The 500 - #211 - Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: #211
Album Title: Wish You Were Here
Artist: Pink Floyd
Genre: Progressive Rock, Art Rock
Recorded: EMI Studios (Now Abbey Road Studios), London, England

Released: September, 1975
My age at release: 10
How familiar was I with it before this week: Very!

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #264, dropping 53 spots
Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts 6 - 9)

There is not another album on The 500 list that I have listened to more often than Wish You Were Here by English quartet Pink Floyd. The album has spoken to me deeply for more than 40 years and I never tire of listening to it because it seems to age along with me. The lyrics, which resonated so powerfully as a teenager, take on a different tenor now that I am listening to it as a man nearing 60. Like "comfort food" -- warm, hearty traditional dishes – that sustain you and also remind you of childhood and home.

However, the album is more than that. It is a piece of art that has seeped into the fibre of my being – witness to my life in times of joy, triumph and elation, as well as periods of darkness, sadness and loss. Seemingly part of my DNA.

The album consists of only five songs: Welcome To The Machine, Have A Cigar and the title track Wish You Were Here, book-ended by the 30-minute opus, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, which is divided into nine parts. Shine was written by three members of the band – bassist and vocalist Roger Waters, guitarist and vocalist David Gilmour and keyboardist Richard Wright. The final member of the classic line-up was drummer Nick Mason.

Pink Floyd in 1975 (l-r) Mason, Gilmour, Waters and Wright.

Shine On You Crazy Diamond was conceived by Waters as a tribute to the band's founding member, Syd Barrett. Barrett, who struggled with mental health issues and drug addiction, was eased out of the band in 1968, and his health continued to decline. Once joyful, friendly and extroverted, Barrett began experimenting heavily with the psychedelic drug LSD (Lysergic Acid Diethylamide) in the mid-sixties. Changes in his personality were gradual. However, after a long weekend during which he went missing, he returned "a different person", according to keyboardist Wright. Barrett became increasingly unreliable as a band mate. He was withdrawn, experienced hallucinations, struggled with his speech and was even prone to bouts of catatonia -- sometimes when on stage.

Syd Barrett - 1960s.

Gilmour, who was a college friend of Barrett, joined Pink Floyd as a fifth member to fill in - as needed - during live performances. However, eventually, the situation became untenable. As bassist Waters put it, "He was our friend, but most of the time we wanted to strangle him."

Although Barrett  continued to write music and released two solo albums in 1970, (Barrett and The Madcap Laughs), his mental health continued to decline. The rest of the band did not see him for many years, but  in 1975, as Floyd were recording Wish You Were Here, he arrived at the studio unannounced. He had gained a lot of weight and had shaved himself bald, including his eyebrows.  For much of the visit he brushed his teeth. When Waters asked him what he thought about the songs, Barrett replied, "Sounds a bit old."

Barrett at Abbey Road Studios (1975)

The first time I heard Shine On You Crazy Diamond, I was leveled by its hypnotic beauty. It was late at night and I was listening to a rock radio station, procrastinating over a high school homework assignment. I don't recall the song being introduced; I just remember that, at first, there was silence, which I assumed was "dead air". --

Then a gentle susurration pulsed from my tiny transistor speaker. Almost imperceptible, a rich synthetic/orchestral, whispering swelled slowly. I could detect the faint tinkling of chimes, and imagined the sound waves as electronic vines being absorbed by my entire being.

Shine On You Crazy Diamond Pt. 1 - released
as a single (which seems ridiculous - you need the
whole suite.)

The first time you truly “hear” a song, time seems to move more slowly. This was one of those times. It was like floating comfortably through a warm pool toward a distant light. I stopped everything, entranced. The notes modulated ever so subtly, but always found their way to a perfect, albeit temporary, resolution...and then a guitar, (a black Stratocaster, I  later learned) struck a simple series of four notes. I don't think I did anything but breathe for the next eight minutes...and then the vocals began…

"Remember when you were young?

