by Tina Turner
7
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“OVERNIGHT SENSATION”
“Two dollar high-heel shoes and a honky tonk dress
In the rhythm and the soul reviews I had a dream I guess”
So that’s what I did. I just kept going. I never said, “Well, I don’t have this and I don’t have that.” I said, “I don’t have this yet, but I’m going to get it.” The way I was thinking, I was choreographing my own life, figuring out which steps to take and, more importantly, picking the right time to take them.
I remember one day when I was lying in bed, feeling a little overwhelmed, and saying to myself, “I have to get management.” It was 1979. Rhonda was doing a good job booking me on the cabaret circuit, but I had dreams, and they were big. I wanted to fill concert halls and arenas, like the Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart. That was quite an ambition for a forty-year-old female singer whose best years seemed to be behind her. Then again, I never thought about age. I didn’t look forty. I was wearing wigs, so if I was gray underneath, no one could see it! I was still dancing, running across the stage in fact. I felt young and energetic. What I needed was a professional to help me get my career on the right track.
Rava Daly, one of my dancers, kept talking about a manager she knew named Lee Kramer, whose client at the time was Olivia Newton-John. Rava urged me to talk to Lee and his associate, an Australian named Roger Davies, who had just come to America. I listened to her and made an appointment to see them. Roger knew all about Ike and Tina, and he was familiar with my song “Nutbush City Limits” because it had been a big hit in Australia. He was a young man, only twenty-six, but he had quite the background in music. Before Roger moved to America, he’d worked as a musician and a roadie, and he managed the popular Australian group Sherbet during their most successful years.
Today, Roger and I joke about that fateful meeting and our funny first impressions of each other. I thought that Roger looked much older than he was, more like he was in his early forties. And I never saw anyone buried in so much stuff—his office was bursting with books, records, everything—all piled around him as if he was a hoarder.
What did he think of me? Given my long-standing history with Ike, Roger expected me to look much older. The wig always made me appear younger than my years, and my clothes were youthful. He listened to a mix of my music, didn’t seem all that impressed, and looked at me as if he wasn’t sure he knew what to do with this odd bundle of contradictions. Roger didn’t talk much, but when he did, he chose his words carefully. “What do you want?” he asked thoughtfully.
I was brutally honest because there was no point in being otherwise. One thing I had learned about myself since I left Ike and went out on my own was that I was ambitious. I said, “Well, I just got a divorce. I’m in debt. I need a manager. I need a record company. I need records. And [by the way] I want to fill halls like the Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart.” There, I put all my cards on the table. If Roger thought my answer was crazy, he didn’t say so. I told him I was playing the Venetian Room at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco and invited him to fly up with Lee Kramer to see my act.
I felt so much better when I left his office because I had actually done something about the future. I didn’t know whether or not he would make it to the show—just because he said he’d come didn’t mean he would—but by reaching out to him, I’d taken a step in the right direction. I was taking control of my career in an informed way, making moves and choices, and that was empowering and exciting.
In San Francisco, the Fairmont audience was sweet, but a little stuffy. The regulars at the Venetian Room were more of a fancy nightclub crowd than the fans who usually came to see the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. They dressed to the nines and sat comfortably at tables while they drank cocktails and watched the show. My act was still evolving, but it had to showcase my talents in a cabaret setting, which was different from the places I’d played with Ike. My costumes were a combination of old things I’d worn before and some gorgeous new designs by Bob Mackie, with lots of skin, sparkle, and glitz. To make the music timely, I blended popular hits like “Disco Inferno” with old favorites like “Proud Mary.”
Whenever I looked out at the crowd, I hoped to see Roger and Lee, but they kept me waiting for two weeks. They didn’t make it to San Francisco until the very last night of the show. When I saw these two young guys in the room—I still get emotional when I think about it—it was so meaningful to me. I thought, They came . . . great! I knew I had a good show because I was free. Finally, I was dancing on my own. I had my own band playing what I wanted them to play, at the tempo I wanted. I never did it for the money. I did it for love of the work, and the audience felt that emotion coming from the stage. It lifted them. The ladies in their black dresses and pearls stood up and moved with the music. I’ll never forget the headline in one of the San Francisco newspapers. It said something like, “Tina Turner Pulled Cobwebs Out of Nob Hill Last Night.” And it was true!
Roger and Lee came backstage after the show. Lee was appreciative, but Roger was really enthusiastic, which pleased me enormously because I could tell that he was the hungry one, the one who would do the work. It was our destiny to come together at this moment, two people standing on the brink of new lives. He wanted an artist. I wanted a manager. His ambition was to build a star, and I needed someone to believe in me, to take me to that place. We both got what we wanted. I think Roger is the brother I never had, and I’m the sister he never had. We bonded the moment we started working together.
