Yusuf/Cat Stevens at Glastonbury in 2023; and a young Cat Stevens in 1972

WHO can forget young Cat Stevens’ emotional song The First Cut Is The Deepest, combining wonderful melody and lyrics about long-lost first love? It was written when he was just 17 back in 1967 and later sung by, among others, PP Arnold and Rod Stewart.

I was in my teens when I heard it and remember how his gentle, soft but passionate voice haunted me throughout those early years. Now, nearly 60 years later, I’ve just completed reading his huge 531-page book Cat On The Road To Findout, and feel I know him better than ever.

I’ve never met Yusuf/Cat Stevens, as he now calls himself, but remember once eating a delicious Greek salad at his parents’ café, The Moulin Rouge in Shaftsbury Avenue. As a child he helped out at the café, often dressed smartly as a waiter in white jacket in the years before his music career took off.

Yusuf’s book partly celebrates London’s West End in the “Swinging Sixties,” a time when music blared out from shops, stores and arcades onto the streets. Music was everywhere.

He remembers naughty things as a child in the West End like ringing doorbells and running off, or dropping stink bombs into crowded restaurants. (That didn’t include his parents’ eatery, obviously, he says). He and his mates even occasionally bunked into cinemas.

His favourite café (other than the Rouge) was The Lorelei, an Italian, which he describes as squeezed in between Greek Street and Frith Street, in the heart of Soho. He’d go there regularly with his friend Andy to listen to the latest sounds. “Frothy coffee was the only thing we drank as we sat for hours, elongating our sips and listening to the riveting stream of hits radiating from the robotic music machine.”

In 1966 there was an early song called Here Comes My Baby. I remember hearing the words and thinking that’s me. I’d been dumped by a girlfriend for another bloke. And like the song she appeared with him one day walking towards me: “And it comes as no surprise to me with another guy.”

The book also deals with Yusuf’s conversion to Islam. Originally Steven Demetre Georgiou, his Swedish mother, Ingrid, was a Baptist and his father, Stavros, originally from Cyprus, Greek Orthodox.

In 1971 Yusuf turned the hymn Morning Has Broken into another popular song. It was actually written by the English poet and author Eleanor Farjeon in 1931.

And then there was Peace Train, a song that called for the end of war, or the threat of it. He writes: “I still believe in the Peace Train. But I also know that not everybody’s ready to jump on it.”

Yusuf worked briefly with actor Nigel Hawthorne of the TV comedy Yes, Minister fame in 1968-69 on a musical project called Revolussia, which was set during the Russian Revolution. The project never got made but it served as the inspiration for his song Father and Son, a dialogue between an elderly dad and his young son. Dad says: “It’s not time to make a change, just relax take it easy…”

Yusuf’s beloved parents met in Lyon’s Tea House in Tottenham Court Road. The family lived above their café just opposite the Princes Theatre and the children went to nearby St Joseph’s Roman Catholic primary school in Drury Lane. Yusuf later attended Hugh Myddelton Primary in Clerkenwell. Then, briefly, Northampton Secondary School in Old Street.

But let’s get back to his songs. Like How Can I Tell You. He sings: “How can I tell you I love you, when I can’t think of right words to say.”

He was influenced by The Beatles and Bob Dylan, Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers and Little Richard and writes about being “infatuated” by musicals, such as West Side Story.

Because he lived in the centre of theatreland he felt the buzz around him. “Musicals brightened our world,” he writes. “I’d seen all the great Technicolor stage-to-film movies like Carousel and South Pacific as well as being a fan of music sound tracks like The Magnificent Seven.”

His mother, who liked to sit at the piano and play some of her native Scandinavian childhood melodies, inspired Yusuf.
She later retired from the café and could afford to move to Hampstead Garden Suburb thanks to her son’s musical success. She died in 1989, aged 74. Stravros, his dad, died in 1978 aged 78.

Yusuf bought his first a guitar at a music store called Selmer in Charing Cross Road. His first popular song was Matthew and Son, which reached No 2 in the UK singles chart in 1966. While not a US hit, it was a major success in the UK and the title track of his debut album. He practiced his performing at West End musical centres like Les Cousins in Greek Street or occasionally the open nights at the Black Horse pub in Rathbone Place near Tottenham Court Road.

Another of his big songs at the time was I Love My Dog. A slightly “embarrassing” problem was that he’d never actually owned a dog in his life. One evening, after the song was released, he writes, he was walking through Soho and saw a longhaired dachshund tied to a post outside a fruit stall opposite Foyles.

The stallholder said the dog was a stray and Yusuf offered to take her home and care for her, and so he did. The family named her Willemina.

In 1968 the heavy work load of touring, media commitments, and the perks of a pop-star lifestyle took its toll and Yusuf contracted a potentially fatal tuberculosis, which hospitalised him for several months.

But reading the Qur’an opened Yusuf’s heart. “And now my mind was rushing to follow.”

He converted to Islam in 1977 but then stepped away from music for 20 years to concentrate on family, faith and charity. Now at 77 he’s back, having reconciled faith with music, and is making more music.

• Cat On The Road To Findout. By Yusuf/Cat Stevens, published by Constable, £25