You shone like the sun.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

Now there's a look in your eyes,

Like black holes in the sky.

Shine on you crazy diamond."

I had no idea what it meant and it was some time before I learned it was about Barrett.  My world was forever changed by this album. I wore out at least two cassettes, listening to them over and over on my portable player. The music was my companion on walks and in the evening on my bed and on countless bus trips around the city. Sometimes, I skipped class and sat on concrete benches out side the school in order to listen to it again.

I was a toddler when the original Floyd group broke up in 1968, and I was too young to see the classic line-up (Waters, Gilmour, Mason & Wright). However, I have seen the other members on their solo outings numerous times. Most recently, I saw Roger Waters (for the sixth time) on his This Is Not A Drill tour in 2022. He included Shine (Parts 6-9) in his first set.

Waters on tour in 2022.

I also attended what was billed as David Gilmour's final concert tour in 2016. He played the first half of Shine (Parts 1-5) -- which was the highlight for me. Thirty-six years removed from my first listen, I am still transfixed by the sound Gilmour seduced from his trademark black Stratocaster guitar. Below is a photo I took at the concert.

In 2021, he auctioned off 126 of his guitars at a fund-raising event for climate change -- netting $21 million. Included in the auction was the famous "Black Strat" which fetched $3.9 million. My friends and I believed the fund-raiser signalled the end of his writing and touring. However, last month, the 78-year old announced the release of his fifth solo record, Luck And Strange, along with dates for a small 2024 tour – visiting only Rome, London, Los Angeles and New York.

It seems unlikely that we will see either of these band members perform again, but I’m thrilled to have had the opportunity of sharing their careers. As I said at the start, I’ll always have this album – my auditory comfort food.

And we'll bask in the shadow of yesterday's triumph
And sail on the steel breeze
Come on, you boy child, you winner and loser
Come on, you miner for truth and delusion, and shine!

The 500 - #212 - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain - Pavement

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: #212
Album Title: Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Artist: Pavement
Genre: Indie Rock, Alt-Rock
Recorded: Random Falls Studio, New York & Louder Than You Think Studio, California

Released: February, 1994
My age at release: 28
How familiar was I with it before this week: Not at all

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #434, dropping 222 spots
Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Range Life

This week, I am excited to welcome a new guest blogger. Although I have never met T.J. Gillespie in person, we have connected over a shared love of music and The 500 podcast. T.J. is a regular reader of my blog and is always kind enough to respond on social media  -- often quoting his favourite line from my weekly post. He lives in Abington, Pennsylvania, a short drive north of Philadelphia. He is a high school English teacher, has two daughters (Lucy and Elizabeth), a cat and a rabbit. When I saw the Pavement record coming up on the 500 list, I remembered seeing T.J.'s post about attending their concert during their 2022 tour. As I was unfamiliar with the band, I reached out to see if he was willing to "pinch hit" for me. A day later, the following, wonderful essay arrived in my email. I am sure you will enjoy it as much as I did.

Guest blogger T.J. Gillespie in his Pavement T-shirt.

The sound of the 1990s, as is commonly reduced, started with the Big Bang of Smells Like Teen Spirit and ended in the nu-metal mayhem of Woodstock ‘99. In between, the decade seemed to move from one genre to another: grunge to Britpop to industrial to ska, with some weird swerves into electronica, trip hop, and even a swing music revival. What is unusual, looking back, is how we used one catch-all word to try to describe these disparate sounds: Alternative. I am not sure what the sounds of the Rage Against the Machine, The Cranberries, and Beck have in common except that they’d all appear on my local Alternative Radio (WDRE in Philadelphia and WHFS when I was in college in Baltimore). Originally, it was a designation to indicate artists that were alternative to the mainstream. Weezer and Tori Amos certainly seemed different from Celine Dion and Garth Brooks, but by the middle of the decade when Alanis Morrisette was selling millions of albums, the alternative was the mainstream.

