Tina Turner, the unstoppable singer and stage performer who teamed with husband Ike Turner for a dynamic run of hit records and live shows in the 1960s and 1970s, and survived a horrifying marriage to triumph in middle age with the chart-topping What’s Love Got to Do With It, has died at 83.
Tina Turner died on Wednesday, after a long illness in her home in Kusnacht near Zurich, Switzerland, her manager said.
She became a Swiss citizen a decade ago.
Photo: AFP
She was born Anna Mae Bullock in a segregated Tennessee hospital and spent her latter years on a 2.5 hectare estate on Lake Zurich — and overcame so much.
Physically battered, emotionally devastated and financially ruined by her 20-year relationship with Ike Turner, she became a superstar on her own in her 40s, when most of her peers were on their way down, and remained a top concert draw for years after.
“How do we say farewell to a woman who owned her pain and trauma and used it as a means to help change the world?” said Angela Bassett, who played Tina Turner in the 1993 biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It.
Photo: AFP
Her trademarks included a growling contralto that might smolder or explode, her bold smile and strong cheekbones, her palette of wigs and the muscular, quick-stepping legs she did not shy from showing off.
She sold more than 150 million records worldwide, won 12 Grammys, was voted along with Ike Turner into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991 — and on her own in 2021 — and was honored at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2005, with Beyonce and Oprah Winfrey among those praising her.
Her life became the basis for a film, a Broadway musical and an HBO documentary in 2021 that she called her public farewell.
Until she left her husband and revealed their back story, she was known as the voracious on-stage foil of the steady-going Ike Turner, the leading lady of the Ike and Tina Turner Revue.
Ike Turner was billed first and ran the show, choosing the material, the arrangements and the backing singers.
As she recounted in her memoir, I, Tina, Ike began hitting her not long after they met, in the mid-1950s, and only grew more vicious. Provoked by anything and anyone, he would throw hot coffee in her face, choke her, or beat her until her eyes were swollen shut, then rape her.
She credited her Buddhist faith in the mid-1970s with giving her a sense of strength to leave him in July 1976. The Ike and Tina Turner Revue was scheduled to open a tour marking the country’s bicentennial when Tina Turner left their hotel room, with just a Mobil credit card and 36 cents, while Ike Turner slept.
Tina Turner was among the first celebrities to speak candidly about domestic abuse, becoming a heroine to battered women and a symbol of resilience to all. Ike Turner did not deny mistreating her, although he tried to blame her for their troubles. When he died in 2007, a representative for Tina Turner said: “Tina is aware that Ike passed away.”
The Turners were a hot act for much of the 1960s and into the 1970s, evolving from bluesy ballads such as A Fool in Love and It’s Going to Work Out Fine to flashy covers of Proud Mary and Come Together.
Bassett and Laurence Fishburne gave Oscar-nominated performances in What’s Love Got to Do with It, based on I, Tina, but she said that reliving her years with Ike Turner was so painful she could not bring herself to watch the movie.
By the end of the 1970s, Tina Turner’s career seemed finished. She was aged 40, her first solo album had flopped and her live shows were mostly confined to the cabaret circuit.
Rock stars helped bring her back. Rod Stewart convinced her to sing Hot Legs with him on Saturday Night Live, and Mick Jagger sang Honky Tonk Women with her during the Rolling Stones’ 1981 tour.
More popular in England than in the US, she recorded a raspy version of Let’s Stay Together at Abbey Road Studios in London. By the end of 1983, Let’s Stay Together was a hit throughout Europe and on the verge of breaking in the US. Capitol Records artists and repertoire representative John Carter urged the label to sign her up and make an album. Among the material presented was a reflective pop-reggae ballad initially dismissed by Tina Turner as “wimpy.”
Tina Turner’s Private Dancer album came out in May 1984, sold more than 8 million copies and featured several hit singles.
Tina Turner had two sons: Craig, with saxophonist Raymond Hill; and Ronald, with Ike Turner. Craig Turner was found dead in 2018 of an apparent suicide.
In a memoir published in 2018, Tina Turner: My Love Story, she revealed that she had received a kidney transplant from her second husband, former EMI record executive Erwin Bach.
They met in the mid-1980s, when she flew to Germany for record promotion and he picked her up at the airport. She wed Bach in 2013, exchanging vows at a civil ceremony in Switzerland.
“It’s that happiness that people talk about,” Tina Turner said at the time. “When you wish for nothing, when you can finally take a deep breath and say everything is good.”
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
DIALOGUE: US president-elect Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform confirmed that he had spoken with Xi, saying ‘the call was a very good one’ for the US and China US president-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) discussed Taiwan, trade, fentanyl and TikTok in a phone call on Friday, just days before Trump heads back to the White House with vows to impose tariffs and other measures on the US’ biggest rival. Despite that, Xi congratulated Trump on his second term and pushed for improved ties, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The call came the same day that the US Supreme Court backed a law banning TikTok unless it is sold by its China-based parent company. “We both attach great importance to interaction, hope for
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
RELEASE: The move follows Washington’s removal of Havana from its list of terrorism sponsors. Most of the inmates were arrested for taking part in anti-government protests Cuba has freed 127 prisoners, including opposition leader Jose Daniel Ferrer, in a landmark deal with departing US President Joe Biden that has led to emotional reunions across the communist island. Ferrer, 54, is the most high-profile of the prisoners that Cuba began freeing on Wednesday after Biden agreed to remove the country from Washington’s list of terrorism sponsors — part of an eleventh-hour bid to cement his legacy before handing power on Monday to US president-elect Donald Trump. “Thank God we have him home,” Nelva Ortega said of her husband, Ferrer, who has been in and out of prison for the
RSS