As Annie Lennox turns 70, the Mail raises a glass to her extraordinary life

Prior to her birthday, Annie Lennox got her first tattoo; two small black birds hover around a pulsating crimson heart.

It was a nod to Little Bird, a song from her first solo album about letting go of self-doubt and finding the courage to soar.

Little Bird reflected seminal moments in her life; leaving the gray granite confines of a childhood in Aberdeen to spread her wings in London; She overcomes her crippling shyness and becomes a powerhouse and global diva.

Four decades have passed since Lennox rose to superstardom with the Eurythmics’ hit single Sweet Dreams; when she burst onto the world stage as an androgynous disruptor in a tuxedo suit and bright orange cropped hair.

She would become one of the most universally known female artists in music history; sales of 83 million albums; winning an Oscar, a Golden Globe, four Grammys, four Ivor Novello Awards and eight Brit Awards – the most wins of any singer and songwriter.

Lennox turned 70 on Christmas Day; her hair is now icy blonde but still in a pixie style and her face has retained its sculpted beauty, albeit with a few more lines.

As a moody and pessimistic teenager, she was convinced she would not live past the age of 35.

When Lennox is photographed these days, she insists the photos remain unadulterated; that they show her age, which she sees as a symbol of her resilience and perseverance.

It seems that after a life as a tortured artist, she is finally comfortable in her own skin. “I just want to look the way I am,” she said. ‘I have wrinkles. So what? I earned them.’

She has never been big on birthdays, as they fall on Christmas, and she has said she may not even celebrate as she enters her eighth decade.

Of all the birthdays, it is one of her earliest that speaks the most; when she turned three and was given a toy piano which she learned to play intuitively in time with the music from the radio in her family’s two-room attic flat in Aberdeen.

‘My parents realized I had a musical ear and by the time I was six or seven I was singing in a local choir every Saturday morning and taking piano lessons at school.’

When she entered Aberdeen’s High School for Girls, she was already a talented young musician.

On the glockenspiel she played the theme song from the 1960s police drama Z Cars.

At the age of nine she won second prize in a Butlin’s talent contest, singing Mairi’s Wedding; she learned to play the flute and toured with the British Youth Wind Orchestra and the military school band, which took first place at the 1970 Schools Music Festival.

But she hated the school and its archaic discipline; his velor hat and her neat uniform, which her parents had bought too big so she would grow into it.

Most of all, she hated that the girls had to bow to the teachers.

Lennox railed against the system, raising the brim of her hat and cutting her long hair into a fashionable feather cut.

She once said: ‘For years I had an inferiority complex, which I think stemmed from the fact that humiliation was certainly part of the learning process.

‘I felt bullied. I played the flute and was exempt from tuition for some lessons.

“I don’t think there was time for artistic children.”

Her father, a shipyard worker, and her housewife mother tried to discipline her. They took her to church at the top of the street every Sunday and encouraged her to become a classical flutist and shun the idea of ​​becoming a pop star.

Although her parents gave her a comfortable home and she doted on them, there was not the affection that she would later be sure to convey to her own children.

She said: ‘Saying “I love you” was not part of the lexicon. There was no hugging. It was a generational thing.”

Her parents were proud when she won a scholarship to study piano and flute at the Royal Academy of Music in London, but were devastated when she dropped out on the eve of her final exams.

After hearing Joni Mitchell on the radio, she decided it was her destiny to write and sing.

Although she felt the academy had been a waste of time, she was grateful that it had opened up the promise of London, whose bohemian vibrancy contrasted with the gloomy chill of Aberdeen.

But in London she struggled with lack of money, sometimes surviving on just £3 a week, and by the time Dave Stewart found her waiting in a restaurant, she had come to terms with returning north.

Although signed to Elton John’s label, Stewart had not achieved his dream of making an impact on the music scene, but he was tenacious and full of ideas and he saw something special in Lennox.

They fell in love and moved into a gloomy bedroom in Camden and spent their evenings writing songs and playing guitar. Stewart was the driving force Lennox needed.

They formed a group called Catch, but didn’t make a dent until they rounded up the tourists.

