on Tina
Tina Turner, 1939-2023
When Tina Turner was photographed with others, she always pulled focus, no matter how massive her photographic companions. Look above: in the photo of Tina and Mick Jagger on stage at Live Aid, even with Mick doing his Mick mugging routine, Tina’s the focus. And in the photo taken for Rolling Stone of Turner with Courtney Love and Madonna - with Madonna clearly trying to upstage the proceedings - it’s Tina’s broad, jubilant smile at the center. She had an energy - talk about earned - that just drew folks to her. Talking with my best friend last night, he noted that he’d not seen this kind of social media response to a musician’s death from his friends in a very long time - maybe since Prince, or even Michael Jackson. (His friends, it should be stated, are largely of the new wave and goth worlds.) I suggested in response that it’s because nobody disliked Tina. You may not have loved all of her music, but she shone like a lighthouse beam cutting through the fog, and everyone knew her. And even though she never went by just her first name, she could’ve: there was only one Tina.
I was fortunate enough to see her perform live, once, on her 1993 “What’s Love?” tour - kind of a U.S. comeback (even though it had been less than a decade since her actual you-couldn’t-dream-this-up comeback), capitalizing on the Angela Bassett-starring biopic of her story. [Side note: Bassett not winning the 1994 Best Actress Oscar for her performance as Turner will forever be the most egregious loss in Oscar history.] The tour’s setlist was fairly impeccable, most of what you’d want from her at that moment. Like Alfred, I was thrilled that “I Don’t Wanna Fight” had concurrently risen into the U.S. top 10 (becoming her last such hit) in a transitional top 40 landscape, even garnering heavy MTV rotation. Turner was in superb voice and, remarkably, exhibited even more energy than her pair of backup dancers, inevitably a good 30 years her junior, over the course of a two-hour show with myriad costume changes. She clearly loved live performance, and you could tell.
I don’t have much time for the records she made with her late ex-husband, preferring instead to focus on her career, the things that were truly, wholly hers. And again, much like on film, she could make anything her own.
At 1985’s Live Aid, on the biggest imaginable global stage, she strutted onstage after Mick Jagger’s famous utterance “Alright, where’s Tina?” She then proceeded to rip straight out of his hands a pair of songs (okay, 1.5) associated with Jagger, as she duetted with him on the Jacksons’ “State of Shock” (to which he’d contributed a duet vocal with Michael) and the Stones’ “It’s Only Rock And Roll.” Their performance, even with all of Mick’s Mick-isms (including a would-be “wardrobe malfunction” almost 20 years prior to you-know-what), is all Tina. I’m so glad that we have it for posterity, because it’s phenomenal.
You know her career highlights. (And if you don’t, watch HBO’s great 2021 doc Tina, or for that matter just pull up a Turner playlist anywhere.) She doesn’t really require eulogization, because like Prince, like Bowie, like MJ, she will in fact live forever. Tina Turner was a legend and always will be, and true legends never really die. There’s never been a comeback as stunning as hers in 1984 (and I don’t think it’ll ever be topped), ever. I’m so glad that she got her flowers while still around to appreciate them: the immense fame and fortune, the rewriting of her own narrative (while she could never erase her ex-husband from the story, she did manage to push him into the shadows), the solo induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. And I’m most of all happy that she never stopped believing in herself, so that the world got to experience Turner at the peak of her powers through the ‘80s and ‘90s.
There aren’t many genuine icons in this world. Tina Turner was an icon. May she Rest in Power.
Great read Thomas. ❤️