BBC sounds, music, radio, podcasts Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were castaway to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening. My castaway this week is Yossef Cat Stevens. Timeless is an overused word in pop music, but in his case, it's entirely appropriate.

It's now 50 years since his breakthrough album, Tea for the Tillerman brought him international acclaim and his songs have endured. The first cut is The Deepest Wild World. Father and Son, Moonshadow, Peace Train. They aren't just classics. They're standards adapted from era to era and John Ritter genre. But whether you hear him covered by P.A. Maxie Priest or Dolly Parton, you can't miss his songwriting. His trademark sincerity and curiosity about life's big questions made him one of the most successful British songwriters of his generation.

Those qualities also directed his personal journey after a high profile conversion to Islam at the height of his success. He put his guitar down for over 20 years. Today, he's performing again and says, I see music as a gift and all I'm doing is enjoying that gift with certain presents. You unwrap it and that's it. The thrill is gone after you've ripped off the wrapping paper, but not with music. Music continues to vibrate and means something. Yes.

Cat Stevens, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you very much. Nice to be here.

So we'll talk a lot about music today of and its changing place in your life. What does it mean to you now?

It's a mystical thing still. I mean, we can't put it on this sort of laboratory table and examine it. It's something which permeates our emotions and our soul. Sometimes our intellect, our body moves to it. I mean, there's so many things. But for me, music was a vehicle. It helped propel me towards the direction I wanted to go. In fact, I didn't really know where I was going, but music helped me get there.

Father and son, Wild World, they're classic tracks. Yours and their enormous popularity has endured. And I always wonder what it feels like to write a song like that. You know, the moment you've completed it and you've really nailed it, it is going to be a hit. Do you know it? Yeah.

I mean, I knew when I was writing a hit, more or less, I knew it was happening and I was just excited for other people to hear it, you know, and that would be but I was the first one to hear it, you know. So in a way, you have to be a fan of your own music. You have to be a fan of yourself in a way and do things that please you and and to see the imagination then adopted by, you know, millions of other people.

It's pretty incredible, you know, feeling.

Let's get into it then. Desk number one, what's it going to be and why have you chosen it?

I've chosen America from West Side Story because that was the musical which really blew my mind and opened the door for me musically. Leonard Bernstein, absolute genius. And I've never got over him, you know, over his music. And it was me and my pal. We used to watch this as many times as we could. And of course, Natalie Wood had a little bit to do with my infatuation with the film, you know, and we used to go dancing around the telephone boxes outside my front door.

This is just a great opener for me. I like to be up Miami and I everything. For a small fee in America. Buying on credit is so nice, one look at us and they charge twice. Your washing machine. What will you have, though, to keep clean? America, from the film soundtrack to West Side Story lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and music by Leonard Bernstein. So yes, if Cat Stevens, your parents, ran the Moulin Rouge Restaurant on Shaftesbury Avenue in central London and heart failure to land, your mom was Swedish and your dad Greek Cypriot, how did they meet?

They met in Lyons Corner House in Tottenham Court Road. My father had arrived in London and after a quiet an adventure, I would say the journey from Cyprus, his homeland to Egypt first and living there for many years and then going to the states and then finally coming back through Europe to UK. My mother was an au pair and they met in Lyons Corner House over a cup of coffee. And I think my dad, you know, when he spotted my mum, that was it.

So you were the baby of the family. You called Stephen back then. And the youngest of three, were you expected to help out in the restaurant?

Oh, did I? Of course. Yeah, that was my first job. And of course, I learnt that it was quite well paid to because it wasn't a dad who was paying me, but it was the the customers who were giving me great tips. I was, you know, doing whatever jobs. But the waiter, I think I began about nine or ten. And, you know, I had my waiters jacket, which I did read.

And so, of course, we had as many Cokes as we wanted as many, you know, cakes as my mum could bake. And so it was a pretty good background as a beginning for me.

