Perhaps it was a millennium thing; perhaps (less likely) it was a hankering for the old days. But recently, something made Yusuf Islam step back briefly into a persona he shed 21 years ago for an assessment of a trail - usually good, sometimes bad, occasionally ugly - he blazed as Cat Stevens.
Stevens was a phenomenon: as a singer-songwriter of rare power allied to a laser-guided sense of which emotional buttons to push in his listeners, he wrote some of the most enduring, or lump-in-the-throat-affecting, ballads and anthems: Moonshadow, Father And Son, Wild World and Peace Train made him Morrissey's predecessor in bedsit land.
He recorded eight consecutive gold albums and hits by the boat-load. But the baubles of the pop world lost their sheen when he embraced Islam in 1977, changed his name and devoted his life to humanitarian causes and educating under-privileged children.
In 1980, the man who inspired the likes of Joni Mitchell and James Taylor opened the first of four Muslim schools in London; he helped to establish a relief organisation during the same African famine which produced Band Aid in 1984, and in 1990, with a British delegation, visited Iraq on a peace mission and returned with four released hostages.
And in a recent interview to mark Island Records' release of Remember: The Ultimate Collection, he told it all in his own words . . .
'I never wanted to sit at the foot of any guru - I didn't think a human being should have such power over other people. [But] I was looking for a perfect world - that's what drove me,' said Yusuf, 52. 'Islam was that final understanding, and looking back at my songs, Peace Train and the things I was talking about metaphorically, brought me there. I'd arrived.' Before his train pulled in, his desires had been less noble. Finding he was talented with brush as well as guitar, the young Steven Georgiou, a Greek Orthodox Christian from London's West End, fancied himself as a painter.
'I was more interested in being an artist - until I realised not many died rich,' said Yusuf, laughing. 'Then with the explosion of music in the 60s I realised that was a faster track to where I wanted to go. I didn't actually know where I wanted to go, but I knew what I wanted to take with me - all the luxuries of this life!' Discovered at 17 by producer Mike Hurst, he became Cat Stevens and was on his way . . . to immediate stardom. His label-mates in the new Deram stable were fresh young talents David Bowie and the Moody Blues, whom Stevens eclipsed with his hits I Love My Dog and I'm Gonna Get Me A Gun.