Turner, who first rose to stardom in a contentious musical collaboration, went on to become one of the greatest acts in the world as a solo performer and a key figure in 1980s pop culture.
Tina Turner, a pioneering rock and roll performer who rose to fame as a pop icon in the 1980s, passed away at the age of 83 after a protracted illness.
She has recently experienced health issues, receiving a diagnosis of intestinal cancer in 2016 and undergoing a kidney transplant in 2017.
Mick Jagger acknowledged drawing influence from Turner’s high-kicking, energizing live performances for his stage persona because Turner confirmed and highlighted Black women’s early role in rock’n’roll.
After spending two decades making music with her controlling husband Ike Turner, she decided to go it alone. After a few false starts, her album Private Dancer helped her establish herself as one of the key pop icons of the 1980s. In addition to three memoirs, a biography, a jukebox musical, and the acclaimed documentary film Tina, her life was also the subject of three other works.
Wednesday night, her publicist Bernard Doherty released the following statement: “Tina Turner, the ‘Queen of Rock’n Roll,’ passed away peacefully today at the age of 83 following a protracted illness in her home in Kusnacht near Zurich, Switzerland. She leaves behind a legacy in music and a figure to emulate. Scholar Daphne A. Brooks stated in 2018 for The Guardian that “Turner’s musical character has always been a charged combination of mystery as well as light, melancholy mixed with a ferocious vitality that often flirted with danger.”
Turner, who was born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, was raised in Nutbush, Tennessee, where she recalls working with her family in the cotton fields as a young child. She was a member of the tiny town’s church choir and, as a teenager, talked or rather, sang her way into St. Louis’ Ike’s band. Ike had initially turned her down, but he changed his mind after seeing her take the stage during a Kings of Rhythm performance to sing BB King’s You Know I Love You.
Ike gave her the name Tina Turner when her singing abilities became apparent and copyrighted the name in case she ever left him and he wanted to replace her in his show. He immediately turned violent; when Turner attempted to leave the group early on after becoming aware of his erratic nature, he struck her with a wooden shoe stretcher.In her 2018 autobiography My Love Story, Turner penned, “My relationship with Ike was doomed the day he realized I was going to be his moneymaker.” “He needed to keep me under his financial and psychological control so I could never leave him.”
In July 1960, she made her debut on record under the moniker with the Ike and Tina Turner song A Fool in Love, which entered the US Top 30 and launched a string of decent chart success. But what really made them famous were their live performances. Ike actively toured the Ike and Tina Turner Revue on the Chitlin’ Circuit, performing in front of crowds that included people of other races because of their economic success. The Ike & Tina Turner Show: Live! was their first album to reach the charts after they joined with Warner Bros. division Loma Records in 1964.
Many of the most prominent figures in rock courted the duo throughout the second half of the 1960s. The Rolling Stones were supported by the band in the UK and the US, and David Bowie, Sly Stone, Cher, Elvis Presley, and Elton John visited their Las Vegas residency. Phil Spector produced the 1966 song River Deep – Mountain High.They were a chart-topping, Grammy-winning force in the 1970s, but their successful run came to an end when Turner split up with Ike in 1976 because he had a pattern of domestic violence and infidelity. The 1975 movie adaptation of The Who’s rock opera Tommy, in which she played the role of Acid Queen, a character with the same name as her second solo album, was the source of her final group song, Baby, Get It On.
Only two cars and the rights to her stage name were left over after the divorce, which was officially finalized in 1978. In the film Tina, she stated that “Ike fought a little bit because he knew what I would do with it.”
Turner, who had already put out two solo albums, continued to pursue a solo career, but it would take her until the release of her fifth album, 1984’s Private Dancer, for her to shed the previous image of the shimmying rock’n’roller and avoid being prematurely consigned to the oldies circuit. She identified Private Dancer as her debut in the documentary Tina. She remarked, “I don’t consider it a comeback.” Tina was never present.
Turner attributed Buddhism and chanting in particular as having a significant impact on her life in the 1980s. She appeared alongside Mel Gibson in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome in 1985, a film unrelated to music. Her 1986 book I, Tina, which became a worldwide bestseller, was eventually made into the 1993 movie What’s Love Got to Do With It? with Angela Bassett playing Turner. She performed the James Bond movie GoldenEye’s theme song in 1995.
Despite returning to the stage in 2008 to perform with Beyoncé at the Grammy Awards and for a farewell tour to commemorate her 50-year career, Turner declared her retirement in 2000, a year after the release of Twenty Four Seven, her final album as a solo artist.
Clearly, that marked the conclusion. She stated to the New York Times in 2019 that she was “just tired of singing and making everyone happy.” All I had ever done in my life was that.Turner and Phyllida Lloyd worked together to create the 2018 musical Tina, which debuted on Broadway and the West End, respectively, and won the Laurence Olivier and Tony Awards. Turner emphasized that the production was not about his popularity. “The route I took to get there is the subject. Every night, I want viewers to walk away from the theater understanding that medicine can be made from poison.The “invincible” reputation that others gave Turner was something she frequently claimed she did not identify with. She told the New York Times, “I don’t necessarily want to be a’strong’ person. “I lived a miserable existence. I simply continued. You simply keep moving forward in the anticipation of something.
Turner became the first singer to have a UK Top 40 success in seven straight decades in 2020 thanks to the Norwegian producer Kygo’s remix of her 1984 single What’s Love Got to Do With It? She was in to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2021 as a solo performer, 30 years after Ike and Tina Turner.
Erwin Bach, a German music executive, is the only survivor of Turner’s first marriage. They dated for 27 years before being married in July 2013 and residing in Switzerland. Turner became a Swiss citizen in 2013 after giving up her US citizenship.
In July 2018, Craig Raymond Turner, her first child, passed away. Turner expressed regret that her second son Ronnie “left the world far too early” after passing away at the age of 62 last year. She is survived by Michael Turner and Ike Turner Jr., two of Ike Turner’s sons that she adopted.
Turner told the Guardian in 2020 that, although having some significant health issues, her final 10 years had embodied her idealized image of bliss.
True and enduring happiness, according to her, is derived from having a spirit that can shine brightly despite anything. “That’s what I’ve done, and my greatest wish is to assist others in experiencing genuine happiness as well.”
