A rewind to April 1992, and 33 years ago not only was Annie Lennox’s full length solo debut sitting pretty atop the UK charts, but its coruscating contents revealed a liberated and liberating pop album that came with a prophetic and warning regarding severed alliances and a disillusionment with fame and fortune. This sister’s been doing things for herself.
With her storied artistry demonstrating a chameleon-like instinct to experiment and evolve, Annie Lennox has paraded a panoply of personas since her commercial breakthrough with The Tourists in 1979 — from androgynous ice queen to concerned political activist and formidable feminist, this is one woman who has done more than her fair share to help change the way we view pop music.
It’s surprising, then, that, a couple of minor cameos excepted, Annie chose not to pursue a second string in acting. With her striking photogenic features and dramatic flair she would have been one hell of an actress.
Case in point: the promotional video for her first solo 45, Why. The camera spends an inordinate amount of time focused on Lennox’s face as she acts out the role of a showgirl; a been-there-done-that showbiz pro studying and examining herself in a theatre’s vanity mirror as she goes through the nightly ritual of painstakingly applying her stage makeup and costume.
As the performer slowly examines her visage, she is at times bemused, desolate, furious, and imperious.
Once she’s outfitted in her glamorous work-wear, the completed Diva marvels knowingly at her transformation and, with the façade firmly in place, summons more ever-changing moods as she confronts a former lover – or perhaps an erstwhile musical collaborator – via the camera lens: fearful, lustful, playful, impassioned, defiant.
On a personal note, I can remember vividly the first time I caught a showing of the video. Rewind to the morning of Thursday 5 March 1992, and friend, housemate and colleague Judi and I were going through the motions side-by-side on the exercise bikes at Livingwell gym in Central Milton Keynes. In a welcome change from grungy American rawk (Nirvana, Pearl Jam) or the odd pumping piece of dull-soulless-dance-music, MTV Europe suddenly transmitted Why. If it wasn’t the premiere then it could only have been days later.
The soft ballad revealed an Arctic intent with a knife stuck deep into it as Lennox’s confrontational performance made it rise above a MOR pseudo lullaby. Her whispered coda, signing off with “I don’t think you know what I feel/ You don’t know what I feel” was utterly gut-wrenching.
We sat if not motionless then certainly silent and somewhat slightly transfixed until it was over. Just shy of five minutes, the clip recounted the wounds of a broken relationship, but also a marvellous showcase for that woefully untapped acting range. Indeed, it was such a beautiful and powerful visual representation of the song that had we not been psyched up by the exercise endorphins it was one of those moments where your bottom lip might start to tremble.
Judi broke the silence and said, somewhat awed and visibly moved, “I like that.”
The funny thing was, shorn of that emotive video, Why could, at first blush, come across as a tad underwhelming. Pleasant but hardly ear worm radio fodder. Which made its choice as the first 45 from Diva such a bold and courageous move.
Why is certainly an emotionally wracked song, and it’s impressive to think it reached No. 5 in Britain, swiftly becoming Lennox’s biggest hit since Eurythmics’ Thorn In My Side in 1986. This was a tune with deliberately soft and subtle synths underpinning its airbrushed inoffensive instrumentation that forces you to focus on those devastating lyrics. And it’s so blindingly obvious who the intended target is, that it had to be the song to launch a solo career, as a mission statement and a determination to put Eurythmics to one side, perhaps forever. Especially seeing as her relationship with Dave Stewart was now ”on indefinite hiatus” and would take an entire decade to thaw.
With her self-confessed insecurities and neuroses, it must have taken some courage to go solo, particularly when Dave Stewart handled the music and produced the records to boot. In Eurythmics, Lennox was somewhat fragile and prone to depression. The moody, mysterious introvert to Stewart’s fun-loving extrovert and self-confessed workaholic.
What was surprising was in terms of new composition Dave beat Annie to the market by a good couple of years, dashing off three albums and scoring a surprise top tenner with 1990’s Lily Was Here. Before Diva, Annie seemed nervous about writing sans Dave, testing the water with a couple of ‘solo’ covers which ended up in movies: 1988’s Put A Little Love In Your Heart, a duet with Al Green produced by Dave (for Scrooged, and an even more surprising US top 10 hit), and 1990’s Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye (later used in Derek Jarman’s Edward II), helmed by Steve Lillywhite.
Yet this was no time to play catch up.
Annie took time off to become a mother, and indulge in some charitable endeavours. She only reappeared briefly to promote Eurythmics’ Greatest Hits in the spring of 1991, where it wound up topping the chart for 10 weeks and became the year’s second biggest album, outselling scores of contemporaneous heavy hitters from U2, Michael Jackson, Tina Turner and even Queen.
Simply the best of indeed.
