Sneaker 2019

Released fifty years ago this month (August 1975 – the precise date is shrouded in the mists of time): Acid Queen, the second solo album by fiercely glamorous rhythm and blues tigress Tina Turner. (Tina’s first solo album is the weird obscurity from 1974 Tina Turns the Country On! on which the soul diva gamely tackles country music by the likes of Dolly Parton, Bob Dylan and Kris Kristofferson). The record was clearly meant to exploit Tina’s wild, hair-tossing, cape-swirling appearance in the role of Acid Queen in the berserk 1975 Ken Russell rock opera Tommy. It’s billed as a solo album but strictly speaking Tina was still with Ike (and The Ike and Tina Turner Revue) at the time (the turbulent royal couple of rhythm and blues broke up in 1976). Acid Queen sees Turner dabbling with white hard rock cover versions (she gives songs by The Rolling Stones, The Who and Led Zeppelin a sustained feline attack), anticipating the musical direction of her later much more commercially successful comeback career in the eighties. It might be a stretch to call Acid Queen a lost classic: it’s patchy and not entirely successful. The production is frequently tacky, and Tina is backed by jaded generic seventies studio musicians. (Fun fact: one of the backing singers cooing behind Tina is Kim Carnes of “Bette Davis Eyes” infamy! Her sandpaper tones are instantly recognisable on certain tracks. Bring back the Ikettes, I say!). Tina, though, is in ferocious voice, sounding exultant and liberated throughout Acid Queen. In fact, she sings the hell out of it. Best songs: all her rock reinterpretation are fun and interesting ("Under My Thumb" and “Let’s Spend the Night Together” by the Stones, “I Can See for Miles” by The Who and especially Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love.” Note that the version of “Acid Queen” here is different to the one used in the film). “Acid Queen has moments of interest,” Ron Wynn concludes in the 1985 biography Tina: The Tina Turner Story. “Her campy performance in the Tommy film ties into the overall setting of blissed-out panic.” Pic: Turner performing onstage in 1975, photographed by Lynn Goldsmith.

J'aime bien les petits goulus comme lui qui kiffe les grosses bites