Dave Stewart is best known for having been in the Grammy-winning pop duo Eurythmics alongside Annie Lennox. In a career spanning four decades Stewart has also produced and co-written songs with artists including Aretha Franklin, Alison Moyet, Bryan Ferry and Sinead O’Connor. In 1999 the Eurythmics won a Brit award for outstanding contribution to British music and in 2022 were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in America. Stewart has homes in Nashville and Los Angeles and spends six months of each year in the Bahamas. He has two sons from his marriage to the Bananarama singer Siobhan Fahey and two daughters with his third wife, the photographer Anoushka Fisz.
I was five or six when my dad bought a second-hand Morris Minor in the late Fifties. It was so epic that the whole street came out to look; it was like: “A car! What the hell?” From then on we had holidays visiting my aunt and uncle in Lockerbie — it was two hours’ drive from where we lived in Sunderland and we’d stop at Gretna Green for a cup of tea on the way.
My aunt’s house was tiny so my brother and I stayed in a tent in the garden. We had an amazing time. We’d go for walks in the rain collecting sheep’s wool caught on railings and there was a fancy-dress parade led by a bagpipe band; I went as a pint of milk, with a beret covered in silver paper for the foil lid of the bottle. Years later when the Lockerbie disaster came on the TV news I couldn’t believe it. I was like: “That’s Aunty Doris’s back garden!”
In Sunderland there’s a beautiful beach called Seaburn. Once we got the car we’d go there every free minute we had, even when it was raining and massive waves were crashing over the promenade. We’d go in the freezing North Sea and look for crabs in rock pools. My dad took us to an Italian ice-cream parlour there called Notarianni’s. They’d make you a 99 and Mr Notarianni would say: “Would you like monkey’s blood?” It was red syrup, but of course we wanted it: “Yeah! Monkey’s blood!”
Years later, when Annie and I were in the band the Tourists, we wound up in a nudist colony. We’d been living together for several years in a squat for £8 a week. Then we got money for a tour and decided to take a holiday. Annie was desperate to go immediately so we went to a travel agent and said: “Where can we go? We want to go this weekend.” All they had was a trip to Yugoslavia, as it was then.
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When we got there all the other tourists were taken to their guesthouses and we were the last on the bus. Finally, at midnight, we were dropped off in the dark at a little dock where a guy in a rowing boat was beckoning us. It was scary, but he rowed for a bit then this beautiful island — Red Island, just south of Rovinj in modern-day Croatia — came into view. In the morning, when we read the instructions on where to get breakfast, we realised that we were in a nudist colony.
We were there for about ten days and stripped off on some rocks. The funniest thing was watching a man run out of the sea with a Portuguese man-of-war clinging to his balls — Annie and I still cry laughing when we talk about it.
I got lost in Rio with Bob Dylan once. We were there in 1990, for the Hollywood Rock music festival. Bob and I went into the countryside then couldn’t find our way back — we’d drunk loads of those Brazilian drinks that give you a blinding headache and walked for ages with our guitars not knowing where the hell we were. We couldn’t even remember the name of the hotel, which didn’t help. When we got back everyone was panicking.
Losing my way abroad isn’t new to me. I also got lost with Mick Jagger in St Vincent and the Grenadines. Mick likes places where there are no tourists, but once you’re off the beaten path it’s: “Hang on, which way did we come?”
I went into the jungle on the Hawaiian island of Maui to help George Harrison make a clearing for a garden. He had a house on a clifftop there and loved chopping stuff down with a machete, so I went with him. But it was so hot and there were so many mosquitoes that I had to give up after 15 minutes.
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I was driving across New Zealand when I saw a house in the middle of nowhere and said: “Let’s knock on the door.” I went in for a cup of tea and chatted. This was in the 1980s, when we were hugely famous there, but after five minutes it wasn’t a shock to them anymore. It never is — I’ve done it thousands of times; sometimes I’ll say I’m lost or ask for a glass of water.
For six months of the year I live at Harbour Island in the Bahamas. It was in the news recently because Taylor Swift came here on holiday. I have a studio here so I can work then go for a swim in the sea. There’s no airport and the island is only about half a mile by three miles, but it’s a beautiful, tropical place with natural foods and an organic farm. There are chickens walking around everywhere and I know all the local people.
Lots of artists come here — Daryl Hall is with me at the moment — but the locals don’t care. I’ll walk up the road and someone like Drake will be sitting on a wall feeding bits of bread to a chicken.
Growing up in Sunderland you could knock on anyone’s door — it’s that community thing and since then I’ve looked for it, and now I’ve found it on Harbour Island.
Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics headlines Henley Festival on July 11th davestewartent.com
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