Andy Welch talks to the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens about his new album, Roadsinger, his career and public perception of him since his conversion to Islam

If you were going to pitch Yusuf Islam’s story to a film producer they’d accuse your script of being too far-fetched.

Born above a London café, he went on to become one of the biggest British pop stars of the 60s as Cat Stevens, before reinventing himself a decade later as a modern folk troubadour and finding global success.

Then he gave it all up, converted to Islam, and vanished from music for the best part of 30 years, making only fleeting appearances in between devoting his efforts to charity and education in the Muslim community.

Prompted by his son bringing a guitar home one day and rediscovering a yearning to play the instrument, Yusuf returned in 2006 with the album An Other Cup.

It was warmly received by fans and critics alike, eager to hear more music from the man responsible for classics such as Moonshadow, Father And Son, Wild World and The First Cut Is The Deepest, which has since been a hit for artists like Rod Stewart.

“I didn’t know if I was going to carry on making music again after An Other Cup,” he said.

“I suppose I was hesitating, waiting for a response. People were so welcoming and positive about it, and just happy to hear my voice again I think.

“They were also nicely surprised the songs I was writing were a continuation of my style, so that gave me encouragement.

“Since that album I wrote a bunch of songs, and the result of that is evident in this new one.”

The new album, Roadsinger, is a collection of songs that harks back to his classic 1970s records – Mona Bone Jakon, Tea For The Tillerman, Teaser And The Firecat and Catch Bull At Four among others.

But for Yusuf, it’s also part of realising a life-long ambition to write a musical.

Four of the songs on Roadsinger – World Of Darkness, Be What You Must, This Glass World, Shamsia – will all feature in Moonshadow, the musical he’s been working on for some time, and hopes to have on stage in the next year.

If he’d had his way, though, he’d have been writing musicals since his teens.

Yusuf was born Steven Georgiou in 1948 and his family lived above the Moulin Rouge, the café they ran in the capital’s West End.

“I was surrounded by theatres, cinemas, clubs, coffee bars, venues and places with jukeboxes,” he said.

“I was really living in that world, almost on stage.”

When he first started writing songs and performing in the early 1960s, he was enthralled by rock ‘n’ roll and blues, but ultimately wanted to follow in the footsteps of his heroes.

He remained a mainstream pop artist until 1968, when he was recovering from a vicious bout of tuberculosis.

“After contracting TB, I slightly retreated from the pop world and I came back with a whole new vision,” he added.

“A musical was the first thing I wanted to do, so I got together with Nigel Hawthorn, who people know for Yes, Minister and things like that, and we were writing a story based on the story of Nicholas and Alexandra, with the Russian Revolution in the background.

“Father And Son is actually one of the songs that came from the musical. Even before that, if you go right back to I’m Gonna Get Me A Gun from 1967, that was really an outcome of my intention to write a musical about Billy The Kid.”

Yusuf, or Cat Stevens as he was then known, took a selection of new songs to Chris Blackwell at Island Records and suggested a musical.

Blackwell, however, was convinced they could be hit records – and he was right.

But Yusuf wasn’t entirely comfortable with his position, and when his brother David handed him a copy of the Qur’an, the central Islamic text, on his 28th birthday, he found what he’d been looking for all along.

He said: “I knew a little of the religion in the early 70s but totally discounted it.

“I didn’t think there was anything Islam could offer me, but it wasn’t until someone gave me copy of the book that I really understood.

“So many people rely on what other people say and what they’ve been told, but if you build your context of life based on second-hand understanding, you’ll never get to the root.”

His conversion and subsequent withdrawal from popular culture was met with suspicion, with many fans feeling alienated or even let down.

“It did upset some people, but I had to get away from that image – it was an image I’d built too remember, Cat Stevens was a name I chose as well, so it was in my hands to do what I wanted,” he added.

“I thought ‘this is the point where it takes control of my life, or I can do something about it’, so I decided to take really control of my life instead.

“In the music business, that’s always going to be a challenge, because there are always demands being made by other people, but I knew I had a chance to live my life my way, and now I don’t need to answer to anyone except God, and that was a big relief for me, not to have that kind of obligation on my back.”

He doesn’t preach about his faith, in person or on the record, and if you didn’t know he was a devout Muslim, you might not be able to tell from listening to his latest album.

“The title song has a kind of warning about prejudice. People are too quick to judge somebody because they don’t quite look as if they fit in their particular environment, and how that makes us question them,” he said.

“In that particular song, there’s a beautiful little moment where a child, who has no inhibitions or blinkers, peeps out and sees this man singing, likes his song, and just sends a little message to him by drawing a heart on the window pane for him to see.

“That’s a message about how we perhaps need to revisit our innocence and look again at the world with a bit more of a child’s eye. It’s not a new thing, that’s often what my songs have done. Sometimes you’ll find treasure in the most unlikely place.”