To mark the autobiography’s release — it comes out Oct. 7 — the 77-year-old Islam, whose signature beard is now gray, planned a series of shows described by the promoter as “an evening of tales, tunes, and other mysteries.” But the US tour, which included a sold-out date Oct. 6 at the Boch Center Wang Theatre, has been abruptly postponed due to visa issues.
“Waiting months for visa approvals, we held out as long as we could. However, at this point, the production logistics necessary for my show cannot be arranged in time,” the singer said Monday in a statement. “I am really upset! Not least for my fans who have bought tickets and made travel plans to see me perform.”
The 500-page memoir is an entertaining read, even if it isn’t as chock full o’ rock as, say, Keith Richards’s “Life.” Islam covers a lot of ground; people familiar only with hits like “Wild World” and “Father and Son” — to name just two — will learn much they didn’t know. (In 1974, for example, the singer fled to Rio de Janeiro to escape England’s high taxes and landed at the same hotel as “Great Train Robber” Ronnie Biggs!)
Islam writes about his earliest musical influences (Leonard Bernstein was a big one) and ambitions; his lifelong spiritual search and the many detours he took along the way. He describes encounters with rock n’ roll contemporaries; various romances; walking away from a career that made him a millionaire; his 2004 deportation from the US; and what led him to eventually pick up a guitar again. Here are a few bits of the book that we found especially remarkable or amusing.
Once he started writing his own songs, young Steven Georgiou needed a new name. Inspired, it turns out, by the ‘60s films “What’s New Pussycat?” and “Cat Ballou,” and by the song “Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog,” he had an idea: “All I did was add ‘Cat’ to my first name, shifting Steven from head to tail: Hey-ho! ‘Cat Stevens’ was born. It was only meant to be temporary — depending, of course, on what happened next.”
Compared with some other artists of the time, Islam was not a profligate drug-taker. However, he did drop acid with Jimi Hendrix’s bassist Noel Redding one night in 1967. It was bad. “The ghastly visions I was induced to witness were most likely a pent-up reaction to the suffocating music biz internment I was now shackled in…I tried to stab myself — unsuccessfully, I might say — with a large coal spade by the fireside blazing furiously in his living room…It was like a horror movie where my body was no longer under my control.”
Islam met Carly Simon in 1971 when she opened for him at the Troubadour in L.A. and they soon became a couple. “It was difficult to keep away from Carly. We got to know each other extremely well and spent a lot of our much-in-demand time together…We shared the excitement of being two stars, personally and cosmically aligned, and musically inhabiting the same planet.” (Islam confirms that Simon’s song “Anticipation” was inspired by him, and his song “Sweet Scarlet” was inspired by her.)
Islam has had three near-death experiences. The last occurred in 1975 while swimming alone in Malibu. A powerful current carried the singer away from shore, and he was too weak to swim or float: “Death filled the horizon and stared directly into my fragile soul again, catching it half-naked and totally unprepared in the sparse vastness of the ocean. Bolts of fear shot through me…In a split second of the rapidly dwindling moments that remained of my life, I looked up to the sky and prayed, ‘O God, if You save me, I’ll work for You!’ No sooner had those words flown from my heart, than a gentle wave rose behind me and nudged me forward.”
His religious conversion, combined with the 1980 murder of John Lennon, made Islam “increasingly uneasy about picking up a guitar” and he decided to auction all of his instruments, organs, foot pedals, and piles of gold records and give the proceeds (about £40,000) to charity. “A lot of people were well and truly shocked. It was like watching a virtual suicide, as I set light to the symbolic articles and calmly disappeared across the bridge, past the soldering flames, into the bleak expanse of pop insignificance.”
During a visit to an international relief office in Pakistan in the mid-1980s, Islam encountered Osama bin Laden, who would later found the terrorist organization al-Qaeda. “People’s heads all turned and they gazed at this towering figure as he swiftly entered through the door. Many were obviously enamored of the tall, wealthy Arab Muslim leader with four wives. He held himself aloof, speeding through the room, not raising his eyelids.”
Islam married Fauzia Mubarak Ali in 1979 and the couple has five children. In 2002, Islam’s college-age son, Muhammad, returned home for the holidays and brought with him a black Yamaha guitar. “I didn’t get mad with him, which I might have done during the more puritanical phase of my Muslim life.”
One morning while everyone was sleeping, Islam found himself alone with the guitar: “We suspiciously eyed each other for a little while…then I slowly approached…picked it up…and began to play.”
Eventually, he began playing in the presence of others. “Only my close family knew what was happening; they were just starting to enjoy the sound of me playing guitar and actually singing those old ‘Cat’ songs, lounging in the kitchen.”