Goodnight Lady
When I was a kid, about 13-14, I saw Tina Turner being profiled on ABC's 20/20 news series. This would have been around `80-`81. She was working the comeback trail, playing clubs and I guess at one point working day jobs to keep food in the fridge.
I wasn't the immersed music geek I am now at that age. I was just getting into listening to rock radio a lot. I didn't know much about Tina Turner. I'd seen her on variety shows a couple of times but didn't know quite what to make of her back then.
I knew there was such a thing as spousal abuse, or as we called it back then, wife-beating. But I was shocked that such a powerful-seeming woman could have been subjected to it. And by the gruesome realities of it she so unflinchingly shared. And I watched a clip of her belting out an aching, gospel-y version of "Help".
The music I head there didn't necessarily move me (though I later came to appreciate her version of "Help"), but her story did. I was left rooting for the lady. I hoped she would find success again, though I admit I didn't really think she would. Fortunately, I'm not much of a prognosticator.
When "What's Love Got To Do With It" came out, I wasn't hot-and-bothered about the song, but I was happy she'd gotten herself a hit. I had no idea what was to come.
Not long after, I saw her do "Private Dancer" on SNL, and was impressed. That was a good song, and she knew how to deliver it. I also dug her raunchy duet with Mick Jagger at Live Aid. I didn't follow her career closely. Ultimately most of her hits were not my kind of thing - too 80's, too slick, too arena-rock - too much of a kind of music I didn't dig. But I always liked her. And never stopped rooting for her.
Well I guess she didn't need me anyway. She ended up something like 100x the star she'd ever been in the olde days. I wasn't even aware of how many hits, accolades, awards and achievements she made over the next 20 years. Damn!
It's a measure of her impact too, to note the folks who stepped in to help her in those comeback days, and hooked up with her post-comeback. Rod Stewart, the Stones, Clapton, Mark Knopfler, Lionel Richie.
And even if she did do her share of slick, crafted adult contemporary pop-rock in her post-comeback days, she was a rocker at heart. Watched a vid of a live set from 1982 last night - the setlist is mostly rock and roll covers - Stones, Bob Seger. I won't say she made them her own - her band was good, but a little too "pro" to get the gut-bucket sound she needed. Still that gut-bucket sound wouldn't have got her back in the Top 10, and that's what she was shooting for, make no mistake. But she did it her way too. And even later on, there are moments where her natural grit overcomes the glossy arrangements. The aforementioned gospel-y "Help", "Private Dancer", her cover of The Animals "When I Was Young" (buried as a b-side. She makes Eric Burdon sound like a little kid). She was still doing "Acid Queen" in her live shows into the 00's, and sticking tough blues-rock tracks on her albums. Sure I'd have preferred she hook up with Dave Alvin or Southern Culture on the Skids, but I'm just glad the lady got the last word, and the last laugh.
Anyway, her post-comeback music is readily available and easy to explore for anyone who hasn't already. My choice for her best music, the stuff she made with Ike - who might have been a very fucked-up person, but was, even by her admission, one hell of a musician, performer, and talent scout - is poorly represented out there. There are many compilations, but all of them miss too much of the good stuff from the original albums. I recommend The Soul of Ike and Tina Turner, Dynamite!, Live! The Ike and Tina Show, The Soul of Ike and Tina, Oooh Poo Pah Doo, So Fine, The Hunter, Come Together, Workin' Together, What You Hear Is What You Get, Feel Good, and Nutbush City Limits, all of which yielded several tracks for my personal Ike and Tina collection.
SHORT TAKES
Those who suffer my presence also suffer my rabid music fandom and these days I've bored them all with my relentless championing of The Linda Lindas and Yee Loi. I've spoken most of my piece on these girls in a Perfect Sound Forever piece I wrote last year, but I will say again that those who write them off as mere puppets (no evidence to support that one) or unworthy of attention due to their ridiculous age are missing out big time. Both bands are serious about their music, well-schooled in their influences, have solid or better-than-solid chops, and are writing first-rate songs, adolescence be damned.