It was in the fall of 1993 as a music loving college freshman that I picked up a copy of a charity compilation CD called No Alternative, whose title alluded to both the bands included (Matthew Sweet, Soundgarden, Soul Asylum and a hidden track by Nirvana) and also the album’s mission: there’s no alternative to fighting AIDS. The record stands as a nice time capsule of mid-nineties trends. There are some ironic covers, some sincere ones too, a live recording, some grungy guitars, and a couple of acts forgotten by time (Straitjacket Fits, anyone?). But to my ears there were two songs that seemed to stand out because they didn’t feel of the time. They weren’t following trends because they were steadfastly doing their own thing. They fit under the “alternative umbrella,” but they also felt alternative to the alternative. They were Smashing Pumpkins, who I knew well, and a mysterious band who sang a song about R.E.M and the U.S. Civil War titled Unseen Power of the Picket Fence. They were called Pavement.

These two bands occupied two different places in modern rock. Smashing Pumpkins were on the Singles soundtrack, but they were an anomaly. They weren’t from Seattle, they didn’t play grunge, their influences were prog rock and not punk. Combining shoegaze guitar with a polished poppier sound reminiscent of arena rockers Boston, the Pumpkins played covers of Fleetwood Mac (at the nadir of their popularity) and featured virtuosic ‘70s-style solos. They weren’t ironic; they were sincere. They weren’t cheeky or arch or winking at the audience. They didn’t hide their ambitions. In other words, they were the diametric opposite of Pavement. Formed in Stockton, California, in 1989, Pavement combined the jangly guitars of early R.E.M. with the brash experimental noise of Sonic Youth. An album might have a beautiful melodic line buried in a jarring squall of feedback. After their release of their debut album Slanted and Enchanted in 1992, Pavement would become the embodiment of slacker rock; they were five guys making messy compositions seemingly without ever really trying. They had a singer known only as “SM” and a guitarist who called himself Spiral Stairs and they didn’t release any band photographs. Meanwhile Smashing Pumpkins, or more specifically lead singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Billy Corgan, was laboring as pop music’s most monomaniacal control-freak. Who but Corgan would have cello, violin, timpani, and bells(!) on a single, as he did on Disarm?

In 1993, No Alternative juxtaposed these two approaches back to back, on tracks six and seven. In 1994, Pavement would release their sophomore album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, and create a kind of explicit rivalry with their song Range Life. In it Steven Malkmus, the sardonic leader, sings, 

“Out on tour with the Smashing Pumpkins/ Nature kids / They don’t have no function / I don’t understand what they mean /And I could really give a f---.” 

 Like a lot of Pavement lyrics, there is a kind of offhanded throw-away quality. There’s something barbed there, something funny, but also something inscrutable and nonsensical. But for Billy Corgan, the barb stung. The song allegedly irked Corgan so much at the time that he had Pavement removed from the Lollapalooza 1994 lineup that the Pumpkins were headlining. (I saw that show at Philadelphia’s FDR park and was so blown away by the Beastie Boys that I didn’t miss anyone else). In a world before social media, this low stakes beef barely registered in the wider cultural consciousness, but for record store obsessives and rock geeks a simmering feud was born.

In terms of sales, Grammys, name recognition, MTV presence, t-shirt sales, and any other measure of popularity and cultural imprint, Billy Corgan won the war. Smashing Pumpkins sold 30 million records in the nineties, while Crooked Rain, Pavement’s most successful album, sold 237,000. But in another sense, he lost. It’s not just because we tend to root for the underdog (Pavement remained signed to independent labels throughout their career, including Flying Nun and Matador) or because we value “coolness” over hot-headed hubris, but because Corgan committed the cardinal sin of taking everything so seriously. The line nettled him and he let it be known that it bugged him. The lyric itself is a goof. What does it even mean? It’s a joke line from a much smaller band that could have been laughed off or ignored. The rock critic Steven Hyden covered the aftermath in his 2016 book on intra-band squabbles, Your Favorite Band is Killing Me, writing, “Malkmus seemed less perturbed by the supposed beef, telling NY Rock magazine in 1999, ‘I only laughed about the band name, because it does sound kind of silly. . . . I like their songs — well, most of their songs, anyway. . . . I just dissed their status.’” But for Billy Corgan, for whatever reason, “Nature kids” was personal.

