Bonnie Tyler has admitted that she was scared to speak between songs because of her Welsh accent.
The singer, who was born Skewen, Neath Port Talbot, said that she had taken elocution lessons in the early days of her career as she “wanted to calm it down a bit”.
The Total Eclipse of The Heart singer spoke on the How To Fail With Elizabeth Day podcast, where Day and guests discuss “the things in life that haven’t gone right and what we might learn from them along the way”.
“It’s a bit like Tom Jones I suppose… he’s lived in America since God-knows-when until recently, and he’s still got his Welsh accent,” she said.
Bonnie Tyler spoke on the How To Fail With Elizabeth Day podcast
PA
Tyler, 72, who visited Russia “many times” during her career, also discussed her numerous performances at the Kremlin.
One show even had Vladamir Putin in attendance, who sat with his “face down to his feet”.
Asked who she had sung for in the Kremlin, Tyler said: “Putin … He was in the front row at one time.”
“He had his face down to his feet”, she added.
The singer said she believed the performance was a type of charity gig.
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She added: “Obviously, that’s not gonna happen anymore which is a great shame because it (Russia) had turned completely different to the first time I went there and then when I went back, I couldn’t believe it, designer stores everywhere.”
The 72-year-old also toured the country before the breakup of the Soviet Union, experiences she describes as “very strange”.
“I think I was the first Western girl to perform there,” she shared on the podcast hosted by Day, an English novelist and journalist.
“And it was very, very strange, but beautiful in a way as well, because I had my own band, obviously.”
She said that the KGB chaperoned herself and her band during her visits, with members being stationed on every floor of the hotels they stayed in.
Tyler was born in Skewen, Neath Port Talbot
Wikipedia
“It was a normal thing in Russia then. But they watch everything, they write everything down, whoever goes into a room, it’s all written down,” she explained.
“But the audiences were loving it because they’d never had this before.”
In 2022, Tyler, whose real name is Gaynor Sullivan, was made an MBE for her services to music.
Her other hits include Holding Out For A Hero and It’s A Heartache.
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