Annie Lennox visited the Project Angel Food kitchen on Monday afternoon to show her support for volunteers at the meal delivery service for critically ill residents in Los Angeles.
“What a wonderful opportunity for me just to come down and see everybody face-to-face and know that there are good people on the planet that really do want to support and help. Without each and every one of you, this wouldn’t be possible,” she said after being introduced by Project Angel Food CEO Richard Ayoub, adding with a laugh, “I’m just a singer, an old singer. You probably are far too young to even know who I am, but I just wanted to come down and say hi to everybody. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Keep up this great work. We’re all in it together.”
Lennox made her way around the kitchen, talking to each volunteer and posing for photos.
She tells me that two relatives lost homes in the Palisades fires. “They lived there all their lives,” she said. “Everything is just burnt to ash.”
Lennox twice evacuated her West Hollywood area home. “We grabbed the bags that I had packed about five years ago because when I first came here, I was like, ‘I think there’s going to be an earthquake,’” Lennox said. “We actually experienced a mudslide last year.”
Lennox first visited Los Angeles in the 70s. She laughs as she remembers staying at a “flea bag motel” in West Hollywood, but then strikes a more serious note while talking about climate issues.
“I was aware of global warming in the 70s, but it didn’t feel so close,” she says. “It felt like something way off in the future but in so many respects, it’s our ignorance, our stupidity, our lack of political resolve to even start to address this seriously. It scares me to think about what we’re going into in the years ahead when people at the top are saying, ‘Oh, there’s no such thing.’ Why do they say that? Surely some scientists need to come in and shake some sense into them.”
Lennox praised the Recording Academy’s decision to support fire relief fundraising efforts during the Grammys, which are still set to take place in Feb. 2 in Los Angeles. “It’s fantastic,” she says. “I think that’s absolutely appropriate.”
However, she’d like to see her music peers increase their work around social issues. “The music industry has so much money, so much influence, so much power,” says Lennox, wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with a peace sign. “I’d love to see the music industry do more.”
In addition to visiting Project Angel Food, she also made a donation to the organization’s new Fire Relief Fund. The fund was started Jan. 10. The Chuck Lorre Family Foundation donated $250,000. Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS gave $50,000 while United Talent Agency sent in $25,000. A live fundraising effort on KTLA brought in $97,000.
Project Angel Food is currently serving more than 3,000 people daily, up from 2,700 to accommodate residents affected by the fires.
