Tina Turner Read online

  So that the single version of “We Are the World” could be part of an album and raise further funds for the charity, several of the performers featured on this all-star single donated their royalties from individual songs to the cause. There were nine other cuts on the album, including “If Only for the Moment, Girl” by Steve Perry, “Just a Little Closer” by The Pointer Sisters, “Trapped” by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, “4 the Tears in Your Eyes” by Prince and the Revolution, and “Good for Nothing” by Chicago. Tina Turner contributed her previously unreleased recording of “Total Control” to the project.

  Several days later, Tina was busy launching a triumphant tour of Europe. In the middle of it, she took time to fly back to Los Angeles for another very special night. It was February 26, 1985, when Tina appeared on The Twenty-Seventh Annual Grammy Awards telecast as a guest and, ultimately, as a winner. Speaking of her son Craig, she recalls, “When I went to the Grammy Awards he looked at me and said, ‘Mom, you’re incredible! You look twenty-six!’ ” (31).

  In 1984 Tina Turner’s Private Dancer album and the song “What’s Love Got to Do with It” signaled the rebirth of her career.

  (Photo: Brian Aris / Capitol Records / MJB Photo Archives)

  The Rolling Stones been among Tina’s biggest supporters throughout her career. This shot dates from the 1980s.

  (Photo: Atlantic Records / MJB Photo Archives)

  David Bowie helped Tina land the record deal that launched her into the stratosphere.

  (Photo: RCA Records / MJB Photo Archives)

  Keith Richards and David Bowie with Tina at The Ritz in 1983.

  (Photo: Bob Gruen / Star File)

  In the 1980s Rod Stewart helped Tina find a new audience by having her duet with him on Saturday Night Live and his own concert special.

  (Photo: Warner Brothers Records / MJB Photo Archives)

  Tina takes Paris! Throughout her career, Tina’s success in Europe has been the greatest and the most consistent.

  (Photo: Bob Gruen / Star File)

  Dressed in chain mail, warrior woman Tina Turner as Aunty Entity in the 1986 hit film Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.

  (Photo: Warner Brothers Pictures / MJB Photo Archives)

  Tina Turner and Mick Jagger at the Live Aid Concert in 1986. Together they sang “State of Shock” and “It’s Only Rock & Roll.”

  (Photo: Chuck Pulin / Star File)

  Aunty Entity leads her Imperial Guards on an Australian desert chase in pursuit of Mad Max. Tina loved doing her own stunts in this exciting futuristic film.

  (Photo: Warner Brothers Pictures / MJB Photo Archives)

  Sexy and energetic in her fifties and sixties, Tina Turner has been a role model of inner strength.

  (Photo: Peter Lindburgh / Virgin Records / MJB Photo Archives)

  Thanks to her conversion to Buddhism, Tina has achieved an accomplished sense of peace. Now residing in southern France, she lives in harmony with her surroundings.

  (Photo: Peter Lindburgh / Virgin Records / MJB Photo Archives)

  Indeed, she had a youthful exuberance about her that night. Introducing her on the show, John Denver proclaimed, “Ladies and gentlemen, the woman that God put on this Earth to teach other women how to walk in spike heels” (33).

  Tina was the ceremony’s big winner that night. It was a triumphant and stunning reward for all that she had been through and all of the hard work and energy she had expelled on Private Dancer. It also felt like the audience members that night were personally cheering her on and loving her victory as much as she did.

  Ultimately, she took home the prizes for Record of the Year, “What’s Love Got to Do With It”; Best Pop Vocal Performance, “What’s Love Got to Do With It”; and Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female, “Better Be Good to Me.” Furthermore, Terry Britten and Graham Lyle won the songwriters award of Song of the Year for penning “What’s Love Got to Do With It.” It was an evening of sheer conquest for Tina Turner. She said that night, “We’re looking forward to many more of these” (33). Well, she was officially in the winner’s circle, and she was going to get very comfortable standing in it.

  On March 14 Tina was in concert in London, filling massive Wembley Stadium with cheering fans. Concurrently her single version of “I Can’t Stand the Rain” was on the British charts, where it peaked at No. 57. That same month, the song “Private Dancer” hit No. 7 in America, making it the third consecutive single to be pulled from her incredible hit album of the same name.

