Annie Lennox

Widely hailed as the most successful and influential female star in British rock history, Scottish singer Annie Lennox first began on a path toward a career in classical music. As a teenager she left behind the piano and later the flute, turning her efforts toward her rich contralto voice and its pop possibilities. Lennox first achieved success with the music group The Tourists, comprised of Lennox and her partner Dave Stewart. The two would go on to achieve much broader, world-wide fame with their next group, Eurythmics. It was then that Lennox began experimenting with a bold androgynous look. So convincing was her gender bending that once while on tour in the US she was asked to provide her passport in order to prove that she was indeed a woman. Although Lennox shines in the spotlight, she considers herself less an attention-seeking performer than what she terms a “thought machine.”

Early years

Ann-Lynne Griselda Lennox was born December 25, 1954, in the city of Aberdeen, Scotland. Her mother, Dorothy, a school cook, gave up her job when she became pregnant with Annie. Annie and her parents lived in a two-room tenement flat (apartment) in a working-class, factory district of Aberdeen. The family didn’t lack for musical richness, though. Lennox’s father Tom, a talented bagpipe player who earned his living as a shipyard worker, encouraged his daughter to study music. Her first instrument was a brightly-colored toy piano that he bought for her.

Owing to Annie’s high IQ, at age four-and-a-half she qualified to be educated at an elite local school for girls. At age seven she began taking piano lessons, from a teacher Lennox later described as being a woman given to rapping the knuckles of her recalcitrant students. Four years later, Annie switched to the flute. It was an inauspicious beginning, as during her first flute lesson her erratic breathing caused her to throw up. In time she mastered the instrument, joining the local school orchestra’s weekly practices.

As an only child, one who went to a prestigious school with girls far wealthier than she, Lennox remembers spending a good deal of her early years on her own. She wrote poetry, drew, and daydreamed, feeling somewhat isolated and apart from the other children in her hometown. Later, as a rebellious teenager, Annie frequently butted heads with her strict, authoritarian father.

Early career

Passing her audition with the Royal Academy of Music in London, Annie left home in the northeast of Scotland at age 17. As time went by, Annie came to realize that she was not outstanding on the flute, piano, or harpsichord, and wondered what she might take up instead. She eventually fixed on the idea of becoming a singer/songwriter. In 1974, much to her parents’ dismay, Annie dropped out of the Academy after three years of attendance. Though she would later call on her knowledge of such classical composers as Mahler, Debussy, and Satie, she realized that she was not meant to devote her life to a strict interpretation of their work. In addition to the classics, Lennox also reports having been deeply influenced by the music of Stevie Wonder and Joni Mitchell, as well as by the Scottish folk songs of her childhood.

Writing songs at her apartment, Annie secured a job as a waitress. Feeling she was spinning her wheels, she was on the cusp of packing in her dreams of musical stardom to head back to a teaching job in Scotland. But in 1976, before she left, she came to be introduced to Dave Stewart. Also a struggling young musician, Stewart was having serious drug problems. Recognizing talent if not salvation in each other, the two instantly hit it off, moved in together, and became musical partners.

Eurythmics

Along with another singer/songwriter, Peet Coombs, Lennox and Stewart formed a music group called Catch, later augmented with a few extra musicians and renamed the Tourists. In 1980, after a bit of success but no profits, the Tourists—and with it Lennox’s and Stewart’s romantic relationship—ended. With a reserve uncommon in the modern entertainment industry, Lennox has refused to comment on the split with Stewart, calling it “far too private.”

Still friends and still very much musical partners, though, in 1980 Lennox and Stewart formed a new group, Eurythmics. They changed managers and decided to create their own recording studio. The chemistry, timing, content, and sound were just right. The pop duo would have nine hit albums between 1981 and 1989, with over 75 million records sold. Their first smash single, Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) came out in 1983. Lennox stunned some and delighted others by the orange flat-top hairstyle she sported while singing. Her appearance at the 1984 Grammy Awards, where she dressed as a Vegas-style Elvis Presley, fairly shocked the audience.

Having peaked in 1985, Eurythmics finally, though unofficially, disbanded in 1990. The group was inducted into the British Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005.

Solo career

Including the 2009 release of The Annie Lennox Collection, Lennox has put out five solo albums since the breakup of Eurythmics (which put out a reunion album in 1999). Two of her albums, Diva (1992) and Medusa (1995), went platinum—that is, sold more than one million copies.

Lennox’s manager is Simon Fuller, the creator of American Idol. While Lennox has performed two times on the television show, she once assured a reporter that she has no desire to be a regular cast member.

Personal life

Lennox’s imaginatively-costumed performances, particularly those featuring her in masculine garb, earned her an instant and lasting fan base with the lesbian community. As speculation about her sexuality mounted, though, she stated, “Just for the record, I’m not gay. I love men!”

In February of 1984, while on tour in Germany, Lennox met Radha Raman, a Hare Krishna monk. Attracted by his spirituality and lack of interest in the material world that she knew all too well, they married a few weeks after meeting. A short-lived union, they divorced 14 months later.

In 1987 Lennox met Uri Fruchtman, a documentary filmmaker from Israel. They were married in 1988, remaining together for 12 years. The couple had their first daughter, Lola, in 1990. Their second daughter, Tali, was born two years later. The stillbirth of their son Daniel, in 1988, spurred Lennox to see the fragility of life, and thus to her decades-long devotion to charitable causes. Deeply committed to international issues such as AIDS, poverty, and global warming, the singer/songwriter devotes time, energy, and money to those causes and more, notably Amnesty International and Greenpeace.

With an emotional make-up disposed toward the melancholy, Lennox’s music often strikes the same chord. Lennox says of her own songs that though they may link to some of life’s sadder moments such as divorce and death, they’re really more about change.

Ever since her daughters were born, parenthood has been central to Lennox’s life. (It wasn’t until the singer was 38 that she learned to drive, lessons she undertook simply for the purpose of ferrying her children to and from nursery school.) A single mother since 2001, Lennox describes her life as that of a busy multitasking parent, with to-do lists scattered here and there. Asked in 2003 if a future marriage waited on the horizon, Lennox called the idea of monogamy a beautiful but near-unattainable ideal.

Hope L. Killcoyne

Bibliography/Sources used

O'Brien, Lucy. Annie Lennox: Sweet Dreams are Made of This. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993.

Official Annie Lennox website. http://www.annielennox.com/

Neil McCormick. “Annie Lennox: Diva singing through the darkness.” Telegraph.co.uk, 9.20.07.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandjazzmusic/3667988/Annie-Lennox-Diva-singing-through-the-darkness.html

Montague, Brendan. “Annie Lennox: my baby's death inspired my charity work.” The Sunday Times, Timesonline.co.uk, 5.10.08. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article3908893.ece

Jones, Oliver. “Annie Lennox.” People Magazine, 00937673, 10/22/2007, Vol. 68, Issue 17. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ulh&AN=27048165&site=src-livev

Reighley, Kurt B. “Annie Lennox.” Advocate, 00018996, 1/17/2006, Issue 954. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ulh&AN=19344744&site=src-live

Winters, Rebecca.” Q & A With Annie Lennox.” Time Magazine, 0040781X, 2/16/2004, Vol. 163, Issue 7. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ulh&AN=12326461&site=src-live

Gliatto, Tom and Pete Norman. “A Life Laid Bare.” People Magazine; 8/11/2003, Vol. 60 Issue 6. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ulh&AN=10444378&site=src-live