TINA TURNER BIOGRAPHY. The legendary American soul singer, also dancer and actress, Tina Turner died this Wednesday, May 24, 2023 in Switzerland. She was 83 years old.
Tina Turner is dead. The news broke mid-evening on Wednesday, May 24, 2023. In a statement to Sky News, his spokesperson said the international star “passed away peacefully today at the age of 83 after a long illness in his house in Küsnacht near Zurich, Switzerland”. Little other information has since been released concerning the disease in question, but, in 2018, Tina Turner revealed to the general public that she suffered from intestinal cancer diagnosed in 2016. As part of her fight against this cancer, the singer had moreover had a kidney transplant in 2017. Note that at this stage, no official source has confirmed the link between his cancer and his death.
Since the announcement of the death of Tina Turner, tributes have multiplied on social networks. The White House notably hailed an “icon”, also lamenting “an immense loss”. On her Instagram account, Afida Turner, who was married to Ronnie Turner, also paid tribute to the international star. “Rest in Peace Stepmother: With Ronnie and Craig,” she said, referring to Tina Turner’s two deceased sons. “I am so saddened by the passing of my wonderful friend Tina Turner. She was truly an extremely talented performer and singer. She was inspiring, warm, funny and generous. ‘never forget,” tweeted Mick Jagger.
“Simply the best. Music legend Tina Turner shone on stage and in millions of hearts as the queen of rock ‘n’ roll. Her legacy will forever live on among the stars,” NASA said. , while singer Gloria Gaynor hailed “the iconic legend who paved the way for so many women in rock music, in black and white”. And to emphasize: “She did with great dignity and success what very few would have even dared to do in her time and in this kind of music.”
Singer, dancer, actress, author, composer… Tina Turner was one of the most famous artists in the world and of all time. Anna Mae Bullock, her real name, has sold nearly 200 million albums. “With her, the world loses a music legend and an icon,” said her spokesperson in the statement. In the late 1950s, Tina Turner had met musician Ike Turner. Thanks to her perseverance, she had managed to get a place as a backing vocalist in her group. Little by little, Anna Mae, renamed Tina by Ike Turner, had imposed herself on stage thanks to her energy. In 1962, she had finally become Mrs. Turner by marrying Ike Turner. In the 1960s, the duo recorded many hits like It’s Gonna Work Out Fine, I Idolize You, River Deep Mountain High and Proud Mary. But then the couple began to falter. In 1974, Tina Turner had finally released her first solo album. Two years later, she left her husband. The divorce was pronounced in 1978. In her autobiography, Me, Tina, released in 1986, she revealed that she had suffered violence from her ex-husband.
Tina Turner’s biography is like this: ups and downs. His career took off again in the early 1980s with the cover of a Temptations title, Ball of Confusion, then with Let’s Stay Together, and especially in 1984 with his fifth solo album, Private Dancer. This success allowed him to land one of the main roles in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, alongside Mel Gibson. Her subsequent albums, Foreign Affair, Wildest Dreams and Twenty Four Seven were further hits. In the early 2010s, she then continued to release a few singles, to collaborate on the albums of different artists or to perform for charity concerts. In 2013, Tina Turner now has Swiss nationality. She later married Erwin Bach, a 57-year-old German recording industry executive, in Switzerland. Tina Turner begins the process of giving up her American citizenship. A look back at the highlights of the famous singer’s career.
Anna Mae Bullock was born on November 26, 1939 in Nutbush, Tennessee, United States. She is the daughter of Zelma Currie and Floyd Richard Bullock, respectively worker and foreman, and grew up in a modest environment. Quickly attracted by music, it was in 1957 that she met a life-changing encounter: that of a musician, Ike Turner, who took her on stage and became her mentor, her manager, then her husband. . It was he who transformed the young Anna into “Tina”, in reference to the character Sheena, queen of the jungle appeared in a British magazine at the end of the 1930s. Tina Turner was born.
Originally, Proud Mary, also called Rolling on a River, is a title of Creedence Clearwater Revival, released on the album Bayou Country in 1969. But it is the version of Tina and Ike Turner which will make this song a worldwide success in March 1971. Their recovery ranks at the top of the charts, especially in the United States, where Proud Mary climbs to 4th place on the famous Billboard Hot 100. The single is also certified gold with 500,000 copies sold. across the Atlantic. And it is this version of Proud Mary that has survived the ages, remaining, still today, a cult title.