Rhonda understood that I needed a manager with a long-term plan. Roger was good at everything, but what really impressed me about him was that he recognized the importance of building an audience in Europe. A lot of Americans in the music business didn’t acknowledge that the rest of the world existed. Roger, probably because he was foreign, always thought globally. He had me working internationally, everywhere from Poland to Asia. And with his help, I stripped my act of the Las Vegas/nightclub elements, the flashy costumes and set pieces. We streamlined the dancers and dressed the band in black karate suits. The musicians hated them, but they were inexpensive and they didn’t stand out. Just as I’d imagined, we were making the show more rock ’n’ roll. I was the happiest I’d ever been, happier than I’d ever dreamed I could be.
The most challenging part was finding a record company. I remember Roger saying, “Darling”—he always called me “Darling”—“Every door I walk through, I say ‘Tina,’ they say, ‘Ike.’ ” Record executives in America were brainwashed about Ike, who had a terrible reputation for being dangerous and unpredictable. Now his bad behavior was tainting me. Roger had never imagined it would be so hard to get a label, but he never gave up. Instead, he thought strategically, which is what made him a wonderful manager. He knew that there were many routes to a record contract. He was trying to figure out which one was right for me. I think he was always amazed by my certainty that everything would work out.
“Don’t worry, Roger, we’ll be fine,” I told him over and over again.
Roger was also managing Olivia Newton-John at the time. It really says something about the breadth of his talent as a manager that he was able to guide two artists who were so different from each other. One day, he came to me with a song that he loved and urged me to record it. I had to be honest with him—I always was—and I said I couldn’t imagine myself singing that song, so I passed on it. He brought the song to Olivia. It was “Physical,” which was absolutely perfect for her, and it sold millions of copies and became her biggest hit. I knew that my song was out there, somewhere. We just had to find it.
My Cinderella moment happened in New York’s East Village, at a club called the Ritz. Roger wanted me to perform at a space where I could really connect with the audience, and the Ritz was a wonderful old concert hall that attracted real downtown music lovers. I appeared there twice in 1981, and on one of those nights Rod Stewart was in the house. When he heard me sing his hit song “Hot Legs,” he asked me to perform
it with him on Saturday Night Live, where he was going to be the musical guest. “We’ve got a surprise for you,” he told the NBC audience, saying that it gave him pleasure to introduce “someone who has been a great inspiration to me” (prompting one band member to quip, “Doris Day?”). Rod dismissed that idea and called me onto the stage. We had such a good time bringing the song to life. I high-kicked my heart out every time we said the word “legs.” It was a wonderful opportunity for me to reach a new audience—all those young Saturday Night Live fans who may not have known my work and were seeing me at my “Hot Legs” best. It was the beginning of great times for me.
After another night at the Ritz, I received a surprise invitation from the Rolling Stones, who asked me to open some of their concerts during their North American tour. Singing “Honky Tonk Woman” with the band at the Brendan Byrne Arena in the New Jersey Meadowlands, one of the giant venues of my dreams, was everything I’d hoped it would be. That crowd! The experience was quite a contrast to my intimate cabaret appearances.
During my third appearance at the Ritz, in 1983, the stars aligned, literally and figuratively, in a way I had never imagined possible. I had this thing with Roger. I asked him not to tell me when there were celebrities in the audience—none of that “guess who’s here tonight”—because I would find it distracting. I was there to entertain my fans and, in my mind, everyone in the audience was a VIP.
Apparently, a lot happened before I sang my first note that night.
David Bowie, an artist who needs no introduction, was in New York, meeting with people from EMI/Capitol, his record label. They wanted to take him out to celebrate his new album, Let’s Dance, but David said he was busy that night. He told them he was going to see his favorite singer at the Ritz . . . and his favorite singer was me!
David’s recommendation started a stampede. Suddenly, Roger was bombarded by calls from music executives who were desperate to get tickets to the show that night. Ironically, Capitol had been one of my labels, but I became infinitely more interesting to them after I got David’s seal of approval. I didn’t know any of this until later. When I walked out onto the stage, the room was packed and vibrating. It was my favorite kind of show—great energy and an audience that was with me every high-kicking step of the way. I spotted some famous faces in the crowd, including tennis great John McEnroe and actress Susan Sarandon.
David, who had my old friend Keith Richards in tow, came backstage to my dressing room, and they were all so excited about the show. I was really happy that I had performed David’s “Putting Out Fire,” the song he wrote for the movie Cat People. I think I did a good job covering it with my band, and it meant something to me that he was there to hear it. The three of us were having such a great time talking about music (and passing around bottles of Jack Daniel’s and champagne) that we didn’t want the night to end. We moved the party to Keith’s suite at the Plaza Hotel. At that point, I had the most fun watching Roger’s reactions as the night unfolded. He was over the moon. I think if it had been possible for him to faint, he would have, he was flying so high, thrilled to be in the company of his idols.
David was playing the piano, Keith was in top form, Ron Wood dropped by, and we jammed the night away. We sang, “I keep forgetting you don’t love me no more,” which David said he was planning to put on his new album. Roger kept popping into the other room to use the telephone. Like an excited kid, he was calling his friends to say, “You’ll never guess where I am! You’ll never guess who’s with me!” It meant so much to him for all those people to be there. It was a rock ’n’ roll dream. We didn’t leave until early morning, when we hailed a taxi and headed back to reality.
