Bonnie Tyler: Husky-voiced singer who soundtracked the 1980s

In the spring of 1977 Bonnie Tyler was celebrating her first taste of chart success with the wistful, lilting ballad, Lost In France, when she began to develop a sore throat.

After consulting a doctor she was informed that she had developed nodules on her vocal cords as the result of so much singing and that the only option was for them to be surgically removed.

And once the operation was done, she was told, she would have to rest her voice completely for six weeks – not even speaking, let alone singing.

It proved to be an impossible demand. After one anguished scream of frustration, she returned to be told that she may have suffered permanent damage.

When it finally healed and she tried to sing again, her voice had changed. Her already husky tones had acquired a new gravelly rasp – and her producers loved it.

“When I went into the studio they all said, ‘Bloody ‘ell, where’s that voice come from?’” she later recalled. “I now sounded like a female Rod Stewart.”

Six years later, her new trademark sound found its perfect setting in her biggest hit, Total Eclipse Of The Heart, a soaring, over-the-top power ballad that topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic.

With its huge production – all swooping piano chords and demented, heart-on-sleeve lyrics – it epitomised a certain kind of 1980s excess.

It was written for her by Jim Steinman – best-known as Meat Loaf’s producer – who admitted that even he thought it went a bit too far to be a popular success.

“I never thought it had a prayer as a single,” he told People magazine in the US.

“It was an aria to me, a Wagnerian-like onslaught of sound and emotion. I wrote it to be a showpiece for her voice.”

Steinman also wrote and produced her follow-up single – Holding Out For A Hero – which featured in the movie Footloose and provide her with another massive hit.

After that, singles chart success proved elusive – although she continued to tour and record prolifically.

Always a gutsy performer, she would drink a shot of Jack Daniels with a Red Bull to steady her nerves before going on stage, joking “it gives me wings”.

She perhaps never needed it more than for her infamous appearance at the 1988 Reading Rock Festival.

She was greeted with a hail of bottles and cans – some filled with urine (or worse) – from fans enraged by the festival’s shift from its traditional hard rock roots to a more mainstream, pop-orientated line-up.

Her band were all for fleeing the stage, but Tyler insisted on carrying on – dismissing the bottle-throwers as “bad shots” – and completing her set, finally leaving to cheers and with the crowd chanting her name.

In contrast, Meat Loaf, who was next up, lasted just three numbers before he was hit in the face by a bottle, breaking his nose.

Gaynor Hopkins was born on June 8th, 1951 in Skewen, Neath, in South Wales, the daughter of Glyndwr Hopkins, a coal miner, and his wife, Elsie (nee Lewis).

She grew up in a council house with three sisters and two brothers whose musical tastes included Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and the Beatles – although her favourites were Janis Joplin and Tina Turner, both powerful female singers.

It was a deeply religious background, attending chapel three times a day on Sundays. It was there that she gave her first public performance as child with a rendition of the hymn All Things Bright And Beautiful.

Having left school at 16 with no qualifications, in 1969 she was entered into a local talent contest by an aunt, finishing second.

Although the prize money was just £1, she was encouraged by her success to pursue a career in music, initially finding work as a backing singer with Bobby Wayne and the Dixies.

In 1975 she was spotted performing in the Townsman Club in Swansea by talent scout Roger Bell who invited her to London to record a demo tape.

Months later she was offered her first recording contract by RCA who advised her to change her name. She came up with “Bonnie Tyler” from a list of first names and surnames picked from a newspaper.

Her debut single My! My! Honeycomb was a flop but the follow-up – Lost In France – became her first hit, reaching number nine in the UK singles chart, leading to her debut appearance on Top Of The Pops.

The release in November 1977 of It’s A Heartache – one of her first recordings to feature her new post-operation vocal sound – sealed her success, getting to number three in the US and four in the UK, selling around six million copies worldwide.

With the advent of the 1980s and a new contract with CBS/Colombia, Tyler was looking for a new sound. Among the producers considered for her debut release for the label were Phil Collins and Jeff Lynne.

However, she was determined to get Steinman who she believed was the one producer who could emulate Phil Spector’s famous “wall of sound” which she had adored from Ike and Tina Turner’s River Deep, Mountain High.

Initially Steinman was not keen, but changed his mind after she sent him demo tapes of the more rock-orientated material she was planning to record.

At his apartment in New York, Steinman played Total Eclipse Of The Heart for her. She knew instantly that they were onto something.

“I just had shivers up my spine,” she recalled. “I couldn’t wait to actually get in and record it.”

For the recording at Power Station studio in New York, Steinman deployed a huge band with strings and dramatic operatic arrangements, while Tyler wrung every last ounce of emotion from the lyrics.

The ensuing album – Faster Than The Speed Of Night – went straight to number one in the UK album chart, reaching number three in the US, while Total Eclipse Of The Heart became one of the biggest-selling singles of all time.

With her big hair, lots of jewellery and lashings of eyeliner, Tyler epitomised not just the sound but the look of the new decade.

The 1990s were, in contrast, a relatively fallow period, at least in terms of chart success in the UK – although she remained hugely popular in continental Europe.

The 2000s, however, saw a revival of interest at home with a cameo in Channel 4’s Hollyoaks, in which she appeared in a dream sequence performing a version of Holding Out For A Hero.

In 2009 she joined up with the all-male Welsh choir Men Only Aloud to record a new version of Total Eclipse Of The Heart after being impressed by their arrangement of her biggest hit.

Four years later she was chosen to represent the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest with Believe In Me – but was unable to break Britain’s long run of failure finishing 19th out 26, scoring just 23 points.

She at least had the consolation of outperforming the UK’s entry the previous year – Engelbert Humperdinck who was second last with 12 points.

Afterwards, she insisted that she was not disappointed with the result, declaring: “I did the best that I could do with a great song. I don’t feel down and I’m ready to party.”

In 2019 she was invited to perform in front of Pope Francis at the Vatican’s annual Concerto di Natale – an event she described as a career highlight.

When she was 22, Tyler married her first serious boyfriend, Robert Sullivan – a property developer and former Olympic judo competitor

Having delayed starting a family because of her career, she became pregnant at the age of 39 only to miscarry. The couple did not try for another child.

Last month she was forced to cancel or postpone all of her upcoming shows after she was taken to hospital near to her home in Faro, Portugal for emergency intestinal surgery in May.

She was due to perform at Sunshine Festival in Worcester this summer, along with a number of European dates, and was also booked to perform at Cardiff’s Utilita Arena on December 17th.

But a statement on her website on Thursday announced that she “unexpectedly passed away last night in hospital in Portugal as a result of the illness that she was being treated for”.