Monday, April 20, 2009

Annie or Man-nie?



“I remember enjoying very much being in another persona,” she said in a recent telephone interview from London. “That was interesting. That was like a piece of performance art. Apart from performing, I actually inhabited this male persona for a few hours.”

In fact, Lennox — who strutted across the stage in a dark suit, with faux mutton chops flanking her youthful face and her voice lowered to a different, huskier register — kept her plans a secret from everyone except co-conspirator and Eurythmics bandmate Dave Stewart.

That meant she got to hang around backstage with her fellow musicians not having a clue who she was.

“People were unaware that it was me,” she said. “So it was almost like being a fly on the wall for awhile. That’s always something I think people want to be, isn’t it — someone else?”

But there were also practical ramifications to her secrecy.

Grammy production staffers weren’t in on the joke. They didn’t know where Lennox was and they certainly didn’t recognize this strange man with a bushy black pompadour skulking around backstage.

So when it was time for the Eurythmics to perform — live, of course — they were more than a little frantic.

“The person who really didn’t know who I was was the stage manager, and he was freaking out, because he couldn’t see me anywhere and I was meant to be in my position because we were waiting for the curtain to go up,” Lennox recalled. “And he was freaking, and I was just standing there quietly (next to him).
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When I was 16, a job recruiter came to my school in Scotland. He was a white South African who told us of the luxurious lifestyle that could be ours if we moved to his country to teach music. I wondered how he could so casually promise us an easy future in a place devoid of civil rights. Even as a child, I was innately disturbed by the concept of "us" and "them," a separation exemplified by apartheid.
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4 comments:

  1. Annie Lennox looks just like a MAN has she gone through gender reassignment?

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  2. I don't think she went through the gender reassignment process. She look just like a man, especially without make-up.

    Even as a rock star, she looked like a man. Her parents can't go to jail for incest because they're probably dead. Believe it or not, she has children!

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  3. It's possible that Annie's children are floating around in the music industry, especially if they are born with a "singing voice".

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