Eurythmics: Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox

October 19, 1999
Web posted at: 2:05 p.m. EST (1805 GMT)

From Mark Scheerer
CNN Entertainment News Correspondent

In this story: Acoustic performance from new single Read the review RELATED STORIES, SITES

NEW YORK (CNN) -- To hear them tell it, Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart reunited as the Eurythmics after 10 years apart mostly because it would have been poor manners not to.

"It definitely wasn't for the money," Stewart says, "because we're giving all our money for the gigs to Amnesty and Greenpeace.

The return of Eurythmics, say Stewart and Lennox, began with a performance at a friend's party. Somebody else asked them to perform at a cancer benefit; yet another asked for their talents at a British awards show. Each time, they signed on; says Lennox, "It would have been ungracious to refuse."

By the time they were being given a BRIT Award last winter for outstanding contributions to the British music industry, the situation had a momentum of its own. "Slowly we just started writing songs," Stewart says. "Suddenly, we were halfway through an album before we knew what we were doing."

	MULTIMEDIA
The Eurythmics perform "17 Again" acoustically Audio clip: 250k MPEG-3 Audio clip: 345k WAV Video clip: 2Mb QuickTime

The resulting work, "Peace," arrives in stores this week on the Arista label, with Lennox again lending her ethereal voice to Dave Stewart's instrumentals. The pair wrote it at a London church they'd converted into a recording studio during their peak of fame, not telling the record company until an album's worth of music was complete.

Now, they're preparing for an agreeably named "'Peace' Tour," as well, with profits -- including ticket sales and merchandising revenues -- to benefit Greenpeace and Amnesty International. Their first United States performance is scheduled for November 4 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Other U.S. shows are to include an appearance on NBC's reopening gala for New York's Radio City Music Hall on December 1. Dates in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe also have been slated.

"We both knew our paths would cross at some point," Stewart told the Associated Press recently, "even if it was the record company calling us up and saying, 'It's the 50th anniversary of Eurythmics, can you come out of your wheelchairs and wave from the window?' But to tell you the truth, it was the last thing I was thinking of."

	ALSO
Read a review and listen to audio clips from the new Eurythmics album "Peace"

Starting in 1983 with "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)," the title song from their debut album, the pair of one-time lovers became a 1980s New Wave hit factory. But the Eurythmics came to an abrupt and not-too-friendly end by the beginning of the '90s -- after five albums, countless performances and a professional relationship that survived their romantic breakup.

"We were fed up with each other, you know?" Lennox says. "We'd had enough, really, to put it in a nutshell. And I think that's pretty human. We were not joined at the hip, and it was really good for us to have a total break."

Lennox launched a successful solo career. She released two albums, "Diva" in 1992 and "Medusa" in 1995. She also won two Grammy Awards: in 1995, she won best female pop vocalist for "No More 'I Love You's,'" and in 1992 she won best long-form music video for "Diva," which she co-directed with Sophie Muller.

Stewart had a less-successful stint with a group he named Spiritual Cowboys. Then, he wrote and produced music for films.

Joint appearances -- such as one in July at the Prince's Trust concert in London -- have heralded the release of their reunion album. And on the first U.S. single, "17 Again," Lennox inserts a line from "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)," the 1983 chart-topper that introduced Eurythmics to the world.

"I think it's a bold move to quote oneself in a song, you know?" she says. "Because we've been around for quite some time now, and we seem to be part of the fabric of a lot of people's emotional existence, in a sense.

"It seemed so appropriate to bring that in as a kind of closing of a circle, because we're right at the beginning of another circle now."