Described as his ‘50th Anniversary Tour’ it sounded like he had been doing the rounds for years and was now about to give the legendary dead horse a final flogging.
In fact in Yusuf/Cat Stevens case the opposite is true.
A multi-million album selling artist in the early 70s, Cat Stevens became a follower of Islam in 1977 changed his name to Yusuf and abandoned the music industry. He is now back playing the
music that made his name really for the first time since then.
Not surprisingly the audience at the Apollo, starved of their hero’s live appearances for so long, lapped it up - applauding the opening chords of familiar songs and cheering at
the end of them.
This is obviously great stuff for the die hard fan but was 68-year-old Yusuf actually any good?
It’s pleasing to report he undoubtedly was. The first half of the show saw him wittily narrating the story of his early life interspersed with the relevant songs like his first big hit ‘Matthew
and Son’ and the much covered ‘The First Cut is the Deepest’.
At the start of the second half he hit the motherlode of the early 70s and his most successful albums and wisely cut back on the chat. Stevens was a terrific song writer
combining beautiful melody with meaningful and poignant lyrics and songs like Moonshadow and ‘Oh Very Young’ shone out from over the years.
He used the words of ‘Father and Son’ to musically explain his conversion to Islam and the song got the biggest cheer of the night.
Still in fine voice and helped by some excellent backing musicians the two and half hour set slid by.
His encore included another much covered track ‘Wild World’ and the hauntingly lovely ‘Morning Has Broken’.
All over a delightful evening but you were left wondering how many more great songs there might have been if he had not put down his guitar all those years ago.
[warringtonguardian.co.uk, 16. November 2016]
Yusuf / Cat Stevens thrills Newcastle City Hall with his classic songbook
The celebrated singer-songwriter
made a triumphant return to Newcastle
with a wonderful retrospective show
Deep into this set packed with his own wonderful works, this celebrated singer-songwriter delivers a heart-stopping version of somebody else’s sweet soul song.
His voice is deeper, huskier, sometimes cracked now (it does his songs no harm at all) and on a luminous People Get Ready, it also fills out, resonates. It almost doesn’t sound like him,
paradoxically reminding us that he’s one of pop’s great vocalists.
His own Father and Son and an uncontainably joyful If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out quickly follow, seemingly positioning these great songs in the pop canon, side-by-side with Curtis Mayfield’s
masterpiece.
The whole show is a retrospective with its inherent taking stock and feels like it’s also about re-establishing this body of work and its meaning after years away from the spotlight.
As such this evening feels like a big event, as he mixes life story and song, tracing his journey from Cat Stevens to Yusuf and his spiritual journey along the way.
The stage set is remarkable in itself and invites us into Cat’s Attic (the name of the tour), an imagined version of his childhood London home above a restaurant.
The top of the house is built on stage, opened for us to look around, with posters of West Side Story and one of himself in his starry 70s days, a globe, a packed bookcase. Outside stands a
street lamp and the chimney is smoking throughout, the moonlight pierces the loft window. It’s like a mini opera stage.
And there’s a little bit of gentle stagecraft on display. In this homely setting he actually puts on a Beatles LP for a burst of Twist and Shout, as if playing his favourite tune for friends.
There are other unusual moments – he reads a speech from a Disney character from the film Zootopia– but mainly this is about his wonderful songs set to the backdrop of his life.
Backed by two excellent musicians, these works are mainly simple, delicate, full of yearning. They skip to a different beat, many greeted with an audible intake of breath from this audience. Some
songs sound so sad, but they’re never without hope.
Moonshadow, First Cut Is The Deepest, Matthew and Son and Oh Very Young are beautiful, first single I Love My Dog gets an airing on its 50th anniversary.
A Wild World reminds me just how many people have covered his songs, a hallmark of the classic (it transcends genre, see the reggae versions), in the same way his own tributes to other
songwriters confirm their status.
He explains how he picked up his guitar again after years, realising he still had a “job to do”. Happily that job sounds like it involves exposing songs like Peace Train to the celebration they
deserve, stirring moments that can lift you from the mundane and make you feel that everything’s going to be all right.
[chroniclelive.co.uk, 19. November 2016]
A humble, humbling and heart-warming show from Yusuf/Cat Stevens - review
Still got it: Yusuf/Cat Stevens charms the fans at the Shaftesbury Theatre
It’s 50 years since the whimsical track I Love My Dog introduced a new teenage pop sensation to the world. And, in an evening that felt like a
homecoming, taking place less than 100 yards from where it was written (above his father’s Soho restaurant), one of pop music’s most divisive figures gave us the songs that made him
deservedly famous.
Cat Stevens became Yusuf Islam in 1978, when he turned his back on the music industry to dedicate his life to Islam. He began recording and performing again 10 years
ago, continuing to work under his new first name. But now, he has allowed his past incarnation back in, billing himself as both Yusuf and Cat Stevens.
This Shaftesbury Theatre gig marked the end of the Cat’s Attic tour, and proved a stripped-back musical celebration that combined storytelling and reflection with all the songs so
beloved in his Sixties and Seventies heyday. Part of the stage was dressed to look like that cosy central-London attic where he grew up, scattered with props that evoked heart-warming
stories. Among them were a poster of West Side Story, in recognition of his early crush on Natalie Wood, along with the blue number 33 jersey that he often wore in his youth.
