‘Simply the best’: Singer Tina Tuner dies at 83

World
By William

Tina Turner, the American-born singer who left a farming community and an abusive relationship to become one of the greatest artists of all time, has passed away at the age of 83.

She died peacefully on Wednesday after a long illness at her home in Kusnacht near Zurich, Switzerland, her representative said.

Turner began her career in the 1950s, during the early years of rock and roll, and developed into an MTV phenomenon.

In the video for her song What’s Love Got to Do with It, in which she called love a “second-hand emotion,” Turner epitomized 1980s style as she paraded through the streets of New York City with her spiky blonde hair, dressed in a short denim jacket, miniskirt and stiletto heels.

With her penchant for musical experimentation and bluntly worded ballads, Turner fit perfectly into an 1980s pop landscape in which music fans valued electronically produced sounds and scorned hippie-era idealism.

Nicknamed the “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll”, Turner won six of her eight Grammy Awards in the 1980s.

Tina Turner and Mick Jagger at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in New York, January 18, 1989 [File: Reuters/Stringer]

In the decade, she landed a dozen songs in the Top 40, including “Typical Male,” “The Best,” “Private Dancer,” and “Better Be Good to Me.” Her 1988 Rio de Janeiro show drew 180,000 people, which remains one of the largest concert attendances for a single artist.

By this time, Turner had been free from her marriage to guitarist Ike Turner for ten years.

The superstar has been candid about the abuse she suffered from her former husband during their marital and musical partnership in the 1960s and 1970s. She described bruised eyes, busted lips, a broken jaw, and other injuries that repeatedly took her to the emergency room.

“Tina’s story is not one of victimization, but one of incredible triumph,” singer Janet Jackson wrote of Turner in a Rolling Stone issue that ranked Turner No. 63 on a list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

“She’s transformed herself into an international sensation — an elegant powerhouse,” Jackson said.

In 1985, Turner gave a fictional twist to her reputation as a survivor. Playing the ruthless leader of a nuclear wasteland outpost, she starred opposite Mel Gibson in the third installment in the Mad Max franchise, “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome”.

Most of Turner’s hit songs were written by others, but she enlivened them with a voice that New York Times music critic Jon Pareles called “one of the more idiosyncratic instruments in pop.”

“It has three levels, with a nasally low register, a screeching, cutting midrange, and a high register so startlingly clear it sounds like a falsetto,” wrote Pareles in a 1987 concert review.

She was born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, in the rural Tennessee community of Nutbush, which she described in her 1973 song “Nutbush City Limits” as a “quiet little old community, a town with one horse.”

Her father worked as an overseer on a farm and her mother left the family when the singer was 11 years old, according to the singer’s 2018 memoir, “My Love Story.” As a teenager, she moved to St. Louis to rejoin her mother.

Tina Turner
Tina Turner performing at a concert in Cologne, Germany on January 14, 2009. [File: Hermann J. Knippertz/AP Photo]

Ike Turner, whose 1951 song “Rocket 88” is often referred to as the first rock ‘n’ roll record, discovered her at age 17 when she grabbed the mic to sing at his club show in St. Louis.

The bandleader later recorded a hit song, “A Fool In Love,” with his protege and gave her the stage name Tina Turner, before the two married in Tijuana, Mexico.

Turner left her husband Ike one night in 1976 during a tour stop in Dallas, after he hit her during a car ride and she hit back, according to her memoir. Their divorce was finalized in 1978.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducted Ike and Tina Turner in 1991, calling them “one of the most formidable live acts in history”. Ike Turner passed away in 2007.

After leaving her husband, Turner struggled for years to regain the limelight, releasing solo albums and singles that flopped and performing at company conferences.

In 1980 she met new manager Roger Davies, an Australian music executive who guided her for three decades. That led to a solo No. 1 – “What’s Love Got to Do With It” – and in 1984 her album “Private Dancer” propelled her to the top of the charts.

‘Private Dancer’ became Turner’s biggest album, the culmination of a career in which she sold more than 200 million records in total.

In 1985 Turner met German music director Erwin Bach, who became her long-term partner, and in 1988 she moved to London where she began a decades-long residency in Europe. She released two studio albums in the 1990s that sold well, especially in Europe, recorded the theme song for the 1995 Bond film “GoldenEye”, and organized a successful world tour in 2008 and 2009.

After that, she retired from show business. She married Bach, renounced her US citizenship and became a citizen of Switzerland.

She struggled with a number of health issues after her retirement and in 2018, she faced a family tragedy when her eldest son, Craig, took his own life in Los Angeles at the age of 59. Her youngest son Ronnie died in December 2022.

She is survived by Bach and two of Ike’s sons whom she adopted.

Fans, celebrities and politicians paid tribute to the late singer on Wednesday. “She was simply the best,” US Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan wrote on Twitter.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre called Turner’s death “incredibly sad news” and a “massive loss” to fans and the music industry. “Her music will live on, will live on,” she said.

Canadian singer Bryan Adams also praised Turner. “I will be eternally grateful for the time we spent together on tour, in the studio and as friends. Thank you for being an inspiration to millions around the world for speaking your truth and giving your voice,” he wrote in a social media post.

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