Description
Before websites, Instagram and musicians speaking directly to millions of followers every afternoon, there was the fan club. This terrific little Eurythmics archive comes from Christmas 1988 and captures that almost-lost relationship between a band and its most devoted followers: photocopied news, reproduced handwritten letters, photographs, recording updates and the sort of information that once arrived through the mailbox rather than a screen.
The centerpiece is the Eurythmics Christmas 88 Edition, issued by the Eurythmics D’N’A Fan Club in Los Angeles. Inside is a reproduced handwritten letter from Dave Stewart describing work underway in London, including a video with director Sophie Muller, film work with Michael Apted, recording plans and his continuing collaboration with Annie Lennox. There is also a separate letter explaining a last-minute change to the newsletter following the tragic news of Lennox’s baby—exactly the kind of ephemeral communication that was intended to be read by fans.
But the photographs make the group. Included are four striking black-and-white RCA publicity photographs, three featuring Annie Lennox and another Eurythmics image. Lennox was one of the great visual shape-shifters of the 1980s, and the photographs capture radically different presentations of her—from the cropped, androgynous look most closely associated with Eurythmics to an almost Hollywood-blonde transformation. RCA and His Master’s Voice logos appear along the bottoms of the photographs.
There is something wonderfully analog about the whole package. This is how a serious Eurythmics fan received news in 1988: a stapled newsletter arrives at the house, Dave tells you what he and Annie are doing, somebody at the fan club slips photographs into the envelope, and suddenly you know a little more about your favorite band than the kid down the street.
A great surviving piece of Eurythmics history from the height of Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart’s remarkable run—and considerably more fun kept together than any of its pieces would be separately.
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