From the archives: Tina Turner wowed Ottawa with greatest-hits tour

Article content

Editor’s note: Tina Turner died at age 83 on May 23, 2023, after a long illness, according to her manager. Following this news, we’re re-sharing this article written by Lynn Saxberg and originally published on June 10, 2000, about Turner’s career and several Ottawa shows the artist performed over the years. Date and time references have not been altered from their original wording. 

Article content

Seventeen years ago this weekend — June 10 and 11, 1983 — Tina Turner was in Ottawa. She played a pre-makeover Barrymore’s, then a gritty rock club, and worked hard for her money.

Turner performed four shows over two nights even though only a few hundred people showed up.

I wanted to be there. Badly. I was a teenager in the process of discovering the blues and had been haunting second-hand record stores. I stumbled on Ike and Tina Turner’s Come Together album.

I bought it because I knew the Beatles song — it spoke to my other musical interest, old psychedelia — and because there was a woman on it.

Tina’s uninhibited shriek was a shock to my tender ears, but I loved it. Her voice was wild and untamed, she was everything that I — a boring white, middle-class suburbanite — was not.

Article content

But I wasn’t old enough to get into the club. 

”She rocked,” recalls Dennis Ruffo, the veteran Ottawa promoter who co-presented the show. She had a full backing ensemble, with singers, musicians and multiple costume changes. She also really liked the club’s chicken wings, he says with a laugh.

Turner was taking a break from rehearsals at the time, and looking for material for a new album that would complete her switch from R&B to rock. ”I’m burned out with R&B,” she said in an interview with the Citizen before the show.

Obviously, she found the songs she needed. Less than two years later, when Turner returned to Ottawa, her Private Dancer album had been released, sailed up the charts and fueled one of the most dramatic comebacks in pop-music history.

Article content

Article content

And in August 1985, Turner played two back-to-back stadium shows at the Ottawa Ex. Ruffo worked on that show, too, which was reviewed as one of the finest Ottawa had ever seen. Must have been the chicken wings — Ruffo remembers that she requested an order from Barrymore’s.

When Turner comes back to Ottawa tomorrow, it will be part of what she has said is her final tour. She’s 60 now, and finds it a lot of work, although fans aren’t likely to notice that her energy has diminished one iota.

At her sold-out concert in Toronto last weekend, she was still the strutting, vamping lioness she’s always been, from the top of her frosted mane to the bottom of her stiletto heels, though she left the highest kicks and the most vigorous hip shakes to the fit young dancers who accompanied her.

Article content

”I’m going to take you on a journey of my career — all the way from now back to 1960,” she said early in the evening, setting the tone for a greatest-hits retrospective of a concert.

The 1960 starting point was A Fool In Love, the smash hit recorded by Ike and Tina Turner while they lived in St. Louis. It was a song of Ike’s, Tina’s ex-husband and the bandleader who discovered her talent, but it was intended for another singer. When he didn’t show up to the studio, Ike turned to the former Anna Mae Bullock to cut the demo.

The song turned heads as soon as it was released. Delivered in Tina’s sexy rasp of a voice, it hit a visceral nerve with its raw, primitive sound, sounding sort of like a female version of James Brown.

When Tina was finally able to tour — she had been in the hospital because of a difficult second pregnancy (Ike’s child) — audiences saw the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, a showy R and B orchestra with bass, drums, guitar, piano, a horn line and a trio of female backup singers — the Ikettes. Everyone was dressed to the nines, the men in suits and ties, the women in slinky full-length gowns, Tina’s pregnancy buried in chiffon. Their approach was taken and polished from Ike’s years on the club circuit with his Kings of Rhythm band.

Article content

Ike and Tina had moved to Los Angeles by 1962. They released a string of singles, vibrant and gritty in tone, but not hugely successful. A swaggering cover of Otis Blackwell’s Finger Poppin’ hinted at a change in direction toward a feistier, more rock-edged sound.

During the lean years (in terms of hits), touring became the major source of income. Ike kept his entourage on the road non-stop, working their way across the country, through the Southern states, up the eastern seaboard, across the Midwest, north to Denver and then a downward swing toward home. The route was repeated year after year.

In 1965, wunderkind producer Phil Spector, founder and undisputed king of the ”wall of sound” school of recording, decided he wanted to record a song with Tina. Not Ike.

Article content

The song was River Deep-Mountain High, and Spector cracked the whip, as Tina recalled in her autobiography, I, Tina, which was co-written with Kurt Loder.

”That intro — ‘When I was a little girl …’ I must have sung that 500,000 times, and I don’t know if I ever got it just the way he wanted it. I would sing it, and he would say, ‘That’s very close, very close. We’ll try it again.’ I don’t remember him saying ‘Got it.’

