Bonnie Tyler dies, aged 75 | The Late Show with Ryan Tubridy
Um, oh, I got a very big soft spot for it. It’s a heartache. You know, everybody tries to sing sing like me in that one. Uh, but you know, I’ve lost in France and Total Eclipse of Heart holding out for a hero. You know, Total Eclipse of the Heart is one that everybody like does karaoke to. >> You think you’ll ever get singing it? >> Never ever.
And to have this presented to me, MBE, by the Prince of Wales, magnificent. And um, it’s a very exciting day. Um, one I’ll never forget. >> She was born Gainor Hopkins. She grew up in a four-bedroom council house in Skuwan in South Wales, the daughter of a coal miner. She left school with no qualifications. She worked in a grocery shop and came second in a local talent contest at 17.
And from all of that, she built one of the most distinctive voices in the history of popular music. A voice that was never supposed to sound the way it did. A voice that arrived by accident and became irreplaceable. She sang first in a chapel as a child. All things bright and beautiful in a Protestant congregation in a Welsh village.
She loved Janice Joplam and Tina Turner, the raw, powerful female voices. That is what she was aiming for. She joined a band as a backing singer. Then she formed her own band called Imagination. She changed her name to Shireen Davis to avoid confusion with the Welsh folk singer Mary Hopkin. Then on the advice of RCA records, she sat down with the newspaper, compiled a list of surnames and first names from two separate columns and assembled the name Bonnie Tyler. It stuck.
In 1975, she was spotted singing at a club in Swansea by a talent scout named Roger Bell. A demo was recorded and RCA offered a contract. In 1976, her debut single failed to chart. Then, Lost in France made the UK top 10. After that came It’s a heartache, number four in Britain and number three in America. She was on her way. Then the nodules.
Years of singing in Welsh clubs had left growths on her vocal cords. Surgery was required to remove them. She was told not to talk for 6 weeks. She found this by her own account essentially impossible. When her voice came back, it was different, rougher, grittier, more powerful. She said she couldn’t believe the difference.
She thought the surgery might end her career. It turned out to be the thing that made her. By 1981, the hits had dried up in RCA Letter Go. She signed to CBS Records she needed a new direction. Then she saw Meatloaf performing Bat Out of Hell on BBC television, and she had an idea. She told CBS she wanted to work with Meatloaf’s writer and producer, a man named Jim Steinman.
CBS thought she’d lost her mind. She insisted. Steinman initially declined. They eventually met at his apartment in New York in April 1982. He sat her down at a piano and played her two songs to test her taste. She passed and he agreed to work with her. Weeks later, she returned to his apartment. His regular collaborator, Rory Dodd, sat at the piano and sang a song that Simon had been developing for years, a gothic vagarian power ballad originally titled Vampires in Love, conceived during a lunar eclipse, which was inspired by the 1922 silent film
Noseratu. They recorded it at Power Station Studios in New York. Multiple takes of every track, 64 recording tracks, every fader at maximum. The engineers said they ran out of reverb. Simon wanted the biggest drum sound ever. Max Weinberg and Roy Bittton from Bruce Springsteen’s East Street band played on the record.
There was organ choirs and cannon sounds. Nobody cared. She learned the entire song sitting beside Styon at the piano. He never gave her a demo. She said, “I’ll never forget the feeling when he played me Total Eclipse for the first time. I couldn’t believe he was offering it to me.” Total Eclipse of the Heart was released in 1983.
Number one in the United Kingdom and the United States. Number one in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and Norway, top 10 across Europe, Grammy nomination for best female pop vocal performance. The accompanying album, Faster than the Speed of Night, became the first album by a British female artist to debut at number one on the UK albums chart.
Steimon said of her voice, “It sounds ravaged like it has been through a lot.” The following year came Holding Out for a Hero from the Foot Loose soundtrack written again by Styon, number two in Britain, almost as oporatic as Totally Eclipse. The two songs together defined a moment in popular music so completely that 40 years later they are still impossible to escape.
They soundtrack to weddings, funerals, karaoke nights and film montages. She never got tired of. She said, “Every time I sing total eclipse, it’s like the first time.” She had met Robert Sullivan in 1970 when he was working as a club manager in Swansea and she was still Gainor Hopkins singing in the clubs.
