Rock and Soul Icon Tina Turner Passes Away at Age of 83
With a seven-decade legacy that paved the way for divas like Beyoncé, Rihanna, Christina Aguilera, Amy Winehouse, Jazmine Sullivan, and Annie Lennox, Tina Turner—one of rock and soul music's greatest icons and comeback stories—has passed away. Her representative issued the following statement on Wednesday: "Tina Turner, the 'Queen of Rock 'n' Roll,' passed away peacefully today at the age of 83 following a protracted illness in her home in Kusnacht, Switzerland, close to Zurich. She leaves behind a musical legend and a role model for the world.
The 12-time Grammy winner, two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, and fiery, gritty voice of classics like "River Deep — Mountain High," "Proud Mary," "Nutbush City Limits," "What's Love Got to Do With It," "Better Be Good to Me," "We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)" and the fittingly titled "The Best" had suffered various health issues in recent years, including a debilitating stroke in 2013, intestinal cancer in 2016 and a kidney transplant in 2017.
Turner began singing at the age of 11 in the Spring Hill Baptist Church choir in Nutbush. Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, in Brownsville, Tennessee. She launched her music career in her late teens, after meeting her future husband, bandleader Ike Turner, at the Manhattan Club in East St. Louis. She took the stage during a break and charmed Ike with a spontaneous performance of B.B. King's "You Know I Love You." She was then asked to formally join Ike's group, the Kings of Rhythm. The Kings of Rhythm's 1958 single "Boxtop," on which she was credited as Little Ann, served as her debut release. Ike suggested that she change her stage name to Tina, which rhymes with "Sheena," after being inspired by the comic book character Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, which influenced her wild, vibrant onstage persona.
Ike & Tina began a nearly decade-long streak of mainstream success in 1966 when they signed to Wall of Sound producer Phil Spector’s Philles label and released the stupendous international smash “River Deep — Mountain High,” which Spector considered to be his finest work. A year later, Tina became the first female artist, as well as the first Black artist, to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone. A headlining Vegas residency and tour with the Rolling Stones followed, and in 1971, Ike & Tina’s cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary” became their biggest U.S. hit, peaking at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, selling more than 1 million copies, winning a Grammy for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group and arguably becoming more iconic than the CCR original.
As a member of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, which was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991 and had two of its hits, "River Deep — Mountain High" and "Proud Mary," inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, Tina enjoyed tremendous critical and financial success. Ike, whom Tina started seeing in 1960 and married in 1962, was infamous for his abuse, infidelity, and cocaine addiction; as a result, Tina made an attempt on her life in 1968. After they got into a heated argument in a car in Dallas in 1976, Tina ultimately split from Ike. She fled the scene with just 36 cents in her pocket. After Ike and Tina’s divorce was finalized in 1978, many industry pundits (and Ike himself) believed her career was over, but Tina, who at that point was nearly 40, instead orchestrated one of the most spectacular comebacks in pop history.
Tina released two solo albums in the late 1970s, but she started her comeback in the 1980s with versions of the Temptations' "Ball of Confusion" and Al Green's "Let's Stay Together," both of which were produced by Martyn Ware, co-founder of the Human League and Heaven 17. The later cover's popularity on international charts led Capitol Records to decide to put out a complete Tina album, Private Dancer, in 1984. Tina became a larger pop success than she'd ever been thanks to high-rotation MTV play of the video for that album's lead single, "What's Love Got to Do With It," which featured the charismatic, leggy diva walking in a black miniskirt and bedazzled jean jacket. At age 44, she set a record at that time for being the oldest female solo artist to top the Billboard Hot 100, with “What’s Love Got to Do With It”; Private Dancer spawned two other top 10 hits, sold 12 million copies worldwide and won three Grammys, including Record of the Year for “What’s Love Got to Do With It.” That song entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2012.
Tina continued to dominate the MTV ’80s with her appearance on USA for Africa’s “We Are the World,” sensational performance with Mick Jagger at Live Aid, the Grammy-nominated Bryan Adams duet “It’s Only Love” and the epic theme song to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome).” In that picture, Tina also acted as the glitzy tyrant Aunty Entity. This was her first acting job since she famously played the Acid Queen in Ken Russell's Tommy movie ten years prior. She set a Guinness World Record for the greatest paid concert attendance for a solo artist in 1988 when she performed at Maracan Stadium in Rio de Janeiro for 180,000 attendees. Break Every Rule from 1986 and Foreign Affair from 1989, the albums that came after Private Dancer, both achieved multi-platinum status globally.
What's Love Got to Do With It, based on Tina's best-selling 1986 autobiography I, Tina: My Life Story, which she co-wrote with MTV news correspondent and music journalist Kurt Loder, received Best Actress and Best Actor Oscar nominations for Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne, who played Tina and Ike Turner, respectively. Tina’s single recorded for that film’s soundtrack, “I Don’t Wanna Fight,” was a top 10 hit in the U.S. and the U.K. Tina also scored a ’90s hit with another movie theme, “GoldenEye,” which was written by U2’s Bono and the Edge for the James Bond film of the same name.
In the late '90s, Tina released her final two studio albums, Wildest Dreams and Twenty Four Seven, as she approached her 60th birthday. After that, she kept a quiet profile and settled in Switzerland, where she had lived since 1994. In 2013, she married German music executive Erwin Bach after a 27-year romance. She made a public comeback at the 2008 Grammy Awards, duetting with Beyoncé, one of her many students, in a historically significant performance. That same year, she started her first tour in almost ten years to commemorate her 50 years in show business.
In spite of her official retirement from the stage in 2009, Tina's legacy lived on through a jukebox musical, the memoirs My Love Story and Happiness Becomes You, and a remix of "What's Love Got to Do With It" with Norwegian producer Kygo in 2020 that made her the first performer to have a top 40 hit in Britain for seven decades in a row. She was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement honor in 2018 and again, this time as a solo artist, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Bassett in 2021. She accepted her honor via satellite from her home. ("It's Only Love" by Keith Urban and H.E.R., "What's Love Got to Do With It" by Mickey Guyton, and "River Deep" by Christina Aguilera) — Mountain High” at the Hall’s ceremony.) Tina’s final public appearance was in the acclaimed 2021 HBO documentary Tina.
Along with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a Kennedy Center Honor, and inductions into the Soul Music Hall of Fame, the St. Louis Classic Rock Hall of Fame, and the Memphis Music Hall of Fame, Tina has received numerous other awards and accolades. These include a Lifetime Achievement Grammy, three American Music Awards, two MTV Video Music Awards, an NAACP Image Award, an Essence Award, two World Music Awards, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and three American Music Awards. Bach, Ike Turner Jr., and Michael Turner, her two sons, are also surviving.
TINA TURNER'S MOST STREAMED SONGS IN UK
1. The Best
2. What's Love Got To Do With It?
3. Proud Mary
4. What's Love Got To Do With It? (with Kygo)
5. River Deep Mountain High (with Ike Turner)
6. We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)
7. Nutbush City Limits (with Ike Turner)
8. Private Dancer
9. It's Only Love (with Bryan Adams)
10. Proud Mary (with Ike Turner)