Yusuf Islam, ex-Cat Stevens, returns to his book on a life freed by death

The British singer Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, tells how several face-to-face with death marked his life and nourished his spiritual quest. In an interview with Sunon the occasion of the upcoming release of his autobiography Cat on the road to findoutthe 77-year-old artist returns to three decisive episodes: a fall that narrowly avoided on a London roof in adolescence, a tuberculosis in 1969, then a quasi-Noyade off Malibu in 1976.

“Oh God, if you save me, I will work for you!” He remembers having implored before a wave brought him back miraculously to the beach. This moment, he said, sealed his conversion to Islam and led him to put his musical career in parentheses for 25 years. These experiences, explains Yusuf Islam, led him to see death not as an end but as a transition. “Whether by an accident, an illness or in his sleep, it’s always the same passage,” he says. A reflection that irrigates a large part of its songs, from its beginnings in the 1960s to its most recent compositions.

After two decades devoted to spirituality, education and humanitarian action, the interpreter of Father and Son has gradually resumed the studios and scenes. Under the name of Yusuf/Cat Stevens, he today revisits his great classics – Wild World,, Moonshadow,, The First Cut is the Deepest – while offering new works nourished by this inner quest. In 2023, he confirmed this return to the foreground by occupying the prestigious “Legends” niche of the Glastonbury Festival, hailed by a multigenic audience. A way to show that, behind his timeless walks, remains an artist inhabited by the same urgency: to understand the meaning of life and death.