R.I.P. Tina Turner

Like everyone, I was sad to hear about the passing of Tina Turner. She was a huge part of my childhood listening - thanks to my mum. Here's a wee tribute.

Tina Turner has died. She was 83. By the time you read this, you will have read it everywhere, seen clips, heard the music on radio stations or in shops and cafés, or due to your own playlists or revisiting your record collection.

Tina hadn’t ‘turned’ in years, she hadn’t played shows for ages and hadn’t recorded for even longer. Her solo discography was very finite. She had been reclusive across the last decade or so, and unwell for quite a time. We know that know from reading the reports. Some of us knew it already, sure. But still, I was very sad at the news today.

Tina Turner was a huge part of my childhood. Thanks, of course, to my mum. My mum was, and is, a huge Tina fan. I texted her first thing this morning, to check in. She said she was gutted. She added that she was thrilled to have seen the Tina musical a couple of weeks ago in Sydney (“seems even more poignant now”).

When I was a kid, and I’ve told many of you this in various ways so many times, but my mum would buy a new LP every week. And it was the kickstart to my musical education. Icehouse and Tears for Fears and Midnight Oil and Michael Jackson were the new release albums. The Police and Robert Cray and Terence Trent D’Arby too. But there were back catalogue purchases too – Al Green and Joe Cocker and The Rolling Stones. And one of the biggest (“new”) sounds for me, a voice, and a name, was Tina Turner.

We had the “comeback” records from the mid-80s. All of them. First Private Dancer. Then Break Every Rule. And finally Foreign Affair. (Mum would buy the CD versions of 1996’s Wildest Dreams and 1999’s Twenty Four Seven, or in fact I probably bought them for her. And too many compilations as well).

But it was the one-two of Private Dancer and then Break Every Rule that did it. Those, and the biopic What’s Love Got to Do with It.

So many great songs. And so many memories…mostly of being woken up by the vacuum cleaner during the school holidays. Typical Male or You Better Be Good To Me or I Can’t Stand The Rain or Show Some Respect or What You Get Is What You See or Steamy Windows blasting out, while mum cleaned the house and had a little party on the side.

In the 1980s in rural New Zealand, we had a spa pool and a Ponga fence. There were no lines of coke, nor key parties, but if they recreated the gatherings at our place – us kids up late and loving it – they’d probably have to stage some Ice Storm vibes or Boogie Nights-styled shenanigans in the movie-version just to get it over the line; to make it seem legit. There’d definitely be some Tina blasting from the turntable for the soundtrack.

When I was a teenager, I was hooked on the movie Tommy and a key scene was Tina as The Acid Queen and singing that song. WOW!

A bit before that I was into the Thunderdome (Mad Max 3) and its soundtrack.

From there – and again because of the biopic too – I went back to the Ike and Tina records and found out that’s where my mum had first become a fan.

The Phil Spector sound. Proud Mary. River Deep. A Fool In Love. Touring with B.B. King and The Stones.

It was always about the great choice in cover versions and an ability to knock them out of the park. And it was just as often about Tina’s legs. She knew how to sell the songs, and how to create the energy. She was a force.

She was also a survivor. Many times over. And we knew that from various stories and headlines, and from the books, and the movie, and the more recent doco. From the music she created in her comeback – on her terms. She had not only gathered the courage to walk away from the abusive Ike. She had paid off the debts he had incurred. She cleared her name, through hard work. And then she was a has-been. Chewed up and spat out. And trying to do disco. Or funk. Or whatever.

It was one of the great career reinventions when she became a 1980s pop star. And that’s when I came in. That’s what I heard first.

Those songs that legendary songwriters seemed to write for her. Mark Knopfler gifting her Private Dancer. Tony Joe White’s Steamy Windows never sounding as good in his own voice as it did when Tina took it. Bryan Adams and Eric Clapton both elevated by duets with her. She found a new way in to songs by David Bowie and Paul Brady and so many others. But Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together and Ann Peebles’ I Can’t Stand The Rain were the ones she amazingly claimed as her own. Their original versions remain towering, but you can think entirely of Tina too when you think of those songs. When you hear her versions, you barely consider the source material. You just live in the moment of when Tina turned them on their ear and drained out a whole new approach.

She was a hero to many – through her very survival. And an icon for generations, through her style and her music.

And she was a huge and essential part of my childhood. To which I say thanks mum! I realised only recently that it must have meant the world to my mum that Tina had a comeback and made new music at a time when my mum and dad were financially comfortable enough to splurge on a record a week. My mum had her own tough times as a kid and a teen. She would have been listening to those Ike and Tina records when she was lucky enough to hear them. There would have been no copies of them in the house. Tina bounced back and made records and my mum, along with so many others, got to buy them and relive their childhoods. Now, whenever I hear any Tina songs it is always a reminder of the luck – and love – I had when growing up.

R.I.P. Tina Turner