A few weeks before I met Tina Turner in 1982, I saw her playing in London. I was a big fan. Even though I was known for making electronic music, I loved all kinds and River Deep, Mountain High was my favourite song. But back then, she didn’t have a recording contract. The only way she could earn money independently was by doing what they used to call the chicken-in-a-basket circuit in America, touring her old hits. It was staggering really. She could earn good money doing that, but didn’t want to for the rest of her life.
How I got involved was like an alignment of the stars. I’d been putting together an album of old songs reframed in new contexts and James Brown had just backed out at the last minute – or, rather, his lawyers had. So there I was in the Virgin Records office bemoaning my fate, wondering who on earth was going to sing the Temptations’ Ball of Confusion, and the head of A&R, who knew Tina’s new manager, Roger Davies, overheard me. The next minute, [Heaven 17’s] Glenn Gregory and I were flying out to LA to meet her, literally in her front room. The idea that these two naive lads from Sheffield, just busking, were going to meet this experienced, brilliant demigod was insane.
Tina was as sweet as she could possibly be, making us tea and bringing out biscuits. She lived in this wooden, ranch-style house in the hills, but it wasn’t the biggest. She seemed quite easy with herself, which is amazing given what she’d been through in the very recent past [she divorced her abusive husband, Ike, in 1978]. She didn’t volunteer lots, but she didn’t avoid it either. She told me a couple of difficult things about Ike beating her, and the level of his cocaine addiction – how he’d pour a pile of it in the studio and say everyone couldn’t leave until it was finished; how the only person who took it was him.
Being in the studio with her was incredible from the start. The first time she walked in, she just walked to where the band was and got on with the job. We recorded Ball of Confusion and later, her [1983 comeback single] Let’s Stay Together, which I produced, both in one take. The only way I can describe those experiences is that it was like hearing a record you already knew well being made – she was that good. You just knew, oh, we’ve created something here that will live for ever. That’s never happened again in my life.
When we played on Channel 4’s The Tube with Tina, her long experience of being live on stage and TV was obvious so quickly. She knew how to work every camera angle, and I realised that her humility was a large part of her ability to connect with an audience on a gigantic scale. She was never someone who’d go on stage and say “Hello, Houston.” She wanted to have a direct personal connection with every single person watching her concert, or at home watching her on a small screen. You could see her looking out for them.
She asked us to write some songs for her next album, which is what became [the multimillion-selling] Private Dancer. We couldn’t because our heads were already really inside our next project, and we were pretty daunted by the idea of writing for her too. We suggested covers for her instead, like David Bowie’s 1984, which she did brilliantly. Do I regret not writing for her? No, but I do regret the royalties!
It was clear that Tina wanted to stretch herself and try to appropriate the power of what – before her – was the very masculine trope of rock’n’roll. And she did it. She also did it without getting involved in celebrity culture or any self-aggrandising, unlike so many pop stars today. She didn’t occupy many column inches. She bypassed that entire machinery. People were just drawn to her regardless.
We kept in touch over the years – I’d go to her gigs in London, and we’d say hello. Our last meeting was in 2018, very briefly, at the world premiere of Tina, the musical. It was very sad as she wasn’t well. But before that, I saw her penultimate gig at the O2 in London in 2009. She did a two-and-a-half-hour full-on show, dancing and singing. I couldn’t believe her energy at nearly 70 years old – and later I found out she’d had the flu.
I’m incredibly proud to have been part of that journey as one of hundreds of people who helped her. I still have her letters. Funnily enough, Roger Davies’s office got in touch the other day – they wanted to send a letter from her to me that they’d found recently. I bet it’s a good one.
