This tour becomes a real hype and trained our media skills because even the TV visited my apartment in Essen and forced me to transform my normal living room into a Tina Turner shrine. Of course, it is not difficult for me to transform any room into a Tina-shrine but if you do this every fortnight then you know the workload and you try to reach only minimum levels. This is easy and possible with newspaper photo because you only sit in one corner of the white leather couch (or in your plush couch, I don´t know) while the photo is being taken and you can control the outcome of the picture. This is totally different with a camera zooming in and out and scanning the whole room with all imperfect coners. Therefore, we decorated every spot of my huge book shelf with Tina records. Luckily, I had the book shelf designed in a way that allows exactly one 12-inch-record to fit into one segment as you can see on the photos below.
The recording itself was somewhat unusual, to be honest. The camera team arrived in four, three boys and a girl who had contacted me and wanted to meet us in person. They brought an immense technical equipment with them, consisting of two spotlights which stood on nearly 3m high tripods. Not only that they filled the living room with a strangely bright light, but they also heated up the room so that I had to open the balcony door - right in the middle of November. In addition to that, they were cables, the camera, of course, and some boxes and suitcases with more and more technical equipment. The interview had to be repeated after one hour because they did not record any sound. A friend of mine who works for a radio station thought this could have been a fine trick to repeat all our useless answers but I cannot believe that the small argument of the audio technician and the producer was a little stage play. They could not completely agree whether they had recorded nothing at all or if the sound was only very weak and filled with echoes. Before this could be verified, Lars proposed quickly to repeat everything. As we did not want to sing "Simply the best" in the beginning we wanted to show some kind of commitment, and repeating our adventures seemed to be a commitment which was easy to fulfill.
Everything had started with the article in the "Neue Ruhr Zeitung (NRZ)" which the girl had found. She was responsible for finding new stories and our human-interest-story could be of interest for the TV station. I could assure her that we had time for a visit and that it meant absolutely no difficulty for us to retell our love for Tina.
You can view photo stills and the original clip here or even download it.
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This was a real premiere because this was the first video I ever uploaded to youtube.com. It is not as difficult as I had expected but I was nevertheless happy when it finally appeared on the screen and in the search lists. Here is the embedded version of this file.
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In case you would like to add this video to your own collection - both because of our appearance and due to some tour promo material - or you think that it is necessary to show your friends and family that other people are as bad puppies as you than you should not only forward the link but also download the video.
This interview took place in Cologne, in front of the Hyatt Hotel in which Tina and the band were staying. I received a call in the morning from a woman who worked for RTL and was responsible for the organisation of meetings, interviews and background information. She asked me if we were in Cologne on the same day and I said yes because we wanted to see the hotel and catch a glimpse of the band and - if possible - of Tina herself. It was somewhat strange to get a phone call from a TV station and to propose a meeting with camera and microphone in front of the hotel - but why not? The only problem was that Lars had to reorganize his work so that he could leave at 14:00. Our appointment was on 15:00 so one hour should be enough for the distance between Lars´s work in Düsseldorf and the Hyatt in Cologne.
We were a little bit too late but this was no problem because we had planned our activities on the phone with the lady who had shown up personally for the interview and the organisation. As it was relatively cold everybody wanted to start immediately. Normally, we would not stand outside of the hotel. We have now reached an age at which it is appropriate to sit down in leather sofas with a good cup of coffee, tea or hot chocolate and wait for things to happen. But as everyone is expecting fans to be outside you can see us in front of the hotel with our banner and the phone which (yes, yes, the insider number: 6345789) is waiting for a call from Tina.
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You can watch the result of our interview and the intercut promo and concert material here. It is not that long as our Home Story but nevertheless funny because you can see our "Hottest Granny on Earth"-banner which Tina likes very much. Well, we did not know if she really likes it but she always had to laugh during the concerts and made funny movements that we should put it away. The banner itself was even mentioned in another newspaper in the headline.
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In case you would like to have us (and maybe the Tina-seconds, too) in your own collection, you can download it here: Download high resolution version
We were diving for several minutes during "Proud Mary" as so many other fans during the tour but the camera man thought that our performance was the most impressing one - or the most suitable for children, I don´t know. Years later, in 2008, this fraction of a second will make it to the Ticketmaster commercial for the US Tour. Here is the original footage of Markus & Marco diving and rolling on the river.
