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Annie's background Her route to the meeting, she recalled, began when she "was born at 11:20 P.M. Christmas night 1954 in the town of Aberdeen on the northeast coast of Scotland. My mother worked as a cook until I came along, then she stayed at home to look after me. My father was a boilermaker in the local shipyards. We lived in a big tenement house in Hutcheon Street, overlooking a textile mill. All the kids from the other tenements used to play outside in the streets together, or in the backyards. When I was three, I was given a toy piano on which I used to pick out simple tunes.

"At four I was accepted for the High School for girls. (High School as used here refers to the name of a school, not to the type of establishment known as a high school in the U.S.) I still have a photograph of my first day there, wearing a uniform several sizes too big. Anyhow, three years later they let me start piano lessons. I loved music and I used to sing in the local choir every Saturday morning. When I was 11, they asked if I would like to learn to play the flute. And at 17, I decided I was going to become a classical flute player. I practiced really hard and ultimately won a place at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Unfortunately, I never really fit in there so I spent the next three years looking for something better to do."

Her dissatisfaction with the world of classical training led to "a desperate search for something that did have some meaning to me. I don't know why, but I started to sing and I realized my voice was good. Due to the influences of Stevie Wonder and other Tamla-Motown artists and other things - boys, dancing, clothes, dropping in, dropping out - I not only decided to sing, but also write my own songs."

She found occasional work as a vocalist, but for a while she earned most of her income as a waitress. She told Billboard: "The first words Dave said were, "Will you marry me?" I thought he was a serious nutter. But from that night on, we were inseparable."