WORLD CELEBRITIES

 

Tina's Simply the Best
By Udita Jhujhunwala
 

Photo: Tina Turner and Ismail Merchant at the Taj Mahal hotel yesterday
PCredit: Ashish Raje

A pair of pants shielded her legendary legs but her crop of copper hair and her joie do vivre were impossible to conceal. Multiple Grammy award-winning rock artist Tina Turner made head turns in wonder as she appeared in the Taj Mahal hotel lobby yesterday. “What is she doing here?” said some shocked fans and guests as they screeched to a halt at the sight of the singer with hits like Proud Mary, Simply the Best and What’s Love Got To Do With It.Accompanying Tina were members of her inner coterie and filmmaker Ismail Merchant and therein lies the clue to her presence in Mumbai. Ms Turner has just signed on to play the lead role of Shakti in Merchant’s next directorial project, The Goddess (to be shot in 2005).“Shakti. I’ve learnt the word since being here, and heard it so often since,” says a relaxed Tina, her disarming charm and her comfort with the media filling the room. “The cosmic energy of Shakti attracted me to this Merchant-Ivory film and the film, to me, signifies new energy, new abilities and new beginnings.” With this 64-year-old Turner (born Anna Mae Bullock), who has been off the live performance circuit and in self-imposed semi-retirement for the last four years, returns to acting and to a new beginning of her own.Merchant, who has previously directed In Custody, Cotton Mary and The Mystic Masseur, felt Turner was simply the best choice for Shakti when he saw her performance at Radio City Music Hall in New York. “She was suspended over the audience and had them mesmerised and I thought that spiritual connection, that’s Shakti,” says Merchant. The script of The Goddess, by Suketu Shah, is a work in progress but work on the music has begun. “We had a sitting with Zakir Hussain today and Tina will even be singing a song in Latin and Sanskrit,” said the director. “I believe I will be singing and do some dancing too,” said Turner, who will be working with dancers from Aditi Mangaldas’s school in Delhi.
“There will be no high heels and short skirts here,” smirks Turner, “and I have been wondering how I will step into this form of singing, but I did want to reinvent myself, and this movie will help me do that. The Goddess is about truth, knowledge and spirituality. It’s not my image — it’s India, it’s another culture and people will be curious to know what I am doing now.”
Her most famous big screen appearance has of course been as Aunty Entity in Mad Max 3 — Beyond Thunderdome, but Turner’s also had a brush with Bond when she sang the U2 penned title track for GoldenEye.
“When I first found out I might be Kali, I had to study a lot, to learn about her, but I liked the idea of her energy and of playing a goddess with real love, real power — its not Schwarzenegger or Mad Max, I thought.” One of the primary attractions to The Goddess was the music, she says. “In the last two years I have got into a the new age sound. Performers like Claude Challe, Ravin, Café Del Mar -— I like the emotions that go with this music,” says Turner who counts Ray Charles, Sam Cook, Otis Redding, the Rolling Stones and Beatles among her icons.
In fact, Tina Turner often toured with The Rolling Stones. But her high-octane, ‘raunchy’ Live Aid performance with Mick Jagger is folklore. And as she reminisces about that, she breaks into a spontaneous (seated) song and dance impression of Jagger. Turner denies that she misses the dancing, or that she finds herself bopping in front of her mirror. “I seldom dance now, and don’t do my show dancing at all. But I can do it. These days I prefer to be alone. I sleep a lot, I meditate, walk around, get massages. I move slowly.”