He had competed for Great Britain in judo at the 1972 Munich Olympics. They married in 1973. She said the secret to their 50 years together was that they met before she was famous. He was related to Katherine Zeta Jones, which made Bonnie family by marriage to one of Wales’s other great exports. She sang Total Eclipse of the Heart at Midnight at Michael Douglas and Zeta Jones’s wedding in New York in 2000.
She kept working in Europe in particular. She never lost her appeal with Germany, France, and Scandinavia remaining major markets long after her UK chart success faded. She represented the United Kingdom at Eurovvision in 2013, finished 19th, handled it with good humor. Her 18th studio album, The Best Is Yet to Come, was released in 2021 when she was 70 years old. The title was not ironic.
In 2022, she was appointed MBE for services to music. a coal miner’s daughter from Skuwan who assembled her own name from a newspaper. Who had surgery on her vocal cords and came back with a voice nobody could replicate. Who sat beside Jim Steinman at a piano in New York and heard the song that would define her life. She never stopped.
She was still touring in her 70s, still singing it like the first time. That was Bonnie Tyler. And that was her greatest legacy. Joining me today is news broadcasting journalist Chenade Garin. Chenade, good to see you. Thanks for being here. >> Oh, yeah. Pleasure. >> Uh, talk about distinctive voices. Bonnie Tyler.
But she was not always Bonnie Tyler. So, let’s go back to the beginning and back to Wales. >> Yes. She was born at Gainer Hopkins back in 1951 in Nice in Wales. Uh, as you said, to a coal miner. Um, and she was in a big family, three sisters, two brothers. So, I think um that always, as anyone with any siblings knows, that affects your music taste. Sure.
Especially if you’ve got ones that are quite a bit older there. And she she said that, but of course her house was full of Elvis and uh the Beatles and and everything around that time. Um Frank Soninatra as well. >> Maybe a bit of Tom Jones for a little local flavor. Who knows? Yeah, you would you would expect so from Wales.
>> Yeah. And and then she you know she said her mother played her a lot of music which is also seemed it does seem to be a kind of a key to a lot of musicians what what their mother was doing and whether they were enthusiastic about music as well. >> Yes. >> Um so yeah she she wanted to be a singer.
Her auntie took her to a competition and she really like in a local church and she realized she could sing. So from there she went she went to the clubs. She formed her own band. Uh, and she was, you know, singing in all the different like working men’s clubs in in Wales and just having a good time really. >> I would imagine the working men’s clubs.
I always get the image of very smoky, quite boozy, but uh, great grounding for singers to to do the clubs to to but I could imagine her voice >> to be heard over all that. She probably gave it, you know, had to give it a bit more. >> Well, well, yes. I mean this is the thing famously you know what what turned her into an absolute superstar was the fact that um there was damage done to her throat you know I mean if you think about her when she’s singing Lost in France so this is when she has got a record deal with RCA which you can
imagine at the time when that happened and she’s like I’m on Elvis Presley’s record label little old me. >> Yeah. >> Um just incredible. I mean, uh, I think things dipped as well then because, uh, when Elvis died, they were spending most of their time dealing with his back catalog and making money, which she felt was a bit sort of unfair.
There wasn’t anyone kind of pushing her. But if you listen to her voice in um, Lost in France, she’s it’s so it it’s powerful, but it’s smooth and it’s delicate. >> It’s a different artist. >> Yeah, it is. And, you know, she’s kind of all bohemian wandering around like a a French shadow in the video and and and it’s but it’s stunning.
It’s it’s still one of the most beautiful voices, right? >> But then of course um she has to have this operation because of these nodules which a lot of singers get if they do have to use their voice quite sort of strongly like you say in these working men’s clubs. >> A lot of smoke you know a lot of like um shouting and you know and damage.
>> Yeah. So there would have been a lot of damage. Um but the story goes that when she had this operation you know you’re not supposed to speak for like eight weeks afterwards. You got to rest it. that either she was speaking too soon or actually she she there’s one story that she screamed in frustration and then that damaged it permanently.
>> Frankie >> um but actually that was the turning point, right? So then when you start to hear her voice like there’s it’s like a completely different person, right? It’s raspy, it’s raw, but it is stunning, >> you know, and you just think you can’t like create that. And I mean, if her voice hadn’t been like that, she never would have worked with Jim Steinman.
