This is a tribute show by Darren Coggan celebrating Cat Steven’s life events and not a mere re-production of the lyrics to his songs. In fact Darren’s vocal authenticity and timbre delivers Cat Steven’s passionate songs. The quality and nuances of Coggan’s voice were so close to Cat Steven’s original that if the audience were blind-folded it would not be easy to differentiate between the two of them.
Darren’s enthusiastic sister Naomi Coggan (from Wagga) belted out impressive keyboard skills and provided boisterous but melodic accompaniment to her brother’s rendition of Cat’s prolific bass and baritone songs. Darren is an outstanding singer, actor and musical story-writer, who not only re-created the live voice of Cat Stevens but portrayed his dramatic life narratives.
Stephen Demetre Georgiou was born on 21 July 1948 in Soho London. His mother was Swedish and his father Greek-Cypriot.His family ran a restaurant where Steven – (later ‘Cat’ a reference to his feline eyes by a girlfriend) worked. In this Bloomsbury environment he absorbed the heady Soho influence of the Beatles, and was influenced by Bob Dylan. His father paid eight pounds for his first guitar and he began writing his first songs. He realized that you could combine poetry with music.
Outside of his Soho door Cat Stevens saw the changing way society regarded youth with four mop-topped Liverpudlians leading the vanguard of cultural and social revolution. In July 1964 Stevens made his folk music debut at Black Horse, a local bar. A year later he landed a publishing deal as a songwriter, under the stage name of Cat Stevens. By 1967 his single “Matthew and Son” was the title for his debut album.
By the 1970’s Coggan tells us 1 in 2 people in the UK, US, and yes! Australia owned his albums – probably quite a few of them in the Joan audience!
But in 1969 the super-star Cat contracted tuberculosis and nearly died. After more than a year of convalescence he returned to recording but his comeback single were poorly received. In 2015 he reflected “TB is a very bluesy kind of illness.”
Post-Tuberculosis Cat’s dreams were intensely creative along with melancholic guitar chords incorporated into many new songs such as ‘days at the old school yard,’ ‘the first cut is the deepest,’ ‘you’ll be mine tonight’ ‘looking for a hard headed woman one who will make me do my best.’ He surely found one after he had his change of faith epiphany. Her name is Fauzia and they have been married for 42 years.
Darren Coggan had the privilege of being invited to London in 2007 to meet his idol Yusuf Islam (after conversion to Islam in 1977 and previously Cat Stevens). Yusuf spent the day relating anecdotes to Darren and they enjoyed fish and chips for lunch!
Yusuf gave Darren his blessing for his tribute performances and even autographed his original Cat Steven’s albums. What an incredible day!
Darren told the Joan audience that Cat Steven’s music unites us and reminds us to be kind to one another. So the words of ‘Peace Train’ are as relevant now as when first released 50 years ago. ‘Where do the children play?’ also written 50 years ago has more resonance than ever with degradation of environment due to climate change. How to make the world a better place has been an ongoing outcome of Yusuf’s Charitable Foundations’ work establishing education and alleviating poverty.
Darren Coggan’s wonderful performance of Cat Steven’s lyrics and instrumentals in the show REMEMBER THE DAYS OF CAT STEVENS was a highly anticipated and sold-out show at the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre on April 29, 2022.