Yusuf Islam

Yusuf Islam (born 21 July 1948) is an English singer. He sang many of his early songs when he called himself Cat Stevens. He was born as  Georgiou to a Swedish mother and Greek Cypriot father. He became a Muslim in 1977.Cat Stevens refused entry to US After two years, he took the name of Yusuf İslam. He has sold over 60 million albums around the world since the late 1960s as Cat Stevens or Yusuf İslam.

As a waiter in his father’s cafe, he began writing songs "to escape the mundanity of it all". Chart success was followed by adulation, touring, drug use, confusion, tuberculosis and, in the early 1970s, Islam's changed outlook and an album called Tea For The Tillerman.

Stevens nearly drowned in an accident in Malibu in 1975. 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.'" 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 convert to Islam.

In year 1977 he changed his name to Yusuf Islam upon becoming a Muslim. He stopped playing and recording pop music for almost 30 years, but started performing again in 2006.

He lives with his family in London, England.

 Albums 
As Cat Stevens:
1967. Matthew & Son
1967. New Masters
1970. Mona Bone Jakon
1970. Tea for the Tillerman
1971. Teaser and the Firecat
1972. Catch Bull at Four
1973. Foreigner in my yard
1974. Buddha and the Chocolate Box
1974. These silly imagrents
1975. Numbers
1977. Izitso
1978. Back to Earth
2004. Majikat

As Yusuf Islam:
1995. The Life of the Last Prophet
1999. Prayers of the Last Prophet
2000. A Is for Allah
2001. Bismillah
2003. I Look I See
2005. Indian Ocean
2006. Footsteps in the Light
2006. An Other Cup
2007. Yusuf’s Cafe Session
2009. Roadsinger

References

Category:1948 births
Category:Living people
Category:Musicians from London
Category:English singers
Category:English guitarists
Category:English rock musicians
Category:Synth-pop singers
Category:Multi-instrumentalists
Category:Converts to Islam