And that was the absolute making. That was the big one. >> So, it’s it’s a lovely lesson in life, isn’t it? Something that could potentially have ruined your career or or like made you go in a different path actually can sometimes be the best thing that’s happened to you. This awful operation she had to have, like the the damage that was done actually turned into something fantastic for her.
It’s it’s it’s it’s a it’s a funny conversation about Bonnie Tyler because you can’t help but you you’re saying Bonnie Tyler and all you have is turn around and you’re just waiting to get to to totally. But >> to go back a step, she’s in Wales. >> She’s doing the clubs. >> Um she she she has this style and she’s got her RCA.
So she bounced from the clubs to the RCA. She was she was discovered by somebody. >> She was spotted in a club. >> She was spotted in a club. Somebody said, “We’ll have a bit of that.” Yeah, exactly. And then there was there was a number of months before she was then contacted again, but they did contact her and they signed her. Yeah.
Um and yeah, she was, you know, putting out these songs uh like Lost in France, which was probably the the biggest hit. I mean, there were lots that didn’t do much at all. >> So, she wasn’t getting huge traction there. >> No, she wasn’t. But she also said she was really enjoying herself and couldn’t quite believe that she was, you know, part, you know, any of this was sort of happening.
>> Yes. Um, and she I don’t know I don’t know if you’ve ever met her, but she’s Yeah, I met her once. Yeah. warm kind you know that that sort of lovely Welsh vibe to her. She’s endearing to everybody. Right. So, and I think that kind of grounded attitude she had as well made her a hard worker. Right. Well, I’m going to keep going.
We’ll keep trying. We’ll keep trying. >> We’re after >> Yeah. Exactly. Um, but unfortunately RCA did drop her. >> Yes. >> Um, >> and what happened then? So, she gets dropped by RCA. >> Yeah. And I’m still have turnaround in my head as we getting towards that that piano moment. >> Were there was there much of a wilderness years or and how did we get to the piano? >> Yeah.
No, it it wasn’t too long before um she she she’d heard of Jim Steinman now. Um sort of lately we know him very well for Meatloaf, >> the big bangers. Let’s face it, >> the big 80s cinematic power ballads before power ballad was even a term at this point. So, so that’s, you know, that’s where his, you know, absolute skill was.
Um, and she’d heard him do a few things with Meatloaf and then was like, “Oh, I I’d quite like to work with this guy.” So, she found a way to get in touch with him. He wasn’t that bothered, but you know, persistence, come on, it goes a long way. >> Back to the graft. Yeah, she >> did. So, so they did meet up. Um, and you know, the a couple of songs were played.
Uh, she went away, she studied them. She came back and she sang two of the songs Simon had written. One of them was Total Eclipse of the Heart. And he was like, “Yeah, no, she she’s pretty good.” Like she just had the perfect voice for it. And you know, then that that exploded for her and she went from someone who was grafting who’d had a few songs.
It was kind of like it was pretty well known. I mean like Lost in France did do some numbers. Yeah. >> Um, so she was quite wellnown, but this was like suddenly like catapulted in the way that a single can’t these days because of how streaming works or whatever. Like back then for a song to go number one here and in the US and all, you know, people have to go out and part with hard earned cash and save up and you go to the shop and excuse me sir, do you have a copy of this type thing and can I listen to it first? All all that sort of stuff. So to do that
those numbers back in that day is amazing. And and you know just fast forwarding a bit she’s got something like she’s past the one billion mark on Spotify now with streams for it which no surprise >> you know and that yeah so so really once she’d left RCA and maybe that seemed again like oh gosh what’s going to happen then all of a sudden this absolute magic occurs and she becomes like the voice of the 80s really.
She really I mean I remember well and and the video was kind of an MTV phenomenon as well. The video was very very gothic is the great was a great word. You could see like a female meatloaf sort of situation going on there. >> Absolutely. which was she’s known and then also she was known as the female Rod Stewart because of that Rod Stewart roughness and like you know um but yeah I mean it just that was uh for her the real big turning point and made her into this huge huge star and with a song actually that you know has again never
disappeared. >> No, but it still sounds great. >> It still sounds great and I the longevity of it is is quite phenomenal. >> Well, you know the longevity is phenomenal when my 27year-old daughter uses it as her karaoke number. Well, well, that’s it. It’s a great karaoke song. >> It’s cathartic to sing. >> Yeah, it is cathartic to sing.
