Dave Stewart talks Eurythmics hits he co-wrote and will perform in Pittsburgh

PITTSBURGH ― The Eurythmics never played Pittsburgh, but Dave Stewart will give us a zesty taste of what we missed when he performs Friday at PPG Paints Arena.

As the opening act for Bryan Adams throughout a 28-date arena tour, Stewart and his all-woman backing band will feature the Eurythmics songbook, including smash hits he co-wrote as half the internationally famed duo.

"We did a tour in November in many European countries, and after spending Christmas with families it was like, 'hey do you want to tour America, as a special guest of Bryan Adams starting in January?'" Stewart said in a March 8 phone interview. "I've known Bryan since I came out on stage with him in 1984 in Canada, so I thought it was a way to introduce in America this lineup of eight amazing female musicians that just toured Europe rather than announce it as my headlining show without people really knowing what it was. We've played 20 or something shows now, and it's been working really good.

"People don't know what to expect, but they're pretty stunned from the beginning to the end and on their feet singing along with 'Sisters Are Doing It for Themselves' and 'Sweet Dreams' and 'Would I Lie to You?'"

More: Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit delighted Pittsburgh fans at sold-out show

Stewart makes sure all the band members get "little star moments" to shine extra brightly, including his Brazilian harmonica player.

"Even Mick Jagger texted me and said, 'Who's the harmonica player?'" Stewart said.

Stewart understands what a daunting task it would be for any one person to tackle the towering, powering vocals of Stewart's Eurythmics bandmate, Annie Lennox, so he's hired several vocalists.

"I have about four or five singers who alternate, depending on where we are in the world, and they all know the set off-by-heart because I've known them for a long time," Stewart said. "One of them is Vanessa Amorosa, one of the great recognized singers. She's Australian and she's insane in terms of vocal range and power. And then my daughter (Kaya) has been singing a lot in the shows; she's known Eurythmics songs since she was 3 years old and sitting on Annie's knee; she's Annie's goddaughter and Annie used to sing songs to her, so it's a bit in the DNA.

"Then I have Stevvi Alexander who I've recorded; an amazing singer who's sung (backup) with everyone from Fleetwood Mac to Sheryl Crow. "

Up-and-coming, singularly named English soul-electropop singer Rahh rounds out the vocal collective.

More: Q&A with K.K. Downing, the heavy metal guitar god bringing his band KK's Priest our way

Stewart found his bassist, drummer, saxophonist and harmonica player via an Instagram post where he included the hashtag #brilliantmusicians and said he was about to play some shows and needed a band. Qualified musicians who responded received a direct message from Stewart.

"I think they all thought at first it was a hack or somebody fake but then they realized I wasn't, and soon we were speaking by phone and arranged a FaceTime talking about the show and then everybody got together for the rehearsals in London," Stewart said.

They'll pull from the Eurythmics songbook for an hour set in Pittsburgh.

"We play in front of a huge, wide screen. I have some special things filmed for it; sometimes it's us on the screen, sometimes it's a film that coincides with the songs. Every Eurythmics fan will know every song. It's kind of like hit after hit."

Count on Eurythmic's mega-hit "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)," which lit up a Roxian Theatre audience two weekends ago when covered early in the set of New Orleans jazz-hip-hop band Soul Rebels.

"Funny you should mention them, I played with them live on stage; I was conducting them when they first did it at the New Orleans Jazz Festival," Stewart said.

How has "Sweet Dreams," off the same-named album, remained a pop culture fixture for 40 years?

"Some songs become anthems on their own," Stewart said. "Something about some songs resonates globally; they pick up their own momentum. 'Sweet Dreams' is one of those songs. Wherever I am, if somebody says, 'What do you do?' and I say I'm a musician, then they say 'Oh, what kind of music do you do?' and I say ... how do I describe this (starts singing) 'Sweet dreams' and they go 'are made of this.' (Laughs). It's one of those. And the audience goes crazy when we play it on this tour. I created a special intro and outro for it. Maybe some people can analyze pop songs and what makes a good chord structure. But it doesn't make it an anthem. They might have a hit. We weren't trying to write a hit song; we just wanted to make something we really loved. The whole album was that way. It was the first one I produced and engineered. It was usually just me and Annie in the room."

The Eurythmics recorded most of 1983's groundbreaking New Wave album in the duo's tiny attic studio, first needing to borrow money from a bank, "which was really weird because we looked like a couple of oddballs, but the bank manager understood when I said, 'Look, for a small amount of equipment, it was like $4,000 or something, we can make an album and not have to pay to go into the studio. And guess what, after that we could make another album, and another.' Which we did. We made it on very limited equipment, but I like to say necessity is the mother of invention."

