Cat Stevens

And he converted to DL's favorite religion...

Carly Simon wrote anticipation about him. & some of You’re so vain. (Also a bit about warren beAtty , Kris kristofferson & the men of her fathers era)

Fat wa. Thread closed.

Bob Dylan, though he's more 60s.

I don't think any of "You're So Vain" was about Cat Stevens. Or Kris Kristofferson. If was about anybody it was about Mick Jagger and/or Warren Beatty. I always loved "Anticipation", it's one of her best songs. As for Cat Stevens aka Yusuf Islam, he was always kind of a strange one. For a while he was a typical rock star. Patti D'arbanville was once his lover and she blabbed about their affair, saying he once bend her over a car hood and fucked her. Her ramblings probably embarrassed the hell out of him considering by that time he'd converted to Islam and was married with children. Yes, the horny rock star had become a devout Muslim. Anyway, attempts have been made to smear him and twist his words but basically he troubles no one and has won several humanitarian awards. He aged pretty well too and became an attractive older man.

I like him, too, OP, as a performer. Some of the songs he has recorded are sublime - Moonshadow, Morning Has Broken, Peace Train...

We miss you Cat.

Foreigner Suite is my favorite song of his. Pity he turned religious.

Oh, baby it's a wild world.

Still makes me cry.

I was surprised he wrote "First Cut is the Deepest."

Great song with many great covers, too.

[quote] I don't think any of "You're So Vain" was about Cat Stevens. Or Kris Kristofferson. If was about anybody it was about Mick Jagger and/or Warren Beatty.

From the wikipedia page for the song:

"The song is a critical profile of a self-absorbed lover about whom Simon asserts "You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you." The title subject's identity has long been a matter of speculation, with Simon stating that the song refers to three men, only one of whom she has named publicly, actor Warren Beatty."

Dick Ebersol won a charity event : Carly will reveal the person Vain is about. He then told the press: beatty, kristofferson, cat & the way men of her parents era acted. Also in her book.

Kris Kristofferson and Cat Stevens have never struck me as being "vain." The description of the guy in the song doesn't sound anything like them.

....

R12 I heard she aimed it at Beatty and that Ebersol never shared what Carly whispered in his ear. Kristofferson and Stevens make no sense.

He has a beautiful voice.

He is the rare artist who sang a song in Latin.

[quote] Simon stating that the song refers to three men, only one of whom she has named publicly, actor Warren Beatty."

"Well I hear you went up to Saratoga And your horse, naturally, won "

Beatty owned a race horse named Naturally. Clever disguised lyric.

I can’t remember where I read it- I think it was in the biography of Carly, Carol and Joni- that he was bisexual. And Carly knew. I also read it some where else too.

R13 read her book. Carly only dated assholes. Kris was a drunk & treated women really bad. Cat was bi & trouble. Also a bit of a diva (he was a child star). One husband a fag & taylor was hooked on drugs their entire time together. (She fucked someone in his band soon after they broke up) i’m all up on my carly gossip!

[quote] He is the rare artist who sang a song in Latin.

Oh, big fucking deal.

R20 So who do you think were the 3 guys referred to in You're So Vain?

Nessun dorma, you cunts.

Mannie, Moe, and Jack, ROSE!

Cat was a hot piece and he’s still handsome. Carly got all the hot dick.

[quote]Carly got all the hot dick.

Well with those teeth she probably gave a great blow job.

Damn, he’s dreamy.

Beautiful man with a beautiful voice. I love Oh Very Young, it moves me every time.

Presenting hole at r29!

He knew when to bow out of the scene before the MTV years.... many didn't.

".Read her book."

I don't think I will. I don't really take a lot of stock in what she says. She's always struck me as being kind of "off." Some critic questioned why, if she was opening up about all the affairs with rock stars and celebrities, she made no mention at all of her uh, "affair", with John Travolta. Her only explanation for not commenting on that was that it would be "too much." WTF? Like I said, Carly is rather "off."

Everyone extols Cat/Yusuf for his syrupy slow sentimental ballads, but I only really ever enjoyed his upbeat rocky cynical cuts about fame to be honest.

My favorite of all his tracks is ‘Sun/C79’ for this very reason, and it’s such a stellar example of this type of song that I don’t know why it’s so underrated and obscure. I love the pops of weird hovering psychedelic keys throughout, and the edging guitars that sound like their strings are about to snap, and the loopy slap-happy bongos & shakers in the verses, and even the drone of the backyard backing vocals at the bridge.

