Tina Turner: vocal
Bryan Adams: rhythm guitar, vocal
Keith Scott: lead guitar
Dave Taylor: bass
Tommy Mandel: keyboards
Mickey Curry: drums

Recorded April/May 1984. Produced by Bob Clearmountain and Bryan Adams. Associate producer, Jim Vallance. Recorded and mixed by Bob Clearmountain.

"It's Only Love" would have been a solo Bryan Adams performance were it not for Bryan's persistence in pursuing Tina Turner. Her single "What's Love Got To Do With It" had just started taking off at radio, and she was finally emerging from years of obscurity! If Bryan had approached her even a few weeks later, chances are Tina would have been too busy to participate.

After splitting with her husband (and band-leader) Ike Turner in 1976, Tina spent several years playing night-clubs, corporate conventions, and whatever other work she could find to support her four children. She was half-a-million dollars in debt, and at one point she had to resort to food stamps to feed her family!

When I was playing drums for Tom Jones in 1980, Tina appeared on Tom's television show as a guest. She sang "Proud Mary" ... and she was amazing!!

Around the same time as the Tom Jones appearance Tina met a young Australian manager, Roger Davies, who was trying to "make it" in the U.S. music business. Roger took Tina under his wing and helped her record the "Private Dancer" album. As everyone now knows, the album was an enormous success -- in fact, success came so quickly that Tina found herself caught between two very different worlds: "top dollar" requests were arriving daily for stadium concerts in support of her hit single "What's Love Got To Do With It", while at the same time she had agree to perform at a McDonald's Restaurant Manager's convention, booked several months before.

To her credit, she honoured all of the small engagements before turning her full attention to the "big time".

It was also a real treat watching Tina sing in the studio. She has the energy of a hurricane, yet she's focused and professional. A very sweet lady.

There was a moment during the recording session when I didn't think her vocal was going to work (we wrote the song for Bryan's vocal range, and it was the wrong key for Tina). She paused for a minute, then she said, "Let me try something a little different".  Right there, on the spot, she came up with a completely different approach to the melody.  It was perfect!

The structure of the song, in terms of feel and chord movement, is loosely based on Lee Michael's single "Do You Know What I Mean", which reached #6 on the U.S. Billboard chart in September 1971. I've long admired the way Lee's song delivers two simple lines of rhyming lyric, followed by the title.  The pattern repeats over and over for the duration of the song, with a brief "bridge" departure at the halfway point. Very simple, and very effective:

     Been 14 days since I don't know when
     I just saw her with my best friend
     Do you know what I mean?
     Do you know what I mean?

Bryan and I were also thinking about guitarist Keith Scott while we were working on the song's arrangement. Keith's an amazing player, and we thought "It's Only Love" could serve as a showcase by featuring Keith after every verse, similar to Jimi Hendrix's version of "All Along The Watchtower" (verse / guitar-solo / verse / guitar-solo / etc).

For me, there are lots of positive memories associated with this song, and for that reason I always enjoy hearing it on the radio.