Dave Stewart says performing with Annie Lennox is “a rollercoaster”.
The Eurythmics star attributes this feeling to the “emotional connection” he shares with his 67-year-old ex-girlfriend and bandmate.
The 68-year-old musician told the Metro’s Sixty Second featurette: “It’s a rollercoaster because of the emotional connection between Annie and myself. People cry at some songs and it’s an exhausting emotional experience for Annie singing too. A lot of the songs we’ve written together are about us being together. So it’s not a straightforward concert going outwards to the audience – it’s like going inwards to us as well, as a duo or as a couple.”
Dave – who has two adult kids Sam and Django with his ex, Bananarama Siobhan Fahey, and two daughters Kaya and Indya with his current wife Anoushka Fisz – says their dynamic is “unusual” as its the reverse of other bands with ex lovers.
He said: “It’s unusual. Usually a couple are in a band together, the band gets successful and then they break up. Ours was the other way around – we were a couple and in a band but didn’t write any of the songs for it or while we were living together. Then we decided not to be together, formed Eurythmics and wrote about 140 songs about it.”
The Brit Award winner attributed to getting into music by being home alone listening to the radio after his dreams of playing for Sunderland AFC were shattered by a broken knee in the 60s.
“I wasn’t interested in music at all growing up – I just wanted to play football for Sunderland. It was only when I broke my knee when I was 14 and my mum left my dad and moved to London and my brother went to college. My dad was depressed and working, so I was in the house on my own. I started playing records. My dad played only Rodgers and Hammerstein but my brother had Bob Dylan’s first album and a blues album. I went into a hypnotic trance looking at the grey Sunderland sky listening to Robert Johnson’s ‘King of the Delta Blues Singers’. It was 1966 so The Beatles, The Kinks, The Who and The Rolling Stones exploded on the radio. I found my brother’s guitar hidden in the wardrobe and taught myself, playing ten hours a day, although it was all out of tune. Even though I’m still obsessed with football, from then on my brain switched to music.”