Annie Lennox will tell you that everybody’s looking for something and that’s just the way it should be.
Speaking a few weeks before starting out on her current tour with Sting – the two perform tonight at White River Amphitheatre in Auburn – Lennox pointed out that “the human condition is in a constant state of restlessness. This is something that will accompany you from birth to death and you’re left with the crossword puzzle of trying to work it out, or trying to numb it, or trying to avoid it, or trying to find a substitute. But this is what drives most of us on in life, looking for the answers to the great mystery.”
And, Lennox added, “You have to figure out what your destiny is, and you have to try to maximize your full potential. And it’s not a given, it’s something that you have to constantly think about and try to develop according to the circumstances of your life.”
So says the reluctant diva who in the ’80s ruled as the magnetic vocal and visual half of the Eurythmics, then pretty much deferred her career in the ’90s to raise two daughters and only recently returned to center stage, on her own schedule and on her own terms.
Born Christmas Day 1954 in Aberdeen, Scotland, Lennox was the only child of a boilermaker and a nurse who suggested a destiny by encouraging her artistic aspirations at an early age.
“I was musical and had opportunities to learn instruments, and my first was the piano,” Lennox said. Later, “someone offered me a chance to pick up the flute. I enjoyed playing it, and I had this idea that I would maybe be a chamber ensemble player or something like that.”
At 17, she won a scholarship to London’s Royal Academy of Music but dropped out after three years (and just three days shy of her finals), convinced classical music was both restrictive and “far too competitive. And it probably didn’t fit my kind of personality, really,” Lennox said. “I think the world doesn’t really miss the flute player.”
Or the waitress, which is what Lennox was when she met Dave Stewart at a London health food restaurant in the mid-’70s. They formed a band called the Tourists, dominated by singer-songwriter Peet Coombes, and had a minor hit with a cover of Dusty Springfield’s “I Only Want to Be With You” (which is also what Lennox and Stewart decided romantically). But in 1979, after three albums, the Tourists broke up, as did Lennox and Stewart. In their places: the Eurythmics and an ongoing musical partnership that would rack up numerous hits and platinum albums in the ’80s.
What broke the Eurythmics was their second album’s title track, “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” a hypnotic song accompanied by a seminal video that cast the close-cropped, orange-haired Lennox as an androgynous siren. Over the next six years, the Eurythmics continued delivering mesmerizing tracks such as “Who’s That Girl?,” “Here Comes the Rain Again,” “Would I Lie to You?,” “Missionary Man” and “Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves” (with Aretha Franklin).
In 1990, the Eurythmics released a greatest-hits package – and quietly broke up after Lennox announced she would take a two-year sabbatical to have a child. Two years later, Lennox released her first solo album, “Diva.” It produced two great singles, “Why” and “Walking on Broken Glass,” sold 7 million copies worldwide (more than any Eurythmics album) and with song credits going solely to Lennox, established her as a force to be reckoned with.
None of that came particularly easy, says Lennox, who these days sports equally close-cropped but now platinum hair.
“It wasn’t ‘Look at me, I can prove (something) to everybody,’” she said of “Diva.” “I hadn’t taken that step, hadn’t thought of taking that step because I was so melded to Dave creatively that it hadn’t even occurred to me. But it gradually dawned on me that I wouldn’t mind digging my toes into it, though I approached it very gently, very tentatively. I wasn’t particularly expecting to have success; it was really more an experimentation.
“I started to enjoy the feeling of being independent and having that freedom, or responsibility if you like, to take on the creative decisions for myself, by myself. I love that autonomy that being a solo artist gives me.”
But Lennox didn’t exactly push herself: In 1995, she released “Medusa,” an album of covers. Last year, when she released the harrowingly beautiful “Bare,” it was only Lennox’s second album of original songs in 12 years. Throw in “Into the West,” her recent Oscar-winning theme for “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” and that’s a thin catalog of 21 songs in 14 years.
Yet Lennox couldn’t have been happier.
“Oh yes, absolutely,” she said. “You see, when Dave and I were touring and making records, we’d been together as a musical team since the mid-’70s. So I’d been jumping over many hurdles – touring, recording, writing – for many years. Actually, I simply wanted a life!”
Last year marked Lennox’s first-ever tour as a solo artist, and with her daughters now older, she can be more flexible.
“I’m ready to do another record right now,” Lennox said, adding she also wants to write poems andtake photographs. The striking, emotionally and physically exposed cover of “Bare” is a self-portrait. It is part of an ongoing series made with painter-designer Allan Martin and reflects Lennox’s desire to control her own image, as well as her life.
Annie Lennox
Sting
Sting/Annie Lennox
7:30 tonight, White River Amphitheatre, Auburn; $38.75-$101.25, 206-528-0888.
Sting/Annie Lennox
7:30 tonight, White River Amphitheatre, Auburn; $38.75-$101.25, 206-528-0888.
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