From the S&S archives:
Tina Turner: 'I just can't help enjoying myself'

(Click here for photos of Tina Turner's February, 1978 show at Offenbach, Germany.)

IF THE search planes had flown over Offenbach the other night they wouldn't have found "hot" satellite debris as in Canada but their instruments would have detected enough heat to upset their calibrations despite the fact that it was snowing. It wasn't radioactive, though. It was much hotter. It was coming from a human dynamo of bounding, bouncing and bumping energy, a simmering, searing, sensuous, siren of sex who simply takes a song and shows its soul with voice and body.

If you still have to ask, it was Tina Turner. And she came on just as she has for the last 17 years, with a kind an untamed wildness that sets feet to tapping, hands to clapping and hearts to pounding.

A showwoman unparalleled she surely is, but you can't leave it at that. Her performances play and tease the senses of hearing, seeing and feeling like no others, and the rest of the senses beg to get into the act.

"When I'm out there performing, I'm happy. I'm having fun. I feel so good. I just can't help enjoying myself and I really enjoy the audiences. I want to get them into the feeling of wanting to move."

Her show was different only in that Ike wasn't along. But the audience didn't seem to mind. It was glad. Because since she and Ike have parted company, it means that the audience gets those sultry, suggestive looks that used to be reserved for Ike.

And even if Tina weren't able to sing, she would still be unforgettable. Her body, which is 38 years old — no, it can't be — is one of the finest packages to be found anywhere. And she does not hide it. It is usually clad in a thin, skimpy body-clinging costume of sequins and it moves with the grace of a tigress most often. But she can also glide with the smoothness of the swan.

"I never get tired while I'm performing. I've been doing one-nighters, catching planes for somewhere else early the next day, just going and going and I feel good. No headaches or anything, so I must be in very good health."

But the voice now. It is throaty and gravelly, sometimes shouting and sometimes it is soft and purring with a strong hint of the gospel. It can send songs sailing sedately through the audience in a sad blues number, or it can erupt into a geyser of feeling and sound in a rock piece.

She came storming onto the stage at the Offenbach Stadthalle, dressed in not much more than a huge orange feathered plume, singing, "You've Got to Turn It Up Tonight! "

And when it was over she said, "I guess you think I'm going to turn it up the rest of the evening" (pauses, looks over the audience, then adds teasingly) "maybe."

But no one doubted that she would turn it up and she did, with such songs as "Life in the Fast Lane" and "Gypsy Queen." The frenzied rhythm of these songs gave way later in the show to easy numbers like "Ain't It Funny How Time Slips Away," "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" and "When We Touch."

"I've been doing this for 17 years and I like it but I want to do something else, too. I won't stop doing this but I want to get into acting, dramatic acting. I want parts with dialogue. I'm acting now so it won't be a big step into something different. I'm looking at a lot of movie scripts but I haven't see the one I want yet."

An old Creedence Clearwater Revival song came near the last, and it came closest to showing Tina's wide range of talent all in one song. It was "Proud Mary" and she said just before it, "I'll begin it nice and easy, but I'll finish it rough!" She sort of growled out the "rough" with her eyes glistening seductively.

It was a predominantly German audience but the usual formal and rather stiff aura they project gave way early to animated participation. And when she finally left the stage they called her back for four encores.

"When I get back to the States I'm going to record an album. I'll call it `Rough' but that doesn't mean that it's going to be rough. It'll just be songs that I really like to sing. From now on I'm not going to do anything I don't like. You'll like it."

When it was all over, one fan said:

"I feel like I've been to a prize fight or to a cliff-hanger football game. I'm so hyped I don't believe I can go home and sleep."