After rising to prominence in a tumultuous musical collaboration, Turner went on to become a global superstar as a solo performer and a pivotal figure in 1980s pop music.
After a long battle with sickness, Tina Turner, a trailblazing rock’n’roll performer who became a pop giant in the 1980s, passed away at the age of 83.
She had been in poor condition for some time, first discovering she had colon cancer in 2016 and then undergoing a kidney transplant the following year.
Turner validated and accentuated Black women’s seminal role in the development of rock ‘n’ roll, helping to define that musical genre to the point that Mick Jagger acknowledged drawing influence from Turner’s high-kicking, explosive live performances for his own.
She broke out on her own after 20 years of working with her violent husband Ike Turner, and with the album Private Dancer, she became one of the most influential pop singers of the 1980s. Tina, a critically praised documentary film about her life, is set to be released in 2021. It follows three autobiographies, a biopic, and a jukebox musical.
Bernard Doherty, her publicist, released the following statement on Wednesday night: “Tina Turner, the ‘Queen of Rock’n Roll,’ has died quietly tonight at the age of 83, at her home in Kusnacht near Zurich, Switzerland, after a lengthy illness. The world has lost a musical icon and an inspiration with her passing.
According to historian Daphne A. Brooks (2018), writes for the Guardian, “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.”
Anna Mae Bullock (Turner) was born on November 26, 1939, in Nutbush, Tennessee. She grew up there and has fond memories of growing cotton with her family. She began her musical career singing in the church choir of her little town, and by the time she was a teenager she had talked (or rather, sung) her way into Ike’s band in St. Louis. He had first rejected her request to join the band, but then he saw her grab the microphone during a Kings of Rhythm concert and sing BB King’s You Know I Love You.
After her singing abilities began to shine through, Ike gave her the stage name Tina Turner and copyrighted it in case she ever left his show. After Turner got a feel for his unstable personality and sought to quit the group early on, he became aggressive and struck her with a wooden shoe stretcher.
“Her relationship with Ike ended the day he figured out she was going to be his moneymaker,” Turner said in her 2018 autobiography My Love Story. He had to keep me financially and emotionally dependent on him so that she would never leave him.
Her first recording under this name was the Ike and Tina Turner hit “A Fool in Love,” which was released in July 1960. The song cracked the Top 30 in the United States, marking the beginning of a string of solid chart success for her.
It was their live performances that really catapulted them into the public consciousness. Ike aggressively traveled the Ike and Tina Turner Revue on the Chitlin’ Circuit, performing even in front of integrated crowds as a result of the economic force they commanded at the time. They secured a contract with Warner Bros. imprint Loma Records in 1964, and the same year, the label published their first album to chart, which was titled Live! The Ike & Tina Turner Show.
Turner has had singles in the top 40 of the Billboard chart for a total of four decades, which has earned her many Grammys, a Kennedy Center Honor, and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Her career is one of the longest in the history of rock music.
In the 1970s, they were a force to be reckoned with, topping charts and earning Grammys. However, their run came to an end in 1976 after Turner left Ike, who had been frequently abusive and unfaithful during their marriage. Her last song with the band was titled “Baby, Get It On,” and it was taken from the film version of the Who’s rock opera Tommy, which was released in 1975. In the film, she played the role of Acid Queen, which is also the name of her second solo album.
After the divorce was finalized in 1978, Turner was only awarded two automobiles and the rights to use her stage name as a result of the settlement. “Ike fought a little bit because he knew what I would do with it,” she revealed in the documentary Tina. “Tina”
Turner, who had already released two solo records, continued to pursue a solo career. However, it would not be until she released her fifth album, 1984’s Private Dancer, that she supplanted the old image of the shimmying Rock’n Roll with one of a powerful, mullet-sporting, leather-clad pop icon and escape premature relegation to the oldies circuit.
Tina Turner – Private Dancer (Official Music Video)
Tina, a documentary that aired on HBO about Tina Turner, was most recently the focus of attention. She referred to Private Dancer as her first album in the documentary about her life. She said that she did not think of it as a return at all. “Tina had never even arrived.”