  In April 1985, the “We Are the World” hit No. 1 in the United States. This became the first chart-topping album of Tina Turner’s long and illustrious career—another new career milestone for her.

  Amidst all of the awards and hit records, the really important thing was that Tina Turner was now performing at massive arenas around the world. She was no longer a club or a theater act. Her popularity was much too massive for that. She had graduated to becoming a stadium attraction.

  According to her, “When you’re talking about the guys who can pack those football stadiums, you’re talking about the men that the girls love. So it’s like breaking the rules for me to get a chance to be with them” (29).

  She was thrilled to have had an introduction to that onstage excitement by her friends The Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart in the past. She recalled, “Then, when I was ready, I said, ‘OK, I’m ready.’ I knew I was ready, I knew I could do it. Working with The Stones and Rod Stewart really helped me. It wasn’t hard times; it was the beginning of great times” (10).

  One of the most memorable dates on the European leg of the tour came in Germany. “Playing Munich for that crowd had a special meaning to me. I still have vivid memories of the last time I played Munich with The Ike & Tina Revue. Ike kept refusing to go out because there were so few people who showed up. When we finally went on, about an hour later, there were only about 100 people in the audience. It was awful. To have thousands turn out for me this time . . . well nobody can know how much that meant to me,” she claimed (30).

  Then came the debut of her North American stadium tour—and it was every bit as successful as her European jaunt had been. Her first solo headlining tour took the diva to eighty-six different cities across North America, which included eleven concerts in Canadian cities. Brian D. Johnson saw Tina’s first show on the 1985 cross-continent show in Newfoundland, Canada. He wrote in McLean’s magazine, “For an hour and a half she shimmied, strutted, and slithered her way into the hearts and libidos of 5,000 Newfoundlanders who packed a St. John’s hockey arena last week for the first concert of her North American Tour. . . . At the age of forty-six, Tina Turner has never been hotter!” (29).

  Speaking of her stage act, Tina claimed, “You get a little bit of everything with me—laughter, sex, sadness, and then there’s energy” (29). She had it all, and her fans simply couldn’t get enough.

  It was exhilarating to have such massive crowds screaming and cheering her onward. “What excites me is not the lights; it’s that screaming thing, like when I walk on -stage and they go crazy. That’s what happens with Bowie and Jagger, the times I’ve worked with them when they’ve walked on my stage, the whole place went crazy, and I thought, ‘If I’m going to be here, I want that’ ” (5). Well, now she was officially there.

  In June 1985, her next U.S. single, “Show Some Respect,” hit No. 37 on the charts. That same month, her film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome premiered. Suddenly, Tina was an action heroine!

  Actually, the film was the perfect vehicle for her. She didn’t play the hero, she played the villain. As Aunty Entity, she portrays the ruler of Bartertown in post-apocalyptic Australia. Her nemesis is the heroic Mad Max, played by Mel Gibson. The grand finale of the film features a wild road battle between Aunty, Max, and their separate gangs. It is an exciting escapist picture, fun and fantasy filled.

  One of the most outrageous aspects is Tina’s futuristic costume of chain mail, and her blonde mane of hair. She was perfectly cast as the wicked and
powerful leader of postwar survivors.

  When Max is taken up to Aunty Entity’s lair, she takes one look at him and says with a laugh, “But, he’s just a raggityman!” Analyzing him, she surmises, “How the world turns. One day cock of the walk, next a feather duster.” Speaking of her own elevation to ruler of Bartertown, Tina as Aunty says, “This nobody got a chance to be somebody. So much for history.” She plays the role in a cool and calculating way that is exciting to watch. She seems to take special delight in the road race sequence at the end of the film. Max is trying to escape by locomotive rail car, while Aunty and her army follow in skeletal trucks, cars, motorcycles, and cobbled-together hot rods.

  In her final sequence in the film, Aunty catches up with Max. Looking down at him, Tina says, “Ain’t we a pair, raggityman?” Then she laughs a hearty almost-evil laugh and strides away. Even in the post-apocalyptic world, Tina Turner is wearing her signature high heels!