It is undoubtedly THE tube of Tina Turner: The Best. However, the song was not intended for the singer with the mane, but for Bonnie Tyler, who is the first to interpret it in 1988 on the album Hide Your Heart. The following year, Tina Turner seized it on her opus Foreign Affair and, like Proud Mary, made it a planetary success. The song squats the top of the charts in the United States and as far as Germany or the United Kingdom. Since the 1990s, The Best has also become a sports anthem by becoming the campaign song for the Australian Rugby League Championship: a version recorded in 1992 with Australian rocker Jimmy Barnes, as Symply the Best. A title with such sporting significance is a first. Especially since the piece will become over the years the anthem of all Australian rugby (still remaining a song that speaks of love…).
This is another turning point in Tina Turner’s career. In the summer of 1985, the singer took her first steps in the cinema, in the film by George Miller and George Ogilvie, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. She plays the ruthless Aunt Entity. It is this film which will launch the career of Tina Turner in the cinema, after having become known as a singer. A godsend for the artist, very imbued with her role as a powerful woman, who ultimately was not as much as she would have liked… “She was not as fierce as I wanted… I wouldn’t want you to fall asleep watching my movies,” the singer said at the time. “We needed someone whose vitality and intelligence would make her control over Bartertown believable. She needed to be a positive character rather than a conventional villain,” said director George Miller.
Tina Turner has 4 children: Craig, born in 1958 from a relationship with a saxophonist, then Ronnie, Ike Jr. and Michael, from her marriage to Ike Turner. Ronnie, is “also a musician who had problems with drugs and the police at a young age, but managed to get out of it to avoid ending up like his father”, explains the singer in her book, My Love Story, released in 2019. It was he who married French singer Afida Turner in 2007. If Tina Turner moved away from Ike Jr. and Michael, she always remained close to Craig, her first son.
After her traumatic relationship with Ike Turner, which ended in divorce in 1978, Tina Turner met the man she lived with until her death: Erwin Bach. This German producer, then an executive at EMI, the artist’s record company, was born in 1956 and met the singer in 1985, in Zurich. He is 30, she is 46. Between them, it’s “instant love at first sight”, says Tina Turner in her memoirs published in 2019. The couple married on July 21, 2013 in their castle in Switzerland, near of Zurich, almost thirty years after their first meeting.
Very close to Craig therefore, his first son, Tina Turner had to overcome a tragedy in 2018. On July 3, his fate changed: “My son had committed suicide. He had shot himself in the head”, writes she wrote in her 2019 memoir My Love Story, before concluding, “I know I’ll get through this again. I’m a strong person. I wish I could have passed on some of that strength to Craig. Or that “He finds it in him. But what I really want is to hear my son call me honey again.” A terrible ordeal which came at the time to add to the health problems of Tina Turner.
Recently, the star had buried another of his children. Indeed, in December 2022, his son Ronnie Turner had died suddenly at the age of 62. In question ? Complications from colon cancer, but the 60-year-old also suffered from atherosclerosis, a cardiovascular disease, Page Six revealed. “Ronnie, you left the world way too soon. In sadness, I close my eyes and think of you, my beloved son,” the star said on Instagram, unusually stepping out of her reserve as she was already officially retired from public life.
In 2013, three months after her remarriage, Tina Turner suffered a stroke. She, who already suffers from bowel cancer diagnosed in 2016, is also treating her hypertension with alternative medicine and homeopathy. The result: kidney failure that cost him a kidney. She explained at the time that she relied on “confidence, optimism and joie de vivre” from Erwin Bach, who saved her life in 2017 by donating one of his kidneys. “The consequences of my ignorance almost killed me (…) Then I discovered something extraordinary about Erwin: he never blamed me for my mistakes. Instead, he was loyal, kind and understanding. He was determined to help me stay alive,” said Tina Turner at the time of her operation.
And to conclude: “I know that my medical adventure is far from over. But I am here, we are still here, closer than we imagined. I look behind me and think about my karma. The good was born out of hurt. Joy out of pain. And I’ve never been happier than I am today.” Simply the best.
