He was called "the artist boy" and mentions that "I was beat up, but I was noticed". He attended other local West End schools, where he says he was constantly in trouble, and did poorly in everything but art. With interests in both art and music, he and his mother moved to Gävle, Sweden, where he attended primary school (Solängsskolan) and started developing his drawing skills after being influenced by his uncle Hugo Wickman, a painter. Stevens emphasised that the advent of West Side Story in particular affected him, giving him a "different view of life". He would escape at times from his family responsibilities to the rooftop above their home, and listen to the tunes of the musicals drifting from just around the corner from Denmark Street, which was then the centre of the British music industry. Inspired by the popularity of the Beatles, at 15 he extended his interest to the guitar, persuaded his father to pay £8 for his first instrument, and began playing it and writing songs. Georgiou developed an interest in piano at a fairly young age, eventually using the family baby grand piano to work out the chords, since no one else there played well enough to teach him. His parents divorced when he was about eight years old, but they continued to maintain the family restaurant and live above it.Īlthough his father was Greek Orthodox and his mother was a Baptist, Georgiou was sent to St Joseph Roman Catholic Primary School, Macklin Street, which was closer to his father's business on Drury Lane. All family members worked in the restaurant. The family lived above the Moulin Rouge, a restaurant that his parents operated on the north end of Shaftesbury Avenue which was a short walk from Piccadilly Circus in the Soho theatre district of London. Steven Georgiou, born on 21 July 1948 in the Marylebone area of London, was the youngest child of a Greek Cypriot father, Stavros Georgiou (1900–1978), and a Swedish mother, Ingrid Wickman. His second North American tour since his resurgence, featuring 12 shows in intimate venues, began on 12 September 2016. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2009, he released the album Roadsinger, and in 2014, he released the album Tell 'Em I'm Gone, and began his first US tour since 1978. With that release and subsequent ones, he dropped the surname "Islam" from the album cover art – using the stage name Yusuf as a mononym. In 2006, he returned to pop music – releasing his first album of new pop songs in 28 years, titled An Other Cup. He has received two honorary doctorates and awards for promoting peace from two organisations founded by Mikhail Gorbachev. He was embroiled in a long-running controversy regarding comments which he made in 1989 about the death fatwa on author Salman Rushdie. In 1979, he auctioned all of his guitars for charity and left his musical career in order to devote himself to educational and philanthropic causes in the Muslim community. In December 1977, Stevens converted to Islam, and he adopted the name Yusuf Islam the following year. In 2007 he received the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Song Collection from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. His other hit songs include "Father and Son", "Wild World", "Peace Train", "Moonshadow", and "Morning Has Broken". He earned two ASCAP songwriting awards in 20 for "The First Cut Is the Deepest", and the song has been a hit for four artists. His 1972 album Catch Bull at Four spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard 200, and fifteen weeks at number one in the Australian ARIA Charts. His musical style consists of folk, pop, rock, and Islamic music. Stevens' albums Tea for the Tillerman (1970) and Teaser and the Firecat (1971) were both certified triple platinum in the US by the RIAA. His 1967 debut album reached the top 10 in the UK, and the album's title song "Matthew and Son" charted at number 2 on the UK Singles Chart. Yusuf Islam (born Steven Demetre Georgiou 21 July 1948), commonly known by his former stage name Cat Stevens, is a British singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist.
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