Cat On The Road To Findout by Yusuf/Cat Stevens review fame, faith and charity

"When Cat Stevens changed his name to Yusuf Islam and announced his conversion to the Muslim faith and retirement from music in the late 70s, Bob Dylan apparently remarked that he had finally stopped trying to be the prophet and begun to follow The Prophet. It's a quote that Islam reproduces in his autobiography, viewing it as a benediction, but it also tells you something about the music that made him globally famous."

"Their constituency, as Islam perceptively notes, was the college generation, away from home, lonely and trying to find their place in the university of high academic expectations. But none were as obsessed with spirituality as Cat Stevens, with his album titles that namechecked Buddha or referenced Zen poems, his conceptual song cycles based on numerology, his lyrical exhortations to kick out the devil and get to heaven, get a guide, and Morning Has Broken, the hymn he made a 1972 US No 1."

"Living above his parents' Shaftesbury Avenue cafe, he enjoyed a street-loose childhood: the early chapters depict a London baffling to the modern reader, in that ordinary people could actually afford to live in W1. Equally surprising is Islam's love of his primary school. When a 1950s nun-run Catholic school appears in an autobiography, it's almost invariably a source of unending misery, but no; he's enraptured by the mysticism of mass, and haunted by the suggestion that angels start taking note of your misdeeds."

Cat Stevens changed his name to Yusuf Islam, converted to Islam and retired from music in the late 1970s. Bob Dylan reportedly remarked that Stevens had stopped trying to be the prophet and begun to follow The Prophet. The early 1970s pop charts featured many sensitive folky singer-songwriters popular with the college generation. Stevens stood out for spiritual obsession through album titles invoking Buddha and Zen, numerology-based song cycles, and the US No.1 Morning Has Broken. He grew up above his parents' cafe, loved his primary school and absorbed Catholic mass mysticism despite youthful misdeeds and a pill-popping mod phase.

Read at www.theguardian.com