The problem with reducing CR,CR to a silly rivalry is that it turns art into a tabloid narrative and takes attention away from the songs themselves. The album is on Rolling Stone Magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums list not because of a single snarky joke, but because of its DIY-style recording, because of its influence on a generation of guitar based bands, and, most of all, because of the songs themselves. There’s the radio friendly almost-hit Cut Your Hair with its catchy ooh-ooh-oohs, the almost Grateful Dead-like jams on Stop Breathin the garage rock fury of Unfair, the weirdo-jazz of 5-4=Unity and all kinds of strange experimentations which all go to show that while the band may have had the reputation of slackers making messy cacophonous songs, they were ambitious in scope and sincere in their attempts to develop sonically. Gold Soundz is as catchy and melodic as anything else on nineties radio. It would fit in perfectly next to 1979 or Today for example.

Nobody cares about selling out in 2024. Alternative died out long ago. “Indie” is more of an aesthetic, a subgenre, than it is a lifestyle, a set of rules, or a designation of record label affiliation. Nobody is making you choose between tribes. Darling, you can cut your hair. You can even shave your head. Maybe this is the lasting legacy of the alternative rock era: You don’t have to be just one thing. Slackers and perfectionists can coexist, like tracks on compilation CDs, like songs on the radio.

The 500 - #213 - Tattoo You - Rolling Stones

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: #213
Album Title: Tattoo You
Artist: Rolling Stones
Genre: Rock, Blues Rock
Recorded: At various studios, from1972 - 1981

Released: August, 1981
My age at release: 16
How familiar was I with it before this week: Quite

Is it on the 2020 list? No
Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Slave

One of my favourite things about teaching students in the "Transition Years" (Grades 7-8, Ages 12-14) is that they are (to nick a line from a well-known Green Day song) "walking contradictions". They are also a "work in progress" and regularly subject to change. A teacher can witness a student who begins Grade 7 decked out in a Pokémon shirt and eager to share their obsession with Minecraft or their favourite basketball team. By the time that same lad walks across the stage at graduation, he is a skateboarding goth-kid who loves Japanese animation and is now an outspoken vegetarian.

Sometimes, their changing and contradictory nature can be frustrating for adults. The once co-operative, up-tempo, responsible kid who always finished their work and volunteered in class can seemingly overnight, transform into a sullen, poorly-regulated teen who refuses to complete assignments. It's at times like this when I find it helpful to think back on my contrary teen-age years. After taking a reflective pause, I try to extend the same grace to my students that I would have wanted as a contumacious adolescent – unnecessarily obstinate and headstrong.

Me vs. Life in my teenage years - blissfully unaware that I was the jackass.

My "love them/hate them" relationship with the Rolling Stones is a cogent example on which I can reflect when it comes to dealing with newly-minted teens. I discussed my misguided and tribal-based decision to dislike 'The Stones" in my August, 2021, post about their record Between The Buttons (#357 on The 500).

Between The Buttons record cover from Rolling Stones

My staunch animosity toward the already legendary British rock group was further fueled when a high-school classmate, whose name escapes me, committed the unforgivable error of criticizing my favourite band -- Rush. I distinctly remember him, decked out in his Rolling Stones' concert shirt -- a wildly popular bit of merchandise at my high school that year because The Stones had performed in nearby Buffalo (Orchard Park Stadium) and Detroit (Pontiac Silverdome). 

Promotional poster for Rolling Stones 1981 American Tour.

The skinny-kid, long hair in his face leaned over in French class, looked at my Rush regalia (likely my Moving Pictures concert tee or the many pins I had collected) and flatly said: "Rush sucks."