”Pretty soon, I was drenched with sweat. I had to take off my shirt and stand there in my bra to sing, that’s how hard I was working on that song.”

The lush production, with its soaring strings, throbbing studio orchestra, and Tina’s riveting vocal on top, was considered a Spector masterpiece. But it flopped on the U.S. charts, and drove Spector into hiding for years.

Article content

The song fared much better in England, making it to No. 3 and prompting the Rolling Stones to employ the Ike and Tina Turner Revue as opening act on their British tour. The Stones, like many other British bands, including the Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin and the Animals were enamoured with American blues and R and B, and saw Ike and Tina as the real thing.

Which, of course, they were. Growing up in Clarksdale, Mississippi, Ike used to sneak away at night to watch Pinetop Perkins play piano. Later, he took record executives through the South to meet and record blues legends such as Howlin’ Wolf, Elmore James, Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland and B.B. King. His first band was a younger, more aggressive version of the old R and B swing orchestras.

Article content

Even more important to Mick and the boys, Ike and Tina were a great opening act, making the Stones work to surpass their energy. When they opened for the Stones on their U.S. tour in 1969, Ralph Gleason, jazz and pop critic of the San Francisco Chronicle (and co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine) wrote: ”Jagger ought to get a medal for courage in following B.B. King (who was also on the bill) and Tina Turner.” He described Tina as a ”hurricane” and said she ”must be the most sensational female performer on stage.”

Both Stones tours gave Tina a chance to see up close how a rock ‘n’ roll band functioned. She liked what she saw — the music, the playing, the swagger, the rhythm. It was clear they had soaked up the vibe of black music.

Article content

Before the Stones tour of 1969, Tina heard some songs she felt she had to sing. She persuaded Ike to let her try them and they worked on the Beatles’ Come Together, the Stones’ Honky Tonk Woman and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Proud Mary. Her versions bristled with energy: here was a black woman interpreting songs written by white bands that were influenced by black music. The songs took on new meaning in Tina’s hands — it was as if she was the honky-tonk woman.

”That was the beginning of me liking rock music,” Tina wrote in her autobiography. ”It wasn’t like we planned it — ‘Now we’re gonna start doing white rock ‘n’ roll songs.’ But those groups were interpreting black music to begin with. They touched on R and B, in a way, but it wasn’t obvious. I mean, it wasn’t the old thing. It was Honky Tonk Woman — wow! I could relate to that.”

Article content

Proud Mary was Ike and Tina’s biggest hit in the United States, reaching number four and selling one million copies in 1971. It earned Tina her first Grammy Award, for best R and B vocal performance, and landed the duo on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.

Around this time, Ike and Tina’s version of the Otis Redding song, I’ve Been Loving You Too Long, which was on the charts in 1969, was a staple of their live show. Complete with Tina writhing and moaning, its blatant sexuality cemented her image as a sex symbol. Tina, however, found it embarrassing after a while — she says it was Ike who kept the song in the show for so long.

Turner was almost 34 when Nutbush City Limits was released. It was a big hit in the U.S.; an even bigger hit in Britain, sparking talk of an Ike and Tina comeback. But the song, an autobiographical ditty written by Tina herself, was their last single to crack the top 30.

Article content

While Ike snorted cocaine, gambled thousands and spent a fortune outfitting his recording studio, Tina was developing her inner strength through Buddhist chanting. In 1975, she made a splash as the Acid Queen (and sang the song of the same name) in the film rendition of the Who’s rock opera, Tommy, a role that boosted her confidence even more, partly because Ike, who had controlled her life for so long, was not involved.

Tina made her first ‘solo’ album in 1974. It was recorded at Ike’s studio, but with an outside producer and musicians. Tina Turns the Country On didn’t sell well, and it’s no wonder: it was out of character, a country album of cover songs by the likes of Hank Snow, Dolly Parton, Kris Kristofferson, James Taylor and Bob Dylan.

Article content

Tina finally left Ike on Independence Day weekend in 1976, although the divorce was not final until two years later. She needed to rebuild her career, which she began, tentatively, with shows on the supper-club circuit and then a solo album called Rough. It contained evidence of Tina’s increasing infatuation with rock music in a cover of Bob Seger’s Fire Down Below, but the album sank and she was dropped by the record company.

In debt to promoters and the Internal Revenue Service to the tune of some $400,000, Tina had her first meeting with Lee Kramer and then-partner, Roger Davies, the young Australian who would become her manager and change her career.

They decided to take her on after seeing her perform in a hotel ballroom: ”Tina came on and she had so much energy, she blew me away. It was amazing … I thought, ‘Well, the second show can’t be as good.’ But it was better. People were standing on tables; the chandeliers were shaking,” Davies said in I, Tina.

