NO LEARNING, NO CREATIVITY, NO FREEDOM OF CHOICE, NO IMAGINATION.’
– Heston Blumenthal
THE TWO VOICES OF ANNIE LENNOX
ANNIE LENNOX HAS TWO VOICES. The first is the one that has sold over eighty million albums, winning her five Grammys, an Academy Award and more Brit Awards than any other female artist. Her second voice is the one she lends to women’s rights and the issue of HIV/AIDS in Africa. And it’s this campaigning voice that takes centre stage these days.
Annie remembers the moment when her singing voice changed pitch from artistry to activism. It was after taking part in a concert to launch 46664, Nelson Mandela’s HIV/AIDS foundation in South Africa, a country with the highest rate of HIV infection in the world. She witnessed Mandela describe the HIV pandemic as ‘a silent genocide, carrying the face of women’. He explained that one in three pregnant women were HIV positive in South Africa and AIDS was (and still is) a leading cause of death for women of reproductive age globally. Then, on a visit to a township hospital, she saw the impact of AIDS for herself, in clinics, rape crisis centres, orphanages and people’s homes. It was a dark epiphany for Annie. From then on, she shaped her life around responding to the tragedy.
The result has been over a decade of tireless work on tackling the issue – work that has, according to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, ‘contributed significantly to turning the pandemic around in our country’. In 2007 she founded a campaign called SING to raise global awareness and prompt action, helping to ensure that HIV positive women and children have access to the treatment and care they need. Annie has travelled across the globe giving fundraising performances, presentations, speeches and interviews on radio, television and in the printed press, at conferences, rallies and in government buildings, speaking truth to power at every given opportunity. She also became the founder of The Circle, an organisation which aims to inspire and connect women in order to harness their skills, creativity and influence, and to transform the challenges and injustices faced by the most disempowered girls and women in the world.
Those dusty plains of Sub-Saharan Africa are a long way from the working-class tenement block in Aberdeen where she was raised. Coming from a poor but musical family, she studied the piano and flute at school, which led her to be offered a place at the Royal Academy of Music in London at the age of seventeen. ‘It became my passport out of there.’
Tough years followed, however. ‘I had very little money and didn’t really know anyone. I lived in a variety of different bedsits, doing whatever I could to make ends meet, but even though my chances seemed bleak I didn’t want to go back to Scotland and feel as if I’d failed.’
One constant through it all was singing. ‘I would sing and sing and sing, walking down the street, in the shower, all the time, just by myself, and by the time three years at the Royal Academy had come to an end I knew I wanted to be a singer/songwriter, so I started to write songs on an old Victorian harmonium. I’d been writing poems since I was twelve and I had a lot to say.’
But for all the hard work, practice and passion, one factor for success was still missing: serendipity. That came thanks to Camden Market, where Annie sold second-hand clothes, sharing a stall with a friend. It was there that she got to know a guy selling records who told her, ‘You should meet my mate, Dave.’ According to Annie there was a creative connection with Dave Stewart from the beginning and within a few years they were dominating the charts on both sides of the Atlantic as Eurythmics.
Her life story is of a woman following her passions, wherever they may take her, from the tenements of Aberdeen to the townships of Africa, via the Grammys in America, and her advice fits that story perfectly.
‘There will be “Ah ha!” moments in life when a light might go on, when you think to yourself, “I MUST do that” – whatever it is. It’s not because someone says you should do it, but it’s because you feel absolutely compelled to and there would be something wrong with the world if you didn’t. If you find that light – acknowledge it. Find other people who share that passion. Cultivate it. Find that deeper purpose in your life.’
As voices go, it’s a good one to listen to.
ON HOLIDAY WITH SIMON COWELL
I’M SAT DEEP IN THE stalls of the London Palladium theatre, watching four glamorously dressed people on stage argue with each other. Above them hangs a huge backlit Union Jack resplendent with the words ‘Britain’s Got Talent’. And beneath it sits the man who has most definitively proved that assertion to be true: Simon Cowell.
After the judges finish play-fighting and filming wraps for the day, I’m brought backstage to meet the main man. He’s sat in the centre of the room, surrounded by a bustle of black-clad assistants, cameramen and producers: the calm eye in the middle of his own media storm.
I know his reputation for cutting to the chase, to put it politely. I also know from his media director that he’s twelve hours into a twenty-hour day, so I am a little apprehensive, expecting a terse, short conversation. But the exact opposite ensues and, embarrassingly for a forty-three-year-old straight man such as myself, over the hour we spend talking I fall hopelessly and completely in love with Simon Cowell.
It starts with Simon sitting me down and making sure I am comfortable. He then offers me a cup of his homemade fresh ginger tea, but it turns out to be so fiery I start to cough and my eyes water uncontrollably. Simon is concerned and makes sure I am OK. Then, once he is happy I’ve recovered, spends the next ten minutes enquiring about me, my business, my story. He speaks softly, probes gently, listens intently. He invests more time just asking about me than the time we’ve been allocated to talk.
Eventually he allows me to move the topic of the conversation from me to him. His manner is so warm and kind and charming, and his voice so soothing, I totally relax. A lovely feeling washes over me, like being on a sunny holiday. He uses my name a lot and drops in the odd compliment. I get the impression he really likes me. I start to think we might become good friends. Maybe we’ll even go on holiday together.
I catch myself. This is ridiculous. I’m a grown man behaving like a teenager. I need to concentrate. I push my man crush and daydreams to one side and tune back in to what he’s saying. He’s certainly someone worth listening to: a rich and fertile source of practical wisdom and insight, anecdotes and stories. I say his team strike me as exceptional in their commitment and professionalism, and he explains how he learnt to get the best from people. ‘Well, Richard, my dad told me there’s an invisible sign on everyone’s head which says make me feel important. Remember that and you’ll be fine.’
He’s charmingly, self-deprecatingly candid about where his ideas come from, which makes me like him even more. ‘So, Richard, I’m in my kitchen one night, cooking dinner and watching some boring programme, saying to myself, “I’d rather watch a dancing dog than this,” and then a few seconds later I think, “Actually, I really would rather be watching a dancing dog than this.” And that’s where the idea for BGT came from.’
I can see his assistants hovering, but I don’t want my time in the sun to end, so I play for time and keep on asking questions. Given his dominance in the music industry, what’s his advice for aspiring artists trying to make it? ‘More than anything else, you’ve got to have a great song. Do small gigs. Listen to the crowd’s reaction, find out what works.’ And how does one cope with all the inevitable rejections? ‘Listen to the feedback, you may learn from it. But if the people saying “No” are more stupid than you, don’t get discouraged.’ What if someone finds themself auditioning or pitching to Simon Cowell? ‘If you get a “Yes”, then shut up. There are times I’ve said yes and the artist starts with “I knew it, we’re going to do amazing things together” and the more they talk the more I’m thinking, “I’m really going off you”. The better