Ex-journalist recalls the night rock ‘n’ roll giant Tina Turner came to Lancaster

In the week it was announced Tina has passed away at the age of 83, retired journalist David Upton recalls the night a rock ‘n’ roll giant came to Lancaster.

"The photos may have faded slightly but the memories remain vivid.

When Tina Turner performed at Lancaster University on the night of Saturday February 25 1984 I was among the 2,000-strong audience, but probably one of the few with permission to take a camera into the venue.

I was reviewing the show for the Blackpool Gazette and on this occasion one of the road crew on the door allowed the camera in after I’d produced a press card to prove my credentials. But strictly no flash photography allowed!

Nowadays everyone has a smartphone memory to share but nearly 40 years ago live concert pictures were the preserve of a few chosen professional tour photographers. And not many of them headed as far north as Lancaster on a Saturday night.

The university’s Great Hall was already something of a regional outpost for rock and pop tours which had outgrown many city centre venues, but were yet to be swallowed up by the cavernous arenas that were to become commonplace around the country.

So Lancaster enjoyed 15 years of star status that saw the likes of Eric Clapton, The Ramones, Iron Maiden, Elvis Costello, The Smiths and Van Morrison perform, amidst a veritable A-Z of music legends.

But Tina Turner was still a standout attraction, whose appearance had sold out in moments. This was a woman – at the age of 45, and already old enough to be a mother to most of the student-age audience in front of her – at the start of her ‘second breath’ in the business.

The small-scale tour had started in St Austell in Cornwall the previous month and finished at Manchester Apollo three days after Lancaster. But by the end of the year it had transformed into a world tour in which she starred alongside Lionel Ritchie.

In his excellent memoir of those days, When Rock Went To College, Lancaster’s concert organiser Barry Lucas recalls how he even managed to accommodate a dozen or so Tina Turner fans, members of Lancaster CID, in the projection box at the back of the hall.

Down below them a capacity standing audience were soon carving out their own individual spaces in which to dance along to an electrifying setlist of songs which included Turner’s version of Acid Queen, from the film of the rock opera Tommy in which she had recently starred.

But it was her then Greatest Hits section – Nutbush City Limits, River Deep Mountain High and Proud Mary – that brought the greatest reaction. In amongst them all was a selection of hurried costume changes, while support vocalists and dancers Lejeune Richardson and Annie Behringer ensured the tempo never slackened. But there was only one middle-aged mum who dominated the stage and led the frenetic dancing.

It was to be several more years before Tina Turner was universally known as Simply The Best... but on a hot winter’s night in Lancaster no one doubted they were already in the presence of a rock ‘n’ roll giant.”