"One minute she's on a disorganised youth show, sharing the bill with Johnny Rotten and Public Image, and the next she's fronting new-level supergroups."
Supergroups had come and gone before. But when Elton John was "just the keyboard player", Phil Collins was "just the drummer", and Mark Knopfler was "just the rhythm guitarist", you were dealing with a new definition of huge.
Imagine the status and presence a vocalist would need in order to front a band in which the world's biggest stars were queuing up just for a place at the back of the stage playing a tambourine… That was the status and presence Tina Turner built in the mid 1980s, and this Grammy-winning double live album is a fantastic document of the period.
On Friday 28th October 1983, Tina Turner had appeared as the headlining live act on Channel 4's chaotic, UK youth-targeted music show The Tube. Despite her long history in the business and an evocative catalogue of existing work, she'd spent years in cabaret settings and a large proportion of the young audience didn't know who she was.
But her spectacular performance and fantastic image would ensure they would never forget her. Kids had tuned into that programme for post-punk, for pop, for poetry. But virtually all of them came away from it talking about Tina Turner. She was cool enough for punks. Catchy enough for popsters. She wooed the pirate radio devotees with soul, and even had Heaven 17 on backing vocals for the new romantics. She had girl power for the girls, sex appeal for the boys… She bonded with everyone.
This would be the opening salvo in a fast-track shift to the very forefront of the "palatial rock" scene. One minute she's on a disorganised youth show, sharing the bill with Johnny Rotten and Public Image, and the next she's fronting new-level supergroups, before record-breaking audiences, as the undisputed Queen of Palatial Rock. That's what can happen when phenomenal talent reaches the grass roots of the music-buying public.
Tina Live in Europe was recorded across numerous performances in the mid to late 1980s - the majority of the venues in England - and the album was released in 1988. It features vocal performances from David Bowie, Robert Cray, Bryan Adams and Eric Clapton, and there are many other luminaries in the backing groups. Cray and Clapton also play guitar - Clapton using the original Fender Eric Clapton signature model Stratocaster.
A booklet was provided with the double cassette, offering info and pictures. The booklet's thickness is such that it barely squeezes into the case.
The tape was released on the Capitol label, and it has a great, zingy sound - to an extent courtesy of the XDR quality control process, I'm sure. The tape media type is clearly not chrome, however. It looks like a high-grade ferric, but it does have excellent fidelity, as well as bright red transparent leader tape.
The twenty-eight songs include…
What You Get is What You See
Break Every Rule
Two People
Girls
Typical Male
Back Where You Started
Better Be Good to Me
Addicted to Love
Private Dancer
We Don't Need Another Hero
What's Love Got To Do With It
Let's Stay Together
Show Some Respect
Land of a 1000 Dances
In The Midnight Hour
634 5789
A Change is Gonna Come
River Deep Mountain High
Tearing Us Apart
Proud Mary
Help
Tonight
Let's Dance
Overnight Sensation
It's Only Love
Nutbush City Limits
Paradise is Here
This was really a greatest hits compilation of the time, but performed live. And with a good few other people's hits thrown in too. Some of the tracks were not featured on the vinyl version of the album.
If you only want albums on which every single song is brilliantly written, brilliantly played, brilliantly produced, and sung with almost supernatural power, precision and vitality, your choice is already very limited. Insist on a double album and you really don't have much choice at all. But Tina Live in Europe is on your list. It's sonic bliss from start to finish. No buts. It's perfect.