MTV Fueled Tina Turner’s Comeback at 44 — And She Helped Put the Network ‘On the Map’

After Tina Turner nailed the opening of her 1984 “What’s Love Got To Do With It” video on the first take, gazing at a tugboat under the Brooklyn Bridge, then pivoting to shimmy with a man in a purple suit, the cinematographer jumped off his dolly and into the director’s arms. They had a $60,000 budget and a week to shoot, and Turner — in her leather skirt, jean jacket and spiky hairdo — had saved the morning. “It was quite fun and quite magical,” recalls John Mark Robinson, the director. “Tina was absolutely nonstop energetic all day long in the 90-degree heat.

“She knew we were under time pressure, but it didn’t phase her,” Robinson says of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame singer, pop megastar and fashion icon, who died May 24 at 83. “She was totally relaxed and just completely engaged.”

Robinson had submitted his treatment for the video to Turner’s label, Capitol Records, and after the label shared the idea with Turner and her manager, Roger Davies, the director storyboarded the song on a plane. “I roughed it out, and a lot of it was improv as far as the dance moves and some of the choreography,” Robinson says. “We had so little time, so we were going off the top of our heads.”

“It’s just a classic,” says Michelle Peacock, Capitol’s then-head of video. “Once we saw the video, we were all convinced it was a hit. MTV saw and heard a hit, and that’s all that mattered.”

By 1984, MTV was a driver for radio airplay, record sales and concert attendance. “You couldn’t turn on MTV without seeing Tina at that point. It was immediate,” Peacock says. “We would get the numbers every Tuesday. There was a direct correlation between MTV and record sales.”

MTV — then not yet 3 years old — played the video nonstop, putting the 44-year-old Turner shoulder to shoulder with Prince and Madonna, both of whom were 25 when the “What’s Love Got To Do With It” video premiered in June. By July, the song was in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100; by September, it was No. 1, making Turner the oldest female solo performer to summit the chart up to that point.

MTV helped fuel Turner’s comeback, and she helped “put us on the map,” says John Sykes, one of the network’s co-founders and a longtime vp of programming and production. “We’re used to dealing with artists in their early 20s. Here was someone who was 40 years old, but her talent, her experience, her drive, her sex appeal transcended age.”

Turner — who had returned to the center of the pop-music world eight years after fleeing her abusive marriage — instantly charmed the network’s staff. “What I remember most about Tina from the day we met was her confidence,” Sykes says. “We were all in our 20s and had grown up seeing her on Bandstand, Soul Train and watching the Ike & Tina Turner Revue open for The Rolling Stones. To us, she was already a star. We saw her as an icon the moment she walked in our door.”

Turner’s relationship with MTV had begun in the early ’80s, when she and Davies put on a charm offensive for the new cable channel. For one of Turner’s shows at the Ritz in Manhattan, Davies gave out multiple tickets to “secretaries, interns” and ensured that top executives had backstage access, says Gale Sparrow, then the channel’s director of talent and artist relations. Turner even wore a satin MTV jacket onstage during the encore. “With a room full of MTV people — was that a smart move, or was that a smart move?” Sparrow asks. “She and Roger worked together for the common goal, which, of course, was stardom.”

In addition to being the “hottest ticket in town,” says Sparrow, Turner “just wowed everybody” in person, and the young executives became devoted to her. “She just was a sparkle. She had that spark in her eye,” Sparrow recalls. “Tina gave MTV a kind of second jolt of excitement. It was a whole different persona as an artist: She could have been your best friend. Everybody felt comfortable around her. You don’t have to please her.”

Turner became one of MTV’s signature stars over the next few years — her videos for other singles from Private Dancer, including the Hot 100 No. 5 “Better Be Good to Me” and the No. 7 title track, as well as her 1985 duet with Bryan Adams, “It’s Only Love,” and the theme song to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, “We Don’t Need Another Hero,” made her a constant presence on the channel. Like other stars, she recorded a plug for the network: “Hi, this is Tina Turner, and I’m hot, but MTV is real cool.”

In September 1984, she was one of the performers at MTV’s inaugural Video Music Awards, along with Madonna, David Bowie, ZZ Top and Huey Lewis & The News. She performed “What’s Love Got To Do With It,” though as the video itself wasn’t eligible that year, she collected her first Moonman at the 1985 VMAs, winning a second in 1986 for “It’s Only Love.”

VH1 took over Turner cheerleading duties in the ’90s: She placed at No. 2, behind Aretha Franklin, on the network’s 1999 list of Greatest Women of Rock & Roll. The last time Sykes saw her, that same year, he was backstage for VH1 Divas Live/99, starring Turner, Whitney Houston and Cher. Turner told him, “I always wanted to play on the same stage as my friends, the Stones, and I did it.”

“The relationship was enormous together,” says Les Garland, a former senior executive vp of programming for MTV and VH1 and MTV co-founder who is now an adviser for artists and documentary filmmakers. “To a huge number in the audience, Tina Turner was brand-new from the moment they saw her first video. They probably had their TV set on and said, ‘Oh, my goodness, who’s that?’

“We had a slogan in those early days: ‘You’ll never look at music the same way again,’ ” Garland adds. “Well, Tina Turner had a part in that slogan.”