Off-topic Sunday on a Tuesday. I'm back from a day job gig, so I missed the opportunity to post this over the weekend. This nugget was burning a hole in my pocket like a cricket ball-sized lump of Etna's own magma.
I've written about the former Mr and Mrs Turner on this blog before, back in 2017, click Ike & Tina to have a look, but I was listening to a dirt cheap greatest hits CD the other day and this song grabbed me by the neck tie and pinned me against the office wall, so I went hunting visuals on YouTube. It beats working, right?
This clip isn't the best quality, but it's well worth sharing. This song seems to date from 1961. Tina, never afraid of showing off her pins, is in a skirt that has a 1961 hemline and Ike, always a sartorial Shackleton, isn't quite reaching his peak, though the minibells are out there for '61. He looks so sharp, he could cut a grapefruit in half.
I was introduced to Tina Turner through the 1985 film, Mad Max 3, Beyond The Thunderdrome. It was inspired casting, as the leader of Bartertown, Aunty Entity, and she sung the theme tune, but as a 14-year-old it didn't make me want to find out more about her, and I didn't discover these 1960s thrill-a-second TV performances for years. More fool me.
The wiggle at 10s; the arm shaking crescendo; the guitarist playing the neck of his Fender like a slide guitar; the three guitarists synchronised grooving at the end; the backing trio who look like a six-legged joie de vivre machine; Tina's loving, playful, sexy call and response with her husband - 'The Thriller', 'Nah, the Killer, baby' and, obviously, the radioactive irony of the song's title and the doomed marriage (15 years later Tina accused her cocaine addict husband of abuse).
Tina proved she didn't need Ike, and obviously no one should have to put up with abuse for any reason, but they were a dynamite pairing on stage, even if it didn't work out fine.