Brownsville, Tennessee,
native still stomping around in high-heeled shoes, gyrating in a leather
skirt up to there.
In concert, Tina
Turner's voice carried "Private Dancer" far beyond that song's
recorded version. (Herb
Ritts)
The Tennessean
NASHVILLE — Tina Turner keeps saying this is her last
concert tour.
If so, she'll go out like Michael Jordan, like Jim Brown, like
Sandy Koufax without the arm problems or like Otis Redding
without the plane crash.
She'll go out at the top of her
game, as the screeching audience at Monday's sold-out Gaylord
Entertainment Center show could attest.
The concert began with a deep voice quoting the words of
Nashville songwriter/artist Susanna Clark's song "Come From the
Heart": "Sing like you don't need the money/ Love like you've
never been hurt/ Dance like nobody's watching."
Well, Tina Turner probably doesn't need the money any more, and
she may have recovered fully enough from her abusive marriage to
Ike Turner to love without fear, but she dances like everyone's
watching.
The Brownsville, Tennessee, native will be 61 next month, and
she's still stomping around in high-heeled shoes, gyrating in a
leather skirt up to there. And she still sings in a soul voice
that may be best compared to Redding, expressing palpable
emotion through whispery low tones, then soaring to
house-rocking levels.
"I'm going to take you on the journey of my career," she
announced. Backed by a seven-piece band, three dancers and two
backing vocalists, she did just that.
Turner sang the spectrum, from her early work with Ike through
her comeback in the 1980s and on to the sometimes iffy songs
(and unfortunate gurgling electronic percussion) of last year's
Twenty Four Seven album.
But most of the show was just spectacular. A roaring Hammond
organ propelled "Better Be Good to Me," Turner's voice carried
"Private Dancer" far beyond that song's recorded version, and
"Proud Mary" shook the downtown hockey arena with the force of
1,000 slap shots.
Opener Joe Cocker wailed his way through a vocally masterful,
hit- filled set that included "You Are So Beautiful" (he still
can't get that last note, though), "The Letter," the slinky "You
Can Leave Your Hat On" and a characteristically fine version of
"With a Little Help From My Friends."
While Cocker sang his rounded belly off, the night belonged to
Turner. In the end, as a mechanized crane implement lifted her
from the stage out, toward and just over the heads of her
audience, there might as well have been no guitarists, no
sparkling dancers, no nothing.
There was only a regal, sweaty, emphatic 60-year-old woman
leaning over a railing, shouting about her long-ago upbringing.
"Nutbush! Nutbush!" she hollered.
And everyone knew just what she meant. And they partied like
they weren't holding onto cell phones.
— Peter Cooper
C) 2000 The Tennessean via Bell&Howell Information and Learning
Company; All Rights Reserved.
