Tina Turner, the pioneering rock and roll star who became a pop music giant in the 1980s, has died at the age of 83 after a long illness.
He has suffered from health problems in recent years, was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2016, and underwent a kidney transplant in 2017.
Turner acknowledged and reinforced the formative importance of black women in rock 'n' roll, defining this era of music to the point that Mick Jagger admitted to being inspired by his energetic live performances and high kick kicks for his stage persona.
After two decadesworking with her abusive husband, Ike Turner, shot off on its own and after a few failed starts became one of the defining pop icons of the 1980s with the album Private Dancer. His life is described in three memoirs, a biographical film, amusic from the jukebox, and in 2021 an appreciated document entitledTina.
In a statement released on Wednesday evening, her publicist Bernard Doherty said: "Tina Turner, the 'Queen of Rock'n'Roll', passed away peacefully today at the age of 83 after a long illness at her home in Kusnacht, near Zurich, Switzerland. The music legend and a role model.”
In 2018, scholar Daphne A Brooks wrote for The Guardian, "Turner's musical character has always been a charged combination of mystery and lightness, melancholy mixed with wild vitality that often flirted with danger."
Born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, Turner grew up in Nutbush, Tennessee, where she remembered picking cotton with her family as a child. She sang in a small-town church choir and, as a teenager, spoke, or rather sang, on the way to Ike's band on St. performed by You Know I Love You by BB King.
After her singing talents were revealed, Ike gave her the name Tina Turner and registered it as a trademark in case she left him and he wanted to replace her in her performance. He soon became aggressive: when Turner tried to leave the group earlier after seeing her capricious nature, he hit her with a clogged stretcher.
“My relationship with Ike was doomed the day he found out I was going to be his money-making machine,” Turner wrote in her 2018 autobiography, My Love Story. to never leave it. "
He debuted under that name with Ike and Tina Turner's single A Fool in Love in July 1960, which broke into the US Top 30 and spawned a string of respectable chart hits. But it was their live performances that made them a sensation. Ike toured aggressively for the Ike and Tina Turner Revue on the Chitlin' Circuit, also to a freed audience, such was his commercial strength. In 1964, they signed a contract with Warner Bros. Loma Records, which released their first album, Live! Ike and Tina Turner's show.
In the second half of the 1960s, many of rock's biggest names were courting the duo. Phil Spector produced the 1966 single River Deep - Mountain High; supported the Rolling Stones in the UK and later the US, with celebrities including David Bowie, Sly Stone, Cher, Elvis Presley and Elton John attending their Las Vegas residency.
Grammy Award winners topped the charts in the 1970s, and the streak came to an end when Turner left the always violent and unfaithful Ike in 1976. His last single with the group It was Baby, Turn it on. , from the 1975 film adaptation of the rock opera Who's Tommy in which he played Acid Queen, the character of the same name from his second solo album.
In the divorce, which was finalized in 1978, Turner only managed to get away with two cars and the rights to his stage name. "Ike fought because he knew what he was going to do about it," Tina said in the documentary.
Turner, who had already released two solo albums, continued his solo career, though it was not until his fifth album, 1984's Private Dancer, that he displaced and prematurely fled the old rock and roll. an image pushed to its former track, with one of the sportier, leather-clad, powerful pop icons.
In the documentary, Tina described Private Dancer as her debut. "I don't see it as a comeback," he said. "Tina never came."
Turner has admitted that Buddhism, and especially the practice of singing, positively influenced his life in the 1980s. Outside of music, he starred in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome opposite Mel Gibson in 1985. , Tina, in 1986, which was later adapted into the film What's Love Got To Do With It? With Angela Bassett as Turner. In 1995, he sang the main theme to the James Bond film GoldenEye.
Turner announced his retirement in 2000, a year after the release of his last solo album, Twenty Four Seven, although he returned to the stage in 2008, performing at the Grammy Awards with Beyoncé and for a final tour commemorating 50 years of his career. . .
It was the final end. "I was tired of singing and making everyone happy"told the New York Times in 2019. "That's all I've ever done in my life."
Turner collaborated with Phyllida Lloyd on the musical Tina, which opened in 2018 and won Laurence Olivier and Tony Awards for her West End and Broadway performances, respectively. "This musical is not about my fame," Turner said of the production. "It's about the journey I took to get there. Every night I want the audience to take away from the theater that poison can be turned into medicine.
Turner has often said that she is not related to the "invincible" character others have given her. "I don't necessarily want to be a 'strong' person," he told the New York Times. “I've had a terrible life. Go forward. You keep walking and hoping something will happen.
w 2020 rremix van haar hit What's love got to do with it?Norwegian producer Kygo made Turner the first artist to enter the UK Top 40 in seven consecutive decades. In 2021, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist, 30 years after Ike and Tina Turner were inducted.
Turner was survived by her second husband, German music director Erwin Bach. They married in July 2013 after 27 years of living together and lived in Switzerland. In 2013, Turner renounced her U.S. citizenship to become a Swiss citizen.
His first son, Craig Raymond Turner, died in July 2018. Last year, Turner said that after the death of his second son, Ronnie, aged 62, he "left the world too soon." He left behind Ike Turner's two sons, Ike Turner Jr. and Michael Turner, whom he adopted.
In 2020, Turner told The Guardian that despite serious health issues, the last 10 years of her life embodied her ideal vision of happiness.
"It is true that lasting happiness comes from an unwavering, hopeful spirit that can shine through no matter what."she said. "This is what I have achieved, and my greatest desire is to help others to be truly happy."