TINA TURNER: Inspiration. Teacher. Simply The Best!
Late winter 1983 / early 1984. I don’t recall if it was NBC’s Friday Night Videos, or MTV.
A synth line. Slow fade in on a woman in a solo spotlight. The first 45 seconds is just her, singing over the synth. Bongos come in, and she lets out a wail. 10 more seconds. Brit boy backing vocalists join her. The video cuts to her dancing, flanked by two women matching her.
The song builds and builds in intensity, and I am completely mesmerized. It wasn’t until later that I learned this was a cover of an Al Green song, and it was a shortened version for the music video.
I later heard the full version of Tina Turner’s cover of “Let’s Stay Together” and I still didn’t want it to end. EVER. Her vocal, the arrangement, the saxophone lines, the Brit boys.
There are some songs I just want to live in — and this is one of them.
Of course, I’d seen Tina Turner previously, on a Chicago PBS show called Soundstage, certainly on Cher’s show in 1975 and The Brady Bunch Variety Hour in 1977— but this? Took me over.
June 1984. I’m graduating grammar school. My aunt and uncle bought me tickets to see Lionel Richie as a graduation present.
…and who is Lionel’s opening act?
Tina.
Was I excited? You bet!
However, she did not sing “Let’s Stay Together” that night, and all her other material? Way too rock n’ roll for me at the time. In my journal after the show, I wrote, “Liked the show, except for loud Tina Turner. Couldn’t understand what she was singing.”
Within three months I was embarrassed I ever wrote those words.
The night I saw Tina, Private Dancer had just been released in America three weeks before. “What’s Love Got To Do With It” was beginning its climb up the charts. No one knew what was about to happen. Even her.
She was a star, but she was not mega-massive international star TINA TURNER the night I saw her. I probably heard Private Dancer material that night, but had no idea what it was.
Prior to the summer of 1984, I didn’t listen much to mainstream pop radio. I listened to ‘lite-FM’ stuff; heavy on ballads. I was stuck, musically.
As August rolled around, and I was preparing to start high school, I sensed I needed to step it up if I was going to connect with new people at school. I pledged to myself to “get with it,” musically.
One way to do that, I decided, was to buy every album that went to #1 on the Billboard charts, whether I liked the genre or not.
The first album under my new rule was Prince and the Revolution’s Purple Rain. Once I heard it, my previous lack of interest in rock n’ roll got flipped upside down.
I was watching MTV more. Listening to the radio. Following charts.
My every #1 album rule got thrown out the window real fast, since Purple Rain stayed at #1 for months.
I altered the rule. Top 20 albums. If I heard a song I liked.
I wasn’t ready for “rock n’ roll Tina” in June 1984, but, by September 1984? Private Dancer made it to my turntable, and it had that full version of “Let’s Stay Together.”
“Show Some Respect,” “Better Be Good To Me,” “I Can’t Stand the Rain.” Good lord. These songs. Tina’s power. My musical mind was completely blown.
I bought the singles, which had non-album B-sides. My personal favorite b-side was a live cut of Tina performing Prince’s “Let’s Pretend We’re Married,” in part because the notes said it was “live in Chicago,” so for years, I thought it was from the show I saw (it was actually from another Chicago show a few months later).
Tina got bigger than big. Within a year, Tina’s Live: Private Dancer Tour concert special was on HBO, and I watched it incessantly. She was electrifying, and I wished I’d had that clue when I saw her the year before.
LIVE AID with Jagger. “Tonight” with Bowie. Killer duets with Bryan Adams and Rod Stewart. Her compelling presence and acting in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. I liked “We Don’t Need Another Hero,” but flipped for “One of the Living.”
In late 1986, my family took a vacation to Los Angeles. Tina’s LP Break Every Rule was ruling my mind. One night, my family was at a restaurant and somehow the waitress and I got into a discussion about Tina. She told me Tina was a Buddhist and a little about the reasons why. It sounded so cool.
When I got home, I freaked my family out a bit because after reading interviews, or, Tina’s memoir, I, TINA, I was suddenly cross-legged chanting “Nam Myoho Renge Kyo” in my bedroom.
That didn’t last long. LOL. But, obviously, given where my life has gone (a heavy focus on study of spiritual principles), Tina had put me on to something.
I didn’t realize it in 1986, but my favorite song on Break Every Rule (and my all-time favorite Tina ballad), “Paradise Is Here,” spoke to these principles as well.
It all connects.
Of course, I was aware of Tina’s stature and music previous to 1983, but didn’t do much research or seek out the work, mainly because of reading I, Tina, and learning how much of her early years of performing were associated with pain and trauma.
So it wasn’t until a 1991 greatest hits set, Simply the Best, that I got to hear the Spector production of Tina singing “River Deep, Mountain High,” which is frickin’ amazing (the sound mix used for the recording session scene in What’s Love Got To Do With It is even more amazing).
When I first saw the trailer for What’s Love….., the movie based on I, TINA, the crowd I was with actually laughed. Angela Bassett looked nothing like Tina, especially in the shots intended to be Tina in 1983, and the trailer made the movie look hokey.
We all couldn’t have been more wrong. Once the movie came out, no one was laughing at Angela Bassett anymore. She nailed it to a point that made it impossible to not feel a deeper connection with Tina Turner, the horror she suffered through, and how she ultimately transcended all of it.
The scene where Tina finally gets away from Ike, and is helped by a kind hotel manager, pulled almost verbatim from Tina’s book, gives me chills every single time, because I know Tina lived that moment.
