Hello and welcome to Ways to Change the World. I'm Krishnigiri Murthy and this is the

podcast in which we talk to extraordinary people about the big ideas and their lives and

the events that have helped shape them. We're in a swanky so-ho hotel today on location

to talk to one of the greatest musicians of the modern age. Dave Stewart is perhaps

best known for urythmics but he's had a whole career in lifetime of writing, producing,

making music with the biggest stars of the age and he's brought out a new album called Ebony

McQueen, which is based on the story of his own life. Dave Stewart, welcome to Ways to Change the World.

Very nice to be here. Why did you want to do an album which reveals so much of yourself in

your own backstory? Well you know I went to Sunderland my hometown about three years ago and two

years before that I played a kind of homecoming gig at Sunderland Empire and I would drive around and

go to the old streets where I would play football in my dad's house where I was born and which

actually the cover is taken in the brick wall outside on the back street of my dad's house and

Tyler or Bri took the picture with a with a little old iPhone actually but I liked it so much

I made it the cover and when I was going around there I you know obviously brings about loads of

rushing memories you know my dad passed away he loved Sunderland he never wanted to leave Sunderland

and then I went back again just before the pandemic and I went and said oh let's pop into my old

school when I when I was five where I started and I went in there and sat right in this seat

where I sat on the first day of school when I was five years old then I went into the next school

and the one and I just basically went to all these places where my dad wanted to go every Sunday and

then I went to play a gig at the Royal Festival Hall went back to America and all of a sudden

or hell brought loose with the pandemic so I just had all of that sort of memory input

and so during the pandemic I was riding down on a bicycle towards my house and I just met

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