'Aids is wreaking more havoc than apartheid ever did in South Africa,' says Annie Lennox, as she explains to Brian Boydwhy she gathered 23 divas to record a fund-raising anthem called Sing
"If you have a sex with a virgin, you'll be cured of Aids," says Annie Lennox. Arguably the greatest white soul singer of her generation is stretched out on an antique couch in an £8-for-a-cup-of-coffee London hotel. She lets the words linger around the fussily decorated room before suddenly sitting bolt upright and grabbing your elbow.
"This is what I'm up against," she says. "You've government ministers in African countries saying you should take lemon juice, garlic, and olive oil if you have Aids. You have Thabo Mbeki [the South African President] holding, and let's be charitable here, 'unorthodox' views on Aids. And, as always, you've the women bearing the brunt of it - the women who are infected, whose children in utero are infected, because a man is 'too proud' to wear a condom. Aids is wreaking more havoc than apartheid ever did in South Africa. I'm just back from touring around women's groups in South Africa who are working in the frontline of Aids prevention and as they say, trying to make people 'HIV literate'. The stories they told me . . . I tell you something, the architects of apartheid must be laughing in their graves."
It was listening to a speech by Nelson Mandela when he revisited his Robben Island prison a few years ago that "totally connected" the singer with the Aids pandemic. "I know I'm privileged, I know I have a fantastic lifestyle, but I also have a voice and I will be heard," she says. "This is not about being a do-gooder or being 'charitable'. This is about engaging with the rest of the world. This is about being, and feeling like, a fully-rounded human being."
Her new solo album, Songs Of Mass Destruction, her first since 2003, contains a song called Sing. On it she gathered together 23 of the most well-known female singers in the world. Madonna, Gladys Knight, Celine Dion, k.d. lang, Joss Stone and Martha Wainwright all join her on the "powerful feminist anthem". The song will be released as a single in November and all money raised will go the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), a South African Aids activist organisation - largely peopled by women - who are aghast at the myths that are perpetuated by male politicians about the still rampant virus.
A surly remark made previously by a British journalist saying she was trying to be "the new Bob Geldof or Bono" is still very much on her mind. "For the love of God," she says as her eyes flash with anger, "do people know nothing about me, about who I am, where I come from, what I've done? Here's my connection to South Africa. I'm 17 and living in Aberdeen [where she was born and brought up]. My father is a trade union socialist, as was my grandfather. There's a knock on the door one night. There's this man on a recruitment drive to sign up people to work as teachers in apartheid South Africa. The salary they offer is massive. I'm broke, it's a very attractive package. But because of how I was brought up, I tell him exactly what he can do with his job offer.
"Later during the 1980s when the Eurythmics [the duo she was in with ex-fiancee Dave Stewart] were selling millions of records, we were offered silly money to play to 'mixed' audiences in South Africa. Now remember, during the 1980s Thatcher had labelled the ANC a "terrorist" organ. Besides not going to play shows under that heinous regime we also saw to it, and this was against the law at the time, that all the royalties we made from South African sales of our albums were secretly channelled to the ANC."
The connection was reawakened when she met Nelson Mandela. "I saw him address the world's press from his old prison cell," she says. "He was talking about how the country had come through apartheid but now had to deal with an Aids crisis. He used the word 'genocide'. It's only when you visit the country that you realise that the crisis is on such a scale of devastation - seeing the Aids orphans on the street. Millions struggle secretly with the virus because of the taboo attached to it. The time for worries about taboos are well, well over. I have a voice. I will use it."
She traces her commitment back to her father's equally committed trade union socialism. "My family were proactive socialists," she says. "I was aware the world was unjust. In my own case we were never that badly off but I saw other situations. I ended up with fame and wealth. I can use both to move this campaign forward. It's why I got all those magnificent female singers to contribute to the album. You know, I've been quiet now for a number of years, I have two children so I can't tour that much. But I feel engaged again now, I feel busy. I feel connected again - and for a long time I wasn't."
Moving on, she thinks aloud about how female performers are treated by the press. It's the same old story with successful female acts, she states. You're defined by your relationships, people just won't accept the body of musical work a woman has produced (and she has sold a staggering 75 million albums), it's always "Tragic Annie" with her divorces and separations. She was once, rather dramatically, described in a headline as "Britain's Most Tortured Rock Star".