  According to Tina, “The part is perfect for me. She [Aunty Entity] is very strong; I like this lady because of her power. If you had asked me last year what part I would like to play, I would have said an Egyptian queen. But this part is close enough. I don’t want to do sexy films, and I’m not funny, so I couldn’t do comedy. I want to be dealing with some kind of war, with physical strength in a woman. It’s my personality; it’s how I am” (11).

  Naturally, it would be silly to have Tina Turner in your movie and not have her contribute some songs. Since this was not a musical film, and Aunty Entity was an evil ruler, not a rock star, it was perfect for Tina to provide the theme song for the picture, and another tune as well. The songs she contributed to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and its resulting soundtrack album were “We Don’t Need Another Hero” and “One of the Living.” The film’s score was handled by Maurice Jarre.

  She was also thrilled with the popularity of the film, and she looked forward to it bringing many more acting offers to her. “If this movie brings a film career, I’ll take it!” she claimed. “That’s what I want! My singing career wasn’t what I wanted. It was something I was always sort of ashamed of, because, I guess, of the lady in me. But finally, in the last ten years, I’ve accepted it. That is who I am now and what I offer in the music world. But I also want to act and show another side of me that isn’t raunchy. I’ve always been very aggressive, very active, very outspoken. I just tell it like it is” (11).

  Projecting ahead, she said, “I want to do really heroic woman things. I’d like to do a female version of Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo” (29).

  She was so successful in the role that another film offer came to her almost immediately. Steven Spielberg was in pre-production to bring Alice Walker’s best-selling book, The Color Purple, to the screen. And he did not have a leading lady yet.

  However, she turned it down flatly. She had no interest in playing a poor and abused woman who was labeled a “victim” of society and misogynism. “Black people can do better than that. I’ve lived down South in the cotton fields. I don’t want to do anything I’ve done,” she said at the time (29).

  “I declined The Color Purple,” she explains, “because it was too close to my personal life. I had just left such a life, and it was too soon to be reminded of—acting for me, I need something else. I don’t need to do what I’ve just stepped out of. It was exciting and flattering I was asked by Mr. Spielberg, but it was the wrong movie for me at that time” (16).

  The Color Purple was too big a downer for her. She wanted to be strong and exciting on screen, not beaten and looking for pity. Besides, she claimed, “The part’s too old—she’s been with every man in town and this man brings her into his house with his wife. No, I know this already from my past. I want to do a Raiders [of the Lost Ark/Indiana Jones] or a Western next. There is no way I’m a drag right now” (2).

  Tina was soaring in 1985, and it seemed that there was no stopping her. On July 15, she was one of the many international star performers on the massive Live Aid global rock & roll telecast. A benefit show for the same African hunger relief that the USA for Africa/“We Are the World” project aided, Live Aid was a huge success. Tina and Mick Jagger were seen doing a rare and exciting duet in the middle of the telecast, live from Philadelphia’s JFK Stadium.

  In fact, this was the most hysterical and outlandish Tina and Mick performance ever. First, Mick did a solo set, backed up by a band featuring Daryl Hall and John Oates. In addition, former Temptations Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin were singing background vocals. Jagger performed several songs from his recently released debut solo album, including “Just Another Night.” Then, right before the final songs of his set, he shouted into the ‘stage right’ wings, “Where’s Tina?” With that, out strides Tina—dancing to the music in a black leather top and a matching wrap-around black leather skirt. Jagger and Turner then proceeded to swing into a hot duet version of the song “State of Shock,” which melded into to them singing The Stones’ classic “It’s Only Rock & Roll” together. (“State of Shock” was a Top 10 hit song duet between Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson, included on The Jackson’s 1984 Victory album.)

  Obviously feeling like being a little exhibitionist, mid-song, Mick stripped off his T-shirt on stage, then both he and Tina went off into the wings of separate sides of the stage while the music and singing continued. Then they both came out on stage again still singing “It’s Only Rock & Roll.” Shirtless, Mick now had on a new outfit of colorful spandex pants and a yellow sports jacket. Again Tina and Mick met at center stage and started cavorting with one another while singing. Then, as an obvious surprise to Tina, Mick grabbed hold of her leather skirt’s fastener, and in one quick notion, he pulled it open. Her leather skit hit the stage floor, and there stood Tina—as they say in England in her knickers! Yes, fortunately for her, she was wearing underwear, but it was certainly more of herself than she had planned to put into her performance that evening! Like the song they had just sung together—she too looked like she was in a complete “State of Shock.” Not quite knowing what to do, and laughing wildly at Mick’s naughty prank, she continued singing, while grabbing onto him, and hiding her exposed crotch area behind his jacket. Finally, knowing this was a losing battle, Tina turned around—inadvertently mooning the audience—and she strode off into the wings. It was without a doubt the most outrageous Tina Turner television “exposure” that she had ever received. And in front of countless millions of viewers, no less! As the song goes, it was only rock & roll, but she liked it!

