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Has anyone enjoyed as many lives as YUSUF CAT STEVENS ? From ’60s pop star to ’70s singer-songwriter, religious convert and now sagacious elder statesman. But what connects all these different threads of his life? “People who don’t change are stuck,” Nick Hasted finds out

Every month we get inside the mind of one of the biggest names in music. This issue: Roy Harper . Since the mid-60s, the progressive folk singer-songwriter has enjoyed a successful solo career that’s also found him collaborating with everyone from Pink Floyd and Peter Gabriel to Kate Bush and Ian Anderson. But he’s never quite reached the commercial heights of his peers. As his Final Tour: Part Two fast approaches, he looks back over highlights from his career so far and teases a brand-new album.

The grand parade of lifeless packaging? Far from it, as this much-delayed blockbuster reissue of one of prog’s most fascinating and frustrating albums finally proves.

From Cheshire village halls to LA Babylon, he’s the obsessive music fan who rode the Hammond grooves of The Charlatans through baggy, Britpop and beyond . But how has his band remained together through 37 years of chaos and tragedy as well as triumph? “We had to get used to heaviness,” says Tim Burgess .

Tom Petty Somewhere You Feel Free: The ...

D avid Bowie’s first album of the 1980s was a milestone record for many reasons. It was his last to be co-produced with collaborator Tony Visconti for more than 20 years, his swansong for RCA and for