A reissued collection by Rhino spotlights Tina Turner’s solo work prior to her 1980s heyday.
Had Tina Turner’s triumphant “comeback” of the 1980s never happened, she would still stand tall in the pantheon of popular music’s greatest.
Born in Nutbush, Tennessee, Anna Mae Bullock joined forces with rock and roll pioneer Ike Turner in the late 1950s, soon christened with the stage name “Tina Turner” that she kept until her passing in 2023. Propelled by Ike’s musicianship and Tina’s combustible stage presence and rasping, wall-shaking vocals, the Ike and Tina Turner Revue released classics like ‘Nutbush City Limits’, ‘River Deep – Mountain High’, and a seminal cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ‘Proud Mary’.
However, Tina’s professional and romantic relationship with Ike was marked by atrocious violence. After putting up with his abuse for over 15 years, Tina fled the partnership, forfeiting royalties but retaining her stage name, left to rebuild her career from the ground up. Despite being considered in many circles as an industry ‘has-been’, Tina returned to prominence in 1984 with her Private Dancer album, propelled by her international hit single ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’. Chart success, Grammy awards, and record-breaking world tours followed.
The interregnum between Tina’s departure from the Ike and Tina Turner Revue and her Private Dancer “comeback” is often presented as a prolonged period in the professional wilderness. Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, for example, depicts Tina slogging away on the depressing cabaret circuit waiting for a record label to take a rare chance on a 40-something Black woman. The Oscar-snubbed biopic What’s Love Got To Do With It, with Angela Bassett playing the lead role, largely glosses over this period.
However, despite financial difficulties and legal disputes with Ike, the mid to late 1970s was still a musically productive period for Tina. Her solo career, in fact, long pre-dates Private Dancer. From 1974 to 1979 Tina released four solo albums – two when still part of the Revue, and two after she had fled Ike. The biopic does not acknowledge this solo output, while the musical incorporates a brief scene where a music executive disparages Tina’s third solo album Rough for being exactly that.
But this material – recently reissued on CD and vinyl by Rhino – deserves greater recognition. Below, I’ve broken down my favorite cuts from Tina’s “forgotten” solo albums.
Tina Turns the Country On! (1974)
Tina’s debut solo album – released in September 1974, while she was still partnered with Ike – was a country record, including covers from the likes of Kris Kristofferson, Linda Ronstadt, and Bob Dylan. The strongest track, however, is the album’s sole original: the Grammy-nominated ‘Bayou Song’, a simmering lamentation of domestic servitude and manual labor in Louisiana, written by Peter-John Morse. Tina’s weathered voice adds gravitas to the lyric; the line about “working for the man as hard as I can…” feels particularly sinister given her own marital predicament. There is a spitting sign-off: “Let the bayou bums starve by themselves / Let the bayou bums drink themselves to hell.” Elsewhere, Tina brings a frenzied emotion to Dylan’s ‘He Belongs To Me’, while reveling in the prayer-like quality of ‘There’ll Always Be Music’.
Acid Queen (1975)
Tina’s last solo album while still partnered with Ike dedicates its first half to British rock covers while Ike’s songwriting helms the second. The psychedelic title track ‘Acid Queen’, from The Who’s rock opera Tommy (in which Tina starred in the film adaptation), is certainly the best known song from Tina’s solo ‘70s output, and the only song from this era which would occasionally find its way into Tina’s live sets at the height of her touring successes. Each lacerating vocal line drips with demonic power. She is similarly exhilarating on a slowed down, teasing, and darkly sensual cover of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’. Just as the song appears to be over, a haunting a cappella coda provides a final jolt of excitement.
Rough (1978)
Perhaps it’s telling that Tina’s first album following her divorce from Ike, Rough, gave the strongest hints of the pop and contemporary rock-orientation of her later material. She certainly has a wail of a time on Elton John’s ‘The Bitch is Back’ and original track ‘Root, Toot Undisputable Rock ‘n’ Roller’. Yet she shows the most range, vocally and emotionally, on the Willie Nelson composition ‘Funny How Time Slips Away’. She paces herself through the song before finally letting loose on a gospelly climax, giving some of the best balladeering in her discography – and pre-empting later power ballads like ‘We Don’t Need Another Hero’ and ‘Be Tender With Me Baby’.
Love Explosion (1979)
Love Explosion was Tina’s attempt to ride off the coattails of disco – though unfortunately timed: it landed some months after the infamous ‘Disco Demolition Night’ which ushered in the demise of the genre. The title track would likely be pure filler in less capable hands, but Tina’s sandpapery vocals cut through the busy, kitschy production and make it feel meaty and substantial. The lushly produced ‘Sunset on Sunset’ and the snarling, rock-accented ‘You Got What I’m Gonna Get’ are the album’s more complex offerings. A cover of Dusty Springfield’s ‘Just a Little Lovin’’, written by the legendary duo Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, proves an unexpected win, eschewing the disco flavorings of the wider album and playing to the strengths of Tina’s bluesy phrasing.