You were growing up, you know, surrounded by the boys of Soho. You had the Hundred Club just a few doors down Carnaby Street local to you. How much would you say that the place you were growing up shaped your early life? Totally.

Then again, of course, it was not just the place. It was my family. So you had this very sort of Mediterranean, very hot blooded sort of father, you know, who was very passionate. My mother, who was much cooler. She used to sing to herself, you know, and hum. And she would be very melodic. The way she spoke was like musical. Then you had my brother, who was like the philosopher. So he got me thinking about life too early on, I think.

And my sister, who is really loved me and looked after me and, you know, cared, they were both older than me. But then again, as you go out of that kind of sphere, you look at what's going on around you. You see the American dream like, you know, we just heard it. Now I like to live in America. That's the dream. You know, that was dream to be to have all those gadgets and those cars and the Levi jeans.

And I wanted to get as much of it as I could.

It must have felt like you were growing up in the centre of everything it was.

And when I wanted to cool off, I'd just go to the British Museum. You know, when I was skive off school, I went to the mummy department and the Egyptian mummies. And what were you listening to at home? What sort of sounds were you taking in there?

It was my sister's record collection, and I used to love going up to her room at the top floor and shelves and playing her classical records actually were mostly classical.

Porgy and Bess, another musical, which was Gershwin. And then she had a thing called Red River Rock. And so, you know, on came rock and roll and with rock and roll, the first single I ever bought. It was Little Richard. And he inspired the Beatles to. I've never heard anything quite like his voice before, so it just was magical. It launched me into that whole new experience of rock and roll.

Well, I think on that note, we'd better hear your second disc yourself. What's it going to be?

It's got to be Little Richard's tutti frutti.

Wow. Babalu, my bom bom bom. Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba Nathan. I did eat dinner with Tutti Frutti by Little Richard. So, yes, your faith is a huge part of your life. Now, of course, as a kid, you had a Swedish Baptist mother and a Greek Orthodox father, and they sent you to a Roman Catholic school. I think so. Quite a mix of influences going on. Was religious faith important at home?

Because I went to the Roman Catholic school down in Drury Lane, St. Joseph's. I got more of an induction into that than almost anybody. I was obviously not difficult at all to to understand life with God. The only problem was I couldn't join in all the little things and the rituals which Roman Catholics would do because I was officially, you know, Greek Orthodox. So I had to take on an observer status and sort of watch as they always wonder what it that taste like, you know, that little thing they put on the tongue.

But it was an internal experience because I was left to just connect with God, you know, within myself. And that, I think, was very, very important to the background of religious school, which was important.

You also spent a lot of time drawing and went on, of course, to create the artwork for many of your album covers. Did you want to be an artist?

Yeah, I did. I think going back, looking at the influence, it probably was my uncle in Sweden because his name was Hugo Wickman and he was an abstract. Art is one of the first. In fact, you know, in Sweden, you quite moderna out there. And he was the one who really put the pencil in my hand and allowed me to do what I wanted. And, wow, you know, that really got me going, especially the fact that he was pretty good and he was quite famous.

I might make a living out of this. Yeah.

And how did you come to start playing guitar?

You'd have to put it down to the Beatles because they came along and changed everything. The world had turned a corner, you know, with the Beatles when they came on on our television sets, we had to be part of it. And I realized that being an artist, maybe, you know, looking at Van Gogh, he was very rich. He died a bit poor. So maybe that's not the way for me. Maybe I'll get everything I want from this career if I was able to get into the music business.

So I bought myself a guitar and started my own musical dictionary and those are my songs. I couldn't really play other people songs because you had to learn the chords, you had to learn what the words were. And I just thought, no, let's get straight to it. Let's write my own. And did it take long to start doing that? How quickly did you master it? Pretty quick, I would think, you know, because you're that age when you can do anything, you know, and we had a piano in the house, too, so my dad bought my sister and piano and then I transposed what I learnt from the guitar onto the piano.