Article content

But Davies thought the show was too Vegas; the band too disco in their silver tuxedos. He knew Tina needed a rock band behind her. She had to ditch the glitzy Bob Mackie costumes and the long wigs.

In 1981, Tina and her hot new band made their public debut at the Ritz in New York City in front of a crowd that included Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol, Diana Ross, Robert De Niro, Mary Tyler Moore and other celebrities. She was a huge success. A return engagement was just as triumphant. In the audience was Rod Stewart, who invited Tina to join him on Saturday Night Live that weekend. They sang Stewart’s hit, Hot Legs, reminding millions of viewers of the power of Tina’s performance. Three stadium shows opening for the Rolling Stones in New Jersey left no doubt.

Article content

Sometime later, a request came from two young British producers, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig, who would go on to become the synth-pop group Heaven 17. They were compiling an album of their favourite pop songs, done to electronic backing tracks, and wanted Tina Turner to sing Ball of Confusion.

Fearful of getting stuck in the R and B rut again, Tina almost backed out when she found out they had the old Temptations hit lined up for her. But she did the track and impressed Ware and Craig so much they invited her to come back and do a record.

In a move that’s now part of rock history, she did return to the duo to record Let’s Stay Together. It was 1983, sometime after Tina’s aforementioned club date in Ottawa, and by the end of the year the song was a top 5 hit in Britain. It was the first glimmer of what would become Tina’s breakthrough album.

Article content

Davies cobbled together more producers and songs, including a track written by Mark Knopfler, Private Dancer, that didn’t make the last Dire Straits album. The songs fell into place, including What’s Love Got To Do With It, Better Be Good To Me, I Might Have Been Queen, Steel Claw (with Jeff Beck on guitar), an electronic version of Ann Peebles’ I Can’t Stand the Rain and David Bowie’s 1984.

The album cruised up the charts, reaching No. 3 by September and staying there for three months, topped by two of that year’s blockblusters: Prince’s Purple Rain and Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. Private Dancer defined the 45-year-old singer as sexy, cool, proud and defiant. It also showed that she could really sing — not just scream. And when word got out on the abuse she suffered from Ike, she was seen as the ultimate survivor.

Article content

Described by the New York Times as ”two sensational legs topped by an explosion of hair,” Turner swept the 1984 Grammy Awards (presented in February 1985), winning best record and best female pop vocal performance for What’s Love Got to Do with It and best female rock vocal performance for Better Be Good To Me.

Tina ended 1985 starring in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome with Mel Gibson. She dueted with Mick Jagger in the massive Live Aid event. By this time, she had enough money to do whatever she wanted. So she cranked out another album.

Break Every Rule was widely considered a restatement of Private Dancer, but scored a hit in the put-down song Typical Male.

Then came the 1989 album Foreign Affair, a polished and sophisticated outing (popular for the song, The Best), though it was criticized by some for not having any harder-edged rock material for Tina to strut her stuff on.

Article content

And while Tina would occasionally talk about retiring from touring, she mounted elaborate tours for Foreign Affair and 1993’s What’s Love Got To Do With It soundtrack, which accompanied the Hollywood movie about Tina’s life. Both tours stopped in Ottawa.

She toured again in support of the album Wildest Dreams in 1996, which updated her sound in a Europop style, with guest appearances by Sting, U2’s Bono and The Edge, the Pet Shop Boys producers Trevor Horn and Nellie Hooper and even Barry White.

But with her 60th birthday approaching, Tina decided last year to give up life on the road in favour of boating, gardening, learning French and spending time at her villa in Switzerland with longtime beau, EMI executive Erwin Bach.

Article content

”I’ve worked more than half of my life,” she said in announcing her farewell tour. ”Now I don’t want to schedule. What I want to do now is still make a statement by recording. I’ll still do my videos. I’ll do TV specials, musical specials. I’ll be a guest star periodically every now and then.”

This year’s album, Twenty Four Seven, marks Tina’s 25th anniversary as a solo artist. The first single, When The Heartache Is Over, was co-written by John Reid of Nightcrawlers and produced by Metro, the London team behind Cher’s multimillion-selling disc Believe. The disc also includes a cameo appearance by Bryan Adams, Turner’s longtime friend, with whom she sang on the 1985 hit, It’s Only Love.

The new disc’s easy pace and soft-pop approach seems to indicate that Tina is preparing for a graceful bow from big stadium touring. In concert, the impression is anything but.

She is going out kicking and screeching in a burst of fireworks and special effects. She’s playing almost every song she’s known for, and then some. It’s a two-hour spectacle that only a few artists can pull off. 

Tina Turner is one of those artists.