Eurythmics star Dave Stewart was back on home turf in Sunderland for a launch of a new album that draws from his childhood memories - and he will be returning again later in the year to start work on a film that his new songs have inspired.
The award-winning musician, songwriter and record producer, who with Eurythmics co-star Annie Lennox was recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has written a remarkable 24 songs for Ebony McQueen which is the result of digging deep into those memories - painful ones - to take listeners on a journey back to the point he first discovered a love for music. "It's been an epic amount of work," he admits and it just part of a project that includes not only the upcoming film but a box set of LPs and cassettes, a photo book and a stage musical too.
Stewart, who played for invited guests at a launch event at the Pop Recs cafe and music hub on Friday night, explained how he named the album after a fictional voodoo blues queen who embodies the blues music that shaped him from that starting point when he found himself first moved by music. That came when he played a record sent by a cousin from Memphis.
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"Up until then I wanted to play football," says Stewart, who used to live in Sunderland's Barnard Street and recalls always being out kicking a ball around. "I never thought about music at all." But life changed when he was about 13-and-a-half and injured his knee so badly that he couldn't play anymore.
The period of time he was stuck in the house coincided with further trauma. "At the same time my mam and dad split up; my brother was going to college and I was in the house on my own," he says. Looking back, he sees now that his low mood was PTSD and anxiety but such things weren't really known about then.
"I did have the blues but I didn't know it." It's only when you get older, he adds, that you reflect. "I was full of anxiety; it was a very sad part of my life."
Sunderland itself was also going through a time of struggle, he recalls. When, on a gloomy, grey day, a package arrived from Memphis, the bored teenager opened it up and, finding a record, he decided to give it a play.
"All of a sudden a wild, howling sound came out the speaker," he says. "I was in a trance: I thought - what is this?"
It was Robert Johnson - so-called king of the Delta blue singers - and, for Stewart, that was the defining moment. After that, he explored more sounds and really began to hear music for the first time.
All these memories resurfaced after an earlier visit to the region. Stewart says of the album: "It stemmed from my last time in Sunderland, about four months before the pandemic, when I went to look at my old school."
He lives in in America, between Nashville and the Caribbean, and has his own recording studio where he kept himself busy during lockdown writing and recording songs. But over the years he has made regular trips back to Sunderland.
In 2017 he played a one-off gig at Sunderland Empire to mark his 65th birthday and recently has been involved with The Alan Hull Award, the annual bursary, given to young talents, that was set up by Lindisfarne's Ray Laidlaw in memory of his late bandmate, and which was won in 2021 by Faye Fantarrow, who's "great" says Stewart.
As a producer - who has had collaborations with everyone from Ringo Starr to Celine Dion and Stevie Nicks- he supports local talent, including previous Alan Hull Award-winner The Lake Poets, aka Martin Longstaff. Sunderland has a proud music tradition, points out Stewart, and while the city has undergone much change, he thinks there is something solid and deep-rooted here.
He enjoyed the buoyant mood and atmosphere he found in the city this time in the wake of Sunderland's win at Wembley and he will be back in the autumn to start work on the movie: "It will all be filmed in Sunderland."
"The movie will be filmed first," he says, with a young actor being cast to play him in his teenage years and snatches of the album's songs - sometimes the whole - woven into the story. "From that there will be a separate musical." He's been writing this with Lorne Campbell who used to be artistic director of Northern Stage.
He also has a big date later in the year when he and Annie Lennox will be performing together at the induction event in Los Angeles for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, alongside six other specially-chosen acts including Duran Duran, Lionel Richie and Dolly Parton. The pair previously reunited at a benefit gig, playing alongside the likes of Bruce Springsteen, in New York: a rare stage appearance together although they have stayed in touch since the heady Eurythmic days which saw them rule the music world in the eighties.
Euyythmics fans have longed hoped for a reunion and Stewart has previously told Chroniclelive: "We've never said it's over. It can't really be over when you've created something that's lasted." Now he says about the idea of getting back together on stage with Lennox for one more hurrah: "That would be great, particularly as the music was part of many people's lives."
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