EURYTHMICS: THIS IS 1985, OK?

You would think that with one platinum album, two number one singles and three sold-out tours, even a halfway decent band would get some respect (translate that to airplay) the next time they released a record. Ah, but nothing’s as simple or as logical as it should be in the radio-ruled world of big time music biz politics—or film, either, for that matter. Just ask Eurythmics, they’ll tell you. In fact Annie Lennox finds it amusing— “bemusing, because I can see the irony of the whole thing,” she says, striking an appropriately bored pose for the cameras of Entertainment Tonight.

“The whole thing” happens to be the war on two continents over 1984, the soundtrack album Eurythmics recorded to go along with Michael Radford’s remake of George Orwell’s infamous book. The Radford film, as opposed to the original done in the ’50s, would eventually have become a Trivial Pursuit question, since it stars Richard Burton in his final performance. But nooooo, this bleak and grim version of Orwell’s stark futuristic vision (I didn’t say that, the critics did, though they loved it) opted for more immediate infamy, engendering a sense of controversies even George couldn’t imagine. As a matter of fact, if the ol’ boy had forseen rock ’n’ roll, he probably would’ve put this one in the book.

The shouting started last October when 1984 (the film) premiered in London. Eurythmics had spent the two previous months in Nassau, Bahamas following their U.S. tour, cranking out the score. “When we were asked to write it, we were very excited because we’d turned down quite a lot of movie scores and this one we really felt for,” explains an exasperated Dave Stewart. “But they didn’t tell us that they’d also had somebody else write a soundtrack 10 months before. A whole political battle ensued between the record label and the film company.” Lining up on opposing sides were director Radford and producer Simon Perry, who decided they were enchanted with some work film veteran Dominic Muldowney, and the distributors, Virgin Films, headed by “enfant terrible,” Richard Branson. Branson had commissioned Eurythmics in the first place because he’s no dummy, having made several zillion quid out of his various Virgin-al enterprises (the shops, the airline, ad infinitum), all of which were bankrolled by the record label’s success. (Thank you, Boy George.) He knew that a good soundtrack from a name artist could only enhance the movie’s eventual box office take. And at that point, he was encountering a lot of resistance from American film companies who weren’t exactly doing backflips when presented with the opportunity to plaster Big Brother’s face over theater screens everywhere, even if John Hurt did make a cute Winston.

So when the Kleigs scraped London’s skyline and every limey celeb worth his weight in Fleet Street ink, made his/her run through the TV gauntlet for the gala opening, nobody was more surprised than Branson—except maybe Eurythmics—when Muldowney’s music issued from the screen. Turns out that at the last minute Radford had switched scores because, as he later said to the Brit film clan at the Standard Film Awards when they gave 1984 the “Best Film” award, Eurythmics 1984-ish modern rock ’n’ roll didn’t exactly compliment the 1948-ish mood he was trying to create. (And that’s a cleaned up interpretation of his comments.) Branson and Eurythmics would’ve appreciated at least a little advance warning, though, since the theme song, “Sexcrime,” had already been issued as a single. “It was shooting up the charts all over Europe, so it made it even more difficult for them to have the battle because it was already on sale,” laughs Stewart over the folly of directors and executives. Compromise was, naturally, the final solution. Gradually, Eurythmics music was phased into showings at the Haymarket Theater in the West End, so audiences at the sold-out show never knew just whose tune they were humming upon exit.

Now if England was silly, America proved to be utterly ridiculous. In fact, the headaches grew so bad Annie & Dave were thinking of taking stock in Veganin, the miracle English aspirin. “Sexcrime” came to the U.S. in the usual manner, with RCA shelling out promotional 45s to radio stations, rightfully expecting the normal enthusiastic response that greets a new Eurythmics disc. Wrong again. “We had ‘Sexcrime’ on the air for like one day, and boom, the phones just lit up,” Scott Shannon, program director at New York’s Z-100 explained, and his was a typical tale. Seems that listeners out in radioland were offended, not by the lyrics but by the title. ‘Sexcrime’ in his society of totalitarian existence was something like an adulter’s crime. This actually happens in the book, and consequently in the movie—that Winston, the main character, has an adulterous affair with a woman and ultimately is tortured and led to confess his crime of adultery. It isn’t about rape and it isn’t about pornography and it isn’t about child abuse or anything to do with that.”

