Dave Stewart, 74, is an English musician, songwriter and producer best known as one half of Eurythmics with Annie Lennox. Born in Sunderland, he has spent more than five decades making music and collaborating with artists around the world. He has four children: sons Sam and Django with his former wife, singer Siobhan Fahey, and daughters Kaya and Indya with his wife, photographer Anoushka Fisz. His latest projects include a new album, The Way It Was Back Then, and Art of Chaos, an app built around his vast personal archive.

Here, he remembers the moments that made him, from playing football on the beaches of Sunderland to showing Bob Dylan around his houseboat and becoming so obsessed with guitar that his dad took him to the doctor.

I’m terrible at property. I buy when the market’s really high and sell when it’s crashed, much to the dismay of everybody around me. My dad, who spent his whole working life at an accountancy firm, once visited a place I had in the hills above Fréjus and said: “Listen, son, whatever you do, don’t sell this for at least 30 years.” Of course, I sold it after about eight.

I’ve lost out on millions. I bought one of those big white houses on Randolph Avenue in the mid 80s for about £350,000, spent another £180,000 doing ridiculous things like trompe l’oeil ceilings, and sold it for about £500,000 in the 90s. A while ago, I saw the house for sale for £8 million. I also had a little houseboat in Little Venice, and Bob Dylan would come round and we’d take it up to Camden Town. He was fascinated by the canal system.

I miss the time when all I needed was a piece of paper saying: “Pick up at 11.30.” Our Eurythmics tour manager, Matthew Murphy, would push a piece of paper under your hotel door saying it. That was all you needed to know. We travelled all over the world like that, missing only one show in about nine years. Now if I do a concert, I’ve got 50 emails and hundreds of WhatsApp messages. You’re thinking: “For f**k’s sake, I just need to know this. I don’t need all the other bits jumbled up with it.”

Sunderland comes back to me as a feeling. Every Sunday my dad, mum, brother and I would go to Seaburn Beach with our Labrador, Solo. We’d play football and the dog would run around. In winter, my dad made us a toboggan – he made all the furniture in our house out of wood – and we’d go sledging at Penshaw Monument or Tunstall Hill. As you get older, it’s not really the actual thing you remember. It’s the feeling you had as a kid going to the beach or playing football straight after school.

I didn’t know I could play music until somebody broke my knee. Until then, all I wanted to do was play football. I played for the school team and another team, then I’d still be playing at night under the streetlamps until my dad shouted for me to come in. One night, my knee made this horrible noise. The surgeon told me quite happily: “It’s alright, son. You’ll be up and walking in about six months. You’ll be able to play football in about a year.” I was about 14. A year? That was a lifetime.

My cousin sent me some blues albums from Memphis and it put me in a trance. Ian was nine years older than me and obsessed with Memphis. He even started speaking with a Memphis drawl in Sunderland, much to everyone’s annoyance. By 19, he’d actually made it to Memphis, where he still lives. A few years later, when I was 14 and laid up with my leg in plaster, he sent home a box with two pairs of Levi’s corduroy jeans and some blues albums. I put one on my dad’s homemade record player and went into a trance. Afterwards, I hobbled into the kitchen, turned on the radio and suddenly heard the Kinks, the Stones and the Beatles playing bits of the same blues music. It f**king blew my mind.

I became so obsessed with guitar that my dad took me to the doctor. My brother had an old guitar in his wardrobe with about five strings on it, and I spent weeks trying to find a blues note. Then I hobbled round to see Mr Gibson, who lived two doors away. He’d been a prisoner of war and had made a guitar out of floorboards and wire to keep his friends going. He showed me a few things and I became obsessed, practising nine or 10 hours a day.

My dad was worried one side of my chest looked pushed in from the guitar. He was probably hoping the doctor would tell me to stop. Instead, the doctor said: “There’s nothing wrong with his chest.” I even took it to school, where my maths teacher would say, “Put that banjo away, Stewart.” I’d say, “It’s not a banjo. It’s a guitar.”

My daughter earned about £2 from a song and decided music wasn’t for her. During Covid, Indya wrote a sad song about her granddad, recorded it and made a home video. When it started getting lots of views, she said, “Whoa. How much have I made?” I said, “Well, maybe two pounds.” She said: “What? That’s it. I’m not doing music.” She became an interior designer. I have another son who was an incredible songwriter, but his band was signed to Capitol Records and got dropped the day the album was released. I don’t think he ever really got over that.

My Covent Garden flat was like living inside an art installation. During the 90s, I had an apartment in Covent Garden when there were always artists around – Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas, Damien Hirst, that whole period. Instead of wallpaper, I’d blow up giant photographs of things like a hand or half a face to cover the walls. Then I had tiny miniature TVs coming out of the fingers of the hand. I’ve recreated the whole thing inside my new Art of Chaos app as a way into my completely insane archive.

An intern once labelled Bob Dylan “man with curly hair”. I was obsessed with filming everything: 8mm cine cameras, 16mm, early video, Betacam, DV. Whenever something new came out, I filmed with it. That’s why I’m hardly in anything myself. When I eventually tried to put it all in one place, everything had to be digitised. I had this very sweet intern, who was only about 18, loading all these tapes and writing down what was on them. She didn’t necessarily know who everybody was, so she’d write: “Man with curly hair.” It was Bob Dylan.

Art of Chaos and Dave Stewart’s new album ‘The Way It Was Back Then’ are both out now