After an intense conversation with Annie Lennox, I am convinced I know why she
does the things she does. If that sounds presumptuous, I can only say that
rock music has always provoked bold, bald statements. First, she has
suffered from bouts of depression since she was 14 in her home town of
Aberdeen; secondly, her father and grandfather were trade unionists of the
old school, committed to improving the lot of the underdog.
“Many people,” she says, “have a fairly s****y life.” She is not trying to
include herself in the category, although she has had her moments. “I love
people who have principles and stick by them.” Again, she doesn’t claim to
be of their number, only to want to “put the ideals that I have into some
kind of symmetry with what I do for a living”.
Now 52, she says these things with the same fervour she has brought to her
singing these past 30 years with the Eurythmics and as a soloist. Regularly
called the greatest white soul singer alive, she is a musical counterpart to
the conviction politician. As a result of this, not to mention her feminism
and her striking androgyny, some regard her as scary, whereas the truth is
surely that she is passionate.
“If I were just promoting my records,” she goes on, “I would be disgusted with
myself.” As with the delivery of the songs – Would I Lie to
You? springs to mind – she dares you to doubt her. Still, there is no
getting around the fact that she is releasing a new album called Songs
of Mass Destruction. It contains several moving compositions that come
from this rueful vision of hers. Last month she headlined an Albert Hall
concert for Peace One Day, the organisation behind the UN’s adoption of
September 21 as a fixed date in the calendar for conflicts to be suspended.
Her half-hour set, which included the new single, Dark Road, had a
blistering honesty about it, and an absence of ego that seemed appropriate
to the occasion. On that showing, it would be hard to argue with her own
assessment that her voice is in its prime and that she is “closer to my
cutting edge than ever before”.
Lennox’s involvement with this organisation started several years ago when she
attended an event it had put on at Brixton Academy and was asked to read out
a speech written by the Dalai Lama. When she talks about this and her other
great involvement, with the South African Aids activists’ group TAC
(Treatment Action Campaign), she does so with an energy that leaves you in
no doubt that these callings are as urgent to her as was her teenage music
vocation. She recalls her sense of awe at seeing Nelson Mandela standing
outside his old cell on Robben Island rejoicing in the defeat of apartheid
but warning of the greater struggle against the “genocide” of Aids.
Aids has now become for her not only a cause to be helped financially, but a
theme of her songwriting. On Songs of Mass Destruction there is one
called Sing, which incorporates a track by the TAC members group
called the Generics. As message songs go, it carries a highly specific one,
calling for the national implementation of a programme to prevent HIV
transmission from mothers to babies. Lennox contacted 23 female singers of
global renown, asking them to join her on the recording; hence the presence
of Madonna, Céline Dion, kd lang, Beverley Knight, Sarah McLachlan, Shakira,
KT Tunstall, Martha Wainwright, Bonnie Raitt, Joss Stone, Gladys Knight and
others.
The idea is to put the track on the internet, with the profits from downloads
sent to support TAC initiatives. You could see this as a practical enactment
of the Eurythmics’ 1985 hit with Aretha Franklin, Sisters are
Doin’ it for Themselves; whatever else it is, or does, it is a
huge feminist anthem, with the endorsement of the ultimate girls’
superchoir.
“I can’t understand why it [feminism] has become such a scurvy word,” says
Lennox. “I find that odd. I think people are a little scared to use it. I’m
not. I’m saying it loud and strong. When I go to poor countries and see
women labouring in the fields, carrying loads on their back as well as
children, I think that what they need is empowerment. You can be a man and a
feminist, too. It’s just about social and political rights. Until women
finally get a better deal, we need feminism.
“Something happened, around the 1980s, when women started to become ashamed.
Maybe there were a few too many brazen hussies, and maybe that was a bit of
a turn-off, I don’t know. But you have to remember that women died for the
vote and we still don’t have equal rights. Many men are quite threatened, I
know, by the new phenomenon of women. I understand that; the male ego can be
a frail thing – so too can the female, actually – and here are women getting
top jobs. On a personal level it must be threatening.”