Autobiographical show: Yusuf/Cat Stevens and band at the Shaftesbury Theatre
Early on in the set, following an effervescent cover of the The Beatles’ first single, Love Me Do, and with his tongue firmly in his cheek, he ambled over to a
record player and a pile of Beatles records, muttering “Let’s see if I remember how to do this”. When he put pin to vinyl, Twist and Shout kicked in over the
speakers, leaving a grinning Yusuf to dance to the sound of John Lennon’s rasping vocals.
The 68-year-old looked laid-back in a pair of sunglasses and a grey T-shirt and matching jacket, his unmistakable, soulful voice sounding remarkably unchanged over the years. He spent most of the
show either standing with his acoustic guitar or perched on a chair, skilfully backed on guitar and bass by Eric Appapoulay and Kwame Yeboah. And, to the delight of the crowd, he was also joined
for several songs by his long-time guitarist and back-singer, Alun Davies.
The show acted as an autobiography, as Yusuf worked his way through his life telling anecdotes of his playful chagrin at being beaten to number one by The Monkees, his hard-living days on tour
with Jimi Hendrix, and subsequent contraction of tuberculosis and the profound effect it had on his songwriting, transforming him from a pop act to a mature folk rocker.
Positive and self-effacing: Cat Stevens at the Shaftesbury Theatre
He also retold that now well-known story of how religion became such an important part of his life: swimming in the ocean, he suddenly found himself too far
from the shore and prayed desperately to be saved, just before a wave pushed him back to safety.
Although he never uttered the words Islam or Muslim on stage, Yusuf did address the backlash that followed his conversion (“I took a lot of hard punches”).
His apparently supportive comments on the fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989 will forever be a black mark on his career, though he has repeatedly distanced himself from them since, and that
period was not mentioned here.
Instead, the show maintained a positive, often self-effacing tone, delivering messages of peace, tolerance and hope, occasionally from the most
unusual of places – the preamble to Peace Train saw Yusuf read an uplifting speech from the Disney film Zootropolis that had charmed him when he watched it on a flight to the US
(“They let me in there now, you know,” he quipped, in reference to his being banned in from 2006-2008).
His audience were very willing to forgive: there were regular shouts of adoration, and the opening bars of hits such as Father and Son and Moonshadow were met with delighted sighs.
Yusuf was near faultless in performance, exuding that relaxed, unbridled charisma that makes it all look so easy. This was never truer than in the sweetly moving rendition of
Morning Has Broken with which he closed the show – a show both humble and humbling, and exactly what he needs to build a path back into mainstream music.
[telegraph.co.uk, 21. November 2016]
Yusuf was once more Cat Stevens
at Shaftesbury Theatre
and the audience was purring
There can’t be many artists who absent themselves from the public stage for 37 years and then return to record again and play to packed houses.
But then, there aren’t many performers such as Yusuf/Cat Stevens
(his surname Islam was noticeably absent from the posters and programme) who ended his Cat’s Attic 50 year anniversary tour at a theatre “literally a stone’s throw
away”, he told us, from where he was brought up in Shaftesbury Avenue.
In words and music, he then took us on a musical and spiritual journey including teenage escapades (“Me and my mate Andy used to climb the roofs at night, including
the one at this theatre”), an early infatuation with Natalie Wood in West Side Story (which gave him the chance to sing a touching version of “Somewhere”) and the time he spent listening
to his sister’s record collection in the attic, which provided the stage setting for this very personal and – despite the size of the theatre – intimate evening.
Hits followed, including “I Love My Dog” (“I had to tell my publisher that I’d pinched the tune from someone, would you believe, called Yusef”)
to “Matthew and Son”, both released 50 years ago and both of which sounded just as fresh today as they did then.
He toured with Hendrix (“we ingested some strange substances”) before a bout of TB landed him in hospital and early spiritual awakening from a book on
Buddhism given to him by singer Barry Ryan. A new record label and a new album followed, which gave him the chance to introduce long-time collaborator and guitarist Alun Davies on to stage for
note-perfect renditions of “Wild World”, “Where Do the Children Play”, “Oh Very Young” and, of course, “Moonshadow”.
The audience did purr
Yusuf was once more Cat, and the audience were purring.
He then took us through sombre times in Rio “I was in a very dark place” through to that fateful morning swim in Malibu in 1976 where, weak and about to
drown, he prayed for deliverance, and found it (“a little wave pushed me from behind and I found my strength again”).
He became a Muslim the following year and played his last live show in 1979. Then began that long absence, until one day his son brought a guitar into the house and Yusuf Islam, as he now was,
began to perform and record again in 2006.
Less textured, more expressive voice
The voice is now a little more textured, less youthful but more expressive. The musicianship, whether on guitar or piano, just as impressive, aided, as he was, by the understated but superb vocal
and instrumental backing of Eric Apppoulay on guitar and Kwame Yeboah on bass and percussion.
Towards the end of the concert, after gently fielding repeated calls of “I love you Cat” from the audience (“I love you, too,” he’d reply) he told us that
love and respect were the answer with a borrowed speech from the Disney film Zootopia and a potent version of his more recent song “Maybe There’s A World” that segued into the Beatles’ “All You
Need Is Love”.
As the audience, stood, clapped and cheered, he came back for a quiet encore (“You can all sit down now”) that included a hymn he told us he’d found in the
religious section of Foyles bookshop, “Morning Has Broken”.
It was the perfect finish to a night of nostalgia but also one of renewed faith and admiration in a supreme singer and storyteller.
CaTNiP
