Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Tina Turner’s name alone is enough to cause celebration, to place a smile on lips that may have come to expect only sadness in life, such is the light that emanates from her live performances that it is one of those moments in existence that when you feel the overwhelming force of her heart beat against your soul, you know that you have not lived through an affair of important value, but that you have lived completely and utterly in the presence of greatness.
There is no doubting that Ms. Tina Turner is a legend, that status was, and has been assured since before she became a solo artist in her own right, and yet legend doesn’t really do the artist, the name, the woman justice, the queen of all she surveys, the ground breaker, the survivor, the icon we never perhaps knew we needed, but which we as listeners have embraced with all our might.
It could have been all so different, it very nearly was, but for faith in her own ability, and that of those who could envision a very different path for her away from what she had rightly escaped, that predestined path was erased, removed and shattered. Whilst the initial solo albums barely made a dent in the public conscious, it was, firstly through the superb Private Dancer in 1984, and then in the extraordinary Foreign Affair, that the legend became the superstar, the woman of a certain age who taught the multitude that they could rock no matter the years behind them, no matter the pain and suffering they had endured.
How to improve on greatness, normally it is an impossible job, but as the re-release deluxe box set of Foreign Affair shows, sometimes greatness is just the shroud that hides eminence, that fame is the precursor to immortality.
It is not just the chance to hear the album once more, to reacquaint yourself with tracks such as the giant hits Steamy Windows and The Best, with the storming forceful tunes Undercover Agent (For The Blues), Be Tender With Me Baby, You Know Who (Is Doing You know What), Falling Like Rain and Not Enough Romance, it is to fall in love with the impressive extras, the B-sides and remixes that may have been lost to time, and the double CD which houses the Do You Want Some Action? The Foreign Affair Farewell Tour live from Barcelona.
It is perhaps in this final piece of the puzzle that the 2021 deluxe edition strikes home, the sheer magnitude of a woman who quite rightly refused to stay silent, who knew exactly who she was, and that is the woman who offered a foreign affair but stayed forever as the undisputed queen of rock.
An extraordinary deluxe set that deserves pride of place in anyone’s collection.
Ian D. Hall