On 21 March, a comprehensive 5CD+Blu-ray deluxe edition of Tina Turner’s classic comeback 1984 album Private Dancer hits the shelves. Unlike the 2015 reissue, this one does collect all the B-sides and remixes from the era. It also includes a previously unreleased track, ‘Hot For You Baby’.
Continuing Tina’s penchant for covering Australian rockers (as seen on Private Dancer‘s John Farnham-aping cover of ‘Help!’), this was originally recorded by John Paul Young in 1979 for his album Heaven Sent.
We’ve seen similar deluxe editions for 1986’s Break Every Rule and 1989’s Foreign Affair, as well as bare-bones CD reissues of Tina’s first four United Artists albums from the 1970s. Tina only issued 9 solo albums across her career, so it seems like the material has been well handled on CD.
Yet despite all that, there’s a chunk of material from her wilderness years leading up to Private Dancer which hasn’t made it onto the re-release. And that’s a pity.
I became aware of much of this material when researching Tina’s Australian touring career. A couple of the tracks popped up on the long-out-of-print 1994 3CD compilation The Collected Recordings: Sixties To Nineties, but most have never been on CD.
First up there’s Tina’s legendary down-under-only single ‘Are You Breaking My Heart?’ and its B-side ‘Hold On’ (on which Tina takes a rare co-writing credit). This 1980 rocker was a flop and never released anywhere but Australia and New Zealand, though she did perform it on Countdown.
Fast forward to 1982 and Tina recorded two covers for the soundtrack of the film Summer Lovers: Robert Palmer’s ‘Johnny And Mary’ and Sherb’s ‘Crazy In The Night’.
‘Crazy In The Night’ was regularly featured in Tina’s live set at the time.
1982 was also when Tina recorded the Temptations’ classic ‘Ball Of Confusion’ with BEF (aka the Heaven 17 crew), a move which led directly to her career revival when she recorded ‘Let’s Stay Together’ with the BEF team the following year. That one also got an outing on Countdown.
While ‘Ball Of Confusion’ is actually on the Private Dancer reissue, it can’t be left off here – and I’ve also included the instrumental B-side, which has never had a CD release.
Finally, we have ‘Games’, a 1983 demo recording that first popped up on The Collected Recordings: Sixties To Nineties but which has been ignored ever since. And to round things out, the 12-inch remix of ‘Love Explosion’, her 1979 disco single, makes its first CD appearance.
Here’s the complete track listing.
- Are You Breaking My Heart (3:45)
- Hold On (3:30)
- Johnny And Mary (4:13)
- Crazy In The Night (3:53)
- Ball Of Confusion (3:50)
- Games (4:16)
- Love Explosion (Extended Mix) (7:02)
- Ball Of Confusion (Instrumental) (3:50)
It’s a short disc, clocking in at a total of 34 minutes and 19 seconds, but a very necessary one. Think of it as a supercharged EP.
Pedant note: I didn’t include any reissues of earlier Ike & Tina material that appeared during this era, or live recordings such as Tina’s 1982 duet with Rod Stewart on ‘Hot Legs’. Those would logically belong to another project (making no promises, mind).
For more Gusworld Records action, check out the CDs for Collette, Kim Hart and Christie Allen.
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