Tina Turner died on Wednesday at the age of 83. She was an American singer who left a hardscrabble farming town and an abusive relationship to become one of the best recording artists of all time.
Her agent said that she died peacefully in her home in Küsnacht, Switzerland, near Zurich, after a long illness.
Turner started her career in the 1950s, when rock ‘n’ roll was just getting started. She later became a big deal on MTV.
In the video for her top-charting song “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” in which she called love a “second-hand emotion,” Turner strutted through the streets of New York City with her spiky blonde hair, wearing a cropped jean jacket, a mini skirt, and stiletto heels.
Turner’s love of experimenting with music and her bluntly written ballads made her a perfect fit for the 1980s pop scene, in which people liked electronically produced sounds and looked down on hippie-era ideas.
Turner won six of her eight Grammy Awards in the 1980s. She was sometimes called the “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” In that decade, she had 12 songs in the Top 40, including “Typical Male,” “The Best,” “Private Dancer,” and “Better Be Good to Me.” In 1988, she did a show in Rio de Janeiro that was attended by 180,000 people. This is still one of the biggest crowds for a single performer.
Turner had been divorced from guitarist Ike Turner for ten years by that time.
In the 1960s and 1970s, when she was married to her former husband and they worked together as a band, she was honest about the abuse she got from him. She talked about her bruised eyes, split lips, broken jaw, and other injuries that sent her to the emergency room over and over again.
Janet Jackson, a singer, wrote about Tina Turner in an issue of Rolling Stone that put Turner at No. 63 on a list of the top 100 artists of all time. She said, “Tina’s story is not one of victimhood, but of incredible triumph.”
Jackson said, “She’s turned herself into an international star, an elegant powerhouse.”
Turner changed her reputation as a survivor in 1985 by making up a story about it. In “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome,” the third movie in the Mad Max series, she played the cruel leader of an outpost in a nuclear wasteland. She was opposite Mel Gibson.
Most of Turner’s hit songs were written by other people, but she brought them to life with her voice, which Jon Pareles of the New York Times called “one of the more unusual instruments in pop.”
In a 1987 concert review, Pareles said, “It has three levels: a nasal low register, a yowling, cutting middle register, and a high register that is so clear it sounds like a falsetto.”
Angela Bassett, who played Turner in the 1993 movie “What’s Love Got to Do with It” and was nominated for an Oscar, said she was “humbled to have helped show her to the world.”
Bassett said in a statement, “She gave us her whole self.” “Tina Turner will always be’simply the best’ as a gift.”
Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones said he was saddened by Turner’s death and called her “inspiring, warm, funny, and generous.”
Jagger said, “She helped me a lot when I was young, and I will never forget her.”
Bryan Adams, a Canadian singer who sang “It’s Only Love” with Turner in 1985, said, “The world just lost one hell of a powerhouse of a woman.”
U.S. President Joe Biden called Turner a “once-in-a-generation talent” and praised her “remarkable personal strength.”
“Overcoming adversity, and even abuse, she built a career for the ages and a life and legacy that were entirely hers,” Biden said in a statement.
‘ONE-HORSE TOWN’
Turner was born on November 26, 1939, in a small town in Tennessee called Nutbush. In her 1973 song “Nutbush City Limits,” she called Nutbush “a quiet little old community, a one-horse town.”
According to the singer’s 2018 book “My Love Story,” her father was a farm manager and her mother left the family when she was 11 years old. She moved to St. Louis to be with her mom when she was a teenager.
When she was 17, she grabbed the microphone to sing at Ike Turner’s club show in St. Louis.
Before they got married in Tijuana, Mexico, the band leader had his protégé record the hit song “A Fool in Love.” He also gave her the stage name “Tina Turner.”
Tina was the lead singer in a group called the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. She had a strong voice and worked hard to perfect her dance moves. In the 1960s and 1970s, she worked with rock royalty like The Who and Phil Spector. In 1967, she was on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine’s second issue.
Ike and Tina Turner changed record labels a lot, and a lot of their commercial success was due to how much they toured. “Proud Mary” by Creedence Clearwater Revival was their biggest hit.
Turner left her husband during a tour stop in Dallas in 1976, after he beat her up in the car and she hit him back. This is what she wrote in her memoir. In 1978, they officially split up.
Ike and Tina Turner were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. At the time, they were called “one of the most powerful live acts in history.” Ike Turner died in 2007.
EUROPE BOUND
Turner spent years trying to get back into the spotlight after she left her husband. She put out solo albums and singles that didn’t do well and played at corporate conferences.
In 1980, she met her new manager, Australian music executive Roger Davies. Davies was her manager for the next 30 years. That led to her solo No. 1 “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” and in 1984, her album “Private Dancer” put her at the top of the charts.
Turner’s biggest album, “Private Dancer,” was the peak of a career in which she sold more than 200 million records.
Turner met Erwin Bach, a German music executive, in 1985. He became her long-term partner, and she moved to London in 1988, where she lived for the next two decades. In the 1990s, she put out two studio albums that did well, especially in Europe. She also sang the theme song for the 1995 James Bond movie “GoldenEye,” and in 2008 and 2009, she went on a successful world tour.
She quit the show business after that. When she married Bach, she gave up her U.S. citizenship and became a Swiss citizen.
After she retired, she had a lot of health problems, and in 2018, her oldest son, Craig, killed himself in Los Angeles at the age of 59. Her younger son Ronnie died in December 2022.
Her name still brings in crowds of people years after she stopped performing. “TINA: The Tina Turner Musical,” a musical about the life of the star performed by Adrienne Warren, was a hit in London’s West End in 2018 and later on Broadway. It is still running. And in 2021, HBO showed “Tina,” a film about her life.
Bach and Ike’s two sons, whom she raised, are the only people who will remember her.
