The folk star who auctioned his guitars and walked away

In 1979 a hugely successful songwriter put his guitars up for auction, gave the proceeds to charity and stepped out of pop. It is one of the most striking exits in popular music, and it came only a year after he took the name Yusuf Islam, following his conversion to Islam in December 1977.

Before that he was Steven Demetre Georgiou, born in London's Marylebone in 1948, the youngest child of a Greek Cypriot father and a Swedish mother. The family lived above their parents' restaurant on Shaftesbury Avenue, a few minutes from Piccadilly Circus. His first big moment came in 1967, when his debut album and its title song, "Matthew and Son", both reached the UK top ten.

The early seventies made him a fixture on record shelves. Tea for the Tillerman and Teaser and the Firecat each went triple platinum in the United States, and Catch Bull at Four reached number one on the Billboard 200 in 1972. Songs such as "Father and Son", "Peace Train", "Moonshadow" and "Morning Has Broken" followed him everywhere, and so does “Wild World”.

For two decades he performed only music that met strict religious standards, devoting himself to educational and philanthropic work in the Muslim community. Then, in 2006, he came back to pop with An Other Cup, dropping the surname and billing himself simply as Yusuf. By 2017 he was using Cat Stevens on a record sleeve again for the first time in 39 years. He revisited his own past in 2020 with Tea for the Tillerman 2, a reimagining of the old album for its fiftieth anniversary. It is rare for anyone to walk away from a career at the top and return to find the songs still waiting, and these ones were.