23 years ago today, Tina Turner opened her Foreign Affair European tour at the Sportpaleis (Sports Palace) in Antwerp, Belgium. The tour would go on to be the biggest concert tour in Europe of that year, and one of the biggest tours in Tina’s career, playing over a hundred shows across the continent; from Zagreb to Lisbon and from Oslo to Athens. During opening night, Tina performed You Can’t Stop Me Loving You and Look Me In The Heart, the only time the songs were heard live – audio inside the post.
‘A one in a million chance, you know it the moment that you cross over the line.’
Today, we have reached the magic mark of one million page views for The Tina Turner Blog. We started this blog 20 months ago, and never in our wildest dreams did we imagine the success, and all the positive feedback, we’ve had so far. We are very thankful to all the people who visit our website daily, who comment on our posts, who send us e-mails, and who share their Tina stories and material with us. It gives us a lot of joy and pleasure maintaining this blog, but we couldn’t do it without your support. Therefore, as a thank you for reaching one million hits today, we share with you a 50-minute TV broadcast (in black & white) of Tina’s concert in Athens, on August 28, 1990 as part of her Foreign Affair tour. We hope you will continue to visit and support our blog, and we look forward to many more years of exciting Tina news, and treasures from the ‘vaults’.
Thanks,
Ben & Sjef.
P.S: Just to remind you that you can join the others by subscribing to our blog. Don’t worry, you won’t received any spam but only the latest articles as they appear on the blog. And of course you can still follow us on Facebook!
An audience recording of Tina Turner performing her single I Don’t Wanna Lose You, live during her concert on June 28, 1990 at the Palace of Versailles in France. The quality of the recording is not the best, but what is funny about the track is especially Tina’s introduction: “I’m gonna do this one for, my boyfriend. I call him Azzedine.” She is referring of course to Tunesian-French fashion designer Azzedine Alaïa, who designed many outfits for Tina during the 1980′s. But who knows, maybe her then still ‘new’ boyfriend Erwin Bach was also in the audience! A romantic love song on a summer’s evening!
Tina Turner has it all: 8 Grammy Awards, inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, number 1 hit singles, record-breaking world tours – but you know you really made it big when you have… a rose named after you! That’s right: during the 1990 National Garden Festival, Bob Thompson of the National Garden Association created an orange-colored rose and named it after Tina. She received the flower before one of her gigs at the International Stadium at Gateshead, United Kingdom – part of her 1990 Foreign Affair world tour. She mentioned she would plant it in her own garden and good news: we found a website where you can still order them. Our good friend Enrico has Tina’s rose in his garden, but he warns, it is not an easy plant! If you continue reading, you can read some articles about this special flower that appeared in the British press at that time, as well as some photos of it in full-bloom in Enrico’s garden! Thanks to Alan for providing the articles, and to Enrico for the information and photos.
Tina Turner is always the professional, and often pushing herself to the extremes. She is very reluctant to cancel any appearance, even when she is ill. Of February 17, 1990, she appeared on British chat show Aspel and Company to promote her new album Foreign Affair and her coming European tour. She was clearly very ill and not feeling well. When asked by presenter Michael Aspel whether this was really going to be her last tour, she replied: I wish I could quit right now! Check out the video above for the interview, as well as Tina performing her single Steamy Windows on the show.
Dez Harkness was Tina Turner’s chef on her 1990 European Foreign Affair tour – and he reveals all of Tina’s preferences in this UK magazine article. Nothing out of the ordinary: salmon en croute, navarin of lamb, crepes for dessert and… Spam?! Well, apparently Tina also likes her meat out of a tin. And some more crazy rock star antics? A packet of crisps being flown in from London and a 500-pound room service bill: for one meal. Continue reading for the full article – including a nice backstage shot of Tina and her Chef.
It appears that any time Tina Turner performs on German television, this guy is also there: Thomas Gottschalk. He is Germany’s most famous TV presenter, and he has introduced and interviewed Tina in a variety of shows, most notably several times on Wetten, Dass…? When Tina and Children Beyond appeared at the Ein Herz Für Kinder-gala last December in Berlin, Thomas was also there: his last job for TV channel ZDF.
The clip above is however from another program in the beginning of 1990. The program ‘Das Waren Die Achtziger’ looks back at the 1980′s, including a small tribute to Tina’s hit song We Don’t Need Another Hero. Tina however appears on the show to perform her, at that time, new single I Don’t Wanna Lose You from the Foreign Affair album.
Tina Turner’s Foreign Affair tour in 1990 was the biggest concert tour in Europe that year. During this tour, Tina played literally all over Europe, many times in places where she never performed before. In this post, you will find a few photos and a newspaper article from Tina’s concert in Belgrade, Serbia. These photos were very kindly shared with us by Nikola, for him this concert was his first Tina concert.
This limited edition CD-single of Tina Turner’s Look Me In The Heart was released in 1990. The single features the 7″ version of the song, originally released on the 1989 album Foreign Affair, as well as an instrumental version and the Tina Turner Montage Mix. This last mix is a combination of Tina’s biggest hits from the 1980′s, remixed by Les ‘The Mixdoctor’ Adams. This single was released in the United Kingdom and features a fold-out sleeve including the tour dates to Tina’s 1990 European tour. Below you can listen to the instrumental version of Look Me In The Heart as well as the Tina Turner Montage Mix. Enjoy!
21 years ago today, Tina Turner performed at the Feijenoord Stadium in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, as part of her Foreign Affair European tour. Later that year in November, Tina would finish her Foreign Affair tour also in Rotterdam, this time at the smaller indoor venue Ahoy. At that time, the tour was promoted as Tina’s final big tour, it turned out that it would be one of many ‘farewell’ tours! Below you will find some photos and audio from the concert in June in Rotterdam.