What other choice did I have but to respond with the less than clever retort: "The Stones suck". What followed was a terse exchange of insults about each other's taste in music, punctuated by erroneous condemnation of the talent possessed by the members of Rush and The Stones.

Images of vintage Rolling Stones and Rush Concert Shirts that 
match the ones we wore. (Found online).

It's my personal example of misplaced anger and one that I still witness with the students today. Several months ago, two boys were in a heated debate about the superiority of basketball stars Michael Jordan and LeBron James. Rather than engaging in a statistical comparison or accepting that both players were generational talents, the agitated teens looked for ways to disparage each other for their "misguided" choice. The goal is winning -- not engaging in reasonable discussion.

If I could go back in time, not only would I have let the "Rush sucks" comment slide. I would also have suggested that my classmate put his Stones T-shirt away for safekeeping. That shirt currently sells on EBay for $275.

Back of The Stones 1981 Tour shirt.

Despite my hostility toward the band, it was tough not to like the tracks I heard on Tattoo You when it was released in the summer of 1981. The lead single, Start Me Up, with its undeniably catchy opening guitar riff, was a huge hit on local radio -- reaching #2 on the Canadian charts. Privately, I liked it a lot.

Cover and label for Start Me Up single from The Rolling Stones

Then, when I heard their second single release, Waiting On A Friend, I was riveted by the soulful saxophone jam. I later learned that it was played by legendary saxophonist Sonny Rollins. Rollins also contributed to two other tracks on the record – Slave and Neighbours. As a hobby saxophonist, I envy Rollins’ seemingly effortless playing and rich tone.

Sonny Rollins.

Waiting On A Friend was originally recorded by The Stones in 1973 while they were completing sessions in Kingston, Jamaica, for their 11th studio release, Goat's Head Soup. It did not make it on that album but, with the addition of Rollins' smooth, tenor saxophone melody the song was a wonderful choice to end Tattoo You. In a 2009 interview, Stones' singer Mick Jagger said:

"I had a lot of trepidation about working with Sonny Rollins. This guy's a giant of the saxophone. (When he arrived to play) Sonny said, 'You tell me where you want me to play and DANCE the part out.' So I did that. You don't have to do a whole ballet, but sometimes that movement of the shoulder tells the guy to kick in on the beat."

The music video for Waiting On A Friend was also omnipresent in the early ‘80s,  airing regularly on television. Shot in New York City, the video’s narrative matches the song's lyrics, with Jagger waiting on a door stoop for his friend, guitarist Keith Richards, who is ambling through the busy Manhattan streets.

The building where Jagger waits, and sings, still stands at 96-98 St. Mark's Place near the East and Ukrainian Village regions of Manhattan. It has become an iconic location for music fans because it is also the same building featured on the cover of Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti album.

Album cover for Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti - St. Mark's Place
Waiting For a Friend was shot on the steps to the left.

My wife and I have visited New York City many times (in fact, we married--  at the Big Apple’s City Hall in 2006.) I try to make my way to St. Mark's Street on every visit and, in 2018, I snapped a couple pictures of the building and the "Stones steps" for posterity.

My wife, white shirt, can be seen walking toward
me with the building and steps behind her.

The iconic steps from the Waiting For a Friend video
easily identified by the garbage can stencil.

As you may have guessed, I am now a huge fan of The Rolling Stones and, with seven more records on The 500, I look forward to revisiting a catalogue of music that I foolishly resisted in my youth.

It seems being a strong-willed, pigheaded teen is a rite of passage. If there’s one in your life, think back to your youth and maybe go easy on them.

Addendum

As an aside, Rush and The Rolling Stones didn’t share the animosity that my high-school classmate and I did. In fact, the members of Rush cite The Stones as a defining influence.

On July 30, 2002, a benefit event was held in Toronto to help revive the local economy following an outbreak of S.A.R.S. (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome). Initially called Molson Canadian Rocks For Toronto, it was soon referenced by the clever nickname, SARStock.

