3. Ike & Tina TurnerLet Me Touch Your Mind
Now, you could really substitute, and I love Ike & Tina Turner so much, but you could substitute any of their records, they’re all so good. This one especially has my favourite Ike & Tina song on it, it’s called ‘Annie Had A Baby’, with the lyric “Annie had a baby now she can’t work no more”, and it’s so fun. It’s interesting to listen to these records as they’re like a time capsule – the politics are, like, way off. There’s a song on here called ‘Help Him’ and it has this great monologue at the top of it where’s talking to one of her friends and sitting her down and basically the whole song is ‘you gotta help him be the man you want him to be’. It was before Spotify, and even after Spotify, where they were having a hard time wrangling all the rights to this stuff. For a long time it was hard. You can get compilations and whatnot but it was really tough to get the full records themselves. I got them all on vinyl and that’s how I listen to these most of the time, but they never get old. There’s a song on here called ‘Popcorn’ that’s fucking awesome, super fun and funky, and his guitar sounds just like farting, it’s so cool, he’s got the fattest farting guitar and the production is so dry. I think a lot of these records sound like they were recorded in their living room, and everywhere’s covered in carpet – it’s as dry as a bone and you can hear everything. She’s always been a massive inspiration and performance-wise when I started to do Scissor Sisters, I would watch old videos of her and the Ikettes and soak in that power. She is a force of motherfucking nature! Their last album together was a gospel record and it’s heart-breaking, a really beautiful album and there’s so much pain in it, it’s a fascinating listen.
