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Yusuf Islam is the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens BBC1 screened an outstanding Imagine documentary about the superstar who vanished from the stage. At the end of his final performance in 1979, he told the audience: “We’ve only got one life and we’ve got to do the best with it. “You’ve got to find the right path and when you do, you know it. So I pray that you find the right path. Inshallah. Goodbye.” Last Sunday, the same channel broadcast Yusuf’s return to the stage at London’s Porchester Hall. It saw classic songs like Father and Son and Peace Train alongside tracks from his “comeback” album An Other Cup. Imbued with a sense of the years that have gone by and Yusuf’s own spiritual outlook, it was a stunning 50 minutes of television. The singer-songwriter and his backing musicians created some truly magical moments, as his grandchild slept in the audience. They included “a slight change to an old song, called Wild World, with some new words…in Zulu”. The evening begins at 8.30pm with a 1971 TV studio concert, screened again on BBC4 last year. That’s followed at 9.10pm by the 2006 Imagine profile and then at 10.05pm comes that repeat of his first solo concert in almost 30 years. In a week when a terror trial has again dominated news headlines, the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens carries a Muslim message of peace. Peace Train was originally released in 1971 – during the Vietnam War – on the album Teaser and the Firecat. Some 36 years later, the anthem for peace is still out on the edge of darkness and in the hands of a remarkable man.

Stars:
Release Date: 2003-06-11
Seasons: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 31 37 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 52 53 54 55
TMDb: 5.5/10
  • Country: GB
  • Language: English
  • Runtime: 50

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