Forty years after its release, Bonnie Tyler’s hit Total Eclipse Of The Heart has suddenly seen a major revival – thanks to last Monday’s total solar eclipse. The Welsh-born singer’s 1983 power ballad shot to No. 1 on iTunes, while searches on streaming service Spotify doubled. In her recent memoir, Tyler, now 72, gave an intriguing account of the record’s creation…
Six guards, each with a dog, guarded the Victorian-style former infirmary where we shot the video for Total Eclipse Of The Heart. You can’t imagine a more terrifying place.
It is said that dogs have a sixth sense and that those six animals would not go near the morgue or the room where doctors administered electric shocks to patients.
This sprawling building near Virginia Water in Surrey was called Holloway Sanatorium. It was a former hospital for the mentally ill, and the vast, echoing emptiness terrified us all.
In 1983 it was featured extensively on an exciting new channel called MTV, a gift to the song
Jim – the composer, lyricist and producer who was also the brains behind Meat Loaf’s album Bat Out Of Hell
But it fit the mood of the song – and the extravagant imagination of the great Jim Steinman, nicknamed the Lord of Excess, who directed the video and wrote Total Eclipse Of The Heart.
Jim – the composer, lyricist and producer who was also the brains behind Meat Loaf’s album Bat Out Of Hell – added all kinds of crazy elements such as American football players and pigeons to the video.
Of course he did! His mind was endlessly inventive, eccentric and grandiose.
Also amazing that he convinced me to wear a dress instead of my usual jeans and leather jackets. It was one of the few times I did that, but it was a beautiful one: sheer, floor-length and white with a daring slit and a wrap top.
There was a famous film director on the production team who didn’t like the fact that I kept asking questions. Every time I said, ‘Do I really have to do this?’ or ‘Why do we do that?’ he rolled his eyes. I found the video very confusing. I think people still do that now. It was supposed to be a dream sequence, which is why some of it makes absolutely no sense. But then again, neither do dreams.
But my goodness, it was brutally hard work. And because the recording was in the middle of winter, we were all terribly cold.
We started at 9:30 am and finished 18 hours later at 3:30 am the next day, shortly after I was chased barefoot through the snow by a group of pagan dancers.
At one point a young guy sitting in a chair releases a pigeon. Initially, they wanted him to film the scene naked. I objected, saying, “You have absolutely no chance; he’s a little boy.’
Finally, they decided to put him in a school uniform. Then two of the boys ended up in a hospital dinner scene. They had to perform a fight where they knocked over a table and during the fight a glass bowl shattered. The poor boys fell on it and cut themselves, so they were quickly taken to the victim for stitches.
There was a famous film director on the production team who didn’t like the fact that I kept asking questions. Bonnie Tyler will be appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire by the Prince of Wales in 2023
The song itself was flawless in my opinion – except for one flaw. Since it was originally written for a musical called Dance Of The Vampires, it was over seven minutes long
Even now, when I do TV shows, they play a clip of the Total Eclipse Of The Heart video, and now it has about 1.1 billion views on YouTube. [By Tuesday it was the channel’s second most watched video in the US after Americans devoured it during the eclipse].
I was impressed when I got the song. And I just knew it. I knew this was the song I had been waiting for my whole life.
The song itself was flawless in my opinion – except for one flaw. Since it was originally written for a musical called Dance Of The Vampires, it was over seven minutes long.
Imagine trying to get that on Top Of The Pops!
So it had to be shortened to four minutes and thirty seconds to get some radio play.
Meat Loaf was also devastated that he didn’t get the song to sing. Apparently he called Jim Steinman to ask why I was chosen to sing it. Every time I saw Meat Loaf he’d say, “That song was mine!” To this day I have no idea why Jim chose me to record it, but I’m so glad he did. I will be forever grateful because its appeal is universal. Even as I recorded it, I knew there was something magical and lasting about it.
In 1983 it was featured extensively on an exciting new channel called MTV, a gift to the song. There have also been some great parodies of the song and video over the years. My favorite is a Lego version where my head falls off.
People always ask me what I think of the parodies, thinking I’ll be offended, but actually I’m very flattered by them. When the song was released on February 11, 1983, it reached No. 1 in both the UK and US and topped the US charts for a month. [Today, sales are nudging six million and on the day of the eclipse it sold 4,000 copies].
I was 32 when it was released and it marked the pinnacle of my ambition. At the end of each day I called my record company to ask how many sales I had. Sales topped out at 57,000 copies per day, incredible by today’s standards.
I was nominated for two Grammys, with the awards held at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, a huge venue with all the glitz and glamor of a movie set.
I performed the song dressed in a skin-tight leather mini dress and sky-high heels [pictured].
I had to start singing at the top of a wide, winding staircase and walk down, facing the audience.
It was downright nerve-wracking. I kept thinking: I’m going to fall, I’m going to fall! Thank God I didn’t do that.
I was impressed when I got the song. And I just knew it. I knew this was the song I had been waiting for my whole life
Today, it’s still one of those songs that everyone likes to belt out after they’ve had a few drinks
That February 1984 ceremony drew the largest TV audience for the awards in its history. An astonishing 51.67 million people tuned in. There was a galaxy of stars in the audience: Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Lionel Ritchie… they were all looking straight at me. I had never done anything on that scale before.
As for the awards, Irene Cara beat me in the Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female category with her song Flashdance. . . What a feeling. Michael Jackson was the biggest winner of the night, with eight Grammys.
It’s hard to imagine that karaoke was just becoming a big thing about forty years ago. Total Eclipse Of The Heart was the number 1 karaoke song in Britain at the time.
Today, it’s still one of those songs that everyone likes to belt out after they’ve had a few drinks.
lAdapted from Straight from the Heart by Bonnie Tyler (Hodder & Stoughton, £22). © Bonnie Tyler 2023. To order a copy for £19.80 (offer valid until April 27; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937