A new reality, as it turned out. Getting back to my Cinderella tale: for me, that night at the Ritz was the equivalent of going to the ball (minus the part about Prince Charming) because it changed my life dramatically. Buoyed by the enthusiasm they witnessed at my show, Capitol wanted to move ahead with a record deal. It got very complicated trying to work something out between Capitol in America and EMI in England, but Roger was like a warrior manager when it came to making things happen. Against all odds, we found ourselves walking into Abbey Road Studios (by way of a quick, moneymaking concert in Sweden) for a recording session with Martyn Ware and Glenn Gregory of the innovative pop-techno group Heaven 17. Martyn, who was practically a boy, though a very talented one, happened to think that this middle-aged singer had a bright future.
I walked into the studio expecting to see musicians. Weirdly, there wasn’t a human or an instrument in sight. “Where’s the band?” I asked, thinking back to Phil Spector and his giant orchestra. Roger and Martyn explained that the new Wall of Sound would come from something that looked like a giant X-ray machine. Martyn created his music with synthesizers. I was a little puzzled by the process, but happy and excited to take a chance on something new, even if it meant singing along with a machine. The problem was, what would I sing? There was no time for Martyn to write new material, so we talked about songs we liked and agreed to try David Bowie’s “1984” and Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.”
The first time I hear a song, I start singing along until I feel that I have it, exactly the way I did it as a child, when I listened to the radio. When I’ve absorbed it fully, I say, “Okay, it’s my song now, I own it,” and I’m ready to record. I go to the studio, step up to the microphone, and get it done. I’m different from most artists in that respect. When I make a record, I like to sing a song all the way through, from start to finish. To me, it’s a story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and it has to be told in its entirety.
When I recorded “Let’s Stay Together,” I had a crush on someone back in America, so I did it as a love song. That’s why my version was so different from Al Green’s. Al wrote the song, loves the music, and all of that. But I was coming from a more emotional place. As I finished the last lyric, Martyn called it a wrap. We got it in one take. Sometimes they call me the “one-take wonder.” The song was blessed, and it continued to be blessed when my recording of it came out in England, and later in America. It was a hit!
When you’ve been in the record business as long as I was with Ike, it’s impossible not to be suspicious of success. When I was told I had a hit record, I thought, Okay, fine. But I didn’t wake up and think, Oh, I guess I’m a star . . . again. And there was a downside. A few of my girls quit when I told them I couldn’t afford to give them raises. “The song just hit,” I tried to explain. “The money’s not even here yet.” Fortunately, “Let’s Stay Together” was enough of a hit for my record company to tell Roger to move forward with producing a new album. And they wanted it done as quickly as possible.
Roger and I headed back to London, where I’d found support and inspiration from the earliest days of my career, starting with “River Deep—Mountain High.” The English people stepped up for me when America didn’t. They never asked, “Where’s Ike?” They accepted me as a solo artist. You know those old Hollywood movies, when talented kids get together and spontaneously put on a show—the way I used to do with my cousins at Mama Georgie’s house back in Nutbush? That’s what it felt like when we set out to make the Private Dancer album. Actually, we didn’t know the song “Private Dancer” at first. We started out with one song, “Better Be Good to Me,” by Holly Knight. The studio was booked—we had two and a half weeks to record an entire album—and Roger raced around town in a small car with a big bag of cassettes, frantically gathering potential material—something, anything, for me to sing. It was a funny way to begin a project.
Roger brought me a demo of “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” and we immediately clashed because I didn’t like the song, not one bit. “What am I going to do with it?” I said dismissively. It was certainly not what Rod Stewart or the Rolling Stones would sing, I argued. Roger disagreed. He prided himself on his ability to spot a hit, and he thought this song was a smash. Asking me to please keep an open mind, Roger took me to the studio to meet with the
songwriter, Terry Britten, whom he had already asked to produce two songs on the album. Terry was sitting casually on a stool, swinging his legs and holding his guitar. I told him he looked just like a little boy, which thankfully he took with good humor.
Terry talked to me about the song and listened to my concerns. He understood what I was saying—I didn’t want to do something light, or pop. Then I decided to show him some respect. I sang his words, but did it my way: “You must understand that the touch of your hand . . . ,” forcefully, with gravity and raw emotion. Oh yeah. It was a whole different approach, and a whole different outcome. I heard in my voice what Roger was imagining in his head. The album was off to a great start, and Terry Britten and I enjoyed a long, happy collaboration.
Meanwhile, Roger was still running all over London, looking for more songs. Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits said he had one called “Private Dancer.” He’d written it for himself, but hadn’t used it on his most recent album because he decided it was a song that was better for a woman than a man. He was absolutely right. I can’t even describe how “Private Dancer” sounded coming from a man, even a very talented man like Mark. Very butch! Like something you’d hear in a pub, after too many pints had been consumed. “Do you really want me to sing this song?” I said to Roger, half-amused, half-appalled. “You just put your touch on it and we’ll see how it goes,” he answered reassuringly. And that’s what I did.
