Tina Turner’s Thursday night stop at the Target Center offered eye candy at every turn, from the Vegas-style stage to the dazzling lights to the booming pyrotechnics. The most impressive special effect, however, was standing front and center for the entire show.
It’s been eight years since the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s supposed farewell tour, but Thursday night it felt like barely eight minutes had passed — not from 2000, but counting all the way back to 1984, when Turner launched one of the most stunning comebacks in music with her “Private Dancer” album.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is a woman less than 14 months from celebrating her 70th birthday. Yet Thursday, she put on a show that would leave women half her age huffing and puffing. And this was only her sixth gig of an ambitious, 80-date world tour that runs well into 2009.
Turner re-emerged from retirement in February for a lukewarm Grammys performance with Beyonce that didn’t exactly suggest the Tennessee native was ready for the spotlight. Thursday, though, Turner not only belted out her greatest hits during a pair of hour-long sets, she danced and grinned and gave the crowd of 12,177 ample opportunity to gaze upon her world-famous gams.
The more subdued first half of the evening focused largely on the decade or so of singles that kicked off with “Private Dancer” — “Steamy Windows,” “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” and a sped-up “Better Be Good to Me” — with a few older cuts mixed in, including her Phil Spector classic “River Deep, Mountain High” and the Who’s “The Acid Queen.” It ended with a high-camp, full-blown production number to accompany “We Don’t Need Another Hero.” And, oh yes, Turner was dolled up in her “Mad Max” drag for the entire song.
She returned after a half-hour intermission that included, of all things, an Amway advertisement (oh Tina, say it ain’t so) for an even higher-energy second set consisting almost entirely of crowd-pleasing covers: “Let’s Stay Together,” “Jumping Jack Flash/It’s Only Rock and Roll,” “Addicted to Love” and a jaw-dropping, aerobic tear through “Proud Mary.”
In an evening that was rarely subtle but always stunning, Turner spent much of her encore perched on a hydraulic arm that sent her careening over the heads of the first two dozen rows while singing “Nutbush City Limits.”
If the crowd left with any complaints at all, it might be ringing ears. Turner seemed eager to push the limits of her ever-powerful vocals almost to the point of shrieking, while her backing band kept upping the volume as the clock turned. But this was one show well worth the morning-after earache.
Pop Music Critic Ross Raihala can be reached at rraihala@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5553. Read more about the local music scene on his blog, “The Ross Who Knew Too Much,” at blogs.twincities.com/ross.