Georgiou began performing his songs in London coffee houses and pubs. In 1965 he signed a publishing deal with Ardmore & Beechwood and recorded several demos, including "The First Cut Is the Deepest". He also sought to emulate composers of musicals, like Ira Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein. As well as the Beatles, other musicians who influenced him were the Kinks, Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, blues artists Lead Belly and Muddy Waters, Biff Rose (particularly Rose's first album), Leo Kottke and Paul Simon. At that point, his goal was to become a songwriter. He began performing under the name "Steve Adams" in 1965 while at Hammersmith. Though he enjoyed art (his later record albums featured his original artwork), he decided to pursue a music career. He took a one-year course at Hammersmith School of Art, considering a career as a cartoonist. He was called "the artist boy", and said, "I was beat up, but I was noticed". He attended other local West End schools, where he says he was constantly in trouble and did poorly in everything but art. With interests in both art and music, he and his mother moved to Gävle, Sweden, where he attended primary school (Solängsskolan) and started developing his drawing skills after being influenced by his uncle Hugo Wickman, a painter. Stevens said that West Side Story particularly affected him and gave him a "different view of life". He occasionally escaped his family responsibilities by going to the rooftop above their home and listening to the tunes of the musicals drifting from around the corner on Denmark Street, then the centre of the British music industry. He persuaded his father to pay £8 ( equivalent to £200 in 2020 ) for his first guitar, and he began playing it and writing songs. At 15, inspired by the popularity of the Beatles, he became interested in the guitar. Georgiou developed an interest in piano at a young age, eventually using the family baby grand piano to work out the chords, since no one else there played well enough to teach him. Stevens has a half-brother, George Georgiou, born in Greece, presumably from his father's first marriage in Greece, where he served in the Macedonian Mule Corps.Īlthough his father was Greek Orthodox and his mother was a Baptist, Georgiou was sent to St Joseph Roman Catholic Primary School, Macklin Street, which was closer to his father's business on Drury Lane. His parents divorced when he was about eight years old, but continued to maintain the family restaurant and live above it. All family members worked in the restaurant. The family lived above the Moulin Rouge, a restaurant his parents operated on the north end of Shaftesbury Avenue, a short walk from Piccadilly Circus in the Soho theatre district of London. Steven Georgiou, born on 21 July 1948 in the Marylebone area of London, was the youngest child of a Cypriot father, Stavros Georgiou (1900–1978), and a Swedish mother, Ingrid Wickman (1915–1989). He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. He returned to making secular music in 2006. His musical style consists of folk, pop, rock, and, later in his career, Islamic music. Yusuf Islam, commonly known by his stage names Cat Stevens, Yusuf, and Yusuf / Cat Stevens, is a British singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist.
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