Tour by Tina Turner | |
Associated album | Break Every Rule |
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Start date | March 4, 1987 |
End date | March 30, 1988 |
Legs | 5 |
No. of shows | 91 in Europe 87 in North America 6 in South America 11 in Australia 12 in Asia 218 total |
Box office | $60 million ($121.50 in 2017 dollars) |
Tina Turner concert chronology |
Break Every Rule World Tour is the fourth worldwide concert tour by American singer Tina Turner. The tour supported her sixth solo album Break Every Rule. It was sponsored by Pepsi-Cola and broke box office records in 13 different countries. It was the top female concert attraction in 1987–1988 and is the biggest tour, by attendance, for a female artist ever, bringing in over 4 million people.
The tour was originally billed as Turner's "last tour". In an interview with Jet magazine, Turner stated,
It is my last tour for now. There probably won't be a tour with the next album because I want to devote some time to my movie career. But, I don't plan to retire.
The European tour kicked off on March 4, 1987 in front of a sold-out crowd of over 15,000 people at the Olympiahalle in Munich, Germany, a venue that she would later play 7 more times during the tour. During the first few shows, the tour went without Turner's signature hit "Proud Mary". Turner avoided the song because she had done it for so many years. It wasn't until her performance at the Ahoy Rotterdam that she tried the song in the set list. Turner stated, "The crowd erupted and sang the song for us. That's when I realized, 'We've got to put 'Mary' back in, she's still rolling on the river.'"
The most memorable and unusual moment for Turner was in Locarno, Switzerland. The stage for the concert had been built in the center of the town. As Turner recalls, "The stage was literally in the middle of the street surrounded by apartment buildings with parents and little kids sitting on their balconies in their night robes." Before her concerts at Johanneshov Isstadion in Sweden, Turner got a bad sinus infection and had to cancel her concerts. The arena was sold out and when the concert promoter went on stage to tell the audience, instead of booing the 13,000 people cheered with understanding. When Turner returned, she played to an even bigger audience. In her stadium concert in Ireland, Turner attracted a huge crowd of over 60,000 people. During this massive concert, Turner nearly stopped the show because of fans in the front getting crushed by other fans. The European tour ended on July 26, 1987 where it began in Munich, Germany. Turner recalls", Our biggest crowd came towards the end of the tour in Munich. We had already played eight indoor shows there to about 120,000 people and once I have been to a city, I'm always reluctant to go back soon afterward. [Then] we attracted another 100,000 people outdoors, I was really quite astounded. It felt like the Rolling Stones when they drew those huge crowds."