Yusuf Islam, the artist who first rose to fame under the name Cat Stevens, has spoken about his religious responses to near-death experiences.
Islam, born Steven Georgiou, is set to release a new autobiography, Cat on the Road to Findout, next month.
Speaking to The Sun ahead of the memoir’s publication, the 77-year-old singer-songwriter recalled several key encounters with his own mortality.
The first came in his early teenage years in the early 1960s, when the London-born artist was out with a friend on the rooftops of Shaftesbury Avenue.
After losing his footing, Islam had to cling “by his fingertips” to a ledge, with “the dark abyss” confronting him.
“It was the moment I first faced up to mortality,” he said, explaining that his friend had hoisted him up, saving his life.
“I already considered myself as a thinker by then and, as such, you can’t help thinking that one day you won’t be here,” he added. “Whether it’s through an accident or illness or by dying in your sleep, it’s all one thing. You leave this world.
“That to me was a problem. I just had to understand more about it.”
Islam’s next near-death experience came in 1969, when he contracted TB. Then, in 1976, he nearly drowned during a swimming excursion off the coast of Malibu, California.
He recalled thinking: “Oh God, if You save me, I’ll work for You!”
After a wave carried him back to shore, Islam took it as a sign that “God was right there”. It precipitated a conversion to the Islamic faith that also saw him change his name and take a 25-year break from his music career.
“I was like, ‘This is actually it’,” he recalled. "Everything I’d been writing in my songs was converging into this one new message. It overtook everything.”
Islam later began performing and recording music again, initially under the name Yusuf Islam, during a period when he would play mostly religious songs and a few entries from his back catalogue.
In 2017, he began performing under the name Yusuf/Cat Stevens, and reintroduced many of his most beloved songs from his early catalogue.
He performed in Glastonbury’s hallowed Legends slot in 2023, pulling from hits such as “The First Cut Is the Deepest”, “(Remember the Days of the) Old Schoolyard”, “Wild World” and “Father and Son”.
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