She has a top job. Is she threatening to men?
“Yes, I think so. Although never at all intentionally.”
But she is ballsy, as a performer. That is generally meant, as here, as a
compliment.
“I take it as one . . . I really do have this intensity and energy, I know. I
can’t help it, it’s just who I am. Seriously, I often have the sense that I
should dampen it down to accommodate certain men.”
Not that there is a particular one in her life at present. She has been
married twice, the first time very briefly to Radha Raman, a Hare Krishna
monk, in the mid1980s; the second time, between 1988 and 2000, to the film
producer Uri Fruchtmann, the father of her two teenage daughters, Lola and
Tali. Her present singleness appears to suit her.
“It is probably better for me,” she agrees. “To be honest, I think
relationships can be too difficult, very complicated. There is a part of me
that thinks I could fare better in a close relationship with a man, but
then, as I say, it all gets too complicated. It hasn’t panned out. It never
did.”
But she gets on with her exes? “I have to sidestep that one because it’s too
tricky. I’m sorry.”
She must be doing something right; she looks terrific, less gaunt than a few
years ago, with a voice that sounds more flexible, broader and more relaxed
than in her early years after she had left the Royal Academy of Music in
London (where she studied the flute.)
She says her life has all been “a bit of a rollercoaster”, and that she is
trying to smooth it out. It “feels big and extraordinary” when she is away
singing, but she gets “heartsick” for her daughters and longs to be back in
the smallness and sanity of Crouch End in North London.
And the depression? “Here’s the deal. It’s insidious. You can’t put your
finger on it. You feel dreadful and you think there should be a reason.
Stephen Fry [in his recent TV programme on the subject] described it very
well when he got out of the car, in Aberdeen actually, saying: ‘I just feel
dreadful.’ He described it and I knew exactly how he felt.” And it wasn’t
because of Aberdeen? “On that I shall remain schtum.”
But not on Amy Winehouse, the troubled young singer who has some claim to
being the next rock diva. “Oh, I think Amy has been given an incredible
voice and writing skills. I saw her at the Cobden Club (in north Kensington)
when she was 18, and I was completely blown away. She was like a woman in
her thirties, with a whole, seasoned delivery, not fazed by anything at all.
I was in awe of her. I thought, wow, you have a special talent. God, you are
18, where did that come from? I am very concerned for her. She could just
destruct. There is some issue that desperately needs to be handled. When I
talk about Amy, I think, there but for the grace of God. Not with drugs or
drink. I think I have other issues.”
The depression? “Yes.” But then she also has a range of strategies, which
includes her friends, her family, the music and the purposes she puts it to.
She also has that not too common British attribute of pure, ardent
exuberance at the heart of her. This may sound like a contradiction of the
depression but it is in fact a travelling companion, the sort which reminds
her that, having come so far, there’s no backing down now. The stakes have
become too high.
Annie Lennox’s new CD, Songs of Mass Destruction, is out on Sony
She's already changed the world, you twit. Listen to one of her discs and you'll comprehend how she's done it.
John Dove, Toronto, Ontario
Annie lennox is what a real pop icon looks like ,Shes up there with Blondie ,Bowie,etc
Eat your heart out Madge!
D paterson, Glasgow, Scotland
Pop singers do not and never have made the world a better place although it's a heart warming tribute to their pretentious sense of self importance that they think they do. Would I lie to you honey?
John Albert, Nottingham. , UK
A true Northen Light frae Aiberdeen. Keep singin quinie.
Hugh wright, Southampton, canada
I had the chance to work with The Tourists in Basing Street Studios , London and met Annie a few years later in Compass Point Studios , Nassau when she was recording the classic tune , 1984 . I was totally amazed that she remembered my name . She is a very beautiful woman with unique talent .
May your god bless you Annie .
Andrew, Paris , France