The Tragic Story Of Cat Stevens

Outcast alienated and almost literally lost at sea before becoming Outcast again. Here are some

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things about Cat Stevens that you may not know. Stephen Demeter Georgio was born in 1948, to a Greek Cypriot father and a Swedish mother. Kat Stevens was exposed to many cultures and religions at From an early age, her parents owned and lived above a Greek restaurant in London's Soho district, inspired by big Greek weddings, Nina Simone and the musicals she listened to on the other side of the house. the street. The young Stevens soon developed an aptitude for music. He began learning piano and guitar inspired by Lead Belly and the Beatles, he later admitted it was a lonely life with his unique heritage isolating him from his peers.

He dreamed of becoming a painter or cartoonist, but struggled with less creative subjects and became something of a troublemaker, he told Stereo Review magazine in 1972 at school. I was the artist kid who got beat up, but I realized he never felt particularly masculine telling Melody Maker magazine. I saw these idols like Spartacus and Kirk Douglas and I thought that's not who I am when he was very young, I never really felt it. of one sex or another, I was gradually brainwashed into thinking he was a boy, but maybe when I write a song or a

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about a relationship there are many more areas to it.

Cat Stevens began performing songs in local bars in the early '60s under the name Steve. Adams and it wasn't long before he caught the attention of local record producer Mike Hurst, who signed him to Deca Records, according to a 2002 interview with Australian Women's Weekly. Stevens chose the catchier stage name Cat Stevens because a girlfriend once told him that he had cat eyes. In 1966 he had scored his first hit with the unconventional 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 big hit for soul singer p p Arnold. and many 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 found himself thrown into a hectic world of non-stop producing and performing that year. He embarked on a tour with Jimi Hendrix that introduced him to a destructive lifestyle that involved smoking drugs and alcohol. In a 2020 interview with his tutor, he admitted to drinking to alleviate 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 and the only way to do that was to be intoxicated. Cat Stevens' first album, Matthew and Son, was an immense commercial success on Deca Records under the direction of producer Mike Hurst.

Naturally, Hearst was eager for something similar. tracking and that's where the problem started, as Stevens told voxpop in 1972, it's not that easy because songs aren't like that, life isn't like that, you just don't do the same thing over and over again, that's how it was. just a business after a while the whole musical element that made me want to create music was suddenly put aside I even looked for a more authentic folk sound as Hearst pushed for more polished pop songs with heavy instrumentation in 2004 Stevens recalled to Classic magazine Rock there There was a group of musicians in the studio who would perform your own music for you.

It seemed to me that I had to have more control. The result of this tension was Steven's second album, 1967's New Masters, which did not live up to the expectations of its predecessor Hearst. He later admitted to making mistakes by noting the intense legal battle that followed by telling renowned music journalist Chris Charlesworth that we made the second album with lawyers actually in the studio. It was horrible. Hearst explained to Cherry Red Records in 2020 that everything was ultimately resolved out of court and Stevens. He 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 one could do. I think I did it after years of working too hard, smoking and drinking too much, and enduring a stressful legal battle with him. At his record label he fell seriously ill, lost an alarming amount of weight, and developed a persistent cough. He finally sought medical attention after he began coughing up blood. Stevens was diagnosed with advanced tuberculosis, which had caused a collapsed lung and severe pneumonia, and he was immediately hospitalized. I spent three months in intensive care undergoing painful lung procedures and about a year recovering from the life-threatening illness Stevens told Charlesworth about.

Tuberculosis ruined my career and ended my dream. I was back on Earth stuck in the hospital and that was a big lesson. I had a lot of time to reflect that death was on my mind during his long convalescence. He wrote about 40 songs that would provide the material for his next three-hour albums, the '70s' Mona Bone Jacking and Tea for the Tillerman, and the 1971 teaser, and the fire cat in. In 2021, he told Goldmine magazine that the despair-filled song Trouble was directly inspired by his fight against tuberculosis. Its title and lyrics are a play on television, 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 she recalls Darbinville in an interview with famous groupie Pamela Debarr in the book Let's Spend the Night Together. He found Stevens approachable and became close to him after the two rode a roller coaster together and hung out for about two years watching the moon in 1969. He landed and spent time in his red-painted bedroom that contained only a bed and a piano. Darbinville's career often required her to travel extensively and, eventually, into the arms of Mick Jagger, heartbroken by her, Stevens wrote the haunting ballad Lady Darwinville in which she professes her love for his dead body. .

Darbinville admitted to giving I cried the first time I heard it because that's when I knew she was really done. Steven's relationship with darwinville also inspired a few other songs, including Maybe Your Right and, most notably, the sweet and heartfelt '70s Wild World, which became a huge hit. for the newly reinvented Steven ends when he was 25 years old Cat Stevens went into voluntary exile having become a superstar with several successful albums he began to feel lost and uninspired in the hustle and bustle of excessive fame and suffered an identity crisis I mean I left a business musical in a way, not just music, but because he wanted to fix my life, music is a luxury, donate his tax money to Children's Charities instead of the British government, he moved to Brazil and did some soul-searching, he he said to Melody.

