Tina Turner, ‘Queen Of Rock ‘n’ Roll’ , Dies At 83

NEW YORK – Tina Turner, the irresistible singer and stage performer who paired with her husband Ike Turner for a spectacular run of smash singles and live shows in the 1960s and ’70s, and who survived her horrific marriage to triumph in middle life with the chart-topping “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” has died at the age of 83.

According to her management, Turner died Wednesday at her home in Küsnacht, near Zurich, following a protracted illness. She gained Swiss citizenship a decade ago.

Few celebrities have traveled as far and overcome as much as Anna Mae Bullock, born in a segregated Tennessee hospital and lived her latter years on a 260,000 square foot house on Lake Zurich. She became a superstar on her own in her 40s, when most of her peers were on their way down, despite being physically beaten, emotionally traumatized, and financially destroyed by her 20-year relationship with Ike Turner, and remained a top concert draw for years following.

“How do we say goodbye to a woman who took ownership of her pain and trauma and used it to help change the world?” According to Angela Bassett, who played Turner in the 1993 biopic “What’s Love Got to Do With It,”

On September 2, 1984, Tina Turner sang her current hit song “What’s Love Got to Do With It” in Los Angeles. (Photo by AP/Phil Ramey/File)

“Through her bravery in telling her story, her commitment to staying the course in her life, no matter the cost, and her determination to carve out a space in rock and roll for herself and others who look like her, Tina Turner demonstrated to those who lived in fear what a beautiful future filled with love, compassion, and freedom should look like.”

Turner died Wednesday at her home in Küsnacht, near Zurich, following a protracted illness.

The “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll” was one of the world’s most popular entertainers, with fans ranging from Mick Jagger to Beyoncé to Mariah Carey. She was known for a core of pop, rock, and rhythm and blues favorites: “Proud Mary,” “Nutbush City Limits,” “River Deep, Mountain High,” and the hits she had in the ’80s, including “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” ”

Her rumbling contralto that could smolder or burst, striking smile and prominent cheekbones, a palette of wigs, and muscular, quick-stepping legs were all hallmarks. She sold over 150 million records worldwide, won 12 Grammys, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside Ike in 1991 (and on her own in 2021), and was honored at the Kennedy Centre in 2005 with Beyoncé and Oprah Winfrey among those honoring her. In 2021, her life became the subject of a film, a Broadway musical, and an HBO documentary, which she dubbed her public farewell.

Turner has two sons: Craig, who he had with saxophonist Raymond Hill, and Ronald, who he had with Ike Turner. (Craig Turner was discovered dead in an apparent suicide in 2018). Tina Turner announced in her memoir “Tina Turner: My Love Story,” published later that year, that she had gotten a kidney transplant from her second husband, former EMI record executive Erwin Bach.

Turner’s life appeared to be an argument against marriage, but her life with Bach was a love tale Tina would not have imagined possible when she was younger. He picked her up at the airport when she traveled to Germany for record promotion in the mid-1980s. He was a decade her junior — “the prettiest face,” she claimed of him in the HBO documentary — and the desire was reciprocal. She married Bach in a civil ceremony in Switzerland in 2013.

“It’s that happiness that people talk about,” Turner said at the time, “when you wish for nothing, when you can finally take a deep breath and say, ‘Everything is good.'”

SOURCE – (AP)