Described as his ‘50th Anniversary Tour’ it sounded like he had been doing the rounds for years and was now about to give the legendary dead horse a final flogging.
In fact in Yusuf/Cat Stevens case the opposite is true.
A multi-million album selling artist in the early 70s, Cat Stevens became a follower of Islam in 1977 changed his name to Yusuf and abandoned the music industry. He is now back playing the music that made his name really for the first time since then.
Not surprisingly the audience at the Apollo, starved of their hero’s live appearances for so long, lapped it up - applauding the opening chords of familiar songs and cheering at the end of them.
This is obviously great stuff for the die hard fan but was 68-year-old Yusuf actually any good?
It’s pleasing to report he undoubtedly was. The first half of the show saw him wittily narrating the story of his early life interspersed with the relevant songs like his first big hit ‘Matthew and Son’ and the much covered ‘The First Cut is the Deepest’.
At the start of the second half he hit the motherlode of the early 70s and his most successful albums and wisely cut back on the chat. Stevens was a terrific song writer combining beautiful melody with meaningful and poignant lyrics and songs like Moonshadow and ‘Oh Very Young’ shone out from over the years.
He used the words of ‘Father and Son’ to musically explain his conversion to Islam and the song got the biggest cheer of the night.
Still in fine voice and helped by some excellent backing musicians the two and half hour set slid by.
His encore included another much covered track ‘Wild World’ and the hauntingly lovely ‘Morning Has Broken’.
All over a delightful evening but you were left wondering how many more great songs there might have been if he had not put down his guitar all those years ago.
Paul Bargery
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