I’d read that the last thing Tina wanted to do was re-record songs from the past for What’s Love….., but she did, and I’d say the versions on the soundtrack are more iconic than the originals, especially “Nutbush City Limits,” “A Fool In Love”, and “Proud Mary.”
I have a strong affection for “I Don’t Wanna Fight.” Talk about a perfect lyrical encapsulation of letting go of the past!
Post movie, Tina had become an even bigger symbol of resilience, strength and empowerment. So much so, that in 1996/97, Oprah Winfrey spent a decent portion of that season of her daily talk show sporting a Tina wig (in connection with Oprah following Tina around on the Wildest Dreams tour).
At a certain point, Oprah’s partner, Stedman, apparently said to Oprah, “Someone needs to tell you that you are not Tina Turner!”
Several songs on the Wildest Dreams album knocked me out. Her cover of “Missing You,” the James Bond theme, “Goldeneye,” and the big ka-pow, “Whatever You Want.”
By the year 2000, most of my 1970s faves….Barbra Streisand, Cher, Tina….all indicate they’re hanging it up in terms of live performance. “Farewell concerts.” Hilariously, not one of them stuck to that.
Even so, Tina Turner: One Last Time In Concert may be the best filmed concert for home video I’ve ever seen. It’s one of the few I watch over and over.
It introduced me to my second all-time favorite Tina song, “Whatever You Need,” from what turned out to be Tina’s last studio album, Twenty Four Seven.
Tina sings “Whatever You Need” right around ‘magic hour,’ and her performance at Wembley, just sitting on a stool, with her fabulous backup singers (including Lisa Fischer), takes me to a place I cannot describe. Beautiful song. Beautiful arrangement. Beautiful moment captured in time.
Whenever I fly, as a plane is climbing to higher altitude, my tradition is to put on this concert and watch Tina’s opening number, her cover of Sly and the Family Stone’s, “I Want To Take You Higher.”**
It just works! (And as a somewhat nervous flyer, it also helps distract and make me feel more confident).
I’ve had a consistent workout routine for the past fifteen years, and one of those routines involves doing an element of Tina’s choreo for “Proud Mary.” Whenever the instructor calls out this section on the video, she refers to it as “TINA!!”
Getting to pretend you’re either Tina, or an Ike-ette with Tina, for a few moments will certainly get your energy up!
I never did see Tina live and in person again after that first time in 1984, but I was OK with that, because I could say, “I did see her live, and before Private Dancer launched her into a new stratosphere.”
I always thought it was interesting, that years later, when Tina did her actual last tour, Lionel Richie opened for her.
She published two books in the last decade, one, a follow up memoir entitled My Love Story, and, another that means even more to me, Happiness Becomes You, which is all about Tina’s spiritual philosophy and how it assisted her in life.
If anyone’s life is an example of how spiritual principle can be applied and work for you, it is Tina Turner’s.
The last time I heard her on record was Herbie Hancock’s tribute to Joni Mitchell, River: The Joni Letters. Tina was a perfect choice to sing Joni’s “Edith and the Kingpin.” Seek it out if you’ve never heard it.
I knew Tina was in failing health. She’d written about it in her books, and when the HBO documentary about her life aired last year, it was clear she could only participate to a point.
I’d gotten accustomed to her not being in the public eye; enjoying her life in Switzerland with her husband.
The beauty of the era we live in, is, everything I mentioned, and oh so much more, will live on as long as audio, video and film is playable on this planet (or if we can take our archives to our space colonies).
Tina may have left us today, but she is immortal.
She lived.
She served.
….and now, I know, she has the true answer to whether she “might have been queen.”
Might?
IS.
**Beat is gettin’ stronger
Beat is gettin’ longer, too
Music soundin’ good to me
Let it take you higher
It wanna take you higher
The universe is calling, Anna Mae. Miss Tina.
Ascend.
— — — — —
Addendum: The Break Every Rule Deluxe Edition — released winter 2022
1984’s Private Dancer may have had more radio hits, but Break Every Rule, which came two years later, is an equally strong album from start to finish.
The remastering in this deluxe edition gives the rock n’ roll tracks the extra punch they needed (cases in point: “Back Where You Started,” the non-album B-side, “Don’t Turn Around,” and the passionate closer, “I’ll Be Thunder,” now even more appropriately thunderous), and also brings out the intricacies of instrumentation in R&B songs like “Two People” and “Afterglow.”
A DVD featuring a performance in an intimate London setting is a real treat, with Tina singing a spectacular “A Change Is Gonna Come” as well as tributes to the soul singers she loves.
The video tech of a 1988 concert in Rio (also included) may be dated, but Tina still burns through the screen!
This re-release is available in a 3CD/2DVD box set designed with panache, a 2CD set (just the album and the second disc of B-sides and mixes), and remastered vinyl.
The inclusion of remixes on disc two makes me very happy as I lost most of my 12" vinyl to a flood years ago!
It’s also thrilling to see a music video for her masterful cover of David Bowie’s “Girls” included on one of the DVDs. I can’t believe I never saw it! It should have been played incessantly by MTV and made iconic!
My favorite of Tina’s ballads, “Paradise Is Here,” is on this album.
I was 16 when I first heard it, and while I loved the arrangement, Tina’s vocals, and lyrics, it took a couple of decades to genuinely zero in on the song’s true meaning.
It’s as if my teenaged self was leaving clues as to where my overall life perspective would eventually lead. That just makes me love it even more.
I also love that Tina performed it live, usually as the closer for her shows, in that era (two examples are in this set). I had no idea!
I’d been looking forward to this, and it does not disappoint!