It’s all so much sly fun and so youthful & bright instrumentally, while at the same time really sinister, moody & jaded lyrically - maybe even a little nasty (the lyrics are about a old old rockstar telling his son the story of the latter’s conception, by a hasty fuck with a groupie in a hotel room). It sounds fresh to my ears, much younger than it actually is as a song released in 1974 (from BUDDHA & THE CHOCOLATE BOX).

One of those songs I wish I’d written, in all.

R5, I'm not sure Cat Stevens can be said to have troubled no one...

He wrote a handful of good songs and one or two great ones and a whole lot of terrible, corny, sappy, hippie-dippy bullshit songs. My father was a fan when I was growing up and immediately dumped all his records when he converted, lol.

Simon's The Carter Family was about Kristofferson

R37 totally agree. It’s the worst when pop & rockstars get on soapboaxes and make all their songs about their ideologies & causs (naming no names, Bono & Chris Martin...) What Cat didn’t realise or accept is that he was actually at his best as a writer & performer when he was demonstrably vain and nihilistic and talking about what was really going on in his life without the rose-coloured glasses.

‘Baby Get Your Head Screwed On’, ‘Kitty’, ‘It’s a Supa Dupa Life’, ‘Mona Bone Jakon’, ‘Popstar’, ‘Miles from Nowhere’, ‘Bitterblue’ (another favorite), ‘Tuesday’s Dead’, ‘Later’, ‘A Bad Penny’, ‘Banapple Gas’, ‘Novim’s Nightmare’, ‘Killin’ Time’ & ‘Bad Brakes’ are the other darker or harder-edged early-catalogue Cat cuts I’d put in a top ranking along with ‘Sun/C79’. All good solid pop about sex and drugs and money and mental breakdowns and all that fantastic stuff.

Not that I don’t agree with the messages of ‘Peace Train’, ‘Where Do The Children Play?’, ‘Morning Has Broken’ etc. I just don’t want to hear those songs ever again.

Hated gay people.

" I'm not sure Cat Stevens can be said to have troubled no one..."

Cat Stevens was no fan of Salman Rushdie's book "The Satanic Verses" but he never "called for the death" of Rushdie, as he said:

"I never called for the death of Salman Rushdie; nor backed the Fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini – and still don’t. The book [Satanic Verses] itself destroyed the harmony between peoples and created an unnecessary international crisis.

When asked about my opinion regarding blasphemy, I could not tell a lie and confirmed that – like both the Torah and the Gospel – the Qur’an considers it, without repentance, as a capital offence. The Bible is full of similar harsh laws if you’re looking for them. However, the application of such Biblical and Qur’anic injunctions is not to be outside of due process of law, in a place or land where such law is accepted and applied by the society as a whole.

The accusation that I supported the Fatwa, therefore, is wholly false and misleading. It was due to my naivety in trying to answer a loaded question posed by a journalist, after a harmless biographical lecture I gave to students in Kingston University in 1989, which unleashed the infamous headline "

I hope he returns to the Greek Orthodox faith.

I dropped out of university and moved to Kathmandu because of him.

Cat was so beautiful. MTF? I guess somehow in his Greek Orthodox faith or his conservative family, he decided he couldn't be gay so he did the most extreme thing he could possibly do, short of Alan Turing treatment, and voila, he's a fucking imam.

Back onto Carly, I don't get how she bagged so many super-hot guys because shes uglier than Joplin.

I vaguely remember an article (or excerpt from her book?) about her being on an ocean cruise with her beautiful sister and Leonard Cohen - and of course, she bags him as well. At least, in his case, he was no Cat or Beatty or even Taylor (when he was young, James was pretty).

She talked about being insecure because she wasn't pretty like her sister. She sure as hell figured out how to cope.

Must be nice.

* MTF should have been WTF?

Freudian slip I suppose

You know, now that I think about it, closeted guys trying to force themselves to be straight don't give a shit what their women look like -Hugh Jackman, Judy and Liza's crew, Carrie Fisher's (not that she's ugly - just plain), etc.

So of course, Cat wouldn't care what Carly looked like, just that she was famous.

Warren's sui generis. Priapism? So narcissistic that he never even notices what they look like? Lord only knows...

Kristofferson had a rough look himself and once called Janis Joplin a pretty woman. But then, he drank an awful awful lot. (Rita Coolidge was a looker so maybe he was straight - I suppose so...)

Cat Stevens wrote Wild World? I LOVE that song. And yes, he's hot AF.

WIDE

[quote]And he converted to DL's favorite religion...

Bitchery?

