Natalia Chi
NEW YORK — Tina Turner and husband Ike Turner teamed up for a dynamic string of hit records and live shows throughout the 1960s and ’70s, overcoming a dreadful marriage and continuing to top the charts well into middle age. A triumphant, unstoppable singer and stage performer. She died at the age of 83.
Turner died Tuesday at his home in Kusnacht, near Zurich, Switzerland, after a long illness, according to his manager. She became a Swiss citizen ten years ago.
Few stars have traveled this far. Born Anna Mae Brock in an isolated hospital in Tennessee, she spent her final years on a 260,000-square-foot property on the shores of Lake Zurich. And she, she’s been through so much. Physically devastated, emotionally devastated, and financially ruined by her 20-year relationship with Ike Turner, she became an independent superstar in her 40s when most of her peers were on the decline. She became a star and continued to earn top popularity at her concerts. A few years later.
With a fan base ranging from Beyoncé to Mick Jagger, Turner is one of the world’s most successful entertainers, with pop songs like “Proud Mary,” “Nutbush City Limits,” and “River Deep, Mountain High.” , known for their core hits in rock, rhythm & blues. ‘, and the hits she had in the ’80s, among them ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’, ‘We Don’t Need Another Hero’, and Al Green There was also a cover of “Let’s Stay Together”.
Her trademarks were a snarling contralto, a bold smile and powerful cheekbones, a palette of wigs, and muscular, quick legs she never hesitated to show off. She has sold over 150 million records worldwide, won 12 Grammy Awards, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Ike in 1991 (and solo in 2021), and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005. She was honored at the Kennedy Center alongside Beyoncé and Oprah. Winfrey is among those who admire her. Her life will be the basis for a movie, Broadway her musical, and an HBO documentary in 2021 as she bids farewell in public.
Before splitting from her husband and revealing the backstory, she was known on stage as a greedy foil to the down-to-earth head of The Ike & Tina Turner Revue. Ike was billed first and ran the show, selecting material, arrangements and backing singers. They toured constantly over the years, partly because Ike was often short on money and didn’t want to miss a concert. Tina Turner was forced to live with bronchitis and pneumonia, leaving her right lung collapsed.
Also, Ike himself was the cause of her unhappiness.
As she recounted in her memoir, I, Tina, Ike began beating her in the mid-1950s, and only worse, soon after they met. When provoked by any of her, he poured hot coffee in her face, strangled her, beat her until her eyes swollen shut, and then raped her. Before one show, he broke her jaw and she came on stage with blood filling her mouth.
Terrified of being with and without Ike, she believed that her Buddhist beliefs, which had sprung up in the mid-1970s, had given her strength and self-esteem. I left home at the beginning of the month. She was planning to give Ike and Tina Turner Review a 200th anniversary tour, but while Ike was sleeping, Tina sneaked out of her hotel room in Dallas with only a Mobil credit card and 36 cents. got out. She scurried across a nearby highway, narrowly dodged a speeding truck, and found another hotel to stay.
“I looked at him[Ike]and thought, ‘You just beat me for the last time, you bastard,'” she recalled in her memoir.
Turner was one of the first celebrities to speak out about domestic violence, became an abused female heroine, and a symbol of resilience for all. Ike Turner tried to blame Tina for her problems, but didn’t deny he abused her. When Ike died in 2007, her ex-wife’s representative only said, “Tina knows Ike is dead.”
Little did this go unnoticed by many Ike and Tina fans. From bluesy ballads like “A Fool in Love” and “It’s Going to Work Out Fine” to flashy covers of “Proud Mary” and “Come Together,” Turners was a hit throughout the 1960s and her 70s. It was an act. ’ and other rock songs that have resulted in crossover success.
They opened for the Rolling Stones in 1966 and 1969, and performed a lustful version of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” in the 1970 Stones documentary Gimme Shelter. I saw him do it. Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett give their Oscar-nominated performances as Ike and Tina in the 1993 movie “What Does Love Have to Do with Me, Tina?” But she said it was very painful to relive her days with Ike. I didn’t feel like watching the movie.)
Ike and Tina’s rework of “Proud Mary,” a tight mid-tempo hit originally from Creedence Clearwater Revival, helped define their aggressive, sexual image. Against the backdrop of funky guitars and Ike’s singing baritone, Tina opened with a few words about how some people want to hear a “nice and easy” song.
