Yusuf Cat Stevens talks on sharing melodies with Coldplay and borrowing them from Beethoven

YUSUF Cat Stevens has revealed he is working on an animated children’s series based on his songs as he continues the music career that stalled for 25 years after his conversion to Islam.

Yusuf Cat Stevens is working on an animated children’s series based on his songs . Picture: Adam Taylor

Is it a coincidence you were in Australia at the same time as the announcement of your 40th anniversary tour?

We are partnering with some animators here in Australia for a children’s series based on my songs.

Is the series a reimagining of the Moonshadow musical you staged in Melbourne in 2012?

The Moonshadow experience was very, very enlightening for me because I had to get it out of my system, I wanted to see this thing on stage.

I realised then perhaps people need to get to know the fable, the story, the myth before they understand what this is.

At the time some people were confused as to whether it was a tribute or a musical or some cartoony thing. Yet the story is very much a child-centred concept set in a world of darkness ... very much like today where people are oppressed.

In the story somewhere is out there with the little hero looking for daylight, the sunshine. It’s a great little story, so I am working on that. The animation project, yes it’s the same people behind the (Beatles inspired) Beat Bugs project.

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Yusuf/Cat Stevens and Coldplay share melodic sensibilities. Picture: James Croucher

You have talked about feeling a simpatico with John Lennon.

I love them, I was such a fan of the Beatles.

I felt particularly aligned philosophically strongly with Lennon. We even wrote a similar line by chance; I wrote a song in ‘68 which I never released and later heard in his iconic song Imagine in the context of “dream of the world as one.” And “I’m not the only one”.

There was a kind of synchronicity.

There are other songs you have mentioned may have too much synchronicity with your music.

Don’t forget Coldplay.

That song Viva La Vida ... it was said the similarity was with Joe Satriani (2004’s If I Could Fly. The plagiarism case brought by the guitarist was dismissed in 2009).

If you go back even further, you will come to Foreigner Suite in 1973.

On An Other Cup album (2006), you will hear the development of that same melody, which I stole from myself, and turned into a song called Heaven/Where True Love Grows. And that is much closer I think to what ended up on the Coldplay album.

And hey, I love it.

Come on, on my next album again I have borrowed from myself. And also a melody of Beethoven and turned it into a song.

Yusuf’s son left a guitar strategically around the house to encourage his father to return to music. Picture: Supplied.

Songwriters are always casting forward and the tour you will be doing here in November is very much about looking back.

I have great fondness for those songs.

And I bring out hidden gems some people may have missed. There’s a thread, a continuity through them to now.

But the continuity was broken when you quit music in 1979 and didn’t return officially until 2005.

I was just getting down to living the songs, that’s all. Walking the talk, they say.

Coming back to writing again was only when I had something to say.

What had become a bit tedious to me in the end was always this insistence on another album, that cycle.

How thankful are you that your children left a guitar hanging around during a family holiday in Dubai? Is it true that was part of the catalyst for you picking up your music career again?

It was a very strategic move on the part of my son Yoriyos to leave the guitar hanging around and now he’s my manager.

He’s a smart lad and he keeps surprising me, his perception of the world is sharp.

The children love my music. My grandkids, come on. My eldest grandson loves I’ve Got a Thing About Seeing My Grandson Grow Old, he thinks it’s about him. It is; I just didn’t know when I wrote it.

Looking at how it all started for you, growing up in Soho in London with the famed 100 Club down the road and everywhere, do you think you were destined to be a singer and songwriter?

The role I was given early on was a bit of a peacemaker because my mum and dad spilt very early and I was there always trying to hold them all together, it was a big job.

That’s always been my thing, to want to bring sides together.

Cat Stevens was a pop chart-topper before he quit music to “walk the talk”. Picture: Supplied.

During your US tour, you let the songs do the talking rather than speak directly about politics or religion from the stage.

No, no, no, that’s not what people come to see me for, they come to hear me for the music.

It was home for me because I brought my attic with me and put it on the walls and the shoes and the trunks that came with me.

Music quite frankly can, does, bring people together, it’s as simple as that. Concerts bring people together, football matches divide them in half and politics just fractures whatever remains.

Forget the rest, go to a gig.

Peace Train still brings audiences to their feet, united in song, more than four decades after it first hit the charts.

The message is still absolutely perfect, the symbol of the movement of humanity, you want everyone to get on that train to get to where happiness resides, for all of us.

It still resounds and it is a great message for what I hope to represent throughout my life.

Are there songs which, since your conversion to Islam, you may feel qualms about singing?

The Boy With the Moon and Stars On His Head is a paradoxical song.

For a start, I’m that kid!

But at the same time it talks about a flirtation before marriage and that’s not really on for a Muslim, is it?

I don’t have so much of a problem (singing) it now because it’s symbolism and the symbolism of that song is nothing other than love.

And love can overcome anything, everything in fact, if it’s pure or not lustful or anything like that. The last words of that song “I’ll tell you everything I’ve learned and love is all ... he said.”

SEE: Yusuf/Cat Stevens 50th Anniversary tour opens on November 22 at Perth Arena and heads to Botanic Park, Adelaide on November 25, Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne on November 27, Roche Estate, Hunter Valley on December 2, Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney on December 4 and Brisbane Entertainment Centre on December 9.

Tickets on sale now.

Originally published as Yusuf Cat Stevens talks on sharing melodies with Coldplay and borrowing them from Beethoven