(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Sun 11 January 2026 12:00, UK
It’s nearly impossible for anyone to have even a fraction of the impact that David Bowie had during his time on this Earth.
The Beatles might get credit for shaping what rock and roll was going to be, but outside of the true visionaries like Bob Dylan, what Bowie did for everything from rock and roll to fashion to sexual identity is still something that most of us have yet to catch up to. But that kind of bravery he had whenever he took on something new came from watching his favourite artists endure the kind of hardships that they suffered through.
After all, it couldn’t have been easy for someone to have the guts to put that much makeup on at the dawn of the 1970s. Rock and roll may have been entering a new decade, and while everyone wanted to follow in the footsteps of what bands like Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones would be doing, Bowie’s fascination with androgyny is half the reason why he managed to get his foot in the door. Some fans were in love with what he did, and some were appalled, but Bowie was never going to apologise for going in whatever direction he wanted.
Because when looking at his record collection, he never wanted to be put into one specific box whenever he made a record. There are different periods of his work, but his heroes were always those who defied the trends. No one knew what to do with someone like James Brown when he first hit the stage, nor did anyone understand what to make of someone like Kraftwerk when they made their sequenced take on music, but it was all wildly exciting for Bowie whenever he put them on his turntable.
The mechanics of a great record were one thing, but compared to every other rock and roll star, Bowie was always fascinated with what Tina Turner could do. If Elvis Presley was the reigning ‘King of Rock and Roll’ in most people’s eyes, Turner was most certainly The Queen whenever she took to the stage. There wasn’t a single venue that she couldn’t turn inside out whenever she played, but the only thing stopping her half the time was her husband and grade-A asshole Ike Turner.
The atrocities that Ike did to Tina are so despicable that they’re not even worth mentioning, but after breaking out of that relationship, Tina wasn’t going to fade away into obscurity by any stretch. She wanted to remind everyone why she was considered ‘The Queen’, and by the time that Bowie was making a pivot towards pop music on Let’s Dance, Private Dancer introduced the world to a woman that was finally free from every single setback in her way.
Turner was already a legend years before Bowie started making his first dents in the charts, but after watching her from afar, he was proud to see her pick herself back up and keep moving forward, saying, “I don’t know how much help I was but I was certainly enthusiastic about her when she went out on her own. She’s taken out the role of someone like Bob Hope or Louis Armstrong as the ambassador of America. People don’t see her for the songs. They see her for what she represents. They go to see somebody like a phoenix from the ashes that has risen.”
And while Bowie did have his fair share of moments where he shared a stage with Turner, there was never a single show she played where didn’t look to crush everyone else onstage. She danced like no one else, her voice was one of the most impassioned in rock and roll, and even if you put her next to other legends like Mick Jagger, she could have made any member of The Rolling Stones look like schoolchildren compared to what she was doing.
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