“But there is one thing,” she warned.
“We are always kind and rough.”
By the end of the 1970s, however, Turner’s career seemed over. She was 40, her first solo album was a failure, and her live shows were largely confined to the cabaret circuit. Desperate for her job and money, she even agreed to tour her to South Africa at a time when the country was widely boycotted because of the racist apartheid regime.
Rockstars helped bring her back. Rod Stewart persuaded her to sing “Hot Legs” with him on “Saturday Night Live,” and Jagger, who openly borrowed some of Turner’s on-stage moves, was one of the Stones’ 1981-1982 singers. I sang “Honky Tonk Women” with her while on tour in 2008. At a listening party for his 1983 album Let’s Dance, David Bowie told guests that Turner was his favorite female singer.
More popular in the UK than in the US at the time, she recorded a raspy version of “Let’s Stay Together” at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in London. By the end of 1983, “Let’s Stay Together” was a hit across Europe and on the verge of breaking even in the states. Capitol Records’ A&R man, John Carter, encouraged her label to sign her and make an album. Among the songs presented to her was an introspective pop-reggae ballad co-written by Terry Britten and Graham Lyle, which Tina initially dismissed as “a wimp.”
“I thought it was an old pop song and didn’t like it,” she later said of “What’s Love Got To Do With It.”
Turner’s album, Private Dancer, was released in May 1984, sold over eight million copies, and contained several hit singles, including the title track and “Better Be Good To Me.” The song won four Grammy Awards, including “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” which helped define her clear-eyed image since Ike. It also includes the best records.
“People look at me now and think what a hot life I had, haha!” she wrote in her memoirs.
Even with Ike, it was hard to mistake her for a romantic. She said her voice was never “pretty” nor was her love song her area of expertise. One of her reasons for that is that she had very little experience to help her. She was born in Nutbush, Tennessee in 1939, but she said she “received no love” from either her mother or her father. After her parents divorced, she moved frequently between Tennessee and Missouri, living with various relatives of hers. She was gregarious, loved to sing, and used to check out blues clubs in St. Louis during her teenage years. Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm were her most popular there. When Tina first saw him at her club Manhattan, she couldn’t care less about his appearance.
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“Then he went on stage and picked up a guitar,” she wrote in her memoir. “When he hit a note, I thought, ‘Jesus, listen to this man.'”
Tina acted immediately. During an intermission from Ike Turner’s show at nearby Club Dilisa, Ike was alone on stage playing a blues melody on his keyboard. Tina recognized the song “You Know I Love You” by BB King and she grabbed the mic and sang along. Her stunned Ike shouted “Giruru!!”, as she recalled Tina. And she demanded to know what else she could do. Over her mother’s objections, she agreed to join his group. Inspired by the comic heroine Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, he changed her name to Tina, and married her in 1962, changing her surname.
On rare occasions when Ike was generous, Tina took her own steps. She added explosive lead vocals to Phil Spector’s epic “River Deep, Mountain High.” It was a flop in the United States when it was released in 1966, but became a hit overseas and eventually became a standard. She also appeared as an acid queen in the 1975 film version of The Who rock her opera Tommy. Her recent film work includes cameo appearances in Mad Max: Her Beyond Her Thunderdome and What’s Love Got to Do with It.
Turner had two sons. Craig and saxophonist Raymond Hill. Ronald and Ike Turner. (Craig Turner was found dead of an apparent suicide in 2018). In her memoir, Tina Turner: My Love Story, published in late 2018, she revealed that she had a kidney transplant from her second husband, former EMI Records executive Irwin Buck. made it
Turner’s life seemed like an argument against marriage, but life with Bach was an incredible love story for young Tina. The two met in the mid-1980s, when she flew to Germany to promote her record, and he picked her up at the airport. He was more than ten years younger than her, and she described him as “the most beautiful face” in the HBO documentary, but they were attracted to each other. She married Mr Bach in 2013 and exchanged vows in a public ceremony in Switzerland.
“The happiness people talk about is when you don’t want anything, when you can finally take a deep breath and say, ‘Everything’s fine,'” Turner told reporters at the time.
Associated Press writer Hilary Fox contributed to this report.