A hint of the titular persona to come was dropped in an interview with Q magazine to plus said compilation, with Annie recalling the time she saw the first cut of the video for It’s Alright (Baby’s Coming Back) and “throwing a diva-esque tantrum, floods of tears. We had to re-shoot it.”
When Diva finally followed in April 1992, it’s fair to say I was more than a little spellbound. If Eurythmics had been put to bed for this then perhaps it was for the best. Unusually for me, I bought all of its attendant CD singles and the inevitable VHS, and was ready to marvel at the commercial resurgence of the awesome artist from Aberdeen.
The chorus line aesthetic followed through on the cover of Diva too. The ornate headdress that crowned La Lennoxa’s head had previously been used by both team 007 and PSB in the era of excess, the eighties.
In a notable case of recycling at its British best, it had been donned by one of the circus girls at a US airbase in the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy – and subsequently by a bespectacled dancer in the Pet Shop Boys & Dusty Springfield video for 1987’s What Have I Done To Deserve This? – the full costume consists of a heavily beaded orange corset, decorated with a trail of sequins and ballet slipper pink ostrich feathers so long they almost dwarfed the wearer.
Before deciding on the imagery for Why (and also The Gift, the album track accompaniment shot in Venice’s St. Marks Square), Annie stumbled across the apparel at Angels costumiers in Colindale while rooting for something to wear for Diva’s cover shoot with Japanese fashion photographer Satoshi Saikusa.
Freakily, on 15 March 2012 – which just happened to be the day before the tenth anniversary of Why on 45 – I found myself at a fitting at the same North London emporium, being kitted out for a rather more minor role as a Brazillian policeman in Ron Howard’s Formula 1 movie Rush, starring ole Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth.
With the LP front-loaded with Why followed by Walking On Broken Glass, Annie demonstrated how solid a songwriter she is, with that stunning glacial-yet-yearning voice entering uncharted waters while ensuring that Diva grabs you right away.
These two 45s – Why reached the fifth spot while Glass walked its way to eighth position in September (oh, and a Canadian No.1, no less) – showcase solo Annie at her best.
Precious, third track and second single, was less impactful, making No. 23 in June, the month I turned 23, in fact. By then Judi and I were out of Blighty on an eight-week backpacking jaunt around Europe. Having come from Venice via Vienna the week before my birthday, we made acquaintance with a fellow Brit in a monolithic youth hostel in Budapest. Enter Andie Hamling, a Devonian au pair from Plymouth who used to work for Peter Gabriel’s manager Gail Colson.
If my memory serves, were three were sitting on a train to Prague when Andie asked me what was on my Walkman. Just before we left the UK in May I’d rushed off a couple of home-made cassettes, of of which was a C60 (that means 30 minutes per side, you millennials) with most of Diva on one side, and an assortment of KLF cuts on t’other.
When I mentioned that Why had been the big hit thus far and the first 45, Andie asked “how does it go? I’m not sure I’ve heard it yet I’ve been out of the country for so long.”
“It’s difficult to explain. It’s not really a singy song but there‘s a sort of gospel quality to it. It doesn’t really have an identifiable hook. Why don’t you have a listen?”
As with Judi in the gym, I could tell by the look on her face the song had made an impact. Andie looked suitably impressed and said she’d try and track down the album. Fast forward to the fourth of July and the three of us were in the Polish capital Warszawa. As luck would have it, we found a cheap-as-chips market stall selling cassettes of ‘current sounds’. As I’d yet to hear it, I opted for what was the EP currently sitting pretty at No. 1 back at home – the music hall dragfest of Erasure’s Abba-esque – while (huzzah), Andie found her Diva. With a slightly uncertain provenance, both tapes had cost the equivalent of about 20 pence!
That evening in yet another hostel near the “batty” Gotham-like Palace of Culture and Science, Andie played her purchase and seemed utterly thrilled with it.
“How great is Walking On Broken Glass? It’s so joyous and uplifting.” I suddenly felt embarrassed I hadn’t even included it on my C60. Mus
Musically, she was on the zloty. But like so much of the Eurythmics catalogue, the song takes the concept of disenchantment – ostensibly the shattering of relationships – and welds it onto an irresistibly catchy tune. It’s what the Pet Shop Boys have virtually patented the term HappySad for.
Talking of which, in his final assignment for Smash Hits, Neil Tennant interviewed Eurythmics during pre-promotion for their 1985 LP Be Yourself Tonight, and it’s fair to say has had a slightly strained connection to Annie in particular ever since. In a momentary lapse of perspective, the PSB frontman told theartsdesk’s Russ Coffey that “Annie Lennox did something obscure” at the London 2012 Olympics.
The song in question was Little Bird, Diva’s brilliantly exhilarating fifth and final single that was so successful it instantly sledged its way into the British charts at an exalted No. 3 position and stayed there on the bronze podium for an entire month.
