Cat Stevens

Cat Stevens in the Talk-In

Interview by Penny Valentine, Sounds, May 1971

You're very rare in music today in that you managed to virtually disappear for two years when you were ill and then came back ...

Cat Stevens: Buddha And The Chocolate Box

Review by Tom Nolan, Phonograph Record, May 1974

ON THE COVER of Cat Stevens' new album is a Japanese buddha of the Heian Period. On the back is a koan or parable depicted ...

Cat: What A Drag It Is Being Young

Interview by Penny Valentine, Disc and Music Echo, January 1967

THE LYRICS IN Cat Stevens’ songs would imply that he was a simple person involved with the simple things in life. Working for a rotten ...

Cat Stevens: A Rather Cool Cat

Interview by Chris Welch, Melody Maker, January 1967

CAT STEVENS won't purr if you poor him a saucer of milk. But if, as a reward for his sensational leap up the chart with ...

The Walker Brothers: Images; Cat Stevens: Matthew & Son

Review by Norman Jopling, Record Mirror, March 1967

Moody Walkers L.P. and a great debut L.P. from Cat Stevens ...

Engelbert Humperdinck, The Walker Brothers, Jimi Hendrix, Cat Stevens: Finsbury Park Astoria, London

Live Review by Chris Welch, Melody Maker, April 1967

A show which proves pop still has something up its sleeve ...

Cat's Back

Interview by Derek Boltwood, Record Mirror, October 1968

Cat's back. Dogs and Matthew and his offspring and guns and things and now his wife. Not that he has a wife – but here ...

Cat Stevens

Interview by uncredited writer, Beat Instrumental, July 1970

HE'S STILL ONLY 21 but Cat Stevens has returned to the music scene and given himself a new lease of life. Naturally he's changed in ...

Cat Stevens: Cat's Back With The Cream...

Interview by Chris Charlesworth, Melody Maker, July 1970

LAST WEEK SAW the return of Cat Stevens to the MM chart after a disappearance act worthy of Houdini. It is 12 months since the ...

Cat Stevens

Profile by Penny Valentine, Sounds, March 1971

CAT STEVENS is very rare amongst the British writer syndrome in that a vast percentage of his work stems from his environment. He is a ...

Easy Does It: Cat Stevens

Interview by Bud Scoppa, Rock Magazine, May 1971

STEPHEN GIORGIO and Alun Davies sat in straight-backed chairs facing 2300 non-believers. From the Fillmore East balcony, Cat Stevens and partner looked hopelessly tiny. Just ...

Cat Stevens: The Honest Way For It To Happen

Interview by Keith Altham, Record Mirror, June 1971

MR STEVENS is, one might suppose of a young man who has survived the horrors of being initially conceived as a teen idol at 18 ...

Cat Stevens: It Must Be Destiny

Live Review by Bud Scoppa, Crawdaddy!, June 1971

CAT STEVENS couldn't come along at a better time. Time magazine has informed us that we're entering a period of gentle, reflective, and introspective music, ...

Cat Stevens: Teaser And The Firecat

Review by Penny Valentine, Sounds, August 1971

Singer, musician and songwriter. As such, in the opinion of many, Cat Stevens is one of the most brilliant and worthwhile talents to have emerged ...

Teaser And The White Hot Cat

Interview by Penny Valentine, Sounds, September 1971

"I built my house of barley rice, green paper walls and water ice, tables of paper wood, windows of light and everything emptying into white." ...

Cat Stevens: A Cat Breaks Free

Interview by Penny Valentine, Sounds, December 1972

Penny Valentine takes a jaunt to see Cat Stevens ...

Cat Stevens' Subtle Love Affair

Review and Interview by Penny Valentine, Sounds, July 1973

CAT STEVENS walks out of the burning sun, through the huge glass windows. It’s a surprise to see him. He seems as surprised to be ...

Cat Stevens: Foreigner

Review by John Pidgeon, Let It Rock, August 1973

WHAT'S THIS? No Dado? No Samwell-Smith? No Cat Stevens artwork on the cover? ...

Cat Stevens: Foreigner

Review by Ken Barnes, Phonograph Record, October 1973

IN ANY NORMAL TIME, Cat Stevens would be nothing more than an occasionally annoying inconsequentiality; but in an appalling era of innumerable idiot-savant singer/songwriters elevated ...

Cat Stevens: The Patterns Of A Chocolate Man

Interview by Jerry Gilbert, Sounds, March 1974

With an almost regimental sense of routine, Cat Stevens is back in England rehearsing for his first tour in eighteen months. ...

Cat Stevens

Interview by Caroline Coon, Melody Maker, November 1975

Cat Stevens, after a long personality crisis, has bounced back with a new album and tour. Caroline Coon meets him in Frankfurt ...

Cat Stevens: Numbers (Island)

Review by Penny Valentine, Street Life, November 1975

THIS ALBUM is sub-titled 'A Pythagorean Theory Tale'. Pythagoras, you may remember, had a theory that the education system approved of, about the square of ...

Cat Stevens

Interview by Mick Brown, Sounds, December 1975

"I reckon I lost my way somewhere along the line. The whole thing was too regimented. It was getting really silly". It was perhaps ...

Cat Stevens: Bingley Hall, Stafford

Live Review by Chris Salewicz, NME, December 1975

THE HEROIC singer-songwriter begins solo: a white-shirted, dark-trousered speck of religious experience at the end of the cattle barn. The Laura Ashley winsome-ness of 'Moon ...

A Cat Stevens Spiritual Tours Vacation

Interview by Bob Woffinden, NME, January 1976

RONALD BIGGS, the last of the Great Train Robbers still not in captivity, was finally run to ground by the Daily Express in a Rio ...

The Making of Cat Stevens

Book Excerpt by Chris Charlesworth, Proteus Books, 1984

An extract from Cat Stevens by Chris Charlesworth, originally published by Proteus Books in 1984 but now out of print. ...

Fundamentally Speaking: Cat Stevens vs. Salman Rushdie

Comment by Penny Reel, Sounds, March 1989

AN ASPECT of the Salman Rushdie episode that particularly intrigues is the way passions have been so readily aroused. It is as if the text ...

Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam

Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Los Angeles Times, May 1999

By the summer of 1975 Cat Stevens had it all. In the previous four years he had scored six American Top 10 albums in a ...

Cat Stevens: Majikat: Earth Tour 1976

Film/DVD Review by Terry Staunton, Record Collector, August 2004

FELINE FOLKIE caught live in his prime ...

Cat Stevens: Tea For The Tillerman Vinyl Icon

Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Hi-Fi News & Record Review, January 2010

TEENAGE SINGER-SONGWRITER Cat Stevens (now known as Yusuf Islam) hit the ground running in 1966 with a string of memorably catchy hits, including 'I Love ...