Turner, who rose to prominence as part of a volatile musical duo, went on to become one of the world’s largest solo performers and one of the defining pop superstars of the 1980s.
Tina Turner, the pioneering rock’n’roll diva who rose to pop stardom in the 1980s, died at the age of 83 after a protracted illness.
She had been unwell in recent years, having been diagnosed with intestinal cancer in 2016 and undergoing a kidney transplant in 2017.
Turner validated and enhanced Black women’s fundamental interest in rock’n’roll, defining that era of music to the point where Mick Jagger acknowledged to drawing inspiration for his stage image from her high-kicking, aggressive live performances. After working with her violent husband, Ike Turner, for two decades, she broke out on her own and, after a few false starts, became one of the defining pop idols of the 1980s with the album Private Dancer. Her life was documented in three autobiographies, a biography, a jukebox musical, and the renowned documentary film Tina, which was released in 2021.
“Tina Turner, the ‘Queen of Rock’n Roll,’ died peacefully today at the age of 83 after a long illness in her home in Kusnacht near Zurich, Switzerland,” her spokesman Bernard Doherty said in a statement on Wednesday night. The world has lost a music great and a role model with her death.”
Daphne A Brooks, a researcher, wrote for the Guardian in 2018: “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 was born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, in Nutbush, Tennessee, and grew up harvesting cotton with her family. She performed in the little town’s church choir and, as a teenager, negotiated her way into Ike’s band in St Louis: he had denied her request to join until he saw her take the microphone during a Kings of Rhythm concert for a version of BB King’s You Know I Love You.
After her singing abilities were recognised, Ike gave her the name Tina Turner and copyrighted it in case she left him and he needed to replace her in his act. He rapidly turned abusive: when Turner attempted to quit the group early on after becoming aware of his volatile personality, he struck her with a wooden shoe stretcher.
“My relationship with Ike was doomed the day he figured out I was going to be his moneymaker,” Turner writes in her 2018 memoir My Love Story. “He needed to control me, both economically and psychologically, so that I could never leave him.”
In July 1960, she made her recorded debut under the moniker with the Ike and Tina Turner track A Fool in Love, which reached the US Top 30 and launched her career. However, it was their live performances that made them famous. Because of their commercial strength, Ike and Tina Turner toured the Ike and Tina Turner Revue vigorously on the Chitlin’ Circuit, including in front of desegregated crowds. They signed with Warner Bros. imprint Loma Records in 1964, and their first charting album was Live! The Ike & Tina Turner Show.
Many of rock’s greatest stars approached the pair in the second part of the 1960s. Phil Spector produced the 1966 single River Deep – Mountain High; they toured with the Rolling Stones in the UK and subsequently in the United States, and artists such as David Bowie, Sly Stone, Cher, Elvis Presley, and Elton John visited their Las Vegas residency.
They were a chart-topping, Grammy-winning powerhouse in the 1970s, a run that ended in 1976 when Turner divorced Ike, who had been constantly abusive and dishonest. Her final hit with the group was Baby, Get It On, from the 1975 film adaptation of the Who’s rock opera Tommy, in which she played Acid Queen, a character named after her second solo album of the same name.
Turner received just two automobiles and the rights to her stage name in the divorce, which was formalised in 1978. “Ike fought a little bit because he knew what I would do with it,” she explained in the documentary Tina.
Turner, who had already released two solo albums, continued to pursue a solo career; however, it would take until her fifth album, 1984’s Private Dancer, for her to replace the old image of the shimmying rock’n’roller – and avoid premature relegation to the oldies circuit – with one of a powerful, mullet-sporting, leather-clad pop icon.
Tina characterised Private Dancer as her debut in the documentary Tina. “I don’t consider it a comeback,” she declared. “Tina had never arrived.”
Turner attributed her improved life in the 1980s to Buddhism, particularly the practise of chanting. In 1985, she co-starred in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome with Mel Gibson. In 1986, she released her first book, I, Tina, which was eventually transformed into the 1993 film What’s Love Got to Do With It? starring Angela Bassett as Turner. She recorded the theme song for the James Bond film GoldenEye in 1995.
Turner declared her retirement in 2000, a year after recording her final solo album, Twenty-Four Seven, however she would return to the stage in 2008, singing with Beyoncé at the Grammys and on a farewell tour to commemorate her 50-year career.
That was the final straw. “I was just tired of singing and making everybody happy,” she explained to the New York Times in 2019. “That’s all I’d ever done in my entire life.”
Turner worked with Phyllida Lloyd on the musical Tina, which opened in 2018 and won Laurence Olivier and Tony awards for its respective West End and Broadway performances. “This musical is not about my stardom,” Turner remarked of the show. “It’s about my journey to get there.” Every night, I want audiences to walk away with the knowledge that “poison can be turned into medicine.”
Turner frequently stated that she did not identify with the “invincible” reputation that others bestowed upon her. “I don’t necessarily want to be thought of as a’strong’ person,” she told the New York Times. “I had a bad life.” I simply kept going. You simply keep going, hoping for anything to happen.”
Turner became the first singer to have a UK Top 40 success in seven straight decades in 2020, thanks to a remix of her 1984 single What’s Love Got to Do With It? by Norwegian musician Kygo. She was elected into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist in 2021, 30 years after Ike and Tina Turner.
Turner frequently stated that she did not identify with the “invincible” reputation that others bestowed upon her. “I don’t necessarily want to be thought of as a’strong’ person,” she told the New York Times. “I had a bad life.” I simply kept going. You simply keep going, hoping for anything to happen.”
Turner became the first singer to have a UK Top 40 success in seven straight decades in 2020, thanks to a remix of her 1984 single What’s Love Got to Do With It? by Norwegian musician Kygo. She was elected into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist in 2021, 30 years after Ike and Tina Turner.
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