onstage; offstage

 

-------------------- [excerpt from I, Tina - written by Tina Turner and Kurt Loder, copyright 1986, Harper Collins] ----------------------

Tina:  Well, the first night of the Stones tour, at the Albert Hall, I was nervous - we'd never worked a hall that big.  But we went out and did what we did, and the people loved it.  They didn't like "Please, Please, Please" - we cut that immediately - but they accepted us.  And from there on, I became more comfortable.

        We were something a little different for British audiences then - four wild women up there onstage. ...

        After a while, I started noticing this face offstage when the girls and I were out there.  I said, "God, who's that boy with the big lips?"  It was unusual to see a white person that looked like that, you know?  

He would just stand behind the speakers and all you could see would be this white face and these eyes and this mouth.  

        Finally, Ike brought him into the dressing room one night - they were really fans of Ike Turner - and I said, "Ike, who's that boy standing there?"  

He said, "Oh, that's Mick."  Mick went like, "Heyyy," and I was startled by the way he spoke.  He had the English accent, of course, but you could also hear in his voice that he was really into black music and black people. ...

        After that, Mick would come into the dressing room and we would sing a lot together.  He never  knocked, so you'd always have to stay kind of dressed, because he was friendly enough with Ike that he could just walk in.  

But we'd sing and talk and laugh - everything was funny in those days, with Mick around.  He'd be telling me about Keith Richards, too...and it'd be Keith-this and Keith-that, and we'd laugh it up some more.

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do I love you, my oh my

 on You Tube, video titled

Ike & Tina Turner - River Deep Mountain High (original 1966 promo, edited)

channel / uploader:  amajor2002

                -  play -

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wall of sound

 

Jeff Beck

--------------------- [excerpt from I, Tina - written by Tina Turner, with Kurt Loder.  Copyright 1986, Harper Collins] -----------------

        It was an uproarious excursion.  The Rolling Stones launched their tour at the Albert Hall with tape recorders running to capture the show for a projected in-concert album, Got Live if You Want It.  

Six songs into their set, though, the house erupted into a near-riot, with fans clambering up onstage....  For chitlins-circuit veterans who thought they'd seen it all, that opening night offered the Revue members a new kind of eyeful.  And, for Ike and for Tina, an earful, too.

        Tina:  I remember I was in the dressing room and I heard somebody playing guitar - and were they ever playing it!  I followed the sound out into the hallway, and I came to this other dressing room, and there was Jeff Beck, just sitting there, playing.  He was the lead guitarist for the Yardbirds, who were also on the bill.  Jeez, you should've heard him!  I couldn't believe it.

        Ike said, "Man, these guys can play over here!"  He was really blown away. ... I think maybe Ike should've just moved to England then, because he could've really got into a rush with those guys.  But, well . . .

        Mick Jagger:  I think we worked much harder after Ike and Tina had been on, you know?  Because they would really work the audience very, very hard.  But that's the reason we had them on.  

There's no point in having some jerk band on before you - you have to have somebody that'll make you top what they do.  And Ike and Tina Turner certainly did that job admirably.  

Tina's voice was very powerful, and also very idiosyncratic - easy to pick out.  "River Deep-Mountain High" was an excellent record because she had the voice to get out in front of Phil Spector's so-called wall of sound.

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available, right now

 

Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster in Sweet Smell Of Success (1957)

On Amazon Prime, now:

Sweet Smell of Success

and

Goodbye, Columbus

on Netlifx, now:

The Sting

enjoy

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"man, I was so scared..."

 
Bill Wyman, bass player for the Rolling Stones, from 1962 to 1993

------------------- [excerpts from I, Tina - copyright 1986, Harper Collins] -----------------------------

Bill Wyman:  We realized that they were a great visual act, that that was the magic thing about them.  And that's what we used to admire in people, if they could be really good visually as well as on records - which was what we tried to do.  I mean, some people made great records, and then when you saw them, they were a load of old crap, you know?  With Ike and Tina, the visual thing was as important as anything else about them.  So we got them to come over.

__________________________

        By the time the Stones tour came up, the Revue was already on its second set of post-original Ikettes.  After Robbie, Jessie, and Venetta walked out, Ike had quickly scooped up two inexperienced L.A. girls, Maxine Smith and Pat "P.P." Arnold, and a young club singer from Palo Alto named Gloria Scott....