It's time for another track in that this is your third today already. What is it and why we chosen it for us?

Well, it's got to be the moment that, you know, the sound barrier is blasted open with John Lennon's scream. And I hope that you're going to play the middle bit of this, because this is the most important part where John Lennon does that primal scream. And we all enter a new universe called Twist and Shout. Now they like it. Twist and shout the Beatles. So, yes, if you were just 18 when you had your first hit as Cat Stevens, how would you come by the name?

It was a girlfriend of mine. And, you know, at certain point I was sitting in a certain manner and she said, oh, you look a bit like a cat.

And I thought, Hmm. And then later, of course, when we come to choosing a name to take as a career name, Steven Dimitri Georgiou didn't quite ring right. So I chose Cat and I just kept Stephen at the end.

So I saw some amazing photographs of one of your very early tears. And you were sharing a bill, I'm sure you remember, with Jimi Hendrix and Engelbert Humperdinck. I mean, that must have been quite a dressing room. What are your memories of that time?

Well, there were sort of still vague, you know, because after all, one of the things I said, I was very frightened of going on stage. So I had to sometimes drink a little bit.

And Engelberg turned me on to a horrible concoction called, well, it was brandy and port, but it really worked. I mean, you just had to have one glass of that period. And then, of course, there was Jimi Hendrix. And then we heard first night the thing with the Finsbury Astoria. And then we had there's a fire on stage. But then we found out, of course, that was the first time he ever let his guitar on stage.

And I got to know Jimi very well. And he was a lovely man, very soft, very gentle, very modest in his own way.

In the wake of that first wave of success and all of that kind of crazy hard work, you became seriously ill. You had TB and spent three months in hospital. You were just 19 and was quite serious. Were you scared?

I didn't know if I was going to die. I mean that I thought maybe the doctors are not telling me everything. You know, they're keeping it back from me. And I was stuck in this hospital, King Edward, the seventh hospital in Medhurst. And it was the same hospital that Boris Karloff died. I mean, you know, so you can imagine it was pretty creepy for me. But I started at that point looking elsewhere for my life, you know, for I wanted to do next.

And I started reading Buddhist book. In fact, that was the first time I'd really gone into anything beyond Christianity.

It was a long road to recovery, about a year, I think. How did it change over that time? In the hospital, when I tried to detach myself from the material world, I stopped shaving. I just stopped looking in the mirror.

I was reading more and more. It was a great exploration, great moment in my life when I started stretching out and my soul started expanding. And I was listening to a lot of different music, too. You know, it was all happening at that time. And one of my favorite records, actually, which I think we've chosen now is as one of the songs was Electronic Bach by Walter Carlos, who then became Wendy Carlos.

But anyway, he did this incredible thing where he transposed all of so many classic Bach pieces of music and Beethoven and turned them into electronic music. Wow. That just took me so far out of this world.

On that note, Youssouf, I think we'll hear your next desk, if you don't mind. Would you care to introduce it?

Yeah, it wasn't from Switched-On Bach because later out came a film called Clockwork Orange. And in there was just the most sublime piece of music which I've ever heard. And still to this day, I think it is the number one song ever written, and it's called Ode to Joy by Beethoven.

Si. Ode to Joy, March from A Clockwork Orange by Wendy Carlos of the early seventies was a period of huge creative and commercial success for you. Six albums in about four years, I think. Moneybomb on TV, The Tillerman, Teaser in the Fire Catch Bullet for. And you were a star not just here, but you'd been catapulted to huge success in America. How did you find it going back to West Side Story in America?

You know, it was the place to conquer and I connected. And then the audience in the states connected with me, it got very, very, very big. I was destined to be one of the was it was a superstar time, you know, that was it. But that got a little bit scary. You know, after a while, I was still on my journey. And so I still had that private personal space within me that was in a way more important than what else was going on, because I had made it, you know, I could now live.

