Cat Stevens

Cat Stevens gave his final concert at Wembley Arena in London on November 22, 1979, before retiring from music. He had formally converted to Islam nearly two years earlier, taking the new name Yusuf Islam. On March 1, 2007, he returned to live performing by staging a concert at the Porchester Hall in London that was taped for a one-hour program broadcast on BBC1. That show is the main part of this DVD. His beard now gray and white, Islam combines songs from his comeback album, An Other Cup, with old Cat Stevens favorites. There is considerable continuity; Alun Davies, who played second guitar for him way back when, is in place again, and the folk-rock arrangements of such songs as "Where Do the Children Play," "I Think I See the Light," and "Father & Son" are the same as they were in the '70s. But Islam does present variations to some of his hits. "Peace Train" is at first combined with Leroy Carr's blues standard "How Long" and turned into a blues itself. (The hit arrangement comes back as the final song.) And "Wild World" has new lyrics in Zulu. The new songs fit in well with the old, in part because they're not always so new. There is, for instance, Islam's cover of the Nina Simone/Animals hit "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood." In the concert, he sings it without comment, but later, in a 15-minute promotional film discussing the making of An Other Cup, he notes that the song had particular resonance for him, given the extent to which he feels he's been misunderstood in the years since his conversion. He elaborates on one of those misunderstandings in a 53-minute documentary made for the BBC, recalling that, contrary to press reports, he never supported the fatwah declared against novelist Salman Rushdie by the Ayatollah Khomeini. The documentary sympathetically traces Islam's life from his youth working in his family's restaurant in the Soho section of London to early fame in his teens, his more substantial work of the '70s, and his educational and charitable activities since, with comments by such observers as Bob Geldof and Dolly Parton. Then there are a couple of music videos, plus informal performances, bringing the total running time close to two-and-a-half hours. It's enough to give fans a good sense of Yusuf Islam's life and music, even if they are still more comfortable thinking of him as Cat Stevens. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide