Tina Turner - a memory "My dream came true on this side of the world"

Music expert Hanspeter "Düsi" Künzler recalls his first encounter with rock star Tina Turner in 1996 for blue News. She opened the conversation with a friendly "Grüezi!".

I was sitting in my children's room at Niederglatt station playing with my Lego blocks when a volcano suddenly erupted on the radio. Lego and everything else were instantly forgotten.

I listened in amazement to the incredible sounds that reached my ears. "River Deep, Mountain High", it turned out, Ike & Tina Turner with Phil Spector's wall-of-sound production. Not the Beatles, not the Stones and not even the Beach Boys had ever before gripped my childish psyche with such irresistible force.

Of course, I understood nothing of the passions that the song captured in sound. But I understood the "wow" moment very well: for three minutes and forty seconds (an audacious length for a single at the time), I had a view of a world that I had no idea what it would look like, but which I could hope was out there - perhaps already waiting for me at the other end of the railroad tracks that ran past the house.

I had scraped together all my money for a ticket to Tina's solo concert

I was still a long way from having discovered this world when I sat in front of the TV a few years later and watched "Musikladen". And there they were again, Ike & Tina T., this time with "Nutbush City Limits", complete with crazy synth solo. Again I was blown away: my first conscious encounter with true "funk" - rhythm that went deep into my bones and was largely characterized by Tina Turner's phenomenal, percussive voice.

About Hanspeter "Düsi" Künzler

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Zurich journalist Hanspeter " Düsi" Künzler has lived in London for almost 40 years. He is a music, art and football specialist and writes for various Swiss publications such as blue News and the NZZ. He is also a regular guest on the SRF3 program "Sounds".

At some point I also saw "Soul to Soul", the exhilarating film of the concert with which Ghana celebrated its independence in 1971 and where Ike & Tina Turner stole the show with their high-octane, libido-soaked performance.

I was so impressed by these rare virtual encounters that in December 1983 I scraped together all my pennies and bought a ticket for Tina's solo concert at Venue, a medium-sized venue near Victoria station in London, where I now lived.

Finally divorced from the abusive Ike a few years ago, she was still trying to pay off the half a million dollars in tax debt that her ex had signed over to her as part of the divorce settlement so that she could keep the name "Tina Turner" that he had copyrighted.

Tina Turner's first show lived up to expectations ...

The show at the venue lived up to expectations: Costumes, song selection and arrangements had been imported directly from the flashy Las Vegas dances and the private parties of the Saudi sheiks with whom Tina was earning her living at the time. The program consisted of cover versions of David Bowie's "Cat People", among others: a thank you to David, who had taken her on tour as a support act and who also persuaded his record company to sign her, although after several flops no one wanted to record an album with her.

In addition to "Help!", "River Deep..." and Bob Seger's "Hollywood Night", she also performed "Let's Stay Together" that evening, an Al Green composition that the record company had rather reluctantly and without any hope just released as a single. It had been produced by Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, both ex-Human League members and now with Heaven 17. They came from electronic music and trotted along at the forefront of the zeitgeist. A year earlier, they had released an album under the name British Electronic Foundation with various guest vocals, including Tina Turner, who interpreted the Temptations hit "Balls of Confusion".

This recording, combined with the super-cool environment in which she was now performing, meant that Tina Turner had become something of an insider tip in trendy London circles.

Back to the gig at the venue: it was so sold out that instead of two concerts, eight had to be scheduled. The show was overwhelming: TT went about their work with so much verve and enthusiasm that the Las Vegas trappings and the unfortunate choice of songs didn't matter.

It's a cliché, but with Tina Turner it hits the nail on the head: she could have sung the phone book on this stage and we would have been on our knees at her feet. And lo and behold: "Let's Stay Together" became a veritable hit - in Switzerland too, by the way. This development came as such a surprise to the record company that they gave her just two weeks in the studio to record "Private Dancer", the album with which they wanted to savor her success a little longer.

... and then she finally sat in front of me in the flesh

On February 7, 1996, I finally met Tina Turner in the flesh. The interview was about the album "Wildest Dreams", on which she collaborated with Trevor Horn, Pet Shop Boys, Massive Attack and other mainly British musicians.

"Grüezi!", she said in greeting - she had been living in Switzerland for a year. She couldn't have been friendlier. She answered questions that she was guaranteed to have answered a thousand times with the patience of a saint. The connection with the British scene had already begun with "Private Dancer", which marked the start of her great renaissance in 1984 and for which she had chosen songs by Mark Knopfler, Paul Brady and David Bowie.

"My dream came true on this side of the world," she explained to me. "The English love American music and respect my voice. This respect enabled me to find a new style with 'Private Dancer'. There was no producer in America who would have wanted to take this step with me."

Having "fun with it" is now the most important thing for her. "I don't have to do anything anymore. That's why I recorded this album. I thought it could be fun." I wanted to know what producer Trevor Horn, known for his monumental productions for Frankie Goes to Hollywood, for example, got out of her. "Great singing!" she said, laughing out loud. "I think he appreciated that he had little to do. I had done my homework. I knew what songs I wanted to record, had them down and hit the notes."

And another almost touching postscript: "During the vacations or at Christmas or when it's my birthday, I sit down with a mountain of fan mail and try to answer as many letters as possible ..."