So now I had to make some kind of change in my life because it was it was affecting me as a young man who, as you say, was still on a kind of spiritual journey.

Were you happy, do you think?

I was happy in as much as I was able to control my life is quite an extent, you know.

I mean, I could take a holiday, but I didn't I don't know why, because I suppose I was working and I enjoyed work and I enjoyed writing. I enjoyed the whole thing.

But on my inner search, I was expanding. You know, I was looking at how I was looking at numerology, you know, things like that. I thought maybe the Greeks had it right. You know, maybe Pythagoras worked it out.

And I was on the periphery of all these different philosophies and religions while I was, you know, on the road, as you said, you were doing a lot of soul searching and you'd moved to Rio and then followed a life changing moment.

In 1976, you were visiting a friend in Malibu and decided to go swimming. What happened next?

Well, I was an Englishman. I didn't know it wasn't wise to go out at that time of day and go and take a swim. So I did. I decided to turn back and head for shore. And of course, at that point I realized I'm fighting the Pacific and there was no way I was going to win. There was only one thing to do, and that was to pray to the Almighty to save me. And I did. I called up to God and he saved me.

And a little wave came from behind, wasn't big. It was just simply pushing me forward. And the tide somehow had changed and I was able to get back to land. So I was saved. You know, I didn't know what was going to happen next.

Well, we'll find out in a moment. But first, we have to find some time for your next desk. What are we going to hear you and why?

We're going to hear the wind by me. So many people love this song and I love this song because it talks about the future. And in the future, we really do not know. But for sure, God knows. And that's what I wrote. And that's why it's so potentially descriptive of where I am and where I was. I listen to the wind, to the wind of my soul. Where I'll end up well, I think only God really no.

I've said on the set in some. I never wanted water once and never, never, never, never. Cat Stevens and the Wind, a quote from you. Yes, if you can argue with a philosopher, but you can't argue with a good song. And I've got a few good songs, too.

So you became a Muslim in 1977. Conversion is often portrayed as a moment, I think, but it's usually more of a process.

How was it for you after this experience in Malibu? You know, I didn't know, obviously what was going to happen next. And then my brother had visited Jerusalem. He just got married to an Israeli girl and he was holidaying there and he discovered this mosque, you know, in the middle of Jerusalem. He saw the way in which they were praying. So kind of peaceful. It was so beautiful.

We came back to London. He was inspired by me, the Koran, as one of the books, you know, that which I might be interested in. And so that was the beginning, really. That was I would never picked up the Koran. I wouldn't I was not really interested in it because the last thing on my list, in a way, because my father was Greek Cypriot, you know, there was a thing about the Turks and but I was a free spirit.

So I started reading the Koran and that became the gateway. I was still on tour at the same time, going back to my hotel room. It was just the Koran. I was engrossed in this book. And of course, I knew there was going to be some kind of impact about this decision. And in the end, after a year, I couldn't hold myself back. I just had to bow down. You know, this is this is what I was asking for in the ocean.

God save me. I work for you. So. Okay, this is it.

This is the deal because so many fans who have spoken about that, their shock when you appeared to be stepping away from the songs, that meant so much to them.

Well, that was heart tug, you know, because I did feel and well, this is this is very true. I felt a responsibility to my fans.

And the responsibility was actually that I needed to make this step because otherwise I would have been a terrible hypocrite if I have written all those songs and then suddenly found what I was looking for you. No, let's play another song. Let's make another album. Let's do another tour. No, I needed to get real.

And it was the time when I stopped singing and started taking action, you know, with with what I believed. And and and so therefore, I hoped that people would understand that they listen to the song, says, listen to me on the road to find out. It actually says, you know, pick up a good book, kick out the devil, sing. You know, the answer lies within. I thought everybody should get this.

Yeah. And did they? They didn't quite work out like that. Some did, but everybody probably wanted me to keep on making records for now. Some more music.