Maker Magazine in 1975. I had a house there and I was 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 off his characteristic long curly hair and beard becoming virtually unrecognizable and visited politically and socially problematic places such as Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Kenya to explore his humanity again. The result was 1973's Foreigner and an even more straightforward departure from his previous work, the album focused on the theme of being misunderstood and Stevens. He recorded songs with local musicians and produced the entire album himself, he told Melody Maker.

To be able to write with feelings, you must know yourself, writing has to be a matter with yourself and you must be able to live with yourself and overcome all your difficulties. Hang-Ups and I did it in 1976, the same year his explosive magikat Earth Tour Cat Stevens experienced a turning point in his life alone on a beach in Malibu, California, decided the water looked appealing and went swimming where he was left. caught. in a dangerous rip current that was quickly dragging him out to sea, as he told michael krasny from kqed, after swimming for about half an hour I couldn't get back to shore, at that point there was just no one to help me, I said oh .

God if you save me I will work for you and at that moment a wave no matter how big it was came behind me and pushed me forward and suddenly I had all the energy I needed it was a miracle shortly after Stephen's near death experience . His older brother gave him a copy of the Quran, he told the Independent in 2020, it became his gateway after a year. I could not contain myself. I had to bow in 1977. Cat Stevens shocked the world when he converted to Islam and again in 1978 when he changed his name to Yusuf Islam Stevens chose the name Yusuf after reading about the Quranic prophet Joseph and finding the parable in which he sells it to him as a commodity similar to his own experiences in the music industry, but the biggest surprise came in 1979 when he decided to stop making mainstream music, even though being a musician was not expressly prohibited in Islam.

Stevens was already disenchanted with the music industry, fame and the Rockstar lifestyle and instead chose to embrace a more conventional existence, Stevens told Chris Anderson during an interview with Ted in 2017. So if you heard my lyrics, you would have heard that I was on a path and I was definitely searching, he continued and if I was sincere in what I wrote, it meant that if I found something, I would have to grab it, otherwise. I would be a hypocrite to myself and others and that would be a bad example totally committed to his new Faith Stevens sold all his guitars and donated the money to charity in 1979 Kat Stevens married Faucia Mubarak Ali Native of Pakistan with a master's degree in Many in the literature believed it was a traditional arranged marriage, but Stevens set the record straight on his personal website by saying he had two potential girls he was interested in marrying.

He had no intimate relationship with any of them before I married, so by Western standards and my own past hi

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. This was a marked departure from the norm, the couple has five children together, four daughters and one 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 representative of his father, sadly as Stevens noted on his personal website that his sixth child died at only 13 days old due to heart disease. The couple have been married for 44 years as of 2023 and split their time between London and Dubai.

In 1988, author Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses a. Magical realism novel considered offensive to Islam. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, imposed a deadly fatwa on Rushdie, effectively 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 she was asked about the fight while following a speech at Kingston University that appeared to support him, Stevens told Rolling Stone that her university comments were taken out of context, stating that she was simply directly quoting texts from the Scriptures; He later made similar statements on the Australian television program The Jeffy Robertson Hypotheses.

After that, he explained on his website that the incriminating television interview was the result of editing combined with his British sense of humor by writing "I never called for the death of Salman Rushdie nor did I go back to the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini and I still don't." I publish the book." It destroyed harmony between peoples and created an unnecessary international crisis. He also claims to have issued a statement immediately afterwards clarifying his opposition to the fatwa, but this received little press anyway. The public outrage was great. Steven's music was banned from many radio stations.

Destroyed DJ. his albums aired and 10,000 Maniacs removed their version of their song Peace Train from his catalog. Rushdie made his feelings about Cat Stevens clear. I know there was a time when I was a college student but I had a copy of Tea for the Tillerman. I know, but he's not, he hasn't beaten Cat Stevens in a long time. The terrorism accusations did not end there. Cat Stevens was denied entry to Israel in both 1990 and 2000 due to accusations that he had donated money to Hamas, an Islamic terrorist organization during a visit in 1988. Stevens denied these accusations stating that he was only providing humanitarian aid. .

I have never knowingly supported Hamas or directed money to them and have used my charity around the world to help victims of war and natural disasters, particularly children and orphans, in September 2004 while flying. to Washington DC to meet with Dolly Parton for a collaboration the name Yusuf Islam was identified on the no-fly list his plane was diverted to Maine where he was questioned by national security agents and deported back to London Stevens told ABC News that believes it was a case of mistaken identity as he was repeatedly asked to spell his name; He has since returned to the US severaltimes without incident