Inside Tracks #43: "Tonight"-Tina Turner Covers David Bowie & Iggy Pop, Live, 1988

In an attempt to clean up, Ig & David travel to the Heroin Capital of the World to write and record in 1976! They wind up with a song that both record, and it culminates in an '80s cover by a legend!

“He resurrected me,” Iggy Pop wrote at the time of his longtime pal, David Bowie’s January 2016 death. “He was more of a benefactor than a friend in a way most people think of friendship. He went a bit out of his way to bestow some good karma on me.”—Rolling Stone, January 27, 2016

“I learned a lot from him,” Iggy continued. “I first heard The Ramones, Kraftwerk and Tom Waits from him. He also had a certain rigor. If he saw something in another artist he admired, if they didn’t pick up that ball and run with it, he didn’t have any problem saying, ‘Well, if you’re not going to do it, I will. I’ll do this thing you should have done.’ And that was very valid.”

Bowie and Iggy: It’s tough to know how their co-write on “Tonight” began.

‘David-Bowie-Straße’: Commemorating Bowie at Hauptstraße 155 in Schöneberg, a locality in West Berlin, Germany. This is the apartment building in which Bowie and Iggy lived from 1976-1978.📸Imago/Peter Homann

This recent look at that particular period in Bowie’s and Iggy’s careers outlines the chronology of Bowie’s “Berlin Trilogy” and Iggy’s The Idiot and Lust For Life albums:

Pressing the Flesh With Iggy Pop: My Encounter With the Godfather of Punk in 1977

Iggy talks about “his Berlin period with Bowie” on a ‘19 Jonathan Ross TV show (UK):

Bowie gives his account of that era on a 1997 Much Music show (Canada):

Roaring Through the Calendar, Making Music

In short, Bowie produced Iggy’s The Idiot album in June through August, 1976 in Munich and France. In September and October, Bowie recorded his own Low in W. Berlin and France. In May and June 1977, the duo went into Hansa Studios in W. Berlin to record Iggy’s Lust For Life, with Bowie, Ig, and Colin Thurston producing.

Bowie immediately began work, back at Hansa, on his “Heroes” album in July and August of ‘77, joining old friend, Tony Visconti, on the mixing board.

Back to May and June ‘77, and Lust For Life, “Tonight” (with music by Bowie, lyrics by Iggy) ended Side 1 on the song’s original vinyl debut in September 1977 (RCA Records, worldwide).

Iggy sang, of course, while Bowie played keyboards (and, is quite noticeable on background vocals), longtime Bowie sideman, Carlos Alomar, played rhythm guitar, Ricky Gardiner played lead and sang back-up, and Hunt and Tony Sales played drums and bass, respectively, while also adding backing vocals:

Call-back: ‘Well, if you’re not going to do it, I will. I’ll do this thing you should have done.’—Bowie

Well, not one to let anything go to waste, even a track he recorded with Iggy exactly seven years before….Cut to May and June, 1984, and Le Studio aka Studio Morin Heights, in the Lorentian Mountains, near the town of Morin-Heights, Quebec, Canada:

Tape is rolling on Bowie’s 16th studio album (and second for EMI America Records after 11 for RCA), and the title track to his Tonight album, with Tina Turner guesting on vocals (complete session credits by clicking here):

In 1984, Tina appropriately recorded Bowie’s “1984” for her Private Dancer album, produced by Greg Walsh and Martyn Ware (formerly of Human League and Heaven 17). Written in 1973, here’s Bowie’s live “1984” from NBC’s Midnight Special (click here for YouTube video).

Then, from her Tina Live in Europe 1988 album, her recorded “Tonight” duet with Bowie looked like this:

Andres

of The Vinyl Room chimes in (at my request): “I didn't know this song or live performance, but I loved every single minute of it. The chemistry between them transcends the screen in a way that makes it impossible not to feel part of their embrace! The energy they each exude on stage is strikingly different, and yet they blend beautifully well together. Two legends, with such distinctive voices and personalities, coming together in a true artistic communion of the souls.”

Beautifully said, Andy, and “legends” is right! Bowie was a teenager when Tina was first making her mark, not only with Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound on “River Deep-Mountain High” (1966; that year, Bowie was 19 when Tina was 27), but with her hubby, in The Ike and Tina Turner Review!

Two years before, at 17, David actually appeared on The BBC, in this truly stunning 1964 appearance, speaking out for “longhairs” everywhere:

FR&B recently dug deep into that classic 1966 era with Tina and Spector, including several rarely-heard studio outtakes and control-room chatter:

Tina Turner, The Link Between Legends, 1966: Phil Spector's "River Deep-Mountain High"

But, by 1988 and this concert surprise shown above? Tina’s The Queen and The Legend, and Bowie is so aware of that, and happily joins the planet in celebrating her new-found mass popularity the ‘80s have afforded her! And, she’s quite obviously in her element.

👉Many thanks to

Dan Pal

of PalCinema, Television, & Music, for introducing me to the Tina/Bowie duet in his wonderful “Top Ten Memoir, 1984”—join him as he takes you through the decades, year by year, meeting his friends and sharing his life, as he includes his personal photos, videos, and his favorite songs from each year:

A Top Ten Memoir: 1984 - "Jump Along with Dan's Top Ten..."