Dave elaborates. ‘‘I suppose it would be naive to think that you could call a song ‘Sexcrime’ then not think that a few people would have raised eyebrows at it. There are so many songs nowadays on the radio that are blatant and sexuallyoriented in a way different than the way our song is. Yet these get away very easily—because it’s the male society that thinks it’s OK for the guys to sing about all sorts of sexual deviancies with girls. When a girl’s singing a statement like that, sometimes people can’t take it, you know.” Whew! Score one for antimachoism. Neither the verbal sparring or the explanations did any good, though, as radio instituted an unofficial but nonetheless effective ban on “Sexcrime.” Despite a press campaign to expose the censorship, the song vanished from AM and FM dials. Final score—Big Brother one, Eurythmics one.

Our hero and heroine emerge scraped but unscarred from the brouhaha, though, on this rainy winter day. They’re filming the video for “Julia,” another track from 1984, in a 16th century church in the corner of north London called Crouch End. This isn’t just any ordinary church, by the way, it’s the Church, HO for Annie and Dave’s corporation, D ’n’ A. Outside it looks like a companion piece to Winchester Cathedral, but the business being conducted behind its dark gray facade is decidedly more secular. In the front room, usually utilized as one of the facility’s two studios, video producer Jon Roseman and director Chris Ashbrook critically examine the lighting on Annie Lennox’s face. “Ready? Rolling, aaannndddd action!” snaps Ashbrook. On the command, a haunting, flute-y melody pours over the room and Lennox, with overly exaggerated mouth movements, mimes the words. “See, we’re doing an entire video of just the various parts of Annie’s face,” onlooker Dave Stewart whispers from beyond the camera’s reach. He’s dapper today, looking like a Mississippi riverboat gambler, minus gloves and walking stick. He thinks the getup’s more continental, though.

“Cut!” Ashbrook yells. Stewart ambles up to the stool in the middle of the room to keep his partnerfswhose only barrier from the chill is a tartan blanket tossed around her bare shoulders, warm and comfy. “Don’t you think this outfit looks like it’s from a French impressionist painting?” he queries, massaging Annie’s aching neck. “I was trying to dress like the guy in that Manet painting, you know the one.” “Uhumm,” she agrees, eyes closed, just concentrating on loosening some stiff muscles before the next take. of eight hours of filming. Nobody knows better than she just now how boring video making can be.

Ashbrook is relentless. “OK, are you ready?” At her nod, the scenario scrolls again. Nobody notices Annie’s heavenward roll of the eyes, signaling the tedium

On this day and the next, Ashbrook & company will occupy the front room. Yesterday, trendy photog Peter Ashworth was snapping beauties, while in the upstairs studio, Eurythmics bassist Dean Garcia and drummer Olle Romo mixed rhythm tracks for a demo of their own work that Stewart eventually wants to release under his own label. Aiding and abetting is a guy Dave calls “E.T.,” mixer of Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message.” “He just walked in and ended up working on this,” exclaims the boss, watching a roomful of people bob and weave to the beat. “This is a constant creative workshop. It’s not, like, how much is this, anything like that, it’s that everybody’s a part of the music. That’s why the Church is great ’cause you wander round to the shops, you come back and there’s something going on in the kitchen. This energy starts building up and everybody feeds off it. The woman who cleans even makes comments about the mixes and things. The builders, the guys carrying bricks about, will say, ‘Sounds good but the bass is a bit loud’ or something. It’s great, y’know, ’cause when you’re in the studio you’re so cut off usually, you’re in your own world and it’s all fantastic stereo sound, and if a builder comes in you act like, ‘hang on, we’re recording here,’ y’know what I mean. But it’s great to have fresh people just cornin’ in out of the blue, and to be free to accept it.”

