vi var alla unga, mer eller mindre begåvade och vi var vackra

21/07/2011

In England, and I was sure in America, they loved animals

So, I am walking down the street, my hands sticky from beer and Indian kebab that we consumed on the stairs of the newly renovated and richly ornamented church at St Boniface, if you know what I mean, it was sunny and pleasant and full of people swooshing by, there are always so many people on the streets of the African area in Brussels, there was sound of music from someone learning how to play the ukelele, or cymbalon, when I bumped into long-lost friends, shreds and pieces of previous lives, in other, far-away countries.

Stranger things must have happened though. Have you ever heard the story of Yusuf Islam?

Steven Georgiou, born in Marylebone, London, England),[8] was the third child of a Greek-Cypriot father, Stavros Georgiou (b. 1900),[9] and a Swedish mother, Ingrid Wickman (b. 1915).[10] He has an older sister, Anita, and brother, David.[8] The family lived above Moulin Rouge, the restaurant that his parents operated on the north end of Shaftesbury Avenue, a short walk from Piccadilly Circus in the Soho theatre district of London. All family members worked in the restaurant.[8] His parents divorced when he was about 8 years old, but they continued to maintain the family restaurant and live above it.
Although his father was Greek Orthodox and his mother a Swedish Baptist, Georgiou was sent to a Catholic school, St. Joseph Roman Catholic Primary School in Macklin Street, which was closer to his father's business on Drury Lane.[11] Georgiou developed an interest in piano at a fairly young age, eventually using the family baby grand piano to work out the chords, since no one else there played well enough to teach him. Inspired by the popularity of The Beatles, at age 15 he extended his interest to the guitar,[4] convinced his father to pay £8 for his first instrument, and began playing it and writing songs.[12] He would escape at times from his family responsibilities to the rooftop above their home, and listen to the tunes of the musicals drifting from just around the corner;[8] from Denmark Street, which was then the centre of the British music industry.[4] Later, Stevens has emphasized that the advent of West Side Story in particular affected him, giving him a "different view of life", he said in 2000, on a VH1 Behind the Musicprogramme.[13] With interests in both art and music, he and his mother moved to Gävle, Sweden, where he attended primary school (Solängsskolan). In Gävle he also started developing his drawing skills after being influenced by his uncle Hugo Wickman, a painter.[14]
He attended other local West End schools, where he says he was constantly in trouble, and did poorly in everything but art. He was called "the artist boy" and mentions that "I was beat up, but I was noticed".[15]He went on to take a one-year course of study at Hammersmith School of Art,[16]as he considered a career as a cartoonist. Though he enjoyed art (his later record albums would feature his original artwork on his album covers),[15] he wanted to establish a musical career and began to perform originally under the stage name "Steve Adams" in 1965 while at Hammersmith.[16][17] At that point, his goal was to become a songwriter. Among the musicians who influenced him were Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, blues artists Lead Belly and Muddy Waters,[18] John Lennon, Biff Rose (who played on his first album), Leo Kottke,[15] andPaul Simon.[19] He also wanted to emulate composers who wrote musicals, like Ira Gershwin andLeonard Bernstein. In 1965 he signed a publishing deal with Ardmore & Beechwood and cut several demos, including "The First Cut Is the Deepest".[20]

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