Maxine Smith:

We went up to their house to audition.  We just sang a little bit, and then Tina said, "Okay, let's start rehearsing."  And we rehearsed from eleven o'clock in the morning till three in the morning for three whole days.  The fourth day we were on the road, and that night we were onstage.  Man, I was so scared.  And from there we just kept on going, doing one-nighters. ...

___________________________

        And then "River Deep" became a hit in England, and suddenly Ike and Tina were off to tour with the Rolling Stones.

        The Stones tour, twelve dates in all, was booked to run from September 23 through October 9.  In addition, the Ike and Tina Turner Revue would be playing another dozen or so dates on the side, many at the enormous Mecca clubs that then catered to British youth.

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river deep, mountain high

 

------------------- [excerpt from I, Tina - 1986, HarperCollins] -----------------------

[1966]

        "River Deep-Mountain High" climbed to number eighty-eight in the pop charts in the first week of June, then tumbled back down. ...

        While the song misfired in the States, it created a sensation across the Atlantic, rocketing to number three on the British charts in mid-June and remaining in the Top 50 for thirteen weeks.  

George Harrison, guitarist with the then-regnant Beatles, was quoted as calling it "a perfect record from start to finish - you couldn't improve on it."  

America had deep-sixed the single, and here were the Brits, waxing ecstatic....

        "River Deep" 's reception in Britain...was no mystery, however.  The new breed of British rock bands that ruled the charts was fascinated by black American music.  Lacking a native equivalent of blues and R & B, the British groups and their audiences had become connoisseurs of the American scene.  

Such pop-oriented acts as the Beatles and Manfred Mann and Herman's Hermits reveled in covering black girl-group hits.  Grittier stuff became the province of the more blues-oriented Yardbirds, Animals, and, especially, the Rolling Stones....

        The Stones were already well acquainted with the work of Ike and Tina Turner by the time "River Deep" arrived.  As it happened, they were then gearing up for a fall tour of the U.K.  Why not, they decided, invite the Ike and Tina Turner Revue along?

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opening acts

 

After listening to the hit song "Arizona" several times, I checked out an interview with Mark Lindsay, on You Tube - at one point he was a member of the band Paul Revere and the Raiders (pictured above).

It's a band whose name is familiar to me, but I haven't studied them, don't know much about them.  According to the online encyclopedia, they had hit songs and a lot of live-performance success in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

        I didn't think I knew any of their songs, but then I clicked on one called "Kicks" and I've certainly heard that! - I know it...

...Oh don't it seem that

Kicks just keep gettin' harder to find,

You know the kicks ain't bringin' you peace of mind

Before you find out it's too late, girl,

You better get straight....

In the Mark Lindsay interview (from the '80s or '90s, I think) he told a brief anecdote about the "Raiders" playing a TV show called "Where The Action Is", in Pittsburgh, where the - Rolling Stones - opened for them...!?!

Like - Wait.  What??!

        I googled that, apparently it's true.  The Internet explained that who the opening act was and who the main attraction was, could vary, according to what part of the country the bands were playing in, based on who had a hit song that was popular locally, at that point in time.

It made a funny story in the interview, because you just wouldn't expect the Rolling Stones to be "opening" for anybody.  They would be the main attraction.  

Mark Lindsay sort of imitated Mick Jagger's accent - "Who are these guys?!"

But it was 1965, when this occurred - the Stones' most iconic albums, Let It Bleed, Exile On Main Street, Sticky Fingers, and Beggars Banquet were all still in the future, at that time - they hadn't been written or recorded, yet.

The Rolling Stones were still on their way up.

        I got to thinking about opening acts, at concerts.  A Bob Dylan concert I attended in the early 2000s had the country band Asleep At The Wheel as the opening act.  I loved that.

        And I thought about the Ike and Tina Turner Revue opening for the Rolling Stones in England, in the late '60s.  (How incredible that must have been!)  The Ike and Tina Turner Revue - musicianship, singing, showmanship would have been on a par with the Stones - they would have been just as wild, and tight, and they would have out-danced even Mick Jagger, because that was part of their style.

I remember hearing Mick in an interview saying that when Ike and Tina opened for them, "we had to work harder" to put on a great show, so as not to be "outshone" by their opening act.

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