If you follow us on Facebook or Twitter you’ve probably seen this pictures before but everybody isn’t on social networks so here they are! A glamorous and healthy Tina Turner has been spotted last weekend enjoying the good life during a private event in Italy. Of course no one can resist having its picture taken with the legend which makes all the fans happy and jealous at the time! But most of all we are all thrilled to see Miss Tina enjoying the good life and in top form!
And as an extra bonus to begin the weekend if you haven’t seen it yet, a new video upload with this montage of TINA performing ‘Whatever You Want’ live back in 1996. The video is taken from the Johannesburg TV broadcast and the audio comes from the concert Tina gave in Brunei also that year. If anyone has a nice copy of the Johannesburg concert, don’t hesitate to contact me. The only copy in circulation is… well… you’ve seen it! Audio comes from soundboard recording, if you can use headphones to get the full experience! Enjoy!
I received a lot of email asking about a release date for the upcoming BEYOND album: Awakening Beyond. A new photo posted by Regula Curti a couple of days indicated that the album is supposed to be released in 111 days which would give a release date around November 1st! The Beyond team has also open an Instagram account! Check it out!
TINA Heritage Days
This years edition of Tina Turner Heritage Days is coming on September 22-24, 2017! The lovely Sonia Outlaw Clark, head of West Tennessee Delta Heritage Center and her team welcomes you for this weekend in the footsteps of TINA and her legacy! Discover Nutbush and the TINA Museum and meets fans from all over the world! A weekend you won’t regret, you can read my article about last year edition here.
More details about TTHD17 will be unveiled soon, check out their website and like their FB page to get all the latest info.
TINA Fans Birthday Party
Believe it or not but this year marks this 8th edition of our annual party held each year on Tina Turner’s birthday! This year TINA78 will take place once more in Amsterdam before discovering new horizons for the forthcoming years. This November, we will party all night long with a DJ mixing TINA’s most famous hits (and more) for us! The place is entirely ours, no performance this year, only Tina music and friends!
And finally, a big thank you to all of you! Tina Turner Blog just reached 300K followers on FB and the 100K subscribers mark on Youtube is getting closer and closer! This just prove that even retired for 8 years now, the demand for TINA is still going strong!
The Ramada Hotel in Dallas, TX where Tina stayed after leaving Ike Turner thirty one years ago back in July 1976 closed down a few years ago. After being totally rebuild, it reopened recently as a hip Art centric boutique Hotel under the name: ‘Lorenzo’. Located on the vibrant Cedars area of downtown Dallas, ‘over 600 original works of art ignite your imagination and suspend your disbelief. Andy Warhol meets Alice in Wonderland amid breathtaking Dallas skyline views. Draw on the wisdom and creativity of historical luminaries including Copernicus, Shakespeare, Kandinsky, Seneca, Einstein and many others.’
But there is another legendary name to add to that list and a new ‘photo spot‘ for us fans! The new owners didn’t forget our Queen and the former hotel history: In order to celebrate Tina’s legacy, visitors will have the pleasure to see the cover of Tina’s comeback album Private Dancer displayed in the hotel lobby! A great gesture and a nice way to remember that you should always focus on your dreams and make it happen one way or another!
A last reminder if you plan to sleep there: you might need more than thirty six cents and a Mobil card to get the presidential suite! Unless your name is Tina Turner!
Back in the summer of 1993, Tina Turner was touring the USA & Canada, helping promoting the biopic movie ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’ and its soundtrack. She would also tour a few cities in Europe and in Australia later that year, along with a new appearance at the National Rugby League and re-recording her classic tune (Simply) The Best with Australian Rocker Jimmy Barnes. One of the many highlights of this tour would be the memorable appearance of Ayrton Senna on stage with Tina in Adelaide: An enormous crowd, Tina blasting ‘The Best’ and the legendary Brazilian racing driver totally under the charme and taken by the energy of the rock star. Senna would die in tragic circumstances a few months later in Imola, Italy.
And if there’s one song in particular that stands out from the others back in those days, it is, undoubtedly, ‘I Don’t Want To Fight (No More)‘. One of Tina’s latest success in the US, the song penned by Lulu fits Tina’s life perfectly and her (too rare) live performances of this song are always captivating, subtle and strong, the song gives hope and reminds us that’s there’s always a tomorrow. Stop focusing on the past and your sorrows, there will always be a pale moon in the sky, the kind you make your wishes on…
The first video is an edited version of Tina’s performance on the set of Australian TV show ‘Hey Hey It’s Saturday’. The original performance was lip synched version of I Don’t Wanna Fight, I have replaced the audio with a live performance of the song recorded in Saratoga Springs, USA back in July 1993.
