“All right! Where is Tina?” calls Mick Jagger on the stage of the “John F. Kennedy Stadium” in Philadelphia, in front of around 90,000 spectators. It is July 13, 1985 at 10:30 p.m.: “Live Aid”, probably the largest charity festival of all time, is heading towards its final hour of concerts. Money is collected for famine relief in Ethiopia.
Jagger performs without the Rolling Stones (Ronnie and Keith would join Bob Dylan on stage after Jagger’s performance and do a notorious threesome performance for being horrifically bad) and has already written Lonely at the Top, Just another night” and “Miss You” are performed. Now as his call, “Where’s Tina?”
And then comes Tina. It’s year two after “Private Dancer”, but she’s still on everyone’s lips. “Live Aid” takes place in the same month that her song “We Don’t Need Another Hero” peaked at number two on the US charts. Tina Turner Superstar.
She certainly would have earned her own solo appearance on “Live Aid”, whether in Philadelphia or at the – more crowded – London’s Wembley Stadium, but was booked as a guest singer by the Stones boss. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the second song together that night was “It’s Only Rock and Roll (but I like it)”. It’s the first duet song that surprises: “State of Shock”. The song appeared a year earlier, in 1984, on The Jacksons’ album Victory as a duet between Michael Jackson and Jagger. Jagger was not involved in the composition of the top 3 USA hit (songwriters were Michael Jackson and Randy Hansen), but above all he was not originally intended as a singer. Jackson recorded “State of Shock” years earlier – with Freddie Mercury.
Turner gave the younger Stones singer a jump start as a solo artist
However, this version remained unreleased for many years because Jackson began to doubt Queen’s popularity. 1984 was also the year that Mercury dressed up as a woman in the video for “I Want To Break Free” and Queen was in danger of losing fans in the USA as a result. So he offered “State of Shock” to Mick Jagger. Cool from today’s perspective, but quite a risk from the perspective of the time: The then 41-year-old Jagger was with the Stones in the deepest hole of his career. The 1983 album Undercover received poor reviews and average sales (undercut only by Dirty Work three years later). In 1984, Jagger was living off the glitz of a rock ‘n’ roll band that was hip in the ’70s.
A year later things were looking a little better. His first solo album, She’s the Boss, released in 1985, sold well, and with the single Just Another Night, also played in Philadelphia, Jagger seemed to be able to appeal to a younger audience. Since Michael Jackson didn’t want to appear on “Live Aid” – although in the end everyone sang “We are the World”! – Tina Turner was a more than worthy replacement for the shy megastar. Basically, Turner, who is four years her senior, gave the Stones singer a jump start on his solo career, which Jagger himself probably didn’t know if his band would survive (of course they did, but in the 80s many musicians who lived in were tall in the 70s, black). Tina, on the other hand, has certainly never forgotten Mick that she was allowed to appear as a support act for the Stones. In 1969 with Ike Turner, then in 1981, when she had to work on her career, as a solo artist.
Would Turner’s performance in London, belting out “Tonight” together with David Bowie, who was performing there, have turned out just as well? Possible. But “State of Shock” has more power. Jagger and Turner, as the concert video (below) shows, performed like a one-night stand couple, and he quickly took off his shirt. Mick seemed so oversexed that he tore parts of Tina’s dress and she continued to sing in what she was wearing underneath, a leotard, apparently unconcerned.
After this performance, Dylan, Richards and Wood who followed them had no chance. Mick might even have been happy about that. For Tina Turner, “Live Aid” was just another ride on the high wave in that golden era for her between 1983 and 1990.