Fact #156317
When:
Short story:
The Eurythmics enter the UK singles chart with Right By Your Side, which will peak at No10.
Full article:
EURYTHMICS, interviewed by Johnny Black, 1983
It doesn't take very long to work out that, just as there are two members of Eurythmics, there are also two factors integral to Eurythmics' success.
The most obvious factor is the image, brilliantly handled by the extrovert, chameleon-like Annie Lennox, a woman capable of projecting both male and female sexuality, and blessed with a rich, sweet, varied voice. Almost over-shadowed by Annie's array of ever-changing images, the other factor is the music, in the ingenious and capable hands of Dave Stewart. It would be very dfficult to replace Annie Lennox, but it would be impossible to replace Dave Stewart.
'I used to be a complete wreck,' admits Dave. 'I went through a phase of giving my body the worst punishment it could possibly take in the shortest period of time." Dave and I are sitting in his favourite North London cafe, barely 200 yards from the disused church which has now become the offices and recording studios of D'n'A, the Eurythmics' business title. We drink cappuccino coffee and crunch into crisp, heated sesame finger rolls, stuffed with cheese and tomato while Annie sits across the table from us, temporarily engrossed in the latest edition of Rolling Stone, the American rock newspaper, which has her face on its cover.
"I had a massive speed habit," continues Dave, "and got up to all sorts of crazy schemes like when I left my wife and ran away with one of The Sadista Sisters. Like moving to Berlin and being held hostage at gunpoint by a music promoter. Like having three car crashes in six months and ending up with broken ribs and collapsed lungs."
It's the kind of Sunday tabloid true confession session that would usually make me wonder what he's not telling, except that I get the feeling he doesn't care who knows. It's all just history now, because Eurythmics are this year's believe-it-or-not, rags-to-riches success story.
Drugs, dereliction and depravity aren't the usual stock in trade of accountant's sons from Sunderland, so what started him off? "I don't know really. I used to have a recurring dream, when I was a kid, that I was travelling with my parents in the Morris Minor, and a bus overtook us and crashed into a ditch. We stopped, and the bus was full of crippled kids We took one of them with us but she was made out of metal. I kept looking at her in the back of the car She had disc-shaped metal hands, just like the Liquorice Allsorts man. When we got to my Aunt's house she had become part of the family, like she was my sister, and she was told to set the table. She opened the drawer and all the cutlery flew up and stuck to her hands, like she was magnetic. I screamed I and ran out of the room."
Life in theStewart household wasn't quite as weird as his dream, but his mother apparently had (and still has) a hyperactive mind, which often resulted in her talking about four things at once. Unfortunately, Dave and dad could only follow one thing at a time which made life interesting. 'She had a disturbingly vivid imagination,' he recalls. 'When I brought some friends round to see Scott Of The Antarctic on television; she covered the whole room in white sheets, and pulled out some rucksacks and left the window open so it was bitterly cold.
The room was just like what we were watching on the television. I just eventually got used to that sort of thing, and felt totally secure within it.'
At 14 he tucked himself into the back of an equipment van belonging to folk-rock group Amazing Blondel, and stayed with them in Scunthorpe for the next two months. "The thing was, I could do anything like that and it never seemed to surprise my parents."
A year later, he was dossing on a slum mattress with an old derelict and a dog. "It was real meths bottle stuff, yet I was from quite a well-off family."
Still, his restless energy kept him going. Within a year and a half of learning to play guitar, he was supporting Ralph McTell at Newcastle City Hall. A lengthy spell of playing in countless forgotten bands followed until, in 1977, he was working with Peet Coombes, an obsessive introvert who "was involved with things that lead you astray". Enter Annie Lennox. "One day, she and my mum confronted me in our living room and told me I was in a mess, Up to that point, I had no idea what a wreck I had become."
Gradually he began pulling himself back together, and formed The Tourists with Annie and Peet. That ill-fated combo lasted for three albums "but we got screwed badly by that experience."
When The Tourists fell apart at the seams, Annie and Dave were living together and decided to go it alone as Eurythrmcs. "At that time, we made out a list of all the things we liked doing, and stuck it up on our wall. Then we decided only to do those things, so that if we became successful it would be for doing the things we knew we enjoyed."
It worked. They became famous, and Annie still enjoys dressing up, acting out new roles, singing, writing lyrics and performing, but what is it that fires Dave these days?
"Fiddling around in the studio until the early hours of the morning, making funny noises and mixing backing tracks. Wherever I go, I take a little tape recorder. If you listen to our song, This City Never Sleeps, you can hear where I've mixed the squeaking of the wheels of the tube train at Camden Town underground, so it blends in with a feedback guitar solo. You can hardly tell what's guitar and what's wheels.'
That's a Dave Stewart trademark - the blending of natural and electronic sounds to the point where it's almost impossible to tell them apart.
Dave and Annie no longer live together, but they still feel emotionally bound by their commitment to their music. "Sometimes, though, we feel like we're living inside a film. It can be very overpowering."
On their recent European tour, for example, Dave took on the responsibilities of managing the band, organising hotels, agencies, road crew, all on top of his job as mainman in the band. "In the end, I just collapsed from exhaustion. L couldn't get out of bed in our hotel in Hamburg, and they had to drag me to the plane and cancel the rest of thedates.
Finishing our coffees , we head back to the Church and Dave plays me some tracks in progress which will appear on their new album. "We've got this new computer synth," he tells me, like a child with a new toy, switching it on and improvising webs of tantalising sound.
"That's what it's all about," he says after a minute or two, "the ability to stay like a child; and not lose that point of view."
They start to become engrossed in their work as I prepare to leave, and I wonder aloud how long they expect Eurythmics to last. "It feels like something more lasting than just a group," says Dave.