The second video is mix of various performances of ‘I Don’t Wanna Fight’ and the audio comes from Tina’s concert in Luneburg recorded live in September 1993. Enjoy!
A special treat for the French speaking readers (and they are many) of the TINA blog with this 1993 story featured in French Rock & Folk magazine. From her humble beginning to having a biopic made of her life at the age of 54, the article cover Tina’s career and also features an interview with Ike Turner. A very interesting read, sorry for not doing an English translation of it but as you can see the article is very long and unfortunately I don’t have much time to spend on translations these days… However if anyone feels like doing the dirty job and share it with all the fans, please feel free! Enjoy!
Tina Turner isn’t really recognized for being a songwriter but, if it was her style, she could easily brag about writing one of the most epic Rock’N’Roll song in music history putting her hometown of Nutbush on the map. Recorded at Bolic Sound and released in June 1973 the song would be one of the last success of Ike & Tina. Since then, it has been covered by memorable rockers, inspired a dance routine in Australia, and the lil old town in Tennessee that never left the setlist of Tina’s concerts still attracts today fans from around the globe.
Back in 1980, Australian Rock band AC/DC was looking for new leading singer, Brian Johnson auditioned for the band in London playing ‘Whole Lotta Rosie’ and ‘Nutbush City Limits’. If comparison with Mick Jagger are legions, looking at live performances of Brian Johnson, the way he moves and sings, you can’t help thinking about notable influences from Tina once again but once again, they were never really mentioned. Anyway they hired him as their lead singer and history was made!
American Rock legend Bob Seger also made Nutbush his own and performed the song for many years during his live shows. On May 30th 1976 , Bob Seger’s covered version of “Nutbush City Limits” entered Billboard’s Hot Top 100 chart at position #84; the following week it would be at #73, then on its 3rd and 4th week on the chart at moved to #69, that would be its peak position on the Top 100 and its 4th week on the chart was its last.
Australia, birth country of Tina’s longtime manager and friend Roger Davies has always been very good and faithful to the Queen of Rock. From tours during the ‘Pre -Private Dancer Era’ to massive concerts and promo for the National Rugby League, the Aussies have always showed tremendous excitement for Tina. And they still do today through what is known there as the ‘Nutbush Dance’! The dance is inspired by Tina’s famous dance steps and is a dance categorized as a line dance. The steps are fairly simple, such that one who does not know them can generally pick them up by watching other dancers. A key in the song and dance being a popular combination is that the song has a moderately long introduction before the strong dance beat starts, which allows people who are sitting down to get up and to the dance floor and for all dancers to assemble themselves in a grid!
Remember that time when G20 police officers in Brisbane, Australia accepted ‘The Nutbush’ dance challenge and bust out some impressive moves in unison with Tina’s classic blaring in the background?
Two years ago, on November 29th 2015, in Horsham City, Australia, 254 people set a new World Record for ‘Nutbush Dance’, dancing for over 5 minutes and 15 seconds , the youngest dancer was six, the oldest ninety years of age!
Every last weekend of September, Tina Turner Heritage Days are held in Nutbush at the Delta Heritage Center where the TINA Museum stands proudly. Wouldn’t it be great to see the ultimate ‘Nutbush Dance’ happening there?! That would sure look amazing to see coming in the future and until then the last words are for Tina (‘as usual’) with this news upload from 1996 of the Queen energizing performance of Nutbush City Limits in Frankfurt, Germany including an entertaining, must see, sing along with (some longtime) fans! Enjoy!
I had been waiting for years for BDMUSIC, a French publishing company, to release the story of Ike & Tina on comics for years. With previous releases about Nat King Cole, Nina Simone, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez it was predictable that Tina’s story would see the light of the day on such format at some point. The book is divided in 2 parts, the comics part in itself (28 pages) and a biography (both in French and English) together with a 2CDs set of Ike & Tina music from 1960 to 1962 and 1968 to 1969.
If the drawings are pretty well made and the book in itself looks nice, the content isn’t as good as fans could expect from such a release. The story told is more inspired from the movie ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’ than from Ike or Tina personal biographies. So there’s a few inaccuracy in the story but I guess that’s wasn’t the aim of the author. Benoit Bonte tells the story of the notorious couple through big events of their life together, such as their meeting in St Louis, Tina’s first step on stage, life at home, the recording of River Deep Mountain High and the final split.
