‘He threw it together’ – the story behind the demo Bono wrote for Tina Turner

Yesterday evening, the news broke that rock ‘n’ roll legend Tina Turner had passed away aged 83.

Ever since, Twitter and Instagram have been awash with clips of her giving it welly to Proud Mary at the 3Arena in 2009, and her Irish fans teeming with excitement as they waited for her to take the RDS stage back in 1987.

We all know that no Irish wedding is complete until Tina leaves her good job in the city and takes us rollin’ on the river, but that’s not where her connections to the emerald isle ended – her recording of the iconic Goldeneye 007 theme tune was the result of a “very rough” demo sent to her by none other than Bono and The Edge.

“Unbelievable”

The song is widely regarded as one of the most legendary Bond theme tunes of all times and marked the beginning of Pierce Brosnan’s tenure playing the secret agent, but it almost didn’t get made – recalling the initial demo during an interview with Graham Norton back in 2018, Tina revealed it simply wasn’t the best:

“Bono sent me the worst demo. He kind of threw it together as if he thought I wasn’t going to do it. This song, I didn’t even know what key to practice it in.”

“It was unbelievable, what I was sent here,” she remembered, “but, you know, you have to step into the shoes and learn it. And then I sang it how I would sing it, and even Bono was impressed”.

As we now know, the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll found a way to make it work in the end. She continued:

“I actually had to come out of myself to make it a song. I’d never sung a song like that before, so it really gave me creativity in terms of making something out of something that was really rough, very rough.”

You can watch Tina performing the legendary theme tune during a 2009 concert below:

Header image via Getty 

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