origins of inspiration

 Toward the end of the book, Tina has left Ike and is in the process of rebuilding a career on her own, with her manager Roger Davies.

------------- [excerpts] --------------

        Roger Davies:  They said, "Hello, we need to get some names on your guest list - there'll be sixty-three people from Capitol coming down to the show tonight."... They asked David Bowie what he was doing that night, and he told them, "I'm going to see my favorite female singer."  They said, "Who's that?"  He said, "Tina Turner."... 

It was perfect for us.  David brought Susan Sarandon, who had starred with him in The Hunger, and he brought Keith Richards and John McEnroe - it was the weirdest combination of people.  And the show that night was fantastic - Tina had the place standing on its head.  Incredible.  It was a real event, exactly what we needed.

        Tina:  David and Keith and I posed for all kinds of pictures, and David asked when I'd be doing a new record.  We started talking about material, and after a while he said, "Let's go back to Keith's and listen to some songs."  

So around three in the morning we all headed over to Keith Richards' apartment in the Plaza Hotel.  He had this great big tape machine set up there, and you could see that he used it constantly.  

We had some champagne, and Keith cranked up his machine and started playing all this old music, and suddenly it dawned on me:  This was what these guys did.  They would go back to all this old music that they loved - blues and R and B - and they would change it around and make something of their own out of it.  

        Because the feeling that was in that old music was something they felt, too.  But they made it new again, and that was what had always attracted me to the Rolling Stones' songs.  I had never actually realized it before.  That was a magical evening.

Keith Richards at the piano, in the early days

-30-