I think it's your sixth disc today. We've chosen it. When you hear these these things about music and Eslami, you just have to remove the veneer a little bit and you'll see that in the culture of Islam, it was probably the Muslim Spain that introduced the guitar into Europe. You know, and one of the great musicians, I think, from Africa, West Africa, Ali Farka Toure, you know, I mean, God, you can see where the blues came from.

Yeah, I don't mean that. Oh, my God. God. Well. And if you don't find nothing good, I found out. Alanya Ali Farka Toure Yusuf, after your conversion, you became one of the most high profile Muslims in the UK overnight. That must have been a huge responsibility to take on. Yes, it was.

I mean, no, I had a kind of a new audience, if you like, and they were split.

You know, obviously there was the Muslim world which was absolutely infatuated with me because it loved the idea of this pop star, you know, become a Muslim. And, you know, in Turkey, there were big crowds, you know, coming to hear me giving talks and things like that. And I was raised to this kind of pedestal. But then on the other side, there were those who said, well, you know, he's a bit of a traitor, isn't he?

I mean, I turn Turk, if you like, and that I had to deal with. And that was like very, very difficult because at one point I was an icon of the majority. You know, now I'm a part of the minority who I kind of looked down upon and certainly to a large extent misunderstood. People didn't know, for instance, you know, the Muslims believe in Jesus or believe in, you know, Moses and so many things which people are ignorant of.

And there is the problem with the Muslims themselves, you know, where they're unable to express themselves and explain this, that I was used to be a kind of a little bit of a spokesman. You know, I spoke English without an accent and so were useful for certain occasions.

As you mentioned, you were routinely called upon by the media for comment on news stories. And one of them was the fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989. Now, reports at the time suggested that you supported it, something you've since denied. What actually happened?

I wasn't really certainly not prepared or equipped to deal with shock to journalists and the whole way in which the media spins stories. And so I was cleverly framed, I would say, by certain questions, where I couldn't, for instance, rewrite the Ten Commandments. You know, you can't expect me to do that. At the same time, I never actually ever supported the fatwa. I even wrote a whole kind of press statement, which very early on, which the press ignored, completely ignored.

And they went for the one which was written by the journalist who originally broke the story. And so I had to live through that. But the interesting thing is it brought me to kind of study the whole subject of jurisprudence, which again, led me to realize that music where you have certain rules which are dictated to by certain scholars, you have to dig a bit deeper and you find out, no, hang on, this is a an opinion.

An opinion. That's what a fatwa is actually an opinion. And it doesn't come directly from the Koran at all. And so I found out about music. It started opening up for me.

What was it like to play again after not doing so for a couple of decades?

I think it was absolute magic. I mean, because having laid myself fallow for all those years, almost two decades, I had all these ideas. I was music was just flooding through me. Well, the first thing I did was to write a song called Wind East and West. Nobody's heard that yet. But I started, you know, re orbiting the whole idea of writing again and recording again. It's all in destiny and it's all out there waiting for me to do this.

And I knew it was right.

It's time for your seventh disc today, Yusuf.

What are we going to hear and why have you chosen this one kind of speaks for itself because the repercussions of my inability to explain myself, my position, and perhaps not be learned enough in many cases to explain. So don't let me be misunderstood. And there are many reasons for this song. One of them, obviously, because of prejudice that we carry around, we don't know we've got it. The other thing is because Nina Simone was just such an influence on my musical history and my I used to love her.

I used to listen to her so much. And I, first of all, thought she was a guy in a very deep voice. But no, when I found out who she was and then I started listening to her, she's one of my favorite artists of all time. Baby, you understand me now? If sometimes you see that, Imad. Don't you know no one alive can always be an angel? When everything goes wrong, you see some bad.

But I guess the soul whose intentions are. Please don't let me be misunderstood. Nina Simone.

And don't let me be misunderstood yourself these days, your use of Cat Stevens online and happy to embrace your former name. And of course, today we've been looking back at your childhood as Steve in Georgia. How does it feel to reflect on the different stages and phases in your life?

