YUSUF Islam

Articles

A Reluctant Spokesman Makes a Keynote Address

Financial Times
21st March, 2005

The high-profile deportation of an undesirable alien from the US on the grounds of suspicion of terrorist sympathies is not obviously a laughing matter. But when it happened to Yusuf Islam late last year, it was the absurdity of the story that hit home, not least in the country that was supposedly under threat. “I tell you it’s a real success story in the war on terror,” riffed Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. “You know, we finally got the guy that wrote ‘Peace Train’.”

The guy who wrote “Peace Train”, 56 knocking on 35, slightly built and appropriately gentle of manner, today raises a quizzical smile when discussing the incident. He is, for the first time in many years, promoting a new single, and allowing himself to enjoy the experience. He gives the impression he would rather not discuss issues such as the war on terror, but he finds himself a reluctant spokesman, and tries hard to be gracious about his unseemly ejection.

Islam, the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens, was flying to the US with his daughter when his plane was suddenly diverted to Bangor, Maine. A team of security agents boarded the aircraft and, after some bumbling over the spelling of his first name worthy of an opera buffa, demanded his removal. He was subsequently questioned and sent back to London. A later statement from the department of homeland security talked of “concerns about activities that could potentially be related to terrorism”.

Other than that, he says, there has been a “wall of silence” over the incident. “To be honest, I have no interest in asking for a visa to go back to the United States,” he says calmly. “I deserve an apology. But I don’t know how long it will take to get one. It was an insult. You can get some things wrong, but this was horrendously wrong.” He says he never felt so glad to arrive back home. “I was delighted to come back to the UK, with the support I got from the Foreign Secretary, and then Special Branch welcomed me at Heathrow. One of them was wearing a turban. It was amazing, and so heartwarming.”

True home is the very heart of London, where Islam was brought up in the upper part of Shaftesbury Avenue, and where his parents – Greek Cypriot father, Swedish mother – ran a restaurant. He was sent to a Roman Catholic school, but life in the wild West End – “all lights, hurried people and black taxis” – lured him towards the entertainment world. A name change and a spell in art school later, the pop star Cat Stevens had his first hit.

He was a prolific and skilled writer. When I apologise for arriving late for the interview, having been trapped in an Underground fiasco for half an hour, I tell him it had felt like a “Matthew and Son” moment “Up at eight, can’t be late, for a cup of cold coffee and a piece of cake.” Even that lightweight pop song was imbued with social commentary, I say. He is a little dismissive. “It was part of the 1960s, that movement against the work regime, when we were looking for a better social balance.”

His own balance was seriously disturbed when he contracted tuberculosis at the age of 19. The singer-songwriter who came out of recovery was a changed man – introspective, mellowed. His new songs chimed with the more contemplative times, and he became an even bigger star. But there was a nagging feeling of unfulfilment. Then his brother brought home a copy of the Koran, and Cat Stevens converted to Islam, changed his name again and stopped making music.

I ask him why he felt it necessary to take such a Draconian step. Was it a religious imperative? “When I read the Koran there was nothing about the subject, it was all to do with finding your perspective in life and knowing what your purpose is. And that was big news to me.

“I asked the imam about music, and he didn’t see a problem with it, but said perhaps I should withdraw from performing and carry on making records. But there were other voices, different schools of thought, and the hard line was that music was connected with that whole environment of seduction and fornication that you find in the music business, and in the economic machinery that runs it.”

So he became a hard-liner?

“Oh yeah, I was radical. Like most converts are. You just have to look at Muhammad Ali in his early days.”

But his music had already taken a spiritual turn, couldn’t he have developed it in that direction?

“But it had become a ritual. You have a contract which demands yet another album, and that is when the artist becomes chained to the business.

“Perhaps I lost a little bit of spark, and at the same time I was on a spiritual search. When I found what I was looking for, the motivation to keep on writing songs didn’t exist any more.”

We would probably barely have heard of Yusuf Islam again were it not for a set of historical circumstances that pitted parts of the Islamic world against the west, and Islam suddenly found himself in an uncomfortable limbo. His first appearance in the media as a spokesman for his new religion carried the appalling charge that he supported the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie. He will not discuss that issue these days (“it is nothing to do with me and nothing to do with this interview”) but is on record as saying he was badly misrepresented, having merely explained, rather than supported, the Islamic law on blasphemy.

I ask him if he had felt shafted by the media. “When fame is cast upon you, you find you become a spokesman. And I wasn’t very good at it. I was very happy to try and fix my life and try to become a better person. But when it got political, it created a distortion. And the media don’t want to hang around for the subtleties in all this. They want headlines.

“I became a victim of a great wave of misunderstanding that was created initially through the Iranian revolution. I had given up my managers, my PR people, all the trappings that had guided my public persona. I was just little old me, faced with all those questions.

“And it wasn’t suitable that all those questions were directed at me. It was probably an entrapment as well. There were people out there much brighter than me, much more savvy than me, and they were happy to rope me into all kinds of things that I was nothing do with.”

I say that he must have buried his head in his hands on 9/11. “It was a disaster. It was an offence against the true spirit of Islam. But others have manipulated it to try and cause even more damage. Which is absolutely reckless.”

Happier matters: today sees the release, via download only, of a new Yusuf Islam single, “Indian Ocean”. The price – it costs 69p (about $1.30) per download – goes to victims of the Tsunami tragedy. It is a wry story with a positive twist, prompted by Islam’s holiday in the region a year earlier (“I could have been one of those tourists.”) Its added significance is that it marks his return to the pop business.

Prompted by his son, Islam picked up a guitar again last year for the first time since the hard-line days, and enjoyed his “dip into the pool of creativity”. Will he make a new album? “I’m not in favour of thinking about albums,” he says slowly and tentatively, but no one should bet against it.

This is the man who wrote the lovely and wise “The First Cut is the Deepest” when he was a teenager. That was not the song of a young man, I say. “That’s what my brother said. He said he knew I would make it when I first sang it, at an outpost club up north somewhere, and suddenly all the girls started leaving their boyfriends and veering towards the stage.”

And the pop star in Yusuf Islam laughs heartily.

Articles

A Reluctant Spokesman Makes a Keynote Address