‘SWEET DREAM’ LIFE
Drugs fueled Eurythmic’s Stewart Loving Annie, partying with Mick, rocking with Bruce
DAVE STEWART, a sweet eccentric and the “other”” genius in the Eurythmics, makes a life of unrepentantt sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll — and wild spending — sound so good in his new book, “Sweet Dreams are e Made of This.”
He’s collected more than a few great stories to tell, l, drawn from decades of mixing it up with musical gi- an ants like Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, n, B Bruce Springsteen and, of course, e, A Annie Lennox.
Stewart, 63, might be the only per- so son in the world who finds Jagger “very y co comfortable to be around.”
He reveals how the septuagenariann ro rocker is still able to move like Jagger. r. A As Stewart would ready tracks for Jag- ge ger to sing, the man himself amped upp by doing 300 sit ups as a prelude to his s ar arduous daily workout.
Really, who knew? Stewart recalls the night Jagger drove them down n endless dirt tracks in the Grenadines en route to what t he claimed was a hot club. They came to a stop at ann unpromising wood shack.
The moment Jagger stepped into the small room, m, nine stunning women burst in, obviously intimately ac- quainted with the bad boy. “Hi Mick,” “What g’wan.” The most voluptuous of the women led Stewart up- stairs and launched a thunderous dance hall track ass she broke into a lascivious grind while holding Stewartt tight from behind her. A swarm of good-lookingg women shimmied forth to enclose them.
Stewart stumbled back downstairs red-faced, d, where Jagger, in the clutch of a posse of gorgeous women, greeted him with a knowing laugh and a drink of over-proof rum.
“Ya gotta go out on a Saturday night,” Jagger shouted over the music.
From the first, Stewart, the son of a hardscrabble northern English town called Sunderland, had a knack for stumbling into the high life.
He was only 18 when his folk-rock band, Longdancer, was signed to Elton John’s Rocket Record label in 1971. John, hugely fun and insanely extravagant, handed the boys a pile of money. Their first purchase was a bulk order of mescaline. Heavily stoned and inexperienced, the boys barely made it through recording their only album, “If It Was So Simple.” Still, John staged one of the most lavish release parties ever, hiring an entire British Rail train to haul a horde of drunken music writers, and the band, to an extravaganza.
The band fell apart on the road under the influence of an excess of hallucinogens, though they did manage to open for John twice in Italy.
At another ridiculously decadent after party, a man came up to him, flanked by two beautiful women, and asked if he would like a role in his next movie.
Stewart was game, but his then wife, Pam, said no. Twenty-five years later the same man stopped to chat up Stewart when they ran across each other in a restaurant.
After he left, Stewart’s third wife, Anouska, asked how he knew Roman Polanski. That he did was news to him.
He happened on Annie Lennox in the same by-chance way. For years, Stewart had been on a drug binge, living hand-tomouth.
A friend insisted he meet this girl with a really good voice. They parked outside the health food restaurant where she worked, unnerving her by staring through the window until her shift ended.
When Lennox finally emerged, she and Stewart started a conversation that went on through the night and for many years.
For the first few, they were passionately in love.
The couple squatted in a derelict abandoned house. Stewart admitted to being addicted to speed and cocaine and Lennox lovingly nursed him through a detox program she improvised on the spot.
The two were inseparable until, coming off a miserable experience in an interim band, the Tourists, they painfully agreed to end their romance.
Only then did Lennox and Stewart truly come together musically. To distract himself, Stewart played around with a tiny synthesizer and a drum machine, recording on a four track. Excited, he called Lennox.
They named their duo the Eurythmics and signed on with RCA. Their first album, “In the Garden” didn’t do much. Improbably, they somehow scored a small bank loan to buy new gear and matching suits.
The Eurythmics burst onto the world stage with “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” soon followed by another album, “Touch.” The hits kept coming until they officially dissolved in 1990.
