Eurythmics Unmasked
At Le Studio Parisien, a funky warehouse in a predominantly Arab district of Paris, an English photographer is directing Annie Lennox to insert the beak of her Mardi Gras-style bird mask into the yawning mouth of Dave Stewart’s matching mask.
“That will look nice and odd!” says the photographer.
As Dave and Annie tilt and fumble into the awkward position, a phalanx of Eurythmics assistants anxiously look on, and the male members of a French video crew smirk and roll their eyes. Annie, as though suddenly aware of the ludicrous sexual imagery of the pose, extracts her beak and rips away the mask.
“No! I don’t like it!” she says, and then disappears into an adjacent dressing room.
The Frenchmen, reacting swiftly to the departure of the star, who’s banned all smoking in her presence, fire up Gauloises and Marlboros with a vengeance. Défense de fumer is just too much to ask during this long day’s journey into logistical nightmare: a photo session for the album cover of Be Yourself Tonight, plus a series of video promos, plus a video interview and performance — all controlled by two relentless perfectionists.
Not that Eurythmics are temperamental, their minions assure you. They simply insist on personally calling the shots on every little thing they’re involved with. As Annie explains later, referring to her and Dave’s previous group, the ill-fated Tourists, “It was a very good bad experience that made us learn a lot very quickly, and we just don’t want to repeat the mistakes.”
Now they’re trying to repeat the successes. Hunkered down in Paris to record their fifth album, they’re sticking with the frugal approach that yielded their first hit, “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” from a tape made in their home studio. They’ve rented a cheap rehearsal loft and outfitted it with equipment trucked in from the Church, their headquarters in London. And for good luck, they’ve brought along the console “Sweet Dreams” was recorded on.
But today, after a month of laying down basic tracks for the album, the luck seems to have worn as thin as Annie’s joie de vivre. Cool and aloof in black pants and turtleneck, she worries a mournful melody on the piano between technical snafus. Satie? An original? “It’s nothing really,” she mumbles, eyes to the ivories. “Just some lost chords.”
Down the hall, the frustrated photographer, an ex-boyfriend of Annie’s named Peter Ashworth, grumbles about his losing battle with the “damned masks.” The French techies look just as defeated but remain diplomatic. “Eurythmics are pop fantastique, no?” says the sound man, crouched beneath the servile stare of a big black butler — a giant statue Annie bought in a trendy Les Halles boutique.
As day winds down into night, an assistant with one eye on the plummeting mood barometer gets apprehensive over the last question in the video interview: Where would each of you be today if you’d never met? But Dave, ever ready with the quips, saves the take.
“I would be Tina Turner’s houseboy!” he says.
“And I’d be working in a fish factory,” says Annie, following his lead. “And I’d definitely have fifteen children.”
Dave jumps up, grabs a guitar. Annie picks up a mike and joins him for a wild, impromptu blues-funk workout. It climaxes with the duo rolling on the floor, entangled in a web of cables, stars and staff laughing, punch-drunk with fatigue. Then word arrives that José Menendez, executive vice-president of RCA/Ariola, has pulled up in a Mercedes. Like a kid whose parents have come home in the middle of a party he’s not supposed to be throwing, Dave assumes a nothing’s-out-of-the-ordinary attitude and strides off to greet the VIP. Annie escapes to her dressing room.
“I’ve been working hard all day, and I’m tired. That’s my excuse,” she states flatly, folding onto a sofa.
The vibe: No politicking, please. I want to be alone.
I love you like a ball and cha-ya-ain . . .
Annie’s voice rings out from the studio down the hall. Dave, resident Eurythmics PR man, is holding an exclusive listening session for the exec.
I love you like a ball and cha-ya-ain . . .
With the sound of her voice winging like a boomerang from the studio to her dressing-room refuge, Annie Lennox walks calmly to the door and slams it shut. And then she drags a coat rack in front of it.