>> Yeah, if you’re in the car and everyone sings along with them. >> And also, I I feel like, you know, growing up in the 80s, those songs, you hear them so much like we just know them off by heart anyway. That’s right. >> You know, and so they’re like you can sing all the words without like the machine at the karaoke.
>> Holding out for a Hero. >> Yeah. Uh, another massive song that now a whole bunch of a whole other generation who watch Shrek will know that this is a, you know, critical song and that soundtrack and and a great fun song, a completely, you know, >> well, they these songs keep kind of reinventing themselves if you like because it’s it’s not obviously that was in Shrek, but now you’ve got Tik Tok and Instagram that’ll be using that, but also there’s there’ll be like a football montage on that might use it, you know,
or or um, you know, I don’t know, >> cars. They’re built for >> reality TV shows that will pop it in. So yeah, all those things that can like really breathe new life into a song. Not that that really ever needs any breathing life into because it it does. But also when there was a total eclipse, >> there she is.
>> There she is. It’s like like everyone’s trying to get her on their show, right? >> Who else do you want? And I think also uh what’s what’s great about her is and the reason she’s still around and she’s still touring, you know, even though she hasn’t had huge hits afterwards, she’s not forgotten the power of that song or she didn’t forget the power of that song.
>> Um she realized that that song wasn’t hers. It was, you know, it was the fans. It was part of culture now. It was kind of like out of her hands. So she had no problem singing it time and time again. She often times with with with artists and they mightn’t have had 40 hits or 10 hits. They might have had two or three.
Most artists, you know, unless they’re different sort of story. Um you I often wonder about their relationship with that song. You know, I you felt bad on the TV show that I presented in Ireland saying, you know, do you mind do you mind playing this? And I go, no, this this has this has built my house.
This has paid my mortgage. This is the I am grateful for this song. Now she did come on the show when I was there many years ago and her her voice was really quite troubled you know you could see it was an effort for her and I felt not sympathy isn’t the right word I actually admired her for for keep go for keeping on going but that it it is such a it’s such a challenging >> register she’s at that it it must have been quite hard for her to keep belting it out.
>> It is. Yeah. But she says um she knows that like that is such a moment for people to just come and like scream the song back at her, you know, wherever whatever concert it is, like that’s their moment. And if you think about great moments in your life when you’ve watched a band or an artist you love, like they stay with you forever.
And she’s she’s just so gracious in that. And I well she she was so gracious in that. And I think there are a lot of artists who shy away from their big numbers. I mean, you know, >> Radio Head’s last tour in 2025, they didn’t play Creep, and that is would be their biggest song. >> Um, and that’s fine.
You might not have the same relationship with the song, but at some point it stops being your song and it becomes part of popular culture. And that’s what Bonnie Tyler is like. Two massive tracks are still. And she knew that. And that I think was is probably her legacy. >> So what do we know about her and her relationship to success? We mentioned that she had obviously had a a good solid marriage which must have been very useful and helpful to her.
Um but she had these hits that was the 80s essentially and they stayed they stayed alive but I I don’t I wasn’t hugely familiar with a lot of her life after those songs. >> Yeah. So she she carried on record she went to various different labels. She carried on recording some music, doing some other covers.
She was just enjoying herself and that’s what she always said. Uh if she was able to tour, she was able to still keep playing. Uh enjoy the fruits of her labor of the 80s and still be this icon. She was happy. And I think for a lot of people, you know, to have got the success that she had in the 80s, um, completely overrides like, you know, a regular like top 10 hit for the rest of your career.
You know, people strive for those massive hits that will never ever disappear from history. >> Yes. >> Um, and can never get that, but they may be sort of plotting along like with. So no, she never had the success, but for her it didn’t seem to matter. She enjoyed herself. She was able to carry on being a musician, and that in itself um is such a gift, and that’s what she was afforded by the success of those two songs.
