The Deepest, Oh Very Young, Wild World, Moonshadow, Morning Has Broken and so very many others.

In 2010 he returns as the man who first dreamt those timeless songs and has woven them together with new masterpieces into a living folk-tale, as the result of an extraordinary spiritual journey. He, who began making music as Steven Georgiou during the pop wave of the sixties, presenting it to the world as Cat Stevens and now expressing a deeper breadth of understanding and eternal exploration as Yusuf, is once again attracting affection bordering on awe for his artistry. The voice that enchanted and inspired the dreams of a generation still does so and audiences are eager to revisit that which has been beyond their reach for decades.

On his surprise I Guess I’ll Take My Time Tour in England and Ireland Yusuf’s shows, with legendary guitarist Alun Davies by his side, were sought out by Bono and the Edge and the aristocracy of the music world. Having inspired countless young artists with his profound and self-exposed style of writing, he again proved that the rays of creativity remain bright in his universe. His performances broke new ground by previewing an upcoming West End musical, Moonshadow, which promises to tell an everyman's tale, truly unique – for there is nothing to compare with his saga.

For a great many years it seemed unlikely that the artist we knew as Cat Stevens would return to the stage and that his timeless songs would reach us in anything other than tribute shows. But you can't keep a good man down they say, and once he had started the Mountain of Light recording label toward the end of the 90s his guest appearances for charity and then releases under his own name as Yusuf Islam began to mount. In 1997 he performed for the first time at a benefit concert in Sarajevo for a slain friend. In 2001 he sang Peace Train Acapella during a live telecast for the victims of the Twin Tower attacks on New York, 2003 he re-recorded Peace Train for a charity CD that also included contributions by Bowie and McCartney and he appeared at Nelson Mandela’s 46664 concert performing Wild World with Peter Gabriel and the Suweto Choir. Also in 2003, he was awarded the “World Social Award” for his humanitarian relief work around the world. Previous recipients of the award included the late Pope John Paul II and Steven Spielberg.

In 2004 he released the first song with full band, Indian Ocean, to aid Tsunami relief. But the musical horizon all began to take shape a proper in 2005 after Yusuf started speaking out clearly on the subject. “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. There were other voices saying it was not allowed. But in the end, Music is all part of God's universe; good is good, and bad is bad," he says. "at its best, music can be a nourishment and a source of “healing”.

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, as T. S. Eliot once said, 'We shall not cease our exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

To the amazement of the music world he recorded his first ‘pop’ album since 1978, An Other Cup with a collection of stunning new songs. As he told a BBC interviewer in 2006: “When my son started getting into music and brought the guitar back into the house again, I just eyed it for a few days, when I picked up the guitar again it was like a floodgate, Yusuf said. “Ideas and melodies floated in without effort. The novelty of the whole process, searching for forgotten chords, inspired me; it was like the simple joy of being back as an amateur, with nothing much to lose.”

Last year Yusuf recorded a George Harrison song, The Day The World Gets Round, appeared on Chris Isaak’s TV show, Jay Leno’s Tonight Show and Late Night With Jimmy Fallon , performed at Fairport Convention’s Cropredy festival, and cut a second pop album, Roadsinger. A performance at the Island Records 50th anniversary concert in London left all in no doubt that he was back. Back with all the presence he once brought to a stage. Interestingly, one of the support acts was his son's group, Noxshi.

Born of Greek Cypriot and Swedish ancestry and schooled by Catholic Nuns the troubadour we now know as Yusuf grew up over his parents' Moulin Rouge Restaurant on London’s Shaftesbury Avenue, a short walk from Denmark Street hub of studios, rehearsal rooms, music shops and publishers. Fascinated by songwriting and besotted by Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Nina Simone, Leadbelly and George Gershwin he wanted to establish a musical career and began to perform originally under the stage name Steve Adams. He went with Cat Stevens, in part because a girlfriend said he had eyes like a cat, but mainly because, as he said, "I couldn't imagine anyone going to the record store and asking for 'that Steven Demetri Georgiou album'. And in England, they love animals." Cat not only had a string of his own hits but he penned Here Comes My Baby for The Tremeloes and the timeless The First Cut Is The Deepest, which has been a U.K. hit for four different artists, including Rod Stewart and Sheryl Crow. He was a high flying pop star, with hits such as Matthew & Son and I Love My Dog, until 1968 when his world collapsed. In early ’68, at age 19, he came down with tuberculosis and a collapsed lung and nearly died. During his slow recovery he questioned his traditional beliefs, took up meditation, read about religion, became a vegetarian and embraced a spirituality that had not previously occurred to him.

When he returned to the public eye in 1970, signed to Island Records, it was that life changing experience that was shaping his music. The stark, plaintive, pared-back Mona Bone Jakon album gave him a return hit with Lady D’Arbanville, a song with a madrigal sound not previously heard on radio. There was an introspective singer-songwriter boom or movement about to happen and Cat Stevens was poised to be one of its leaders. The 1971 Tea For The Tillerman album broke him globally, going gold on both sides of the Atlantic. Driving it were two indelible hits, the cautionary tale Wild World and the compelling Father & Son, which actually predated his illness. Cat originally wrote it as part of a proposed musical project with actor Nigel Hawthorn called Revolussia that was set during the Russian Revolution and concerned a peasant boy who wanted to join the revolution against the wishes of his father. The project lapsed as he was hospitalised but when it finally appeared in the seventies it sounded so absolutely in tune with its own times and, like Harry Chapin’s Cats In The Cradle and Mike & the Mechanics' The Living Years, has become a defining song about the eternal nature of parent-child relationships.

The years that followed were a blur for him as he rushed to meet global demand. Indeed he was so frantic that, while in tour in Australia in 1974, he rushed into a Melbourne studio to cut a cover of Sam Cooke’s Another Saturday Night, as his record company was demanding a new single. The 1976 Earth Tour would be his last concert jaunt through North America. As ‘Majikat’ he assembled an ambitious and quite groundbreaking production involving live magicians, synchronised film projection and a large innovative stage set. By then had had a massively successful body of work to draw upon – including the albums Teaser & the Firecat, Catch Bull At Four, Foreigner, Buddha & the Chocolate Box and Numbers. So he drew upon it and then he took his leave from popular music, effectively forever. As years went by and Yusuf Islam became so submerged in education, lecturing and charity activities of his Muslim faith from his North London base only the most optimistic fans believed that they would see him on stage again performing the songs that had become such a part of their lives.

But the Roadsinger has, once again, become just that, and Australia is to be one of his first ports of call, in intimate arena mode – for Paul Dainty, who brought him to Australia those three dozen years ago. Some circles are destined to be completed. For one of music’s most extraordinary artists, the journey continues.

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