SUPREME TALENT AND UNBREAKABLE SPIRIT TINA TURNER TRIBUTES FROM THE WORLD OF MUSIC AND BEYOND FOR THE ‘QUEEN OF ROCK‘N’ROLL’
REPORT: ROSALIND POWELL
1939-2023
S he was an indomitable force of nature, fierce, fearless and full of an energy that transformed raw talent into intoxicating performances for decades.
But last week, after a long period of ill health, Tina Turner died of natural causes at her home in Switzerland, where she had lived with her second husband, Erwin Bach. She was 83.
An inspiration to artists across the generations thanks to hits including What’s Love Got to Do With It and The Best, the “queen of rock’n’roll” was the subject of tributes from presidents, rock gods and fellow divas.
Sir Elton John called her a “total legend on record and on stage”, while Sir Mick Jagger, who duetted with Tina at Live Aid in 1985, described her as “inspiring, warm, funny and generous”. He added: “She helped me so much when I was young and I will never forget her.” I Will Survive star Gloria Gaynor credited Tina with having “paved the way for so many women in rock music, black and white. She did with great dignity & success what very few would even have dared to do in her time and in that genre of music.”
A survivor of domestic abuse at the hands of her first husband Ike Turner, Tina had found love with German music executive Erwin, whom she married in 2013 in a ceremony exclusively covered in HELLO!.
A CAREER SPANNING DECADES
Speaking then about the start of their relationship, 27 years earlier, Tina told us: “I said to him then: ‘You can’t fool around and if you do, just tell me, because I don’t want to hear it elsewhere,’ because I’d had an awful run in life in that respect before and I didn’t want it to happen again. So we made that promise to each other then and I think as far as we were concerned, that was the vow.”
Such was their love that in 2017, Erwin donated his own kidney to help save her life after she suffered total kidney failure following a battle with intestinal cancer.
She came from a poor background, born as Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee, and began her singing career with Ike when she was 17. He changed and copyrighted her name and created her “wild” stage persona as they went on to become one of the most dynamic live shows, enjoying hits over the next two decades, including River Deep, Mountain High and Nutbush City Limits. They married in 1962.
However, Ike was physically and mentally abusive to Tina, who came to realise he “needed to control me, economically and psychologically, so I could never leave him”, as she wrote in her 20