At the time churlish Carly Simon "wrote" "You're So Vain" she was fucking everybody, on a long list of contacts her father probably had already made for her through his partnership and ownership of Simon & Schuster had put him in contact with so many hipsters on both coasts. To name-check Cat Stevens or Warren Beatty is relevant only in regards to their own artistic output, and to accept Carly Simon's gossip is simply to be yet another imperialist exploiter, seeking to colonize another great artist's legacy. Carly got her position in the music biz mostly from her father's connections, people like Cat Stevens, David Bowie, and Warren Beatty got there because of their extraordinary talent, with a lot of free-form fucking of groupies like Carly on the side. There's also an element of blaming in discussions like this that seems disturbing. Jesus Christ. Can you prove he was NOT gay? That he was? There are much better usages for gossip and star dialogue.

I know many fine feathered friends But their friendliness depends on how you do They know! Many sure fired ways To find out the one who pays And how you do– –Could've anticipated a Carly Simon, even back then.

^^huh?

I was in London many years ago, watching afternoon TV. There was a talk show, and Stevens was a guest. It was at the time of the fatwa ordering Muslims to murder Salman Rushdie, and the host asked Stevens if he was okay with that.

Stevens said he was.

The host, startled, asked, "You think Mr. Rushdie should be killed for writing a novel?"

And Stevens, without the slightest sense of shame answered, "Yes."

Anyone who says he wasn't down with the fatwa, including Stevens himself, is lying.

I always enjoyed the use of his songs in Harold and Maude.

Patti spills the beans about Stevens.

Greek dad and Swedish mum.

Amusement park.

Very passionate. Schoolgirl uniform from M&S.

Watching the Moon landing in bed, (July 21, 1969) for his 21st birthday.

Exactly, R53!

The thing is, R41, in the video at R36, he is indeed saying he was ok with the death of Rushdie, no matter how much he tries to explain it away now. In the video above they are talking about people burning effigies of Rushdie and Stevens says: "I would've hoped that it be the real thing" and also talks about how he would ring the Ayatollah up personally to let him know where Rushdie was hiding. So he would be happy to see him burned alive in the street and would disclose the location of Rushdie to the man who called for his death. He was totally fine with the fatwa and it's disingenuous of him to blame a journalist when we can hear it out of his own mouth on television.

What are his views on gays? Assuming he adheres to his religion, would he see us hanged or thrown off a building?

so even reverting to Greek Orthodoxy is an improvement.

Always thought his song ‘Randy’ was written about/for a man. The lyrics are ambiguous, but sound like they refer to a forbidden criminal love (bear in mind that underage girls weren’t off-limits back then...). ‘Randy’ is an androgynous babe but is used more typically to name boys & men..

[quote] Oh Randy, if they knew/I think they'd take me away/Just for loving you, you/All alone in my own quiet way./'Cause that's the way that I want it..../Wish I could see you now,/You and your cherry black eyes./My heart would never lie down, down,/'Cause that's the way my arrow flies,/And that's the way that I want it...

as said above, he was Greek/Swedish. I know an Armenian/Norwegian guy who looks a bit like him and is sex on a stick. A great combination.

"Anyone who says he wasn't down with the fatwa, including Stevens himself, is lying."

Cat Stevens has explained himself on that issue many times. Deal with it.

So you're dismissing the video at r36 for what reason, r61? cock?

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2014 inductee.

I remember when he was publicly calling for the assassination of Salman Rushdie. Cat Stevens can eat shit and die.

This has been the most ADHD thread ever. Half the comments are about Carly Simon, then back to the original topic then back to Carly Simon. My head hurts.

Last Sunday on CBS Sunday Morning

Bad link R66.

"I remember when he was publicly calling for the assassination of Salman Rushdie. Cat Stevens can eat shit and die.'

Let Cat explain it for you himself. Read R41. God, you people are stupid. How many times does he have go through that crap, again? He has said FLAT OUT that he was not in favor of killing Rushdie and supporting the Fatwa and that is was all just a dumb misunderstanding. All this attempting to make him out to be some kind of bloodthirsty jihadist is just idiocy.

R67 Stinky Linky.

"Thinking his given name might not be memorable, he chose the stage name Cat Stevens, in part because a girlfriend said he had eyes like a cat, but mainly because "I couldn't imagine anyone going to the record store and asking for 'that Steven Demetre Georgiou album'. And in England, and I was sure in America, they loved animals."

I don't think it's others who are stupid R68. Everyone else is able to watch the video at R36 and hear him say some very disturbing things. It's hardly a misunderstanding when it's heard directly from his mouth. Cat Stevens is playing the victim in his explanation (basically claiming he was misinterpreted), but we can all see the truth.

