With her commanding stage presence and astonishingly powerful voice, unbowed even in the face of abuse, Turner lit up every phase of 20th century pop
There is a great photograph of Tina Turner, taken for Vogue by Jack Robinson in 1969, the year she and her husband, Ike, supported the Rolling Stones on their US tour. It appears to show Tina in full flight; the contact sheets from the shoot suggest Robinson had encouraged her to dance and sing in the studio as she would on stage. Her face is at the photograph’s bottom-right corner, as if he had only just managed to catch her in shot. Her mouth is wide open, her face contorted, eyes raised to the ceiling, hair flying upwards.
It’s a great photograph because it manages to look like Tina sounded in 1969. Listen to the Ike and Tina Turner songs recorded at Madison Square Garden in November of that year (belatedly issued on a 40th-anniversary edition of the celebrated Rolling Stones live album Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out). The duo pile through one cover version after another at breathless speed: Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Proud Mary, a frantic Land of a Thousand Dances, a take on Come Together during which Tina finds a crackling sexual energy in the song that is absent from the Beatles’ original.