PAUL LESTER

Sweet dreams are made of these two… Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart, the risk-taking pop pioneers whose contributions to music are immeasurable

Annie Lennox – singer, songwriter, political activist and philanthropist – is talking to Classic Pop from her home in Cape Town, South Africa, where she is contemplating the Evening Of Music And Conversation at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre, which was due to take place on 4 March.

“I don’t know what the conversation will entail yet”, she says, sounding surprised, as though the idea has just occurred to her. “There will be a look through my archive. I thought it might be interesting to the audience for me to share my photographs. There’s a narrative in them, somehow.

“It will be a really interesting evening”, she adds. “For me as well, hopefully. It’s nice for me to be able to look back in time 25 it was nighttime and the manager of the restaurant saw these two guys coming in. He was nervous because he could see they were ne’er-do-wells. I was a bit nervous, too, because I was like: “Oh god, what is he gonna think of me?” How soon was it before you realised this was somebody with whom you might have a musical future? I didn’t know that. I just felt he was such a sweet soul. He would always be carrying these two plastic carrier bags with all his belongings in, and he just and see the shape of the journey, as it were.”

Is she okay with looking back? “Oh, of course”, she says, as Classic Pop breathes a huge sigh of relief. “I’m quite open to that.”

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Initially called The Catch, Annie and Dave Stewart first found fame as part of The Tourists and the post-punk power poppers released three albums and half a dozen singles between 1976-80. They had two Top 10 hits, a cover of Dusty Springfield’s I Only Want To Be With You and So Good To Be Back Home Again.

Classic Pop It’s 43 years since Dave Stewart walked into Pippins, the health food restaurant in Hampstead where you worked as a waitress. What are your memories of that day he arrived with his friend Paul Jacobs and scrawled “will you marry me?” on the steamed-up window?

Annie Lennox I remember it was nighttime and the manager of the restaurant saw these two guys coming in. He was nervous because he could see they were ne’er-do-wells. I was a bit nervous, too, because I was like: “Oh god, what is he gonna think of me?”

How soon was it before you realised this was somebody with whom you might have a musical future? I didn’t know that. I just felt he was such a sweet soul. He would always be carrying these two plastic carrier bags with all his belongings in, and he justseemed a bit vulnerable. My heart went out to him. He was such an unusual person. We just talked and talked.

By 1977 you had the band The Catch, who morphed into The Tourists. Were you busy gig-goers? Did you see the Sex Pistols, The Clash or The Damned? No, I never saw any of them. We were so involved in what we were doing, and the person that we lived with, Paul [Jacobs], ran a record store [Spanish Moon]. So there was never a shortage of music magazines – Melody Maker, NME – and alternative records. I remember seeing X-Ray Spex and Ian Dury, but I didn’t go to clubs and concerts. I just made music and worked to try to pay the bills.

It was a galvanising time for women in music, with the likes of Poly Styrene, The Slits, Debbie Harry, Siouxsie Sioux… Did it feel like an opportune moment for you to break through?

I mean, “-ish”, sort of. I thought of it as strange that people would say to me: ”What’s it like being a woman in music?” I was just doing what I wanted to do, which was writing songs and performing. All the women that you’ve mentioned were exceptional, and I was probably quite influenced by everybody. It was all very exciting, but I didn’t make a distinction between whether it was a woman or a man.

Dave had been in a band called Longdancer (who were signed to Elton John’s Rocket label) with Peet Coombes, and then you three formed The Tourists. What was the thinking behind them? Well, Peet was the main songwriter on our three albums and it was tricky because he was very prolific but not very communicative. He was much closer to Dave than he was to me, which was natural enough… I think he felt that I may have caused some kind of, not a rift, but a bit of a schism between them. He never said that, but I sensed that something maybe existed like that.

Was being in The Tourists all pop star fun and fame? Not really. We were with a company called Mogul Records and they had a sense of what they wanted us to be, and it was very different from what we wanted, so we clashed. They wanted us to be a female singer with a bunch of backing musicians. [CP: Like Blondie?] They never said that, but that maybe was what they were thinking.

Did you meet anyone good at Top Of The Pops, which you seemed to be on a lot?

We met Madness and John Lydon. It was just people passing. It was never, like: “Here is my telephone number, let’s have a coffee.”

In the mid-70s Dave was involved in a car crash that seriously affected his lungs while financial stresses with The Tourists impacted on you. Were health issues exacerbated bytensions in the band? We had no bad feelings towards the other members of The Tourists, it was everything we’d dealt with over the years. We’d been taken for fools by certain individuals and that was painful. Listen, The Tourists was an incredible opportunity to tour Japan, all over Europe and the US. But it was time to start afresh. We wanted a clean sheet of paper so that we could reinvent ourselves.

“The Tourists was an incredible opportunity to tour Japan, all over Europe and the US. But it was time to start afresh” – Annie on the demise of her and Dave’s first band