The singer-songwriter Yusuf enjoys the reaction he gets driving through London in his '60s-vintage VW Kombi van, which is custom-painted with artwork from his days as the artist known as Cat Stevens -- including images depicting such huge hits as Peace Train and Moonshadow.

''Every time we rode that thing across town we'd get this amazing buzz. People would just look at it and smile and that's the kind of message I'm sending out with my music,'' said Yusuf, now 60.

The VW van is prominently displayed on the gray-bearded Yusuf's new CD roadsinger (to warm you through the night), symbolizing his desire to embrace his Cat Stevens legacy. He is picking up where he left off 30 years ago when he became a Muslim, changed his name to Yusuf Islam and walked away from the ''Cat mania'' of pop stardom.

Yusuf, who prefers to use only his first name to foster a more intimate relationship with listeners, now feels he can square his Muslim beliefs with a return to the introspective folk-tale and storytelling songs that made Cat Stevens one of the most popular artists of the 1970s, with career sales of more than 60 million albums.

''I wanted to prove that there's music in this Muslim,'' Yusuf said by telephone from his headquarters in London, near one of the Islamic schools he founded as part of his charity work with royalties from his Cat Stevens recordings.

WORK HARDER

''I think Muslims should work a little bit harder at making people a bit more at ease and to create an atmosphere of happiness, which is what we need. I think that's what this record does, that's what my music used to do and it still does,'' he said, a few days before heading to Los Angeles for his first West Coast performance in 33 years, mixing tunes from the new album with past hits like Wild World and Father and Son.

After his singer-songwriter son, Yoriyos (Muhammad Islam), inspired him to pick up the guitar again, Yusuf tested the waters with the 2006 comeback album An Other Cup, his first collection of pop songs in 28 years. That record mixed Eastern and Western influences, using new technologies and overdubbing that sometimes overshadowed his voice and guitar.

On roadsinger, Yusuf says he has returned to the ''very stripped-down musical approach'' with minimal overdubbing that he adopted for his introspective 1970 folk-rock album Mona Bone Jakon and the breakthrough Tea for the Tillerman.

''A lot of people were very complimentary about An Other Cup and they were extremely surprised that I still sound like me,'' he said. ``The only other point they made was that they wished there were more of the bare guitar-style songs which I used to do in the Tea for the Tillerman days.''

Yusuf had a further epiphany on a flight to the United States when he listened to an inflight music channel featuring the L.A. vibe of the 1970s with singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell, Carole King, James Taylor and Jackson Browne.

''I realized that I was so much a part of that sound and perhaps it wouldn't be a sin if I just got back to doing some of that kind of style again,'' he said with a laugh. ``I've come back to a very simple approach to songwriting and recording.''

Yusuf says the album's opening song, Welcome Home, symbolizes his return to what he does well. The darker The Rain -- about Noah and the flood -- was reworked from a song on a '60s demo tape. The gentle piano melody of Sitting (from 1972's Catch Bull at Four album) introduces a song featuring a phrase by the 13th century German theologian Meister Eckhart, ''To be what you must/ You must give up what you are,'' that Yusuf says sums up his own spiritual journey.

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