Bonnie Tyler passed on aged 75 last Wednesday, 8 July. Under normal circumstances I’d feel no compulsion to opine on some pop starlet thousands of kilometers away were it not for the fact that Tyler’s is less the death of an individual than the mourning for something that could hardly ever be done quite so beautifully again. Emulated, possibly. Remixed, sure. That seems to be a thing these days anyway. But done authentically better, nha, I doubt that.
If I’m beginning to sound like some hormone-imbalanced purist who’s just too miserable to accept that his best days are behind him and is annoyed by the receding hairline, I won’t hold it against you. You’re probably right: it’s not even necessarily about the music per se. It’s about an era. A moment in time of listening to people on the radio. If you we’re lucky to own a tape recorder and empty cassettes and we’re patient enough to be there to push the record button when Total Eclipse of the Heart came on, how blessed you were.
To be sure, Tyler was more a rosy-cheeked Welsh woman than a revolutionary Annie Lennox screaming for the Liberation cause but I’d like to think if you were desperately Holding out for a Hero to come save the day, her songs always struck a nerve somewhere – even though you’d never admit as much to your comrades. Lazy comparison, I know. But whether one fancies a chivalrous white knight in love or a Makarov-wielding resistance fighter all is fair in love and war me prefers to conclude.
Hers was a moment in time for genius, when creativity was a thing and to earn your place as a pop star meant you simply had to have the pipes. That is, you had to do live on stage what the records claimed you were capable of.
Of kosher bands who gigged everywhere they could and at every chance they got. If she’d grown up in Langa, Tyler could’ve been another Brenda Fassie because neither lady was a Weekend Special. You could toss the records aside when mom insisted on listening to the radio drama. But dump them? Never. Tyler showed us the grace of taking love, even the unrequited variant, and carry it so dearly as to Make Love (Out of Nothing at All) regardless. Fassie was there to remind the gossiping townshiper that her efforts to stand in the way of her, (Fassie’s) son’s marital plans had to come to nought. For here now was Fassie’s son about to tie the knot, so Vulindlela weMamgobizi. Out the way you no good jibber-jabber.
Like Janis Joplin they took another piece from the heart of lovestruck fans. They gave us evergreens – songs that outlived them but are still spinning on the home stereo, stirring up memories both unforgettable and heartbreaking to this day. Real songs for real people. To many of her fans, she was the soundtrack to the first dance at the Matric farewell, the tear-inducing voice when the one you loved loved you no more. Yes, it is that deep.
But there is also has a lighter side that occurred at a lavish Bloemfontein restaurant around the 2010’s when Tyler and her entourage rocked up one evening. The previous evening I’d been fortunate to serve her roadies. A rowdy, unfussy lot whose only instruction to me was exactly what a commission-earning waiter likes to hear: ‘drinks all around, and keep ’em coming, mate.’
The following evening her main posse showed up. Doting – as is the habit of kitchen hands – after them, I obliged when they requested a gas heater to be hauled up to the area they were seated at. Big mistake. Barely five minutes later, a whooshing sound came from their secluded nook. The heater had triggered the smoke detectors and the poor guys were spilling out of there trying to get away from the gush of water. Thank God Tyler had decided on an early night. Even better, her people found the whole thing rather hilarious, so funny in fact, that they left behind a bucket loaded with beer for everybody who was on duty.
Of course, even die-hard fans find themselves disillusioned when these idols suddenly change tact. Move with the times, as it were, leaving the rest of us to commiserate on what was. What will never be. Tyler’s later career sometimes took on an unfamiliar direction but one was still able to find glimpses of the old and croaks. It wasn’t quite what the old jams gave, but still there were remnants of it there somewhere. So we listened, albeit somewhat begrudgingly. Fassie’s funeral was like something of a national song of mourning, a special composition for the one and only Mabrrr. I hope the Welsh – an unapologetically pompous lot if the standup comics are to be believed – will come out and dance a bit for the beloved Bonnie Tyler.
Featured image: Bonnie Tyler in Moscow 1997. Source: Wikipedia. Nadir Chanyshev