Fame brought a wide-eyed Stewart into the realm of legends. In New York, Madonna stopped by his room at the Mayflower hotel for champagne and a noodle at the keyboard. She advised him that Lennox didn’t give enough to the audience.
His second home became the guesthouse on the Mulholland Drive estate of the brilliant music producer and close friend, Jimmy Iovine. It was there that Bruce Springsteen nabbed him one afternoon to come give a listen to a rough mix of his latest. The two sat on Springsteen’s bedroom floor, with the rocker anxiously biting his nails and needing to know, “What do you think?” the second the last note sounded on “Born in the U. S. A.” Iovine mentioned that Don Henley lived down the street, so Stewart strolled over and scaled the gate to knock on the door. The first thing a shocked Henley asked, was “How did you get in here?”
Then there was that night with Stevie Nicks, when he ended up crashing at her place. In her bed actually. She stumbled in at 6 a.m. and they made love twice. Stewart was too drunk to remember, but Nicks, high on cocaine, had perfect recall.
It all got awkward a few days later in the studio when a strung out Nicks flubbed the lyrics to Stewart’s song, “Don’t Come Around Here No More.” She and Iovine fought and she let drop the details of that night.
Iovine merely switched gears, telling Stewart he should take the song to Tom Waits. That was the
beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Toward the end of the Eurythmics’ life span, Jack Nicholson stood at the edge of the stage for three nights, shouting instructions they couldn’t hear. When Stewart and Lennox came off, he put his arms around each and firmly instructed them to go back and face the audience silently for two minutes.
The crowd went wild. Stewart and a girlfriend joined Nicholson after one of the shows for a frolic in his hot tub. Nicholson stood at the rim in a bathrobe, perilously close to the cliff that backed his Hollywood Hills house, wildly conducting Beethoven blaring from the speakers.
Of course the two became fast friends, one of the many tight bud- dies with big names that Stewart collected through the years. His command of a wide array of instruments, and his producing skills, put him very good company indeed.
Dylan, George Harrison, David Bowie and Paul McCartney were just a few of the legends that sought him out for a good time.
He and Lou Reed spent the better part of a drunken night in the East Village convincing Stewart’s pal, Damien Hirst, not to amputate both hands to sew them back on as an art project.
It was around then that Stewart realized that he seemed to own a lot of grand homes. Besides a studio complex in London, he had a penthouse apartment there, a chateaux in the French countryside, a Paris apartment, and a Los Angeles home. Nevertheless, when his second marriage, to Siobhan Fahey of Bananarama, got rocky, he bought her an estate near Saint-Tropez.
She found his life too wild and sometimes intimidating, suffering acute nerves, for instance, when her idol Joni Mitchell stopped by for a long session with Stewart in L.A.
The couple were discussing ending their marriage in the Covent Garden apartment they’d somehow acquired when Eric Idle and Robin Williams burst in to do a couple hours of improvised comedy.
There were better times ahead. Bono, backed by the Edge, and Jagger both took the mic in 2001 when Stewart married Anoushka Fisz. Other marquee names, including Elton John, danced in the crowd.
Stewart’s crowning achievement came the following year when he was asked to take the lead on Nelson Mandela’s campaign to address the AIDS crisis in Africa.
It was Stewart’s idea to establish a telephone line using Mandela’s prison number, 46664. A caller was greeted with words from Mandela himself and then music from famous artists.
Stewart pulled old pals like McCartney in on the project, while he and Bono flew overnight to Miami to consult with Springsteen on their song in the making, “American Prayer.”
Later, he and Bono collapsed in hysterical laughter in the elevator at New York’s Hit Factory, stunned by the talent, including Beyonce and Pharrell Williams, they’d brought into the building to work on the song.
It all came round the night of the 46664 concert in Cape Town, South Africa. The morning after, an ecstatic Lennox found him at breakfast and told him the evening had given her new purpose in life.
Theirs had been a sweet dream, indeed.