PROVING THAT FORM IS TEMPORARY YET CLASS IS PERMANENT, A WHOLE HOST OF MAJOR 60s ACTS HAD AN UNEXPECTED CAREER RESURGENCE AS BONA FIDE CHART STARS IN THE 80s

DOUGLAS MCPHERSON

How funny that music can fall so neatly into decades. The 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s each had their own signature sounds, fashions and defining mood. Very few artists who made their name in one era ever enjoyed hits in another. The simple reason is that the young fans who made them stars grow up and stop buying records, while the next generation of teens rarely want to listen to the music that their parents like. However, while pop fame often comes with a use-by date, there have been some honourable exceptions. The 80s saw several long-established – and even longforgotten – singers not only enjoy huge comebacks but, in some cases, produce classic cuts that completely eclipsed the past hits that had once defined them.

TOTALLY WIRED

One of the first established artists to embrace the new sounds of the 80s was Cliff Richard, with Wired For Sound. That he was among the frontrunners leading the charge into synth-pop wasn’t surprising, since he’d been regularly reinventing himself since his emergence as an Elvis-styled rock’n’roller with the seminal British rock single Move It in 1958.

In 1979, Richard had scored his biggest hit for a decade with the disco-infused ballad We Don’t Talk Anymore. The international charttopper was written by Alan Tarney, who also played keyboards on the track, so it was only natural that he’d be asked to write and produce a whole album for Cliff. The result was 1981’s Wired For Sound, whose synthpop title track returned Cliff to the Top Five.

Richard also anticipated the influence of MTV, which launched that year, promoting Wired For Sound with a promo in which he rollerskated around the modernistic concrete environs of Milton Keynes wearing the then-new icon of the age, a Sony Walkman.

SIMPLY THE BEST

Cliff scored big but Tina Turner’s return to the top of the charts was one of the most impressive comebacks of all time. Born in Nutbush, Tennessee, which she would later immortalise in the 1973 hit Nutbush City Limits, the former Anna Mae Bullock came to fame in the Ike and Tina Turner Review, where the duo scored with such abrasive r’n’b shouters as River Deep – Mountain High in 1966. The aggression in their songs doubtless came in part from their stormy marriage and when their harrowing union dissolved, a few years after the hits dried up, it looked like her career would be reduced to reliving past glories on the cabaret circuit. However, a talent as volcanic as Turner’s would not quietly fade away, as searing live performances alongside The Rolling Stones and Chuck Berry proved. Then, in 1982, she was one of several singers invited to perform on the synth-driven covers album Music Of Quality And Distinction Volume One by the British Electric Foundation, helmed by keyboard players Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, both founder members of Human League and Heaven 17.

Turner’s update of Ball Of Confusion convinced Capitol A&R man John Carter that Tina had the potential to make contemporary hits. Re-teamed with the production team of Ware and Marsh, the resulting single, an impassioned cover of Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together, became her first solo UK Top 10 single. The album Private Dancer followed, uniting Turner with various producers at studios in the UK. It was a multimillionseller and also won four Grammy awards. Highlights included the brooding single Private Dancer, penned by Mark Knopfler, and the similarly bitter-hearted What’s Love Got To Do With It, which topped the American chart and became Turner’s biggestever hit. Bucks Fizz must have been irked since they’d recorded What’s Love… before Turner and shelved their version when hers came out first. Before that, Cliff Richard had turned it down although, ultimately, no one could have owned it like Tina. Turner’s new-found fame was cemented when she starred alongside Mel Gibson in the 1985 film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and released another hit, We Don’t Need Another Hero, from the soundtrack. Before the decade was out, she made Foreign Affair, which included her signature song, (Simply) The Best.