Cleverly intelligent - in a way that only .05 per cent of famous people are, during the interview she's as happy discussing such key texts as Judith Williamson's Decoding Advertisements and John Berger's Ways Of Seeing as she is in trading Amy Winehouse gossip. This, remember, is the woman who pre-Big Brother and pre-Heat magazine, wrote and sang the words: "All those fake celebrities, And all those viscous queens, All the stupid papers, And the stupid magazines, Sweet dreams are made of anything, That gets you in the scene" (from the song 17 Again).
If people insist on defining her by her relationships, it should be worth noting that contrary to popular belief Dave Stewart isn't the key figure. Although she admits that she never would have had the nerve to go solo if it hadn't been for the Eurythmics - and despite the fact they were long-term lovers and went through global fame together - she has gone years without speaking to him.
She first met Stewart when she was studying classical music in London (the flute, believe it or not). Lennox was working in a vegetarian restaurant and the first thing Stewart said to her was "Will you marry me?". She never married Stewart but she did marry the Israeli film maker Uri Fruchtmann in 1988. The couple have two children and divorced, amicably, in 1999. She cites the divorce as the turning point in her life.
"Something you mentioned earlier that you thought I was singing really freely on this new album - well that is the case and it's because on the last album, Bare, I was still coming out of that time in my life," she says. But then the song titles on Bare spoke their own story: The Hurting Time, Bitter Pill and The Saddest Song I've Got.
For someone who was so ubiquitous (and her androgynous looks so commented upon) in the 1980s and early 1990s - she seemed to win a Brit Award for Best Female Artist almost by default during this time - she's aware of how her profile has dropped. Her solo career, while wildly successful, has only yielded three albums in 15 years, not counting the new one.
"I was a normal human being during those years," she says. "Bringing up children and not being the singer on the stage. I keep going back to this but I did feel like a bit of a dry sponge for a long while before I started getting involved with TAC in South Africa. I don't want to come across as just another famous and wealthy person lecturing people, but there was a real awakening for me when it came to getting involved in the Aids prevention campaign. I don't know - I just feel dignified by it. And now, recording and performing again is more special to me because it's connected to something. I'm here, I'm back. It's good."
Songs Of Mass Destruction is released on September 28th
Ten Of The Best:
The Essential Annie Lennox
1. Sweet Dreams Are Made Of ThisThe song that
began it all for her back in 1983. Sweet Dreams is still being
endlessly remixed and still charting (most recently a top 10 hit
again in France). It was covered by musical man of the moment,
Kanye West.
2. Here Comes The Rain AgainThis melancholic rumination on unrequited love came complete with a memorable video which saw Lennox walking along a Orkney Islands cliff top in a nightgown.
3. There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart)Listen to her voice soar over the opening few notes - almost operatic in its execution.
4. You Have Placed A Chill In My HeartWhen she sings "Don't cut me down when I'm talking to you, because I'm much too tall to feel that small" she almost scares you.
5. Would I Lie To You?A full-on R'n'B song with brass backing. The question in the title is definitely not rhetorical
6. 17 AgainA little-known song from the brief Eurythmics reunion period at the end of the 1990s. Great tune and social commentary, too.
7. WhyA relationship is falling badly apart and Lennox puts her side of the story in her most emotional delivery ever. "Do you know how I feel? I don't think you know how I feel" - stirring stuff.
8. No More I Love YousA cover version she sings like it's her own.
9. Pavement CracksA beautiful vocal about an ugly situation.
10. Dark RoadFrom the new album, a master class in vocal phrasing. Her four octave range is apparent.
Without Joni ...
Growing up in Aberdeen, Lennox thought she was destined to become a poet. She knew, however, that something was missing and it was only when she bought a Joni Mitchell album that she realised what that something was. "Her early albums convinced me to become a singer-songwriter. It was all intuitive - nobody discovered me or told me what to do. Her lyrical imagery tangled with my brain and I was challenged to try to follow suit. Her songs still haunt me, she was the blueprint. It wouldn't have happened without her." On the A Tribute To Joni Mitchell album, Lennox sings Mitchell's Ladies Of The Canyon.