By Ralf Kuhling
With hits like “Wild World” and “Peace Train” Cat Stevens alias Yusuf enchanted his more than 5000 fans on Monday evening in the almost sold out Zitadelle Spandau.
Campfire romance in the citadel. Cat Stevens sings “Morning Has Broken” in a stylishly aged but still clear, beautiful voice. Many of the fans in the half-seated open-air stage react with sighing “Aahs”, “Ohs” and beaming faces to a song that they like hardly another leads to happy, even romantic memories of her youth in the seventies.
Cat Stevens, he was the pop star at the time who perhaps delivered the most goose bumps songs. And he brought many of these timelessly beautiful heart warmers with him on Monday evening: “Oh Very Young”, “Heart Headed Woman”, “Where Do the Children Play?” And of course “Father And Son”, “Wild World” and “Peace Train”. , all still beautiful to cry.
Cat Stevens doesn’t play much that is new on Monday evening, the fans were hoping for the classics anyway. And he played them too – including “Father and Son” Photo: Christoph Soeder/dpa
A Cat Stevens concert like that is a trip down memory lane, of course. However, not everything was peace, joy, campfire, as the pop star converted to the Muslim faith in 1977, called himself Yusuf from then on, and as a believer in Islam supported the fatwa of the Iranian revolutionary leader Khomeini in 1989, which the writer Salman Rushdie received for his book “The satanic verses” sentenced to death. He later distanced himself from it.
Live on the concert stage in 2023, none of this is an issue anymore. This very modest, good-natured and loving-looking gentleman with a bushy gray beard, now 74 years old, really did not come to polarize and proselytize. Instead, he mostly left it at short, humorous announcements.
With glorious weather, the spectators were able to indulge in their nostalgic longing Photo: Christoph Soeder/dpa
The cover of his new album, out this Friday, features “YUSUF/CAT STEVENS” as his name in big letters. The musician finally seems to be reconciled with his dual roles of believer and pop star.
Cat Stevens in Berlin – little new music
Very little was heard of the new work in the citadel. And the artist also jokingly combined this with a request to “Please don’t run away”, knowing full well that the majority of fans make a pilgrimage to his concerts because of nostalgic longing.
Instead of the unknown, Yusuf/Cat Stevens preferred to deliver more nostalgic experiences by honoring Beatle George Harrison with “Here Comes The Sun” and celebrating Nina Simone, “the queen of the black civil rights movement” with “Don’t Let Me Be Missunderstood”.
And with a small medley of his early compositions from the 1960s, Yusuf/Cat Stevens quickly made it clear that “The First Cut Is The Deepest”, with which Rod Stewart in particular had a huge hit, also came from his pen.
The artist offered his fans a perfect program, it went well on this dreamlike summer evening. Once, however, there was a brief irritation because sirens suddenly sounded the alarm. Yusuf/Cat Stevens was irritated: “Can someone tell me what’s going on?” No, nobody could. But the siren was quickly silenced again. False alarm? Stevens aka Yusuf joked, “Now they’ve found me.” The citadel laughed.