And since both groups maintain an active internet presence, I get the joy of
seeing their latest activities as the roll off the presses. And watching them grow. The LL's recently played Atlantic City, and were joined by Go-Go's drummer Gina Schock for their cover of the aforementioned Go-Go's "Tonite", a staple of their live shows, sung by little drummer girl Mila who got to come front and center for a change. My money says Mila becomes the breakout star of the band, if she isn't already.
It's the fall of 1983, and I've wandered over to a local Crown Books after school. I'm 17 years old and just beginning my serious musical explorations, one aspect of which is embracing a lot of the new music I've mostly been writing off. More on that in the future.
Anyway, I'm poring through the latest issue of Rolling Stone, in search of interesting tidbits, when I come across this leading the record review section:
Here’s a big-noise guitar band from Britain that blows the knobs off all the synth-pop diddlers and fake-funk frauds who are cluttering up the charts these days. Big Country mops up the fops with an air-raid guitar sound that’s unlike anything else around, anywhere, and if their debut album promises more than the four musicians can quite deliver at this stage in their young career, what it does deliver – especially on the Top Ten U.K. hit “Fields of Fire,” one of the great, resounding anthems of this or any other year–is sufficiently scintillating to preclude any extended critical carps about the group’s occasional lack of focus. At this point, the big picture is clear enough.
I mean, damn. Being thoroughly disgusted with those same synth-pop diddlers and fake-funk frauds, I was anxious for some big guitars to blow the detritus away. And this sounded like it might just do the trick! "I cant wait to hear them live, author Kurt Loder concluded. Heck I couldn't wait to hear them period!
I got my wish soon enough. The Crossing made the charts here in the US, too, and pretty soon "Fields of Fire" and "In A Big Country" were in heavy rotation, and I wasn't disappointed.
But the wind went out of their sails fast. None of their followups had the same punch, to these ears. Or to many others it seems - they were a trivia question in the US within 2-3 years (though I guess they still got hits and maintained their following in the UK). Soon chiming guitar bands from the UK seemed a dime a dozen, and I was more compelled by the darker, more aggressive and sexual sounds coming off SST and other American labels. And unlike U2, BC never moved beyond their basic approach or developed greater depth or breadth. They (deliberately) lacked r&b roots or groove, and The Pogues did more with the concept of mating Celtic folk to real rock drive.
But around 2005, I think the news of Stuart Adamson's death (which was old news by the time I heard about it) dredged up memories of 1983, when they were a welcome blast of misty fresh air. I ended up springing for a new copy of The Crossing, which had long since been purged from my collection. And although its not something I spin very often, when I do, I am rewarded.
Last week I watched a Big Country gig, from their homeland, c. 1983. With a rabid crowd and the band going full bore, it was interesting and enlightening. All their flaws ... but all their strengths, too ... on full display.
Heard today, they sound less like a U2 clone, outside of superficialities. While Bono's crew are a pretty obvious sonic influence, the real root of their sound is Celtic folkie tunes, delivered with Clash-like intensity, and a big dash of Springsteen-ism - sweeping, stirring choruses meant to get a crowd on their feet, fists in the air. All delivered with enough relentless earnestness to make Abe Lincoln's ghost choke. Martial-sounding drums that conjure up scenes from Braveheart, and clumsy/poetic lyrics full of raven-haired lasses atop lonely, windswept mountains, waiting for the ghosts of their lost lovers.
All of which is to say, like Springsteen, their big weakness was corn. They were corny as hell. But, again like Bruce, at their best, even when their poesy fell flat, their passion overcooked, their earnestness unbearable, it still came off real. Th e stirring melodies were actually stirring, even thrilling. The relentless powerhouse charge mowed you down like a Clash record. And the track-to-track flow is near perfect. The Crossing isn't a great album, but it is a very good one. And if it was all they had in them, well, that's an old story too.
Thanks for 'getting' us, lotsa love Rose and Tilds xxx
ReplyDeleteHoly cow! Thanks for writing! Wanne be interviewed some time?
Delete