  Meanwhile, for Tina, the hits just kept on coming. The single version of “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)” became a No. 3 hit in the U.K. in August of 1985. On September 13, Tina’s video of “What’s Love Got to Do With It” won the Best Female Video at the Second Annual MTV Video Music Awards, held and telecast from Radio City Music Hall in New York City. That month “We Don’t Need Another Hero” logged in at No. 2 on the U.S. Pop Singles chart in Billboard. In October, the single version of “One of the Living” peaked at No. 55 in the United Kingdom. In November a duet with Canadian rock star Bryan Adams, called “It’s Only Love,” hit No. 29 in Britain. It was originally released on Adams’s 1984 album Reckless. That same month, Tina’s “One of the Living” hit No. 15 in the United States. To round out the year, on December 8, 1985, Tina won the Best Actress award from the NAACP for her role in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

  In 1985, Tina projected how long she wished to continue to live the rock & roll lifestyle. According to her, “I’m not finished educating myself yet to be able to explain it totally. I figure I’ve got a good seven years left of being onstage with the physical thing. When it’s over I’ll put my attention to teaching” (2).

  In January 1986 the song “It’s Only Love” peaked on the American Pop chart at No. 15. On January 18, Tina won the Favorite Female Artist trophy at the Thirteenth Annual American Music Awards. Weeks later, when the Grammy Awards rolled around, Tina received another trophy, for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female, for the song “One of
the Living.”

  On June 20, Tina was one of the stars to participate in the Prince’s Trust Concert in London. In the audience that evening were England’s Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Ms. Turner and Joan Armatrading had the distinction of being the only ladies in a prestigious team of rock star men. Their costars for that mega-hit concert included Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Bryan Adams, Dire Straits, Phil Collins, and Rod Stewart.

  In Hollywood, on August 28, 1986, Tina received a star on the movie capitol’s Walk of Fame. A star emblazoned with her name was dedicated just outside the headquarters of Capitol Records, on Vine Street. In September, “Typical Male,” the first single off of her forthcoming new album, became a No. 33 hit in the United Kingdom. On August 15, the Tina Turner/Bryan Adams video version of “It’s Only Love” won an MTV Video Music Award as the Best Stage Performance Video of the Year. Tina was also one of the performers on the show, which was simultaneously telecast from Universal Amphitheatre in Universal City, California, and the Palladium in New York City.

  When Tina’s album Break Every Rule was released, it was an instant hit. Since Private Dancer had been such a huge international smash, its arrival on the marketplace was much anticipated. It proved every bit as exciting as its predecessor. The majority of Tina’s vocals were recorded at Studio Grande Armee in Paris, France. This was the beginning of her great-revived love affair with France. This time around, however, there were no more “cover” versions of previous rock and soul classics. This new album was all fresh material and 100 percent rock & roll. Several of her rock star buddies either appeared on the album or delivered songs, including David Bowie, Phil Collins, Bryan Adams, and Mark Knopfler. Terry Britten, who was responsible for “What’s Love Got to Do With It” continued his winning association with Tina by contributing six of the songs on the album, including “Typical Male,” “What You Get Is What You See,” “Two People,” “Till The Right Man Comes Along,” and “Afterglow,” all of which he penned with his writing partner Graham Lyle. The song “Girls” was written by Bowie and produced by Britten. “Back Where You Started” was written by Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance, and produced by Adams and Bob Clearmountain. “Break Every Rule” and “I’ll Be Thunder” were written by Rupert Hine and Jeannette T. Obstoj, and produced by Hine. Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits wrote “Overnight Sensation,” and Paul Brady penned “Paradise Is Here,” both of which were produced by Knopfler.