"Cat Stevens is playing the victim in his explanation (basically claiming he was misinterpreted), but we can all see the truth."

"The truth" is that Cat Stevens has explained himself many times but there are people in this world with thick skulls who just don't GET it. And it seems unlikely that a bloodthirsty jihadist would win the Man of Peace Award of the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates (an award organisation founded by Mikhail Gorbachev) for his "dedication to promote peace, the reconciliation of people and to condemn terrorism."

Another lie about Cat Stevens: that he won't speak to unveiled women. Here's the outcome of that accusation:

On 18 July 2008, hereceived substantial undisclosed damages from the World Entertainment News Network following their publication of a story which claimed that the singer refused to speak to unveiled women.The allegations first surfaced in the German newspaper BZ after Islam's trip to Berlin in March 2007 to collect the Echo music award for "life achievements as musician and ambassador between cultures" Once again he was awarded damages after the World Entertainment News Network allowed an article to be published on Contactmusic.com alleging that he would not speak to unveiled women with the exception of his wife. His solicitor said "he was made out to be 'so sexist and bigoted that he refused at an awards ceremony to speak to or even acknowledge any women who were not wearing a veil." The news agency apologized and issued a statement saying that Islam has never had any problem in working with women and that he has never required a third party to function as an intermediary at work. The money from this lawsuit went to his Small Kindness Charity.

On his website, he discussed the false allegation, saying,

The accusation that I do not speak or interact with ladies who are not veiled is an absurdity.... It's true that I have asked my manager to respectfully request that lady presenters refrain from embracing me when giving awards or during public appearances, but that has nothing to do with my feelings or respect for them. Islam simply requires me to honour the dignity of ladies or young girls who are not closely related to me, and avoid physical intimacy, however innocent it may be. .

[post redacted because independent.co.uk thinks that links to their ridiculous rag are a bad thing. Somebody might want to tell them how the internet works. Or not. We don't really care. They do suck though. Our advice is that you should not click on the link and whatever you do, don't read their truly terrible articles.]

Stevens thought gay relations were immoral and supported Sec 28 in the UK which limited the discussion or promotion of homosexuality.

Wiki says "The law's existence caused many groups to close or limit their activities or self-censor. For example, a number of lesbian, gay and bisexual student support groups in schools and colleges across Britain were closed owing to fears by council legal staff that they could breach the act."

Hey, but his music was fun.

He looks like a terrorist.

This link should work. CBS Sunday morning interview

He runs Islamic primary schools where they veil little girls. Sorry, but that's not "humanitarian". He's either sadly deluded or an asshole. At his age he should get a fucking clue about Islam.

In the new book on the making of the film "Valley of the Dolls", it's stated that Barbara Parkins rehearsed all of her scenes with Paul Burke to a photograph of Cat Stevens, who she had a crush on and eventually dated.

R78 . . .

From the Washington Post review of the book "Dolls, Dolls, Dolls" . . .

Though Susann envisioned Sean Connery, Paul Newman or Steve McQueen playing the male lead, and the studio tested Christopher Plummer, James Garner and Gig Young for the part, “second string” actor Paul Burke landed the role. According to Rebello, Parkins prepared for her love scenes with Burke by staring at a photograph of Cat Stevens. Another surprising fact concerns Parkins: Though beautiful and ambitious, after doing “Dolls,” her career stalled, and her agents advised her to turn down “Goodbye, Columbus” and “Love Story.” If she had had another agent, her career might have taken off. Instead, she continued to pose for “Playboy.”

[quote]Back onto Carly, I don't get how she bagged so many super-hot guys because shes uglier than Joplin.

It cracks me up to read such idiotic remarks on here.

Carly was considered very good looking and sexy.

She also exuded a wit and sophistication that made her fun to be around.

Sigh...I had such a crush on him in the 1970s. I was going to ask for "Verificatia" but why? His politics are a turn off.

I met him once many many years ago at the height of his beauty. He could not have been nicer.

[quote] He looks like a terrorist.

He IS a terrorist.

"He IS a terrorist."

No, he is not. You're a liar. Fuck off.

He was super hot but I could never stand that vocal color of his. Probably one of the most annoying 1960s voices, along with Joan "I'll vibrate the shit out of every song I sing" Baez and tone-deaf Bob Dylan.

I’m just sorry that I never married Cat.

R72/R84 etc, you are never going to be able to make that video at R36 not have happened. Instead of telling others they are stupid and to deal with it, maybe you should deal with that.

"That video", R87, is not the end-all and be-all of Cat Stevens. It's dumb to think that it is.