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“How you practice in the bedroom... that’s how you capture the magic, the spontaneity.” -Dave Stewart

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Nothing like keeping a casual and haphazard work environment, but this is what punches Stewart’s keys. Lennox’s too, if the truth be split. “Nobody knew this, but we once were gonna call Eurythmics ‘Folle a deux!’ which is French for ‘the madness of two people’ who are in each other’s company constantly. Like old sisters sometimes, they’re a bit nutty,” the bearded, hairy half of the duo reveals. He’s finished touring his domain and now sprawls in a folding chair behind one of two long tables that constitutes the office portion of D ’n’ A. Around him, chaos reigns, with four phones constantly shrilling, seven very odd and assorted characters racing in and imparting dramatic frabs of information, one clattering telex, two equally noisy IBM Selectrics and a TV monitor that’s running a documentary made of the band’s New Zealand appearance. This could very easily be a scene from a Marx Brothers movie. “But there’s a kind of safety in that,” he continues, “when you develop relationships with people like that. Like the people in here. They’re all communicatin’. If somebody walked in off the street they’d think they’re all mad ’cause of the way they’re all talkin’ and gettin’ excited. That’s my security, really. When I come to the Church I know I can just be completely nuts. You can, like, paint your body or bounce yourself off the wall or be doin’ a tapestry while somebody’s singin’ and nobody’ll say anything. Everybody’s creatin’, you know?”

Stewart’s appreciation of the Church’s freedom is especially heartfelt after Eurythmics’ experience recording 1984. “We were suddenly in the studio and it’s like, something breaks down and the engineer comes in and it’s all serious. You’re gettin’ charts for everything that you could possibly do. There’s all this pressure and it’s costing thousands of pounds and we have to finish by this time,” he describes. “They stuck us in this clinical studio and the receptionist goes, ‘You’re in Studio B’ and it’s like, right, create music now. We’d been so unused to that for years.”

Dave ’n’ Annie ensured that similar sterility wouldn’t come within a thousand kilometers of their next.Eurythmics album. “I discovered this funny little warehouse in Paris that’s exactly the same as the warehouse we did Sweet Dreams in in London. There’s the same little alleyway, above a picture framer’s again. We’re setting up the old 8-track equipment and recording like we used to in the early days, with all, like, squinky things, get it back to that.” To abandon a comfortable 48-track board in your own backyard might seem crazy to ordinary folk, but if you don’t get it by now that this crew’s got a few extraordinarily arranged brain cells, check your glasses. “It’s back to the reason why you make music,” Stewart rationalizes. “The experiment, recording things like how you sing in the bathroom or how you practice in the bedroom, they’re the best moments. That’s how you capture the magic, the spontaneity. We’re out to de-formulize things, to get back to when you had a great time when you played the guitar.”

The video shoot breaks for the evening and Annie, now with blonde locks, pours what’s left of her energy into a chair. Pandemonium still reigns. Dave fiddles with this small silver globe. It’s got red dots for the world’s major cities, and they light up when you twist it to show the time in that particular zone—a necessary toy for people who live their lives speaking foreign tongues as much as these two do. At least their business associates might hazard as to whether or not they’ll be awake for phone calls in Switzerland or Fiji or wherever.

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Addendum: Like the city they sing about that never sleeps, Eurythmics are always on the move. First they hit London for one of those overwrought press premieres of their LP, Be Yourself Tonight, on a barge down the Thames, next Annie decided to let the world know she’s “amicably” split with hubby Rhada Raman,

then it was off to Tunisia for Lennox and Stewart on separate vacations. Miss Annie needed the rest so’s she can get revved for her first real feature film venture under the directorial eye of Hugh Chariots Of Fire Hudson. Really. No, it’s true. After all, “would I lie to you?” (Catchy title, huh?)