Annie looks up. "It feels like an anchorage … like a ship thats dropped it's anchor ."
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It doesn't take very long to work out that, just as there are two members of Eurythmics, there are also two factors integral to Eurythmics' success.
The most obvious factor is the image, brilliantly handled by the extrovert, chameleon-like Annie Lennox, a woman capable of projecting both male and female sexuality, and blessed with a rich, sweet, varied voice. Almost over-shadowed by Annie's array of ever-changing images, the other factor is the music, in the ingenious and capable hands of Dave Stewart. It would be very dfficult to replace Annie Lennox, but it would be impossible to replace Dave Stewart.
'I used to be a complete wreck,' admits Dave. 'I went through a phase of giving my body the worst punishment it could possibly take in the shortest period of time." Dave and I are sitting in his favourite North London cafe, barely 200 yards from the disused church which has now become the offices and recording studios of D'n'A, the Eurythmics' business title. We drink cappuccino coffee and crunch into crisp, heated sesame finger rolls, stuffed with cheese and tomato while Annie sits across the table from us, temporarily engrossed in the latest edition of Rolling Stone, the American rock newspaper, which has her face on its cover.
"I had a massive speed habit," continues Dave, "and got up to all sorts of crazy schemes like when I left my wife and ran away with one of The Sadista Sisters. Like moving to Berlin and being held hostage at gunpoint by a music promoter. Like having three car crashes in six months and ending up with broken ribs and collapsed lungs."
It's the kind of Sunday tabloid true confession session that would usually make me wonder what he's not telling, except that I get the feeling he doesn't care who knows. It's all just history now, because Eurythmics are this year's believe-it-or-not, rags-to-riches success story.
Drugs, dereliction and depravity aren't the usual stock in trade of accountant's sons from Sunderland, so what started him off? "I don't know really. I used to have a recurring dream, when I was a kid, that I was travelling with my parents in the Morris Minor, and a bus overtook us and crashed into a ditch. We stopped, and the bus was full of crippled kids We took one of them with us but she was made out of metal. I kept looking at her in the back of the car She had disc-shaped metal hands, just like the Liquorice Allsorts man. When we got to my Aunt's house she had become part of the family, like she was my sister, and she was told to set the table. She opened the drawer and all the cutlery flew up and stuck to her hands, like she was magnetic. I screamed I and ran out of the room."
Life in theStewart household wasn't quite as weird as his dream, but his mother apparently had (and still has) a hyperactive mind, which often resulted in her talking about four things at once. Unfortunately, Dave and dad could only follow one thing at a time which made life interesting. 'She had a disturbingly vivid imagination,' he recalls. 'When I brought some friends round to see Scott Of The Antarctic on television; she covered the whole room in white sheets, and pulled out some rucksacks and left the window open so it was bitterly cold.
The room was just like what we were watching on the television. I just eventually got used to that sort of thing, and felt totally secure within it.'
At 14 he tucked himself into the back of an equipment van belonging to folk-rock group Amazing Blondel, and stayed with them in Scunthorpe for the next two months. "The thing was, I could do anything like that and it never seemed to surprise my parents."
A year later, he was dossing on a slum mattress with an old derelict and a dog. "It was real meths bottle stuff, yet I was from quite a well-off family."
Still, his restless energy kept him going. Within a year and a half of learning to play guitar, he was supporting Ralph McTell at Newcastle City Hall. A lengthy spell of playing in countless forgotten bands followed until, in 1977, he was working with Peet Coombes, an obsessive introvert who "was involved with things that lead you astray". Enter Annie Lennox. "One day, she and my mum confronted me in our living room and told me I was in a mess, Up to that point, I had no idea what a wreck I had become."
Gradually he began pulling himself back together, and formed The Tourists with Annie and Peet. That ill-fated combo lasted for three albums "but we got screwed badly by that experience."
When The Tourists fell apart at the seams, Annie and Dave were living together and decided to go it alone as Eurythrmcs. "At that time, we made out a list of all the things we liked doing, and stuck it up on our wall. Then we decided only to do those things, so that if we became successful it would be for doing the things we knew we enjoyed."
It worked. They became famous, and Annie still enjoys dressing up, acting out new roles, singing, writing lyrics and performing, but what is it that fires Dave these days?
"Fiddling around in the studio until the early hours of the morning, making funny noises and mixing backing tracks. Wherever I go, I take a little tape recorder. If you listen to our song, This City Never Sleeps, you can hear where I've mixed the squeaking of the wheels of the tube train at Camden Town underground, so it blends in with a feedback guitar solo. You can hardly tell what's guitar and what's wheels.'
That's a Dave Stewart trademark - the blending of natural and electronic sounds to the point where it's almost impossible to tell them apart.
Dave and Annie no longer live together, but they still feel emotionally bound by their commitment to their music. "Sometimes, though, we feel like we're living inside a film. It can be very overpowering."
On their recent European tour, for example, Dave took on the responsibilities of managing the band, organising hotels, agencies, road crew, all on top of his job as mainman in the band. "In the end, I just collapsed from exhaustion. L couldn't get out of bed in our hotel in Hamburg, and they had to drag me to the plane and cancel the rest of thedates.
Finishing our coffees , we head back to the Church and Dave plays me some tracks in progress which will appear on their new album. "We've got this new computer synth," he tells me, like a child with a new toy, switching it on and improvising webs of tantalising sound.
"That's what it's all about," he says after a minute or two, "the ability to stay like a child; and not lose that point of view."
They start to become engrossed in their work as I prepare to leave, and I wonder aloud how long they expect Eurythmics to last. "It feels like something more lasting than just a group," says Dave.
Annie looks up. "It feels like an anchorage … like a ship thats dropped it's anchor ."