During the 1980s, Turner attributed the good changes in her life to the Buddhist practice of chanting in particular. She also thanked Buddhism in general. Aside from her work in music, she also had a role in the 1985 film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, which she shared with Mel Gibson.
In 1986, she released her first memoir, titled I, Tina, which went on to become a worldwide best-seller. The book was then made into the film What’s Love Got to Do With It?, which starred Angela Bassett in the role of Turner. GoldenEye was released in 1995, and she provided the singing for the film’s theme song.
The year following the release of her last solo album, Twenty Four Seven, in 2000, Tina Turner announced that she would be retiring from the music industry. However, she would return to the stage in 2008 to perform at the Grammy Awards alongside Beyoncé and for a farewell tour to honor the completion of her 50-year career.
Ike and Tina Turner were one of the most electrifying acts of the 1960s, serving up high octane covers of songs like “Proud Mary,” “Come Together,” and “I Want to Take You Higher.” Tina Turner’s incendiary singing, glittery stage-wear, and seemingly inexhaustible energy helped make her and her then-husband one of the most electrifying acts.
That put a stop to everything without a doubt. She expressed her sentiment to the New York Times in 2019, saying, “She was just tired of singing and making everybody happy.” “That was all she had accomplished in her entire life.”
Turner and Phyllida Lloyd worked together on the musical Tina, which had its world debut in 2018 and went on to win the Laurence Olivier Award and the Tony Award for its respective runs on the West End and Broadway. Turner remarked of the musical, “This musical is not about her stardom,” referring to the production. “It is about the path that she traveled in order to get there. Each and every night, she wants the audience to leave the theater with the realization that one can turn poison into medicine.”
Turner has often said that she does not identify with the “invincible” character that others have ascribed to her. She expressed her sentiments to the New York Times, saying, “She doesn’t necessarily want to be a strong person.” “Her whole life was a living hell. She simply kept going. You simply have to keep going and keep your fingers crossed that something good will out of it.
Because of a rework of her success from 1984 titled “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” done by the Norwegian producer Kygo, Tina Turner became the first musician to have a hit in the UK Top 40 in each of the last seven decades in the year 2020. She was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist in 2021, which was thirty years after Ike and Tina Turner were inducted into the hall together.
Erwin Bach, a German music executive, and Turner’s second husband, will go on after her death. They had been together for 27 years prior to their marriage in July 2013, which took place in Switzerland. In 2013, Turner gave up her citizenship in the United States in order to take up citizenship in Switzerland.
Craig Raymond Turner, the couple’s first child, passed away in July 2018. The previous year, Turner expressed her regret that her second son, Ronnie, had “left the world far too early” when he passed away at the age of 62. Ike Turner Jr. and Michael Turner, both of whom she adopted, are the only members of Ike Turner’s family that she leaves behind.
In the year 2020, Turner expressed to the Guardian that the last ten years of her life had been filled with her perfect notion of happiness, despite the fact that she had been dealing with some major health issues.
”She claimed that having an unshakable and optimistic spirit that can shine regardless of the circumstances was the key to genuine and long-lasting pleasure. “That is what she has accomplished, and it is her deepest desire to be able to assist other people in achieving true happiness as well.”
Angela Bassett commemorates Tina Turner.
In 1993’s What’s Love Got to Do with It, the 64-year-old played the rock ‘n’ roll legend alongside Laurence Fishburne as Ike Turner. “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?” Bassett asked The Hollywood Reporter after Turner’s death at 83 on Wednesday.
“Through her courage in telling her story, her commitment to stay the course in her life, no matter the sacrifice, and her determination to carve out a space in rock and roll for herself and others who look like her, Tina Turner showed others who lived in fear what a beautiful future filled with love, compassion, and freedom should look like,” Bassett added.
“Her dying words to me—for me—were, ‘You never imitated me. Instead, you dug deep inside your soul and revealed your inner Tina. I will always remember these words. “Tina Turner was an honor to know,” she remarked.
