“These two Eighties electro-nerds and Tina Turner, queen of soul.
“At face value it’s incongruous,” says Dhivya Kate Chetty, director of the BBC documentary When Tina Turner Came to Britain. A second song, a cover of Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come, remains simply spellbinding. Even today, the songs sounds gleamingly futuristic, underpinned by her powerful soulful voice. Turner nailed her vocals in the first take. I’m thinking, ‘I don’t know how this is happening but never mind – it sounds good.’” They’re putting these plates in and sound is coming out and you’re singing to it. “I pointed at the Fairlight and said, ‘That’s it.’” Turner had equally discombobulating memories about the newfangled gear: “It looked like an X-Ray machine. “She came into the studio and said, ‘Where’s the band?’” Ware has recalled. Turner, at something of a musical crossroads, agreed to do it. A serendipitous meeting in a record company office saw a mutual friend suggest Turner, whose singing Ware loved. But when Brown demanded too big a cut of the royalties at the last minute, Ware ditched him and desperately searched for a new singer. Ware had lined up James Brown to sing The Temptations’ song Ball of Confusion on it. The album was pithily called Music of Quality & Distinction Volume One. Pop group Heaven 17, with Gregory as the lead singer, was one of BEF’s first projects.Īnother BEF project was an album of cover versions of old soul and pop classics sung by famous singers. Ware had left his previous band the Human League and, along with another former member Ian Craig Marsh, had formed an experimental music production company called British Electric Foundation (BEF). In the early Eighties, Martyn Ware and Glenn Gregory were at the forefront of music’s electronic revolution. It’s no exaggeration to say that Britain saved her career. London, Turner later said of this period, “felt like home”. It also started a fruitful period of collaborations with British musicians including Mark Knopfler, Jeff Beck, Sir Rod Stewart and David Bowie. That the queen of soulful American rock ’n’ roll should find this in some New Wave keyboard warriors from an industrial city in the north of England spoke volumes about her venturous spirit and desire for change. But Turner’s career had stalled, she had little money and – although signed to Capitol Records – was in search of a new musical identity and image.
As Ike & Tina Turner they’d had hits in the Seventies with tracks such as River Deep – Mountain High and Nutbush City Limits. Turner travelled to Britain in 1982 when in her early 40s following her divorce from abusive husband and former bandmate Ike. But these achievements may not have come about had Tennessee-born Turner not been involved in one of the more incongruous partnerships in the history of popular music: a collaboration with Sheffield synth-pop pioneers Heaven 17.
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The records sold well over 20 million copies between them and spawned a series of record-breaking world tours. Tina Turner, who has died aged 83, enjoyed her greatest success in the Eighties with the trio of albums Private Dancer, Break Every Rule and Foreign Affair.
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