My long search for any evidence of this song’s existence has proven fruitless, such to the point that I am beginning to doubt my sanity as to whether I invented it in my mind. Also, I don’t think it can truly be categorized as never having been played on radio stations, because I believe that’s the second source from which I remember it, the first source I believe to have been the original movie soundtrack, but I’m no longer sure of that now. To make matters more complicated, since I can’t find the song, I’m not exactly sure of its title, or, since I’m not exactly sure of its title, I can’t find the song.
When the movie “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome” was released in 1985, I remember hearing Tina Turner singing a song that included the lyrics line “fight fire with fire“. However, it doesn’t appear on the soundtrack, nor does it appear anywhere in Tina Turner’s long list of song releases. I can’t remember if I heard it during the closing credits as I sat in a movie theater (all my life, I had been one of those people who stay in the theater during the entire closing credits, never wanting to miss a thing, but that was ancient history; I haven’t been in a movie theater in about a decade now). Alternatively, I thought I may have heard it on radio stations too in the time period the movie was first-run box office gold.
I know for sure that Turner herself sang the version I heard, because of her distinctive voice and her distinctive singing style, it cannot be mistaken. By the way, it was a really great song too. I know for fact that it’s not part of the lyrics in any of the songs on the soundtrack, so I thought maybe it was just a separate song played in the credits and/or on radio stations.
My first search for it began either months or years ago after I first heard it, and in fact, the reason I started searching for it stemmed from the fact that I realized at some point that I wasn’t hearing it any longer. Being the mid-1980s, the internet wasn’t an option for me, but in later years as technology advanced, I took up the search in various other forms and forums. Originally, I was collecting my favorite music on cassette tapes song-by-song, and I wanted to add it. I have since searched for it with that phrase as the title, “fight fire with fire”, and I have searched for it on websites and search engines that specialize in partial lyrics.
Sometimes, due to licensing, copyright, ownership, royalties, intellectual property, or other business-related issues, a song may fall out of public circulation, so it’s possible that might explain this one, but I find it incredulous that I can’t even verify it ever existed in the first place.
Are any of you aware of the song? I’d hate to find out I’ve imagined or made up the whole thing entirely. Grrrrrrrrr.
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No, “We Don’t Need Another Hero” is most definitely on the soundtrack.
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Thriftymaid 