In 1979 the band reached number four in the charts with their single I Only Want to Be With You, but it would be the pinnacle of their success.

Bruce Findlay, a fellow Scot who owned a record shop in London and was manager of Simple Minds, met the couple when they entered his shop to sign as Tourists.

Findlay told the Mail: ‘Annie was very serious and focused and had strong opinions, but she had a good sense of humor and could laugh easily. She was very talented and impressive.”

But Stewart and Lennox lacked the control they wanted in the Tourists, and when the group inevitably split it was acrimonious; they were heavily in debt and she fell into depression.

Findlay said, “They felt like they had lost their chance.”

Shortly after the Tourists broke up, so did Lennox and Stewart, but they missed their musical symbiosis and rather unconventionally decided that they could be a couple professionally, if not romantically.

As duo Eurythmics they had the freedom to make the synth-pop music they wanted and in 1983 their first big hit Sweet Dreams opened the door to superstardom.

Lennox was never comfortable with fame; she was self-conscious and shy and Findlay remembers how nervous she was before performances.

When both the Eurythmics and Simple Minds played in Berlin at the city’s prestigious music festival to an audience of 90,000 in 1983, Findlay recalled seeing Lennox in the wings in a black leather catsuit. She was stiff with fear.

He said: ‘I thought she was going to break her manager’s hand, she was holding it so tightly.’

As the first bars of Sweet Dreams began, Simple Minds stood in the wings shouting, “Go on, Annie, you can do it.”

Findlay said: “She was shaking like a leaf, but as soon as she stepped foot on that stage and the spotlight hit her, she burst into life and confidence flowed through her. She was incredible.”

Eurythmics were one of the most important bands of the 1980s and were prolific, producing seven albums in nine years. They toured for months with a string of hits, including Here Comes The Rain Again, Thorn In My Side and Who’s That Girl?.

They fought incessantly and as their relationship became unbearably more difficult, it became impossible to continue.

Lennox was burned out and tired of touring and wanted to follow a different path; she longed for an ‘ordinary life’. “I had to see what I would be like if I left the two-headed being we had become,” she said.

She entered into a disastrous marriage with a Hare Krishna monk, Radha Raman, whom she had met after a concert in Stuttgart, but the union was as short-lived as it was ill-judged.

When she met film director and Israeli human rights activist Uri Fruchtmann, she found a man who was more likely a soulmate, and they married in 1988, both eager for a stable family life.

Tragically, their first child, Daniel, was stillborn, sending Lennox into a spiral of grief. She said: ‘It was more profound than I ever imagined, deeper in every way – an awakening. It turns your life upside down. You are stunned, as if a truck just hit you.

‘It really brings out the temporality of life. But that is the daily reality for so many women in the world.’

When her daughter Lola arrived in 1990, she retired from music, although she continued to write songs and wondered if she could make it as a solo artist.

The success of her solo albums Diva and Medusa proved that she was indeed a formidable talent in her own right, but when her second daughter Tali was born in 1993, she once again retreated to motherhood.

She said: ‘I didn’t want them to get caught up in the exhibitionism and voyeurism that characterizes the celebrity industry.’

Ironically, both daughters later chose to step into the spotlight; Lola as a singer and Tali as a model.

Lennox divorced Fruchtmann in 2000 and turned to activism, campaigning for equality for women and girls.

She said the loss of Daniel had given her greater empathy and understanding for the struggles of mothers, and that it was through her activism that she met Mitch Besser, a Harvard-trained gynecologist who would become her third husband.

Besser founded mothers2mothers to support families living with HIV and they married in a low-key ceremony with 150 guests, with Lola and Tali as bridesmaids.

In later years, Lennox has dedicated herself to her activism and in March she will host a fundraising concert in support of global feminist organization The Circle.

Findlay said: “It’s amazing to think that Annie is 70 and that she has been a star for so long. After all these years she has kept an aura of mystery around her.’

He believes her musical career will continue for many years to come.

He said: ‘The idea that pop music is for young people died a long time ago and for proof of that you only have to look at Bob Dylan or Diana Ross.

‘But if Annie never made another record, her place in history is intact. She is known around the world as a remarkable woman and talent.”