Stewart and Lennox relied mainly on a prototype drum machine and a brand-new synthesizer to make "Sweet Dreams."

"Everything was just minimal. In the bridge where it goes, 'Hold your head up, keep moving on,' we wanted to do a positive, high sound that cuts through and we ended up, Annie and I, just playing (Coke) bottles that we had tuned by pouring the water out to get certain few notes we wanted. That whole record is like a homemade jam. But as that song comes on in a club or at a festival or on the radio and it starts with that big, huge boom and that riff comes on, everybody just goes crazy. It's one of those songs recognized in the first few seconds as an anthem."

The 1984 follow-up hit "Here Comes The Rain Again" stemmed from an impromptu songwriting session on a rainy, moody, overcast day.

"I was looking out the window at Central Park from a hotel and I had a very tiny Casio keyboard I had just bought down the road, and Annie was just sitting there, and I kept playing that sort of melancholy riff on the keyboard. Then Annie said, 'I want to draw a bath.' And I said, 'no bath, just wait.' So, she sat on a window instead while I kept playing that riff and she said, 'Here comes the rain again,' and the song just came, right like that."

On their fifth studio album, the Eurythmics took their sound in a bold new direction with the heavy rhythm and blues of "Would I Lie to You?" influenced by the duo's love for Motown and Stax soul records from Memphis. Stewart composed the thick, pulsating riff while he and Lennox were renting a small workstation in a Paris youth club, again using their small, portable equipment.

That album also features Eurythmics's soul song "Sisters are Doing It for Themselves," featuring Aretha Franklin, a female empowerment anthem loaded with relevance "especially now," Stewart said.

The song stemmed from a diary entry Lennox had written after waking from a vivid dream. She showed her writings to Stewart, thinking it was a poem, "but I said this isn't a poem, it's an anthem. It's like a song," Stewart said. "And even though we had just finished a whole record, I said we've got to record this. I had just been working with Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, so I rang up (Heartbreakers') Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell and we put it down like a band. Then it turned into a whole thing where people were saying it was amazing, but it was odd that just Annie was singing it. Suggestions came in to add other people. And then it was like, 'hey, what about Aretha Franklin?' And then we were off to Detroit to put it on tape. You could write a whole chapter of a book about just that one song."

Stewart's highly successful career outside the Eurythmics included writing Petty's "Don't Come Around Here No More," which Stewart originally had begun writing for Stevie Nicks to record. When Stewart hit a creative wall in the song's early stages, he showed the rough draft lyrics to producer Jimmy Iovine who suggested they bring in Petty to help.

"Tom was listening to it and he comes up with 'You darken my door' and things like that.'"

Iovine quickly suggested they head to a recording studio Petty had in his garage to pound out the tune.

"And Stevie got really (ticked) off, saying 'Hey, I thought that was my song.' But I was from England and not really used to being in L.A. or America and I didn't really understand the dynamics between Tom's team and Jimmy. And Tom was like, 'Yeah, but I wrote "Stop Dragging My Heart Around" and Jimmy put that on Stevie's album and then her album went crazy. So I'm just standing in the middle thinking, 'Um... what is happening?'"

Nicks must've let bygones be bygones.

In promotion of Stewart's upcoming tour are praiseful quotes from fellow luminaries including Nicks, who says, "He is my hero.”

A Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, Stewart's recent compositions have included the soundtrack for "The Time Traveller's Wife" musical and a 10-song modern rock album "Who to Love" that's making the film festival circuit rounds ahead of its 2024 public release.

But now he's focused on the late-winter arena tour with Adams.

Unlike his former on- and off-stage partner Lennox, who performed solo at The Pavilion at Star Lake in 2004, Stewart says he hasn't played western Pennsylvania since the Eurythmics became famous.

But he suspects he and Lennox played Pittsburgh together when they were in a pre-Eurythmics pop-rock band The Tourists.

Stewart and Lennox last performed on stage together in 2022 when the Eurythmics got inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame. Any chance they'll reunite again?

"Well, Annie always says 'never say never.' Annie's doing a lot of things; she's really working hard on her charitable stuff. We talk back and forth all the time," Stewart said. "On the opening night of this tour she sent some great messages. We're almost like a 48-year relationship, so it's been a journey I can tell you."

Scott Tady is entertainment editor at The Times and easy to reach at stady@timesonline.com.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Dave Stewart talks Eurythmics hits he's playing at PPG Paints Arena