They’re back in black
Eurythmics release box set And now there’s talk of a new tour
For a guy known for working fast, even Dave Stewart was impressed with how quickly he and Annie Lennox recaptured their old magic despite their years apart. The scene was Los Angeles earlier this year and Lennox was visiting the home of her old Eurythmics partner when he suggested she check out the new recording studio he’d just opened.
“ We’d just decorated,” Stewart related by phone this week from London.
“ It was done in all- white like the John Lennon piano room in Imagine. It’s a very nice place and Annie really liked it. We starting messing about with instruments and all of a sudden it became a track.” Afew hours later they were listening to it in the car on the way home. The song, “ I’ve Got a Life,” is a classic bit of Eurythmics neodiscothat anchors Ultimate Collection, the band’s new greatest- hits package. The compilation includes one other new song and accompanies this week’s long-overdue reissue of the duo’s catalogue and a box set.
For much of the 1980s and into the ’ 90s, Stewart and Lennox ruled the charts with an impressive string of hits and videos that blurred genres and genders — and sold by the truckload. So at a time when many acts are working on their second or third box set, what took so long?
“ Fifteen years have gone by, I don’t know why,” Stewart said. “ We were always off doing other things.” The reissues were remastered by Stewart, who went into the vaults, dusted off the tapes and came out with 44 bonus tracks that include B- sides, live versions and previously unreleased covers of The Beatles, Lou Reed, Bowie and others. The magnitude of the duo’s output surprised even Stewart.
“ Annie and I both said, ‘ Blimey, we’ve written a lot of songs,’ ” he said.
“ When we got all the albums together and all the photographs and everything, it was like, ‘ God, I didn’t realize how much work we’ve done.’ ”
Stewart did very little tinkering with the original tapes, preferring instead to let his initial work stand.
“All those records, I mixed them so quickly, and I quite like them like that,” he said, adding that they still sound “ fresh and shimmering.
“ They were all literally mixed in an hour or two hours, one after the other.”
Stewart also resisted the urge to jump on the surround- sound bandwagon. He dismissed a lot of the 5.1 mixes being released today as “ fake,” but left the door open to a possible eventual release.
“ I might do it, but I’d like to do it carefully and take a long time to really think about how to do it rather than just, ‘Quick, let’s bash it out because that’s what’s selling,’ ” he said. The reissue project has renewed interest in a possible fullscale Eurythmics reunion. The two will perform live during the American Music Awards show in L. A. on Nov. 22, and there is talk of an eventual tour.
“ I think it would be a great show,” Stewart said.
“ We’re going to meet in January with our manager and Annie to look at the possibilities.”