For the past few years, the Sunday afternoon Glastonbury legends slot – a regular teatime fixture – has seen the likes of Kylie Minogue and Diana Ross leading huge dancealongs in the Pyramid Stage field. Compared to their energetics, Yusuf Islam, also known as Cat Stevens, is a muted booking. Less than usual in number, a fair few of the audience that greeted the beginning of his set were also in a prone position.
Stevens started with soft versions of The Wind and Moonshadow, but it was when he stopped to talk to the crowd that he won them over with his humility, seeming genuinely moved that thousands had come out to see him: “Woah!” he exclaimed. For the very few who didn’t know already, he explained how he’d started his career in a Sixties Soho club, once touring with Jimi Hendrix: “What a journey,” he observed. The musician then performed a Sixties medley including a beautiful The First Cut Is The Deepest, his voice as strong as ever.
While he doesn’t cut so many shapes, Stevens is a legend who is well-versed in the Glastonbury hippy spirit. Supposedly festival founder Michael Eavis personally tried to secure his presence as long as twenty years ago, but had no luck (surprisingly, this is Stevens first show here). He was comfortable spreading political messages on Worthy Farm’s biggest stage, and said that Where Do The Children Play? is about “this earth and how we are continually mistreating it”. He urged the crowd to say thank you for 75 years of the NHS and other public workers. “Lock all the leaders up in London Zoo” he suggested, before singing Vietnam war-era song Peace Train.
He had some eccentricities. When he heard someone in the audience shouting “let’s go,” he retorted with a little irritation: “Let’s go? What do you think I’ve been doing?”. Soon though, he regained his good humour. The animations that played behind him on stage were decidedly shonky, reminiscent of a Seventies children’s TV show. He dedicated the rather unromantically titled Hard Headed Woman to his wife, and the snippet Tea For The Tillerman to Ricky Gervais, as it was the soundtrack to his sitcom Extras.
When it comes down to pure songwriting chops, Stevens can compete with anyone on Worthy Farm. If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out and Morning Has Broken, his version of the folk classic, are standards. And even the several new songs got the crowd dancing along happily, though he worried that some went a little quiet during one of them.
At the start of the tunes, it had been threatening to rain for the first time of the weekend. But as Stevens came on stage, the darkest of the clouds blew away, and it remained dry. That suited one of the most heartwarming covers of the festival, Here Comes The Sun, which the singer dedicated to Beatle George Harrison, saying he was one of the first to look “eastwards towards the light”, with his interest in Indian culture and classical music. Stevens himself converted to Islam in 1979, and even stopped making commercial music for a while.
To finish, Stevens played busker’s favourite Wild World, and then an emotional Father & Son; the classic conversation between an old man and his impatient counterpart. For that, he was joined on stage by his only guest of the afternoon: video footage of himself as a young man singing the high verses. The crowd were on their feet by now, having grown steadily throughout the set. They seemed to agree that it was one of the more likable legends slots in recent memory.
