Breaking the Rules: The Great Tina Turner Has Died

Tina Turner became a rock and roll star in the 1950s, went through ups and downs, but ended her long career as a real queen. Mick Jagger himself admitted that her stage image and powerful energy inspired his performances. In recent years, she struggled with a serious illness. On May 24, it became known that the great artist died at the age of 84. Izvestia recalls the biography of one of the main American stars of the 20th century.

The path to the dream

Born Anna May Bullock on November 26, 1939, in Nutbush, Tennessee, in an out-of-the-way corner of the American South, in a poor family of a farm laborer from a plantation. From an early age, she and her whole family picked cotton in the fields. Her most joyful childhood memories were associated with music: as a child, she sang in a church choir, and at 18, working as a nurse in a hospital in St. who found her calling. “I could only work in a hospital and sing. And I wanted to sing, ”Tina later wrote in her memoirs. But Turner was skeptical about the requests of a teenage girl to give her a chance: even an affair with the group’s saxophonist Raymond Hill did not help Anna May get into the group.

However, when Ike Turner heard her perform BB King’s “You Know I Love You”, he completely changed his mind. He not only took the girl under his protection, but also came up with a new name for her and created a stage image. This is how Tina Turner appeared (practical Ike did not fail to register the name as a trademark – of course, for himself). Soon Tina became the eighth wife of a musician who was too loving even for an era of free morals: in total, Ike entered into 11 official marriages.

At first, happiness seemed cloudless: the Ike and Tina Turner Review traveled around the United States, gathering full houses. The image created for his wife by Ike Turner delighted and shocked the public at the same time. At that time, women with a microphone were supposed to go on stage in classic floor-length closed dresses. Tina was completely different, new and unlike anyone: slender, long-legged, in an extravagant outfit that barely covered her body, copying the erotic rags of the comic book heroine Sheena, the queen of the jungle, with whom Ike Turner copied the image for the young singer. The duet of Ike and Tina Turner became a completely new musical phenomenon for the 1960s – it was, according to Ike himself, “white music with black vocals.”

Ike and Tina capitalized on the growing potential of white rock, including The Beatles and Creedence Clearwater Revival in their repertoire. Soon the duet’s popularity crossed the ocean, they were talked about in Europe. In the late 1960s, they were at the height of fame that a cotton plantation girl could only dream of.

Invisible tears

Alas, the public knew little about what went on behind the scenes of the ever-successful Ike and Tina Turner Revue concerts. Meanwhile, the couple’s life together was far from cloudless. Hayk drank, used drugs, cheated on his wife right and left, and soon began to regularly raise his hand to her. Yes, and he did not treat the stage image that he had once created very respectfully: for example, when Tina was in the hospital, he, in order not to cancel the concert, released a girl of easy virtue on stage instead of her, with whom he had fun the day before. When the singer, not wanting to endure her husband’s antics anymore, announced her departure from the group, he beat her with a wooden shoe stretcher.

“My relationship with Ike was doomed from the day he realized he was going to cut money from me,” Turner admitted in her 2018 autobiography. In 1968, unable to endure domestic violence, she even tried to commit suicide – but ended up staying with Ike for another eight long years. It wasn’t until 1976, after another ugly scandal in a Dallas hotel room, that she turned around and just left, with a few cents in her pocket and a very vague idea of ​​her future. After numerous lawsuits from everything earned over a decade and a half of successful touring, she got two cars and the rights to her stage name. “Hayk fought against me as best he could, because he knew that this was enough for me,” she later said.

However, then, after the divorce, she did not feel much confidence. She was already in her 40s, she had never performed solo, and in general knew little about the organizational side of the music industry – Ike always did this. However, it was not in her nature to retreat. Tina Turner recorded a couple of solo albums, starred as the Acid Queen in Ken Russell’s cult film “Tommy” based on the rock opera The Who. But the albums sold poorly, the halls were not filled, and the 40th anniversary loomed ahead – the age in those days for a rock star was almost retirement. Rock in the 1970s was the territory of the young and the daring, and Tina’s chances of regaining her former popularity seemed to be dwindling with each passing day.

But she has repeatedly proved that the strength of her character and perseverance are able to demolish any barriers. It happened this time as well.

Your way

In 1984, Tina Turner released the album Private Dancer. The title track was written especially for Turner by then-peak Dire Straits leader Mark Knopfler. It was a 100% hit. The singer, who by that time had already turned 45, not only returned to the stage, but instantly gained popularity, which she did not know in a duet with her ex-husband. The composition instantly soared to 7th place on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and in the lists of the best songs of rhythm and blues, it even reached the third position. Tina Turner was once again a star. Rock titans lined up to sing a duet with her: Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Rod Stewart…

She maintained her status as an international rock ‘n’ roll megastar for another quarter of a century as she continued to record songs and give concerts. She broke records all over the world: so, Turner’s performance at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro attracted 180,000 spectators, becoming the sixth largest paid concert in history. “In Europe, in some countries, I mean more than The Rolling Stones” she said with satisfaction in the mid-1990s. And it was not empty boasting: around the same years, Mick Jagger admitted that he draws inspiration from her stage drive.

Ike Turner, meanwhile, was sinking lower and lower. After numerous prison terms for drugs, he several times turned to his ex-wife with a proposal to re-launch a joint project, but received a calm and categorical refusal. “I probably forgave him,” Tina said about this, “but I don’t want to ever have anything to do with this person again.”

Her last live concert took place in 2009. She suffered a stroke, was treated for bowel cancer in 2016, and a year later, in 2017, she received a kidney transplant. She was donated by her second husband, Erwin Bach. Over the years, many new stars have appeared on the scene. But to this day, there was no one who could be on a par with her. The owner of 12 Grammys, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the French Legion of Honor, the queen of rock and roll, soul and rhythm and blues, one of the most desirable women in the world left undefeated. She passed away at her home in Switzerland at the age of 83 – but for the public she will remain forever young, as the commandments of rock and roll say.