Tina Turner was born because David Bowie dumped Coke on his computer

Please forgive the lurid headline – but after Tina Turner’s death (May 24) a flashy promotional video from the 1980s, which shows the singer together with her boyfriend David Bowie, has gone viral. The clip created for Pepsi in 1987 could only have been created in that decade: Bowie as Mad Scientist (there were quite a few of them in that film era), who accidentally tipped the brown soda onto his computer, creating a Tina Turner becomes. Underlaid with the sounds of his hit “Modern Love” the two then get closer.

In 1987, Tina Turner was still riding the wave of her album Break Every Rule, released the previous year, while Bowie appeared to be fighting for his career – his performance in Jim Henson’s film Labyrinth was ridiculed, his retro-rock album Never Let Me Down” earned him the worst reviews of his career; the accompanying “Glass Spider” tour was well attended but looked terribly pompous. For Pepsi, however, the engagement of the 48-year-old “Queen of Rock and Roll” and the 41-year-old genre bender was a success, the next following the multimillion-dollar deal with Michael Jackson in 1984. Later, Turner would also do a clip for Rod Stewart turn the beverage maker.

Here you can read an article by ROLLING STONE author Hennes Bender about the special relationship between Bowie and Turner.