Roger Davies (manager) - Move Overseas - Tina Turner

Tina Turner

In 1979, Davies became the manager of singer Tina Turner. Tina's career was at a low ebb after she separated from her husband Ike; she was virtually broke and without a record contract. Davies guided Tina's incredible comeback, and over a four-year period rebuilt Turner's career, and helped her to launch her solo career.

By the 1970s, Ike Turner had become heavily addicted to drugs and abused his wife. After years of conflict, Tina had walked out of her disastrous marriage but she left the partnership with nothing and over the next few years struggled to survive as a solo artist. By 1979, she was without a record contract for the first time in her career. She was supporting herself by gigging on the hotel and club circuit but although her talent was undiminished, she realised that she needed new songs, new management and a new image if she was going to reach a wider audience and make it as a solo performer.

In 1979, Davies accompanied Lee Kramer to see Tina live for the first time at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco and it was a turning point for both of them. Roger & Lee met Tina after the show and saw that she was still hungry for success: "She he said 'I want to get out of here and play rock venues.' Tina opted to take lee Kramer on as her manager, Roger reluctantly went along with the plan and he set to work finding her a new contract, although the next couple of years proved to be a testing time. To support herself, Tina worked on the club circuit, while Davies called in every favor owed to him to put together a comeback.

Tina's comeback began in UK with a dynamic cover of The Temptations' "Ball of Confusion", recorded with Heaven 17 alter-ego British Electric Foundation (BEF), and this was followed by a cover of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together", which was a hit in Europe. Her major breakthrough came with "What's Love Got to Do with It", a song written for her by Terry Britten (ex The Twilights), although Tina disliked the song and originally turned it down. Despite her reservations, it became a huge success, providing her with her first US #1 hit. The single "Private Dancer" (penned by Mark Knopfler) was a major international hit and the 1984 album Private Dancer became one of the biggest successes of the 1980s, earning Tina three Grammy Awards in 1985, and re-establishing her as one of the world's top rock performers. On the day the single hit #1 in the USA, Tina was offered the role of "Aunty Entity" in the Australian film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Turner's profile has endured and in 2000 her Twenty Four Seven Tour was also the highest grossing US tour of the year.

Davies notoriety in the music business has led to him becoming probably the only Australian rock manager ever to be wrongly portrayed in American TV and film. In 1993, the biography of Tina Turner by Kurt Loder, What's Love Got to Do with It, was made into a hit film with Angela Bassett as Tina and Australian singer-actor James Reyne (former lead singer of Australian Crawl) portraying Davies when actually it was lee kramer who should have been credited. He was also satirically portrayed by Alec Baldwin in a Saturday Night Live sketch when Tina guested on the program.