I had read about Bonnie Tyler’s recent health struggles in a Portuguese hospital but like many others thought the legendary Welsh trooper would be back in the saddle before too long and was keeping an eye out for rescheduled gigs and the chance to finally see her live.
Indeed I had tried and failed to get tickets for her intimate warm up show at the O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire back in March and had only passed on a Cardiff Utilita in the same month on account of its proximity to our seeing Richard Ashcroft at the same venue. In any event that Welsh homecoming gig then got postponed until the end of this year.
So it was a shock when I glanced at the Guardian online yesterday and saw the following words sitting above the headline in the top panel: Tribute- Bonnie Tyler totally eclipsed her power-ballad peers.
As it turned out Shepherds Bush Empire on March 19 2026 was Bonnie’s last gig.
Alexis Petridis’s obituary in The Guardian is a fine piece and he captured perfectly her erratic career which featured two bursts of global success.
That first burst was all about those two massive earworm singles: Lost in France and It’s a Heartache, released in 1976 and 1977 when I was just 10 and 11 years old respectively, both of which were much championed by Terry Wogan on his Radio 2 breakfast show. As such I associate them very much with Sway and getting ready for school in the mornings. Over the following years the pair would always enliven any car journey as they graduated gracefully to soft rock golden oldie status.
Lost in France was undoubtedly the more whimsical of the two songs and always gave Terry Wogan the opportunity (which he would never pass up) to offer up mock directions and jokey tips about navigating French roads. Yes it was cheesy but it was a lovely melody and Mum would always sing along with it.
However the follow up It’s a Heartache was very much a Dad tune; Dad loved Bonnie’s voice which had memorably transitioned from smooth and lilting to a ragged and husky rasp.
So all good stuff as family favourites went but I had precociously adjudged them to be a little on the lightweight side, thereby not rendering Bonnie worthy of any further investigation. She was certainly not a serious albums artist.
But that all changed when the man behind Meat Loaf, Jim Steinman, arrived on the scene in 1983. I was a big Meat Loaf fan and one of the very few who had actually bought Jim Steinman’s own Bad for Good, which had songs as good as those on Bat Out Of Hell but sadly not the vocals to do them justice.
Jim had fallen out with Meat Loaf and that was Bonnie’s big break. The first result of their creative union was Total Eclipse of the Heart.
It was a track that blew me away. And my love for the track was more than shared by Dad, how could it not as it was rock gone opera. Dad was a big Wagner fan and that was exactly what Jim Steinman was channelling: now we had a rock opus to rival the Ring Cycle, at a more manageable seven minutes long.
It became Bonnie’s signature track. But I am not going to run with Total Eclipse as the Bonnie track of my years, for reasons of over exposure, an aversion to the dread term power ballad or perhaps just wilful perversity on my part.
Instead I am choosing to remember Bonnie for the accompanying album’s title track: Faster Than The Speed of Night.
Total Eclipse Of The Heart had only just slipped off the top of the charts when the accompanying album Faster Than The Speed of Night was released in April 1983 and, encouraged by Dad, I laid down hard cash for it in (as I recall) in WH Smith in Salisbury. I have no idea why I remember that but I just do. Maybe because buying an album was a big deal after all, a serious investment.
Thankfully I was delighted with my purchase. And it was not an album that needed to grow on me; it was instant gratification and never more so than in the opening two tracks, Have You Ever Seen The Rain and the title track.
Back then I didn’t know then that Have You Ever Seen The Rain was a Creedence Clearwater Revival cover, so Dad had to put me straight.
Listening to the original many years later you realise just how booming and overblown Bonnie’s version is compared to the understated original. The Steinman treatment completely reinvents the song, from rootsy to rollicking, with Bonnie spitting out the I Knows with serious intent and utter commitment.
It a fabulous and bombastic opener but it is just the warm up for the title track. It was and still sounds enormous. This is Bonnie as a gothic Springsteen, with the E Street’s band rhythm section borrowed especially for the occasion (as indeed they were on Bat Out Of Hell), Roy Bittan’s classical piano trills leading the way and Max Weinberg’s drums close behind, slamming in at every conceivable opportunity and often seemingly just for the hell of it. There are more cymbal crashes than can possibly be necessary.
It is ridiculously over the top and still sounds as barking mad some 43 years later.
To my mind it’s the pinnacle of Steinman’s Wagnerian Rock project. And Bonnie is never swallowed up or overawed by the booming musical bedlam behind her; she rides it out and gives it everything, and then some.
I am sorry I will now never get the chance to see Bonnie and hear it live.
Faster than the speed of night
Faster than the speed of night
It’s all we ever wanted
And all we’ll ever need
And it’s slipping through our fingers
Faster than the speed of night
