Er ist in einem Songwritermagazin drin, ist aber hier net erhältlich, mit einem Fotoshooting und einem Interview.
Kann man sich höchstens mit Kreditkarte bestellen. Hab das einfach mal in Englisch kopiert.
Performing Songwriter Magazine Issue 116 (March/April 2009)http://www.performingsongwriter.com/pag ... erms=issueThe artist formerly known as Cat Stevens is at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood participating in—or, rather, enduring—a photo shoot.Can you tilt your head this way?” asks the photographer. Yusuf politely declines. “I have to feel natural,” he says. He’s pleasant and cooperative, but it’s clear he knows what he wants.
And he should. With a clarity possessed by few artists, Yusuf has followed a path that first led him into pop music, then away for more than 25 years, and then, in 2006, back again.
As Cat Stevens, Yusuf was a
nant force in music in the early ’70s. Born Steven Georgiou, he bowed in his native U.K. in the late ’60s as a pop singer and first charted with “I Love My Dog.” After a number of U.K. hits, he contracted tuberculosis, which required a long hospitalization and an even longer convalescence. After the forced hiatus, he re-emerged as a stripped-down, confessional singer-songwriter. Tremendous success followed, as albums like Tea for the Tillerman and Teaser and the Firecat produced such defining hits as “Wild World,” “Moon Shadow,” “Peace Train” and “Morning Has Broken.” He charted 11 Top 40 hits in the U.S., sold more than 60 million albums worldwide and provided the soundtrack for the 1971 cult film Harold and Maude. One of his best-known compositions, “The First Cut Is the Deepest,” has been recorded by dozens of artists and was a hit single around the world for P.P. Arnold, Keith Hampshire, Rod Stewart and Sheryl Crow.
Unhappy with fame and its trappings, and following a near drowning, Stevens converted to
m in 1977. Shortly thereafter, he changed his name to Yusuf
m, taking his first name from jazz musician Yusuf Lateef. He walked away from Western music, gave away his guitars and devoted himself to Muslim causes. This included making educational music for children accompanied solely by percussion, because that was “the perceived [musical] limit within strict
mic scholarly circles,” Yusuf says. He eventually came to believe that was not the case and returned to pop music with 2006’s An Other Cup. His latest effort—I Look, I See 2, due in June—was mostly recorded live and is a gorgeous pop album brimming with rich melodies and warm vocals redolent of his early-’70s work.
With the photo shoot wrapped, there’s a calm intensity that surrounds Yusuf as he sits on a sofa in his hotel suite. Clad in a simple, elegant suit, he laughs frequently but also draws deep for some answers, closing his eyes as he thinks. He is conversant and enthusiastic about current pop music but speaks with equal fervor about Beethoven and Motown. At 60, he has seemingly found a way to combine his faith and music without sacrificing either.
The new album opens with “Welcome Home,” which includes the line “All seekers this way.” Do you feel songwriters are seekers?Yeah. Songwriting is not just a skill; it’s a life vocation if you’re really serious about it. And, therefore, it comes from your experiences and the tastes and troubles that make up your life. Seeking the perfect song is always the task of every songwriter, and you never create it; that’s a great thing. My most prolific songwriting periods were after I discovered something about life: doing something, meeting somebody, feeling sad, heartbroken or whatever. Something that affected me strongly would then become part of what would inform my songs.
A new track, “Boots and Sand,” addresses the 2004 incident when you were removed from a plane because your name sounded like one on the “no-fly” list—but it was a different spelling. What made you decide to turn that experience into a song?It was one of those surprises that hit me square in the face when I arrived in Bangor, Maine, in 2004 and was asked, “Is your name Youssef
m?” I went “Yes,” and it all began from there. What I did was take it for what it was, a mistaken identity, because I’ve always stood for the removal of causes of conflict and for peace and understanding.
I was sent back to London on the next available flight, and, funnily, my face was splashed over every front page across the globe over this non-incident, almost non-reality. But because it happened, I needed to comment about it and eventually realized the best way to deal with it was to write a song. For some reason, I got onto this phrase “Boots and Sand.” Boots are what you travel in, and sand is what we’re made of, you know (laughs). And that’s as innocent as I get and as innocent as you can be.
For more, get the latest Issue of Performing Songwriter, ISSUE No. 116