He’s a thorn in her side

Annie Lennox (L) and David Stuart from the Eurythmics perform a medley during the 2005 American Music Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles November 22, 2005. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Annie Lennox (L) and David Stuart from the Eurythmics perform a medley during the 2005 American Music Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles November 22, 2005. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Published Aug 7, 2013

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London - To maximise the glamour factor, rocker-turned-celebrity-photographer Dave Stewart has chosen to hold his latest exhibition of pictures of his famous friends in the Sunset Marquis hotel in Hollywood. Its walls are lined with his portraits of stars such as Mick Jagger, Demi Moore and Joss Stone.

But there is not a single picture of Annie Lennox, Stewart’s former partner in the Eurythmics and his one-time lover.

Stewart, 60, tried to laugh off the omission by saying he would need a whole exhibition to house the multitude of pictures of his beautiful ex.

However, fans of the Eighties band wonder if her absence is more to do with a bitter feud that has driven a wedge between the pair.

Indeed, Stewart let slip he did not receive an invitation to her wedding last September to South African gynaecologist Mitch Besser.

“I’ll have to ask why wasn’t I invited. I certainly would have gone if she’d asked me,” he said, adding: “People always think of us as a couple, and yet we barely ever talk now.”

One explanation, offered by an executive at their former record company RCA, is that the love-hate relationship between the pair is such that Lennox has vowed to stay away from Stewart for fear he “causes a disturbance in her new marriage”.

Could it be that three-times married Lennox, 58, thinks she can’t trust herself to be around him?

Certainly, those who know the two stars admit that the relationship remains intense.

The man who discovered them, Rob Gold, a former head of Virgin Music, said: “Their relationship became almost too much and got claustrophobic. Annie’s head is in a completely different space now and it’s not like it was. She wants to move on.”

To do so, it seems, she has vowed to keep Stewart, also married three times, at arm’s length.

Their most recent fall-out is the latest twist in the tale of love and obsession that is at the heart of their toxic relationship.

In the more than 30 years since they stopped being lovers, it’s been blamed for the break-up of two of her marriages.

They met in 1976, when Lennox, originally from Aberdeen, was a waitress in Hampstead, London.

She had moved from Aberdeen to study the flute at the Royal College of Music. But Lennox, who was brought up in a two-room tenement, sharing an outside lavatory with five other families, felt out of place among her well-off fellow students and quit before her finals.

According to legend, Stewart, who had run away to London at 16, walked into the restaurant where she worked, spotted her and asked her to marry him. At 24, he was already married – a brief union to a nurse. He and Lennox immediately began an intense affair and formed a band called the Catch. At that time, he was already addicted to cocaine and amphetamines.

 

Desperately thin and ill, he collapsed from a punctured lung in 1977.

Lennox nursed him back to health and off drugs, and they formed the Tourists, getting a top-10 hit in 1979. But the group broke up acrimoniously a year later.

The stress sent Lennox into a trough of depression

. Her relationship with Stewart also fell victim to her breakdown and the pressures of working together. Nonetheless, they got back together and formed the Eurythmics the following year.

Their first album, In The Garden, flopped, but in 1983, Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) went platinum in Britain and gold in America.

The Eurythmics sold 75 million records worldwide.

 

Meanwhile, there was talk of terrible rows between the pair, who would go weeks without talking to each other. They disbanded the Eurythmics in 1990, though they did briefly reform nine years later.

Lennox went on to launch a solo career that has seen her win eight Brits, four Grammys and an Oscar.

She

blamed her relationship with Stewart for the break-up of her first marriage to Hare Krishna monk Radha Raman, whom she met in 1984. Three weeks later, they married.

Her parents were worried.

Unsurprisingly, Stewart, too, was vehemently against the odd union. Within weeks, Lennox realised she had made a huge mistake and a year later the marriage was over.

 

As for Stewart, the spectre of Lennox hung over his second marriage to Bananarama singer Siobhan Fahey in 1987. The couple had two sons, but divorced in 1996.

 

Some close to Lennox blamed her decision to reform the Eurythmics with Stewart in 1999 for her break-up, a year later, from husband number two, Israeli producer Uri Fruchtmann. The couple married in 1988 and had two daughters.

Following his divorce from Fahey, Stewart married Dutch photographer Anoushka Fisz in 2001. They have two daughters and live in Los Angeles.

Lennox met third husband Besser in 2009 after becoming involved in his charity, Mothers-2Mothers, which helps HIV-infected children and their mothers.

 

But it remains to be seen if Stewart and Lennox have finally got each other out of their systems. – Daily Mail

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