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Tina Turner, the irrepressible singer and stage performer who teamed up with her husband Ike Turner for a dynamic run of hit records and live shows in the 1960s and ’70s and survived of her tragic marriage to triumph in middle age with the chart-topping “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” has died at age 83.
Turner died on Tuesday, after a long illness at his home in Küsnacht near Zurich, Switzerland, according to his manager. He became a Swiss citizen a decade ago.
Few stars have traveled so far – she was born Anna Mae Bullock in a segregated hospital in Tennessee and spent her later years on a 260,000 square foot estate in Lake Zurich – and overcome many. Physically battered, emotionally wrecked and financially ruined by her 20-year affair with Ike Turner, she became a superstar in her own right at age 40, at a time when most of her peers were headed, and remained a top concert draw for years after.
With admirers from Beyoncé to Mick Jagger, Turner is one of the world’s most successful entertainers, known for the 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 “Let’s Stay Together” by Al Green.
Her hallmarks were her growling contralto, her bold smile and strong cheekbones, her palette of wigs and the muscular, fast legs she wasn’t shy about showing off. He has sold more than 150 million records worldwide, won 12 Grammys, was voted with Ike into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991 (and himself in 2021) and was honored at the Kennedy Center in 2005, with Beyoncé and Oprah Winfrey are among her admirers. His life has been the basis of a film, a Broadway musical and a HBO documentary in 2021 that he said goodbye to the public.
Until she left her husband and revealed their back story, she was known as the fierce on-stage foil to the persistent Ike, the leading lady of the “Ike and Tina Turner Revue.” Ike first billed and ran the show, choosing the material, the arrangements, the backing singers. They toured frequently over the years, in part because Ike was often short on money and didn’t want to miss a concert. Tina Turner was forced to continue with bronchitis, with pneumonia, with a collapsed right lung.
At other times, the cause of his misfortunes was Ike himself.
As she recounted in her memoir, “I, Tina,” Ike began beating her shortly after they met, in the mid-1950s, and became increasingly violent. Provoked by anything and anyone, he would throw hot coffee in her face, choke her, or beat her until her eyes were swollen shut, then rape her. Before a performance, he broke his jaw and came on stage with his mouth full of blood.
Afraid to be with Ike and not have him, she credits her emerging Buddhist faith in the mid-1970s with giving her a sense of stability and self-worth and finally left in early July, 1976. Ike and Tina Turner Revue Set to open a tour marking the country’s bicentennial when Tina walks out of their Dallas hotel room, with only a Mobil credit card and 36 cents, while Ike sleeps. He quickly crossed a nearby highway, narrowly avoiding a speeding truck, and found another hotel to stay at.
“I looked at him (Ike) and thought, ‘You just beat me last time, you missed,'” he recalled in his memoir.
Turner was one of the first celebrities to speak out about domestic abuse, becoming a hero to battered women and a symbol of strength to all. Ike Turner did not deny abusing her, although he tried to blame Tina for their troubles. When he died, in 2007, a representative for his ex-wife said simply: “Tina knew Ike had died.”
Little of this is apparent to many fans of Ike and Tina. The Turners were a hot act for much of the 1960s and into the ’70s, transforming 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 ” and other rock songs that brought them crossover success.
They opened for the Rolling Stones in 1966 and 1969, and were seen performing a raunchy 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 he says returning to his years with Ike were very painful for him. can’t bring himself to watch the movie).
Ike and Tina’s rendition of “Proud Mary,” originally a tight, mid-season hit for Creedence Clearwater Revival, helped define their assertive, sexual image. Against the background of funky guitar and Ike’s suffocating baritone, Tina begins with some spoken words about how some people want to hear songs “nice and easy.”
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