Lennox slams Aberdeen and hints independence support

The multi award-winning star said Aberdeen’s main thoroughfare had been allowed to slide into decline and was in desperate need of rejuvenation.

And she said the city’s controversial pursuit of the doomed redevelopment of Union Terrace Gardens, which she described as a “channel of greenery” in the city, had been a travesty.

The Eurythmics star, who was visiting Edinburgh to promote a major new exhibition devoted to her career, had been one of the most vocal opponents of tycoon Sir Ian Wood’s scheme for a new city square, which was scrapped by the city council last year.

She said action was clearly needed to protect the heritage of her home city and described Union Street as “sad” and “decrepit.”

Meanwhile Lennox said the the case for Scottish independence was “clearly” being taken seriously by some people, adding: “They must feel there is a need and a benefit.”

Lennox, whose exhibition has been jointly curated by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the V&A in London, revealed she almost went to art school as a teenager. Instead, she won a place at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Lennox, who launched her musical career with long-time collaborator Dave Stewart in 1977 with their first band, The Tourists, said she was disillusioned with the modern music industry, saying she found too “corporate.”

Lennox said: “I felt very strongly about Union Terrace Gardens. For me, it was a travesty.

“People would say I have no right to have a viewpoint because I don’t live there anymore. But I’m very reactive and feel things so strongly and I’ve always thought of Union Terrace Gardens as very beautiful. To me, there is one element of Union Street that is left that is green, right there, that’s it.

“What is the charm of Scotland? To me, it is its heritage. It is extraordinary. I don’t think we should live in the past, I love modernity and I love the juxtaposition of it. I don’t have issues with that.

“But to just destroy it, to just build over it, just because you have a new vision of the future which means it’s a great big shopping centre, and that’s going to solve it. Well, not it won’t.

“Union Street is so sad. That should be a thriving centre of the city. What’s happened is they have a nice shopping mall somewhere else, so all the business, obviously, goes there. So the place is decrepit. There are weeds growing out of every gutter and things are falling to pieces.

“It is just obvious to me, if you want to really make a difference to Aberdeen, to that city, then invest in the things that so desperately need to be invested in. Don’t bulldoze things. Rejuvenate them. They are wonderful. Japanese tourists are not going to come to Aberdeen to see the new shopping mall, they’re not, let’s face it.”

Lennox, who said she felt “incredibly rooted” in Scotland, said she felt her “Scottishness” had served her well throughout her career.

Being careful not to express outright support for the SNP, she said: “This is just my viewpoint and I always stand willing to be corrected.

“When I was a teenager, Scottish independence, Scottish nationalism, that party that suddenly came out from nowhere, it seemed so eccentric.

“We were used to it be being very left, right and in the middle. You had the Tory Party, the Labour Party and the Liberal Party. Then suddenly there was this ‘Scottish independence, they must be mad, what are they talking about, what on earth is this thing?’

“Slowly, slowly over the years, what has started out, from my perspective, as eccentric really, almost like a sentimentality, that you want to revive this Scottish thing, it has actually become, clearly, something that people take a lot more seriously here. So they must feel that there is a need and a benefit.

“I’m not an economist. I’m not a sociologist. I’ve not got a glass ball to look into the future. Whatever the people decide when they vote, it will go this way or that way.”

Lennox, whose huge influence as a musician and style icon is celebrated in the exhibition, said she felt she had never been “hard-core” enough to be considered a feminist in her younger days.

“I was mistaken about this, but I always thought that you had to cast all the fripperies of femininity aside, I did think lipstick and high heels were a betrayal.

“The trouble was the girly part of me really liked those things. You did feel you had to be really hard-core and didn’t have to care about men, and be really tough. But it’s a misnomer, it’s an absolute nonsense.

“You have to find a way where you are okay with yourself. What Dave and I did, we just belonged to each other. We weren’t really part of a movement.

“As soon as you step on the stage in front of an audience, you know whether you are cutting it with them or not. It is so testing. It is almost like a gallows. You cannot take it for granted, ever.

“What I see now is a corporate world. I see people that are aligned with brands. It’s not down to me to tell other people what they should be doing. But it is very difficult for musicians to avoid that branding, because the money isn’t there when they are first starting out, so they have to make some sort of compromise.”

The exhibition, which is at the portrait gallery until 30 June, features a host of original costumes, photographs and videos from her earliest work with Dave Stewart right up to the present day.

Lennox added: “I used to love to draw and paint. As an only child you do things like that because those are things you do alone.

“I just loved art, I loved anything visual. I would have really loved to have gone to art school, but you can only maybe do one thing at a time, so it was a choice for me, in a sense, between pursuing art and music.”