The Stones were the SARStock headliner, with AC/DC, Rush, The Guess Who, Justin Timberlake and 9 additional (mainly Canadian) bands as the warm-up acts. Rush even performed a brief instrumental version of the Stones classic Paint It Black during their set, as a tribute to their rock heroes.

Rush performing at SARStock.

Rush drummer Neil Peart once shared the story of meeting Stones' drummer Charlie Watts backstage at the event – immediately before the Canadian percussionist walked out to perform in front of an estimated 500,000 people:

“He (Watts) asked if we were going on soon, and I said yes, any minute, and he said, with a twinkle, 'I'm going to watch you!'

"I suppose if I could have felt more pressured, that might have done it, but I was already at maximum intensity - there was no time to think of Charlie Watts and the Rolling Stones. I had watched them on The T.A.M.I Show or Ed Sullivan when I was twelve-and-a-half. I remember hearing Satisfaction snarling down the midway at Lakeside Park, seeing Gimme Shelter at the cinema in London, (England), listening to Charlie's beautiful solo album, Warm and Tender, so many times late at night in Quebec. I couldn’t be distracted by the other million times Charlie Watts and his band had been part of my life.”

 A short video of that encounter can be seen here.

We said goodbye to both of these drumming legends recently. Peart passed in January, 2020 and Watts in August, 2021. Rest In Peace.

#The500Blog - #214 - Proud Mary : The Best of Ike & Tina Turner - Ike and Tina Turner

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: #214
Album Title: Proud Mary: The Best of Ike & Tina Turner
Artist: Ike and Tina Turner
Genre: Southern Soul, Rock
Recorded: A compilation of material recorded 1960 - 1970

Released: March, 1991
My age at release: 25
How familiar was I with it before this week: Several songs

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #392, dropping 178 places
Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: River Deep, Mountain High

The adjective "undeniable" gets bandied about a bit too much when sports and entertainment pundits have exhausted their arsenal of superlatives. However, in the case of singer, songwriter, actress, and writer Tina Turner, it is apropos. Turner overcame obstacle after obstacle to become The Queen of Rock and Roll.

The 2023 posthumously released anthology Queen of Rock 'n Roll
from Tina Turner.

Attempting to capture the powerfully inspiring story of Turner's life in this short post would be a disservice. I recommend the 1993 biopic, What's Love Got To Do With It, or the excellent 2023 documentary, Tina, to learn more about this talented woman's challenging but uplifting life.

However, to summarize, she was born Anna Mae Bullock in 1939 to an impoverished sharecropping family in Nutbush, Tennessee. Her abusive father drove her mother from the home when she was 11 and then abandoned the family two years later.

At 17, she met Ike Turner and joined his band, the Kings of Rhythm. Within a short time, her powerful, gospel-trained voice and sexy, energetic performances made her a crowd favourite. Ike convinced her to change her name to Tina Turner so he could trademark it and manipulate her finances based on that ownership. If she ever left the band, he could simply replace her with another "Tina". This was the first of many acts of control and subjugation Ike perpetrated to maximize the profitability of the young singer. Tina lacked financial education and was paid a paltry weekly allowance of $25 by the domineering Ike, who had now become her romantic partner.

The Ike & Tina Turner Revue. Ike & Tina (rear) 

The couple married and Tina gave birth to two children. Along with two additional children from previous relationships (one from Tina’s and one from Ike’s), they purchased a home in the View Park area of Los Angeles. Despite the challenges of raising a family, Ike kept Tina to a busy schedule of recording sessions, public appearances and constant touring. Ike was a task-master and perfectionist with his band, but things were much worse for Tina.

Ike and Tina's Los Angeles home.

