Why Mark Knopfler needed Tina Turner to record ‘Private Dancer’
In 1984, Mark Knopfler was about to become one of the most famous rock stars in music. In just under a year’s time, the guitarist would release Brothers in Arms with Dire Straits, still one of the most successful albums of the 1980s. But Knopfler’s place among the mainstream pop elite had actually been previewed a year before Brothers in Arms hit shelves thanks to ‘Private Dancer’, his collaboration with Tina Turner.
As the title track to Turner’s 1984 comeback album, ‘Private Dancer’ was an essential part of Turner’s return to the spotlight along with ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’. Knopfler originally conceived of the song during sessions for Dire Straits’ 1982 album Love Over Gold, but he recognised that ‘Private Dancer’ wouldn’t be right for him to sing. Instead, he handed the song off to Turner.
“Mark said this song is not for a man, it’s a girl’s song,” Turner revealed in a 2004 Q&A with her fan club. “He recorded it but won’t use it so when he put the demo on, he sang ‘I’m a private dancer, dancer for money, do what you want me to do,’ I told him, ‘I think you’re right, it’s not a song for a guy.’ I liked it a lot. I wasn’t sure whether the girl was a hooker or a very classical private dancer but I thought I’d take it.”
“Roger [Davis, Turner’s manager] knows Knopfler’s manager Ed Bicknell, and Bicknell said, ‘I think Mark has a song that could fit Tina, that he never used because he thought it was a song for a girl,'” Turner recalled in a 1991 interview with John Pidgeon. “Mark produced the song and sang it, and after he did it he felt that it was not a song for a man, so it was just sitting on the shelf.”
When Turner got the opportunity to cut ‘Private Dancer’, she was originally going to use the demo version that Knopfler had recorded a few years earlier as the main backing track. However, Dire Straits’ record company, Vertigo Records, blocked this. Instead, Turner got almost all of the members of Dire Straits to record a new version of the track for her.
“He gave me the track and I copied it with Dire Straits people – most of them,” Turner recalled. “At first I was going to try to just put my voice on Mark’s tapes, but there was a record company problem, so we got Mark’s musicians, Dire Straits, and went into the studio.”
“Someone said, ‘Why did you select ‘Private Dancer’? It’s a song about a hooker. Is it because you’ve been a hooker?’ And I was shocked,” Turner added. “I didn’t see her as a hooker… I can be naive about some of these things. But actually the answer is no. I took it because it was an unusual song. I’d never sung a song like it. And I wish you could hear Mark’s version of it. He’s got a very English-sounding voice… and it was really quite beautiful…. A very arty song… so I put the old soulful touch on it.”
Although he was the song’s original writer and singer, Knopfler didn’t actually end up playing on the final version of ‘Tiny Dancer’ cut by Turner. While most of his Dire Straits bandmates came in to record the backing track, Jeff Beck was selected to record the song’s guitar solo over Knopfler. Knopfler remained unhappy at the decision, telling Stuff Magazine that Beck nearly ruined the song with what Knopfler considered “the world’s second ugliest guitar solo”.
Check out ‘Private Dancer’ down below.