Moreover, not only did it become Annie’s second biggest solo single of all time (surpassed only by 1995’s No More ‘I Love You’s) but its impact as a double A-side with the Dracula theme Love Song For A Vampire was such that it helped send Diva back to the top spot almost a year after its release. It‘s for those reasons it was chosen as the track to open 2009‘s Annie Lennox Collection. Not bad for an obscurio, eh?
With its subtly synthesizer-based soundscapes, the rest of Diva was just as captivating, with a mixture of winsome ballads and more uptempo material. The main ten tracks were self-penned, two as co-writes with fellow Caledonians: the satirically self-regarding Legend In My Living Room sported a striking arrangement by former Jethro Tull piano man Peter-John Vettese, while the official show closer, the aforementioned The Gift, was a more subdued collaboration with Glaswegian post-rockers The Blue Nile.
In fact, because the publicity rightly focused on Annie as soloist rather than collaborator, you have to look to the personnel credits in the smallprint to realise Diva is an album that boats not just The Blue Nile and Trevor Horn‘s erstwhile right-hand man but also former members of the Blow Monkeys and Japan to boot, with drum programming attributed to Steve Jansen (David Sylvian’s brother). On his own website in 2018, the drummer recalled the session:
“Annie invited me to listen to a new track she was working on at her home studio in her attic space, which I believe wasn’t really set-up to record drums. She sang a guide vocal on it and we discussed what sort of thing was required. Since programming had become a fairly common practice by that time I took the track away and programmed something up in my own recording space. I actually used some of the same samples that I’d made for Blackwater [on 1991’s Japan pseudonym project Rain Tree Crow], which was also programmed, that’s another story.
I think I drove my neighbours a bit nuts at the time as my place was being refurbished and there was no sound insulation. I had a few complaints. The track was called Why and that explains why there are no drummers performing on it. I think the neighbours heard it a lot more after that.”
Stephen Lipson’s contacts were probably invaluable in getting Diva fleshed out. And to end, a little reminisce from the man in the producer’ chair.
“Simon Fuller had just started managing Annie Lennox and for some reason one of his first moves was to ask me if I’d produce her album. I’d just left the Sarm ZTT fold and was being managed by Ralph Simon at Zomba Management, but some time prior to my moving [Trevor Horn’s wife/manager] Jill Sinclair had asked me who my dream artist to produce would be.
“Without hesitation I’d said Annie Lennox. At the time Eurythmics were still in full flow so there was no point in her pursuing it. The call from Simon was one of those moments I’ll never forget. I remember where I was standing when the phone rang, the time of day, and the feeling of utter euphoria when I put the phone down.
“I flew down from Scotland to meet Annie for the first time. It was a Saturday and I was utterly exhausted from many intense months of working on a Simple Minds album [1991’s Real Life]. She played me her demos and wanted my response to each song. For some reason I thought that being overly effusive wasn’t the best idea so my reactions were positive but muted. The next day Simon called me and said that Annie had the impression I didn’t like any of the songs and consequently didn’t think that working with me was a good idea.
In retrospect, my reactions couldn’t have been worse. This was her first solo album and she needed reassurance that her songs were good enough, so a muted response was pretty dumb. I called her, apologised profusely and explained that I was exhausted and as a result wasn’t being my usual amusing self. I finished by telling her how amazing I thought the songs were and I would be honoured to play any part in the proceedings. Close shave…
Making Diva was an extremely long process. Annie had recorded some of her demos with Marius de Vries and, for the most part were brilliant as is Marius, but I felt that we needed to clearly define Annie’s colours. Her sound had to be different to Eurythmics whilst at the same time not straying too far. The thought that kept going through my head was that she no longer had a guitar player so we should make the album pretty much based around keyboards. That was my big idea – no guitars unless essential, ironic considering that’s my instrument. But keyboards are Annie’s instrument and that had to be the focus.
Annie wanted to make the album at home, so we built a studio at the top of the house, installing two Sony tape machines in a spare bedroom on the floor below. Our workspace was small which was fine since I wanted to keep the numbers down anyway. We designated spaces for Annie, me, Heff [Moraes – engineering] of course, and my keyboard prodigy friend Peter-John Vettese.
There’s a Steve Jobs quote: ‘Surround yourself with people smarter than you are’. That’s completely the case with Peter. His ability to translate my flimsy input into the most amazing part is extraordinary, all the while making everyone constantly weep with laughter. Making Diva was a joyful rollercoaster experience which I think helped define Annie as a solo artist pretty decisively.
It goes without saying that Annie was the major artist in my career – three albums, assorted singles, songs for movies and many live shows, including playing to over 100,000 people in Central Park. There’s a story to every song we recorded together and I can’t think of a single one that I’m not proud of.
It’s funny how one phone call can make such a difference.
Stephen Lipson, Facebook, December 2020
Steve Pafford