When I finally became a Muslim. I had another role to play, and that is to try and bring peace, you know, between two very beautiful worlds, you know? But the one that I belong to is, yeah, it's Islam. You know, I'm not shy of saying that. But what made me a Muslim was what we find in the West is a certain freedom. And so the freedom to choose is a God given gift. That's the gift.

But then we have to be responsible for the decisions we make. And that's the story really we reflected on your changing names.

I wonder how much you've changed as a person over the time.

Can you not see my gray haired and slightly? I'm obviously now older. I'm now 72. I really never thought I'd ever get to this distance. But thank God, you know, we're still here and we're still working and we're still creating. And I'm very, very, very, very fortunate.

It's almost time to cast you away yourself. How do you think you'll cope in isolation on the island?

I think I'll do very well, to be honest. I mean, that was where I started, you know, back in the hospital alone. I'm reading. Okay, first it was a Buddhist book, but, you know, now it would be the Koran. So I would have that at the same time, you know, there are not many people around, but God's there, so I wouldn't feel lonely. So spiritually, you'd be all right, but what about physically and what about the kind of rigors of island life?

What kind of island are you hoping for? Well, I love the sun. Surely has to be somewhere near the equator, you know, get a balanced day, you know, 7:00 to 7:00, sunrises and sunsets. And that's nice. You know, you need vitamin D. I know that that'll be solved. Water. Yeah. Got lots of that. Yes.

And trees. Well, that's the other thing. I mean, I'd hope I'd have learnt something by that time about farming or what the Tillerman should have taught me somewhere along the line. And I'll be, you know, doing my best to survive and pick those fruits all the way out there in the tree, you know, and of course, you'll have the music to keep.

You go in time for one last desk before we cast you away. What are we going to hear and why are you taking this one with you?

I'd love to hear Stevie Wonder sing as well. I think was the best thing after the Beatles. And, you know, he's a very spiritual man as well, obviously, if you listen to his lyrics. But he really is epitomizes for me the music, music, music, and with such a soul, beautiful.

The Sun, the Earth before been in the road, but not a blooming earlier made. Just as hate knows, love the cure, you can rest your mind so that I'll be loving you always is. Now bit of the mystery of tomorrow, but in passing will grow old every day. No, no, no, know what I said, and I'll be loving you always, Stevie Wonder with us.

So the time has come to cast you away yourself to help you settlin on the island. We will send you away with your desks and three books, the complete works of Shakespeare, the Koran and a book of your choice. What will that be?

Well, I think it would have to be because everything I need really, I suppose ultimately is in the Koran. But to go even further into the human sphere of poetry and prose, I would like to have a book by Rumi and I would probably pick the Manawi, which is an immense work of couplets and poems by Rumi. It's yours.

You can also take a luxury item to help you pass the time more enjoyably on the island. What would you like?

It would be Benedicts vitamins, because I have such a sweet tooth. I mean, you can imagine growing, you know, in a cafe, Coca-Cola, you know, almond cakes and everything all around you. So Bendix pediments is it?

And if you could just save one of your eight tracks from being washed away, which would you go for? I would pick Stevie Wonder and I think that because it was unprepared and not composed so, so perfectly. It's got life. Yeah. Yes.

Of Cat Stevens, thank you very much for sharing your Desert Island Discs with us. Thank you.

Come along sometime. You know, I'm still here. Hello. I really hope you enjoyed that interview with Yusuf Cat Stevens. We've cast many musicians away to our island, including two people whose music was chosen by Yusuf. You can find Stephen Sondheim's program as well as Paul McCartney's choice of Desert Island Discs in our archive three BBC Sounds. Next time, my guest will be the actor and director, Samantha Morton. I do hope you'll join us.

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Andrew Harding is available on BBC sounds. Just search for Bloodlands and download all five episodes now.