Tina Turner, the unstoppable singer and stage performer who teamed with her husband Ike Turner for a dynamic series of hit records and live shows in the 1960s and 1970s and survived her awful marriage to succeed in the middle age with the chart-topping “What’s Love Got.” to Do With It”, has died at the age of 83.
Turner died on Tuesday after a long illness at his home in Küsnacht, near Zurich, Switzerland, according to his manager. She became a Swiss citizen a decade ago.
Few stars traveled so far: Anna Mae Bullock was born in a segregated hospital in Tennessee and spent her final years in a 260,000-square-foot estate on Lake Zurich, and she overcame that much. Physically abused, emotionally devastated, and financially ruined by her 20-year relationship with Ike Turner, she became a superstar in her own right in her 40s, at a time when most of her peers were on the move, and remained one of the best concerts for years after.
With fans ranging from Beyoncé to Mick Jagger, Turner was one of the world’s most successful artists, known for a core of pop, rock and rhythm and blues favorites: “Proud Mary,” “Nutbush City Limits,” “River Deep, Mountain High.” ,” and the hits he had in the ’80s, including “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” “We Don’t Need Another Hero” and a cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.”
His trademarks were his snarling alto, his bold smile and strong cheekbones, his palette of wigs and the muscular, fast-stepping legs he couldn’t avoid showing off. She has sold more than 150 million records worldwide, won 12 Grammys, was voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Ike in 1991 (and on her own in 2021), and was honored at the Kennedy Center in 2005, with Beyoncé and Oprah. Winfrey among those who praise her. Her life became the basis for a movie, a Broadway musical and an HBO documentary in 2021 that she said a public farewell.
Until she left her husband and revealed her backstory, she was known as the voracious onstage constant Ike, star of the “Ike and Tina Turner Revue.” Ike was billed first and directed the show, choosing the material, the arrangements, the singers. They toured constantly for years, in part because Ike often had no money and didn’t want to miss a concert. Tina Turner was forced to continue with bronchitis, with pneumonia, with a collapsed right lung.
Other times, the cause of his misfortunes was Ike himself.
As she recounted in her memoir, “I, Tina,” Ike began beating her soon after they met in the mid-1950s, and it only got more vicious. Provoked by anything and anyone, he would throw hot coffee in her face, choke or beat her until her eyes closed, and then rape her. Before a show, he broke his jaw and went on stage with a mouth full of blood.
Terrified as much by being with Ike as by being without him, she credited her growing Buddhist faith in the mid-1970s with giving her a sense of strength and self-worth and finally left in early July 1976. The Ike and Tina Turner Revue was scheduled to open a country bicentennial tour when Tina snuck out of her Dallas hotel room with only a Mobil credit card and 36 cents while Ike slept. He hurried across a nearby road, narrowly dodging a speeding truck, and found another hotel to stay at.
“I looked at him (Ike) and thought, ‘You just beat me for the last time, Latino,'” he recalled in his memoir.
Turner was one of the first celebrities to speak openly about domestic abuse, becoming a hero to abused women and a symbol of resilience for everyone. Ike Turner did not deny abusing her, although he tried to blame Tina for her problems. When he died in 2007, a representative for his ex-wife said simply: “Tina is aware that Ike has passed away.”
Little of this was apparent to Ike and Tina’s many fans. The Turners were a hot act for much of the ’60s and into the ’70s, evolving from bluesy ballads like “A Fool in Love” and “It’s Going to Work Out Fine” to raucous versions of “Proud Mary” and ” Come Together”. ” and other rock songs that brought them crossover success.
They opened for the Rolling Stones in 1966 and 1969, and were seen performing a sultry version of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” in the 1970 Stones documentary Gimme Shelter. Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett gave Oscar-nominated performances as Ike and Tina in the 1993 film “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” based on “I, Tina,” but she would say reliving their with Ike it was so painful that he couldn’t watch the movie).
Ike and Tina’s reworking of “Proud Mary,” originally a mid-tempo hit for Creedence Clearwater Revival, helped define their sexually assertive image. With a background of funky guitar and Ike’s baritone, Tina opened with a few words about how some people wanted to hear songs that were “nice and easy.”
But by the late 1970s, Turner’s career seemed over. He was 40 years old, his first solo album had failed and his live performances were mostly limited to the cabaret circuit.
Rock stars helped bring her back. Rod Stewart convinced her to sing “Hot Legs” with him on “Saturday Night Live,” and Jagger, who had openly borrowed some of Turner’s moves on stage, sang “Honky Tonk Women” with her during the Stones’ tour from 1981-82. At a listening party for his 1983 album “Let’s Dance,” David Bowie told guests that Turner was his favorite singer.
More popular in England at the time than in the US, he recorded a raspy version of “Let’s Stay Together” at EMI’s Abbey Road studios in London. By the end of 1983, “Stay Together” was a hit across Europe and on the verge of breaking out in the states. An A&R man at Capitol Records, John Carter, urged the label to sign her up and make an album. Among the material she was presented with was a reflective pop-reggae ballad co-written by Terry Britten and Graham Lyle and initially dismissed by Tina as “delicate”.
“I just thought it was an old pop song and I didn’t like it,” he later said of “What’s Love Got To Do With It.”
Turner’s album “Private Dancer” came out in May 1984, sold more than eight million copies and included several hit singles, including the title track and “Better Be Good To Me”. He won four Grammys, including album of the year for “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” the song that came to define the clear image of his post-Ike years.
