“There is a pang of conscience I feel about getting out there again,” Islam says. “I had dinner with Art Garfunkel recently, and he said, ‘Come on, you’ve got something to say. Get out there and say it. Get in the game.’ I said, ‘You’re right.’ I’m no pinup these days, so I haven’t got to fear becoming a sex idol again,” he says with a laugh.

Talent aside, it’s unlikely that Islam—the London-born son of a Greek Cypriot father and Swedish mother—would have become a pinup, if he hadn’t changed his name from Steven Demetre Georgiou to Cat Stevens in the mid-’60s. He released his major breakthrough LP, 1970’s ‘Tea for the Tillerman’ and over the next five years, the prolific songwriter would create some of the most moving, indelible and uplifting music of the era: Peace train. Wild world. Morning has broken. Then in 1976, Stevens almost drowned off the coast of Malibu during a swim. He claimed it was then he made a deal with God: if spared, he’d devote his life to serving the Lord. A wave rose up and swept him back to shore. Shortly thereafter Stevens’s brother introduced him to the Qur’an and the singer converted. “I just was so happy, I was floating,” he says.

Roadsinger sounds like a Cat Stevens LP: spontaneous, confident, raw and earthy. Even the cover art is a throw back to the ‘Teaser and the Firecat’ days. Designed by his son, it features a vintage VW van decorated with images from classic Cat Stevens album covers: the orange cat, the artful dodger and, of course, the moon. It’s a career come full circle. “Pulling away from it all helped me to appreciate the art of music, and how it can be used positively, again,” says Islam. “I’m happy with what I’m doing. But I want to do a musical.”

... contd.