Bonnie Tyler is celebrating 40 years of her seminal album, ‘Faster Than The Speed Of Night’, with an anniversary reissue.
Released in 1983, the LP delivered hits such as Have You Ever Seen The Rain?, Straight From The Heart and the classic Total Eclipse Of The Heart.
Available on limited edition red vinyl, it comes ahead of the release of her autobiography, ‘Straight From The Heart’, on September 28, which promises to be “a heartfelt and candid memoir that tells the story of how a shy, music-loving teenager morphed into an international superstar”, per a press release.
‘Faster Than The Speed Of Night’ is out September 15 on Sony and available to pre-order here.
Tracklist: Bonnie Tyler – Faster Than The Speed Of Night
SIDE A
1. Have You Ever Seen The Rain?
2. Faster Than The Speed Of Night
3. Getting So Excited
4. Total Eclipse Of The Heart
SIDE B
1. It’s A Jungle Out There
2. Goin’ Through The Motions
3. Tears
4. Take Me Back
5. Straight From The Heart
Back in 1983, the Welsh superstar found herself at a crossroads and debated giving up on chart success and returning home to the local circuit. Fortunately, she gave it one more shot, signing with CBS and connecting with Steinman – who had already enjoyed numerous hits with Meat Loaf, a personal favourite of Bonnie’s.
“[A&R man] Muff Winwood said to me, ‘Right, Bonnie, we’ve got you for five years, who would you like to work with?’ and I said, ‘Well, I’m so glad you asked me that, because I want to work with whoever writes and produces Meat Loaf’. And he looked at me like I was crackers,” she tells RETROPOP’s August issue. “He said, ‘Bonnie, that’s Jim Steinman’ and I said, ‘Yeah, and I want to work with him. I know I can sing those songs and I think we would be good together!’”
Despite initial reservations, Winwood agreed to reach out to the legendary producer and songwriter and, to both his and Bonnie’s surprise and delight, he agreed to meet with them and the pair jetted off to New York for a visit to his apartment, which overlooked Central Park.
“We arrived at this incredible building and he was on the top floor – his next door neighbour was Dustin Hoffman,” she recalls, “and when we got out of the lift there was this trail of M&Ms leading to his door – like in ‘E.T.’! So we rang the bell and through the glass panel in the door we saw this thing with hair all over his face, like Cousin Itt from ‘The Addams Family’! But he was so sweet; he looked frightening, but he invited us in and he was playing songs and one of them was Have You Ever Seen the Rain?.”
Originally a 1971 hit for Creedence Clearwater Revival, it was the first song the pair decided to work on for the project and ultimately became the opening track on ‘Faster Than The Speed Of Night’.
The following month, he presented them with an original track – Total Eclipse Of The Heart. “He had started writing it many, many years before and originally it was for a vampire theatre play, but he finished it off after he met me, took me and David to the office where his manager, David Sonenberg, worked, thrusted the lyrics in front of us and played the song on the grand piano,” she smiles. “[Canadian rocker] Rory Dodd was there and he sang it all the way through – all eight minutes – while Jim played it on the piano, and when he finished me and David just looked at each other, because it was amazing!”
Released in February 1983 in the UK, the track topped the Singles Chart and became the fifth-best-selling release of the year, achieving similar success worldwide. In the States, it was released that summer and also hit No. 1, keeping another Steinman penned song, Making Love Out of Nothing at All by Air Supply, from reaching the top spot.
“It was incredible,” Bonnie beams. “But as you can imagine, I was everywhere – on all the TV shows, all the radio stations, I was touring – so I didn’t have a minute to myself and I really didn’t have the time to realise how much fun it was. It was an incredible time but I was working so hard that it wasn’t until years later that I could really appreciate it.”
