Tina Turner Wrote and Recorded Her Biggest Album in Just 2 Weeks
Tina Turner has had a life filled with ups, downs, and plenty of great music. The Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll made a name for herself as a solo artist after escaping from her biggest nightmare, and her comeback is still regarded as one of the best in music history. And as if that didn’t already speak to her legend status, she wrote and recorded the album that launched her comeback in just two weeks.
Tina Turner’s extraordinary comeback in the 1980s
Tina Turner married rock musician Ike Turner in the early 1960s. The two began performing as The Ike & Tina Turner Revue and even got to tour with the likes of The Rolling Stones and other famous groups. But Ike was physically and verbally abusive behind the scenes and cheated on her with several women.
She finally got the courage to leave in 1976 and never looked back. But she had to show the world that she could be a successful solo artist. She worked hard and had many disappointments in the following years, but she rose like a phoenix from the ashes in 1984 with her platinum-selling album Private Dancer.
‘Private Dancer’ was recorded in just 2 weeks
Though Private Dancer is technically Turner’s fifth solo album since the beginning of her career, she said in the HBO documentary Tina that she views it as a debut instead. And in many ways, it was: this was the new and much-improved Tina Turner.
Private Dancer had several hit songs including the title track and the number 1 single “What’s Love Got to Do With It.” The smash song was notably not up her alley given that it was a pop record and she was a rock ‘n’ roll artist, but once she hit her creative groove with the song, there was no stopping her.
“I knocked that album out in two weeks in the studio. Done. Finished,” Turner remarked in the documentary.
Her former manager Roger Davies backed her up. “We just went from studio to studio,” he said, “and, literally, [in] two or three weeks the album was done.”
Tina Turner became a solo superstar after ‘Private Dancer’
The Private Dancer album launched Turner to global superstardom, and she continued to build her legacy throughout the 1980s and ’90s. The Private Dancer world tour consisted of 180 dates, while the subsequent Break Every Rule tour had over 200.
The tour in support of her next album Foreign Affair was supposed to be her last, but she continued to perform for sold-out audiences around the globe for the following decade. Her profile only grew even more after the release of the 1993 biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It, with Laurence Fishburne portraying Ike Turner and Angela Bassett taking on the iconic role of Tina.
