Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Private Dancer is arguably the album that saved Tina Turner’s career, widely credited in many circles, one that reignited her standing within the rock circuit, and one that gave others the right to call her the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll. It could have all been so different, she could have flatly refused to record the song Mark Knopfler offered her, she could have stuck to her guns and disappeared without a trace after a less than successful album run that had seen little faith bestowed upon her from the public after she was able to separate herself from Ike Turner, both in marriage, and more importantly as a woman abused by a system and a name.
Five years on from the disastrously recieved Love Explosion that failed to chart anywhere, Private Dancer was a roll of the dice that dug deep into the soul of Ms. Turner, the music was heavenly invested by those within the British synth genre, indeed Heaven 17’s Martyn Ware produce the excellent Let’s Stay Together, and have on board the likes of Nicky Chinn who was responsible for the emergence of Suzi Quatro as a solo performer, and perhaps the one woman who could battle it out with Ms. Turner as the Queen of her musical time.
It was a roll of the dice that came up trumps, and in the fourth extensive box set release that win for Tina Turner is surely to be seen as the biggest triumph of her career; she returned to the top, aided by quality songwriters and musicians who dearly cared for the woman whose voice portrayed deep warmth and passion.
The fourth box set, following on from What’s Love Got To Do With It?, Break Every Rule, and Foreign Affair, is an explorer’s dream, it is almost as if the listener is being transported back in time, not to a reinvention of a performer’s art, but a seismic shift in attitude, an new era that comes with the inspired writing of Jeanette Obstoj, Rupert Hine, and Jamie West-Oram in the dramatic opener, and near self-confessed declaration in I Might Have Been Queen; and which sets the scene throughout the rest of the album, and the flourishing extras that the boxset provides.
Whether in the main disc which holds superb tracks such as I Can’t Stand The Rain, the David Bowie-written pleaser of 1984, and the Mark Knopfler hit of Private Dancer, and then through B-sides, edits, extended versions, the thought-provoking unreleased and rare experiences, and a full delve into a recording during her world tour in 1984 at Park West in Chicago, what the listener is gifted is proof that we can walk away from a period of pain and become sublime, become our own positive idol.
Whilst it is unlikely that the final two albums of her career will receive the adulation of an expanded boxset in the future, the four releases over the last few years are a highlight, a majesty of capturing Tina Turner at her glorious best; and in Private Dancer the best is released to the greatest of acclaim.
Ian D. Hall