>> And and I think I was struck when she got quite sick towards the end, the fuss that was made about that. And there was a great warmth towards her going, “Oh gosh, you know, I hope she was okay.” And so forth. I mean she was held in in high esteem. There was there was a respect for her and a gratitude, wasn’t there? >> Yeah.
And I think that came from the fact that she was talented. She had this beautiful voice, but also she was very grounded. She was very normal >> down to earth. She kept her Welsh roots. She lived between um Wales and Portugal with her husband who she married when she was 22. So before any of the fame and she always said that’s probably what kept her grounded.
But even towards the end, she’d spoke so fondly of him like they didn’t fall out and he was easy on the eye and all those lovely things, you know. Um and sadly she didn’t have any children. She did want to. She had a miscarriage and then couldn’t um u conceive then again after that, but had lots of godchildren and nieces and nephews and that sort of you know lately made her very very happy. Yeah.
um and all of that. She was still like a sort of a homey Welsh girl despite all the um kind of the the success of the 80s and she was able just to carry on being a musician and also you know join in on the fun of uh the the big hits from the 80s and the theatrics of it and you know allow people to sort of do their uh versions of it but being on the joke it not never became like a character.
She was never also in the tabloids was she? She was never a scandal. never remember any of that. >> Yeah. And I think again that was probably due to her marriage and her very sort of grounded sense like she wasn’t out partying. I mean obviously there was no social media for her to be spotted following out of out of anything. Yeah.
>> But um that kind of kept her as just like oh you know we love Bonnie Tyler. You know she’s a she’s a good girl. She’s an amazing singer. She’s got this beautiful Welsh accent. She’s lovely. um and provided just some iconic moments in >> you can see why some executive somewhere said Eurovision power ballad >> big hair >> bunny >> you know and why they might have sent her over to represent the UK >> yeah initially she was a bit reluctant but yeah um I think because historically the UK don’t do particularly well and I
think she thought oh gosh this is going to just just here for people just going to have a laugh. But actually, she was releasing one of her own albums around the time. I thought, well, do you know what? There is a lot of people watching. Let’s just do it. So, she’d already written the song for her album, um, Believe in Me.
And so, yeah, she thought and she had great fun with it. And, you know, everyone was obsessed with her being there and all that love and adoration. So, I think she had a jolly good time uh, in the end. And I don’t think it did her album sales any any harm at all. I mean the I think she came 19th or something which actually I think about 23 points she got.
I mean that’s that’s better than a lot of UK entries. So she didn’t do too bad. >> Yeah. She Yeah, she she she didn’t she didn’t shame herself or or the nation. Um I suppose we should end our chat about the late Bonnie Tyler and uh look a little bit at the legacy aspect of it because >> she you’ve described what sounds like a very nice woman.
I met her only briefly in passing but and I would say that and that lovely warmth but legacy wise Chenade what are you thinking? >> I I I think it’s her voice really and the fact that her voice will live on. I mean you know effectively those two songs have immortalized her really you know uh because everyone recognizes her voice.
I I mean I speak to some of the young people who work in my office 20 21 and when she was sort of uh not very well uh towards the end she um they were like oh Bonnie Tyler and I’m like you know because there are some people they’ve never heard of and you’re like what and they’re like but people do do know her and she’ll her her songs will live on through you know whether it’s karaoke whether it’s screaming it out in the car whether it’s like covers of it um you know the melody the fact that as we said before it’s so cathartic to sing a song like that,
you know, it’s fantastic. So, I think her voice um the fact that she’s an 80s icon and, you know, that’s incredible. And we don’t get that many icons, I don’t think, anymore that aren’t so super produced and super, you know, told how to look and wear and do and be and have to be conscious of social media. She could just be who she was, but also just, you know, lovely warm lady at the end of the day, too.
>> Yeah. Lovely way to put it. Thank you, Chenade, for coming to see us today. There you go. A little girl who went from piecing together her stage name from a newspaper in skewing to sitting with Jim Steinman at a piano in New York. Moments that altered her life forever. From total eclipse of the heart to holding out for a hero.
She was there and she never stopped fighting. Not through vocal surgery, not through being let go by her record label. She found her voice. She found her fight and she etched herself into our lives forever. That was Bonnie Tyler. May she rest in peace. Thanks for being here today. Goodbye.