Her first attempt to end their relationship resulted in a savage attack with a shoe-stretcher in which she was badly concussed. The details of the next sixteen years paint a horrific litany of cocaine-fueled psychological domination and physical abuse – throughout which Tina continued to wow crowds with her powerhouse vocal performances and high-energy, sexually-dynamic stage presence -- decked out in outfits that highlighted her envious figure that left little to the imagination.

On July 1, 1976, with only 39 cents and a Mobil gas credit card in her pocket, Tina crept out of a Dallas hotel room after another brutal assault. As her husband slept off his drug-fueled rampage, Tina, then 37, fled across a freeway to another hotel where she pleaded with the manager to give her refuge -- promising payment at a later date.

Tina and Ike Turner shortly before her escape.

Their divorce was finalized in March, 1978. Tina accepted tremendous losses in the settlement; but, she would not relent when it came to keeping her stage name. She knew she would have to preserve "Tina" in order to remain relevant in the cutthroat music industry. However, as a female nearing the age of 40, she was relegated to the status of a novelty or nostalgia act. Regardless, she persisted, appearing on television game shows (The Hollywood Squares) and variety programs (The Donny & Marie Show, The Sonny & Cher Show) in order to remain in the public eye.

Tina appears on The Hollywood Squares.

It was at this time that Tina Turner began showing up on my pop-culture radar. I was 12 and obsessed with television. It was, to me, what TikTok is to my students today. I'll admit, I had also relegated Ms. Turner to the "has been" file -- despite the fact that I did not truly know what a "has been" was. Sadly, she was a victim of a societal standard that puts an expiry date on women in entertainment when they reach a "certain age". In a 2020 analysis of 6,000 actors, Time magazine found that “male actors see their careers peak at the age of 46, [while] female actors reach their professional pinnacles at age 30.”

Then, in October, 1981, Rod Stewart invited Tina to appear with him on Saturday Night Live. Decked out in hotpants and showing off her stunning gams and smoking vocal skill she immediately had my attention. The decision was an intentional and benevolent gesture from Stewart because it helped introduce Tina's talent (and sex appeal) to a new generation -- including me and my friends. Shortly after, she joined The Rolling Stones as an opening act for their American Tour. The SNL video can be seen here.

A screen capture of Stewart and Tuner on SNL. 

In 1984, at 45 years of age, Tina Turner's relentless perseverance paid off. She released her fifth solo studio album, Private Dancer. It featured seven singles, including three that were in the Top Ten, and went on to sell more than 12 million copies. I turned 19 that year and Turner's music and videos were omnipresent. My friends and I were not big fans; but we respected her talent and achievement -- despite not knowing the challenges she had faced. We also had a crush on her -- even though she was older than our parents.

Album cover for Tina Turner's Private Dancer.

The next year, she co-starred with Mel Gibson in the third film in the Mad Max franchise, Beyond Thunderdome. She was perfectly cast as Aunty Entity, the founder and ruler of 'Bartertown' in the post-apocalyptic wasteland depicted in the dystopian, science-fiction film. The movie wasn't great and there were plenty of cheesy lines to ridicule. But Turner was terrific and the sets were impressive. It's one of those films that isn't good, but is good fun.

Decked out in chainmail, Turner as Aunty Entity in 
Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.

Turner also had another hit record on the film's soundtrack, We Don't Need Another Hero, which went to #1 in Canada. In 1988 her triumphant comeback reached its apex when she set a Guinness Record for the largest paying concert attendance for a solo artist: 188,000 fans sold out Maracana Stadium in Brazil to see her perform her hits.

Turner performing at Maracana Stadium. Brazil in 1988.

In 1986, at the height of her popularity, she met German music executive Erwin Bach and fell in love. After a 27-year romantic relationship, they married in July, 2013. She and Erwin retired to Küsnacht, Switzerland, with an estimated wealth of $250 million  (U.S.) 10 million times the $25 weekly allowance she was given by Ike for most of her early career. Turner died on May 24, 2023, but her music and legacy of perseverance live on. She was undeniable and, much like the title of one of her biggest hits...Simply The Best.