Having previously written comics on Jerry Lee Lewis & Howlin’ Wolf, Benoit Bonte has clearly a soft spot for Ike and for once, the rock’n’roll genius that he is, is not portrayed in a too devilish way. Concerning Tina, she seems quite transparent in the story, some lack of depth from her character, some inaccuracy and the slang language makes it hardly believable.
All in all, a huge expectation from the moment I heard this would come out and a small disappointment. The two CDS accompanying the book are also a letdown. The audio is correct but nothing exceptional and the tracklist is kind of surprising with songs such a River Deep or Proud Mary missing. But of course it is still a nice object for all the fans to add to your collection so if you feel like ordering it follow the link!
Tina Turner at the Sheraton Hotel in Buenos Aires – January 2nd 1988 (AP)
Everybody remembers Tina Turner’s iconic concert at Rio’s Maracana back in 1988, breaking a world record and captured for the memories but there’s other countries in South America set on fire by Tina while touring her Break Every Rule album worldwide.
If ‘Rio was hot’ well Buenos Aires probably reached the same level of rawness and passion in front of the massive crowd gathered at the Estadio River Plate Stadium. After spending the year 1987 heavily touring Europe and the USA, Tina was exploring news frontiers and conquering new (and longtime) fans in Argentina, Chile and Brazil. The success and recognition Tina received from the audience there was massive and memorable. Blog stats can attest that Tina is still very very popular in South America as she is the rest of the world. Starting with this concert in Buenos Aires, the year 1988 would be as extraordinary and exhausting as the previous one. Leaving one continent for the other, Tina concluded her Break Every Rule with a tour of Australia and a series of concerts in Japan. Fans have complained over the years about the lack of footage from this very special era but let’s never lose hope of getting new footage and you can be sure you’ll find it on Tina Turner Blog! Until then, two uploads from Tina’s concert in Buenos Aires! I am aware most of the hardcore fans saw it before but let’s be honest in quite poor quality. Still those uploads of ‘Help’ and ‘Proud Mary’ aren’t the quality you would wish for, but I guess this is the best you could get so far! Enjoy!
10,000,000 views! 10 Million! The video clip for the mantra Sarvesham Svastir Bhavatu reached this incredible number earlier this month. An incredible figure and the proof that TINA has become an incredible ‘shamanic force’ by bringing millions of people across the world around her mantras and buddhist teachings. With the release later this year of the fourth Beyond album ‘Awakening Beyond’, let’s have a look back at the birth of the project with a radio interview recorded in 2009 with Deepak Chopra and an article published in Science of Mind back in March 2011.
In the worst of times, Tina, a deeply spiritual woman who was raised Baptist, sought solace in reciting “The Lord’s Prayer” and, later, an ancient and mystical Buddhist chant to connect to a higher power beyond her human understanding. She began chanting “Nam Myoho Renge Kyo” over and over. “I found something changed inside of me, the load of the pressure of my life started to lift . I started to become happy, and then, slowly, the thoughts came to me of what to do to change my life.”
The power of prayer
Tina Turner believes in it with all her heart, so much so that in 2009, she joined creative forces with two renowned musicians based in Switzerland, one of Christian background and the other a Tibetan Buddhist, to go beyond religion, beyond theology, to go “beyond the beyond,” as Su Poet Rumi wrote, to meet together in a eld of pure potentiality. The result is a remarkable music CD entitled Beyond: Buddhist and Christian Prayers.
When you have been under the spotlight for as long as Tina Turner, billions of things have been written about you. Your words (or not most of the time) have been translated in all kind of languages, creating stories from nothing, making headlines, selling papers. But beyond that, you also have concert reviews from professionals and more serious face to face interviews. Since we’ve been following Tina for so many years, we collected a lot of newspapers cut, some were send by friends, some comes from our personal collection. It is not always easy to find a right place for them in certain articles. So today the third part of our series of posts entitled “Rumor has it’ featuring various Tina Turner newspapers cuts, magazines scans from every country and era possible. Contributions are more than welcome! Enjoy!
Fans have complained over the years about the lack of footage from this very special era but let’s never lose hope of getting new footage and you can be sure you’ll find it on Tina Turner Blog! Until then, two uploads from Tina’s concert in Buenos Aires! I am aware most of the hardcore fans saw it before but let’s be honest in quite poor quality. Still those uploads of ‘Help’ and ‘Proud Mary’ aren’t the quality you would wish for, but I guess this is the best you could get so far! Enjoy!
