Tina Turner, the unstoppable musical force with hits like “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” has died, her manager said.
Tina Turner, the unstoppable singer and stage performer who teamed with husband Ike Turner for a dynamic run of hit records and live shows in the 1960s and ’70s and survived her horrifying marriage to triumph in middle age with the chart-topping “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” has died at 83.
Turner died Tuesday, after a long illness in her home in Küsnacht near Zurich, Switzerland, according to her manager. She became a Swiss citizen a decade ago.
Few stars traveled so far — she was born Anna Mae Bullock in a segregated Tennessee hospital and spent her latter years on a 260,000 square foot estate on Lake Zurich — and overcame so much. Physically battered, emotionally devastated, and financially ruined by her 20-year relationship with Ike Turner, she became a superstar on her own in her 40s, at a time when most of her peers were on their way down, and remained a top concert draw for years after.
With admirers ranging from Beyoncé to Mick Jagger, Turner was one of the world’s most successful entertainers, 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, among them “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” “We Don’t Need Another Hero,” and a cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.”
Her trademarks were her growling contralto, her bold smile and strong cheekbones, her palette of wigs, and the muscular, quick-stepping legs she did not shy from showing off. She sold more than 150 million records worldwide, won 12 Grammys, was voted along with Ike into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991 (and on her own in 2021), and was honored at the Kennedy Center in 2005, with Beyoncé and Oprah Winfrey among those praising her. Her life became the basis for a film, a Broadway musical, and an HBO documentary in 2021 that she called her public farewell.
Frequently Asked Questions
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How old is Tina Turner?
Tina Turner was 83 years old at the time of her death.
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What will be Tina Turner’s funeral casket like?
Details about Tina Turner’s funeral casket have not been disclosed at this time.
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Is Ike Turner still alive?
No, Ike Turner passed away in 2007.
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Is Tina Turner still alive and how old is she?
No, Tina Turner has passed away. She was 83 years old.
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Is there an obituary for Tina Turner?
At the time of writing, there is no official obituary available for Tina Turner.
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How did Ronnie Turner die?
There is no information available regarding Ronnie Turner’s death.
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Who is Tina Turner’s son?
Tina Turner had two sons: Craig, with saxophonist Raymond Hill, and Ronald, with Ike Turner.
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Who was Tina Turner’s husband?
Tina Turner’s husband was Erwin Bach, a former EMI record executive. They got married in 2013.
Until she left her husband and revealed their back story, she was known as the voracious on-stage foil of the steady-going Ike, the leading lady of the “Ike and Tina Turner Revue.” Ike was billed first and ran the show, choosing the material, the arrangements, the backing singers. They toured constantly for years, in part because Ike was often short on money and unwilling to miss a concert. Tina Turner was forced to go on with bronchitis, with pneumonia, with a collapsed right lung.
Other times, the cause of her misfortunes was Ike himself.
As she recounted in her memoir, “I, Tina,” Ike began hitting her not long after they met, in the mid-1950s, and only grew more vicious. Provoked by anything and anyone, he would throw hot coffee in her face, choke her, or beat her until her eyes were swollen shut, then rape her. Before one show, he broke her jaw and she went on stage with her mouth full of blood.
Terrified both of being with Ike and of being without him, she credited her emerging Buddhist faith in the mid-1970s with giving her a sense of strength and self-worth, and she finally left in early July 1976. The Ike and Tina Turner Revue was scheduled to open a tour marking the country’s bicentennial when Tina snuck out of their Dallas hotel room, with just a Mobil credit card and 36 cents, while Ike slept. She hurried across a nearby highway, narrowly avoiding a speeding truck, and found another hotel to stay.
“I looked at him (Ike) and thought, ‘You just beat me for the last time, you sucker,'” she recalled in her memoir.
Turner was among the first celebrities to speak candidly about domestic abuse, becoming a heroine to battered women and a symbol of resilience to all. Ike Turner did not deny mistreating her, although he tried to blame Tina for their troubles. When he died in 2007, a representative for his ex-wife said simply: “Tina is aware that Ike passed away.”
Little of this was apparent to the many Ike and Tina fans. The Turners were a hot act for much of the 1960s and into the ’70s, evolving from bluesy ballads such as “A Fool in Love” and “It’s Going to Work Out Fine” to flashy covers of “Proud Mary” and “Come Together” and other rock songs that brought them crossover success.
They opened for the Rolling Stones in 1966 and 1969, and were seen performing a lustful version of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” in the 1970 Stones documentary “Gimme Shelter.” Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett gave Oscar-nominated performances as Ike and Tina in the 1993 movie “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” based on “I, Tina,” but she would say that reliving her years with Ike was so painful she couldn’t bring herself to watch the movie.
Ike and Tina’s reworking of “Proud Mary,” originally a tight, mid-tempo hit for Creedence Clearwater Revival, helped define their assertive, sexual image. Against a background of funky guitar and Ike’s crooning baritone, Tina began with a few spoken words about how some people wanted to hear songs that were “nice and easy.”
“But there’s this one thing,” she warned, “you see, we never ever do nothing nice and easy.
“We always do it nice — and rough.”
But by the end of the 1970s, Turner’s career seemed finished. She was 40 years old, her first solo album had flopped, and her live shows were mostly confined to the cabaret circuit. Desperate for work and money, she even agreed to tour in South Africa when the country was widely boycotted because of its racist apartheid regime.
Rock stars helped bring her back. Rod Stewart convinced her to sing “Hot Legs” with him on “Saturday Night Live,” and Jagger, who had openly borrowed some of Turner’s on-stage moves, sang “Honky Tonk Women” with her during the Stones’ 1981-82 tour. At a listening party for his 1983 album “Let’s Dance,” David Bowie told guests that Turner was his favorite female singer.
More popular in England at the time than in the U.S., she recorded a raspy version of “Let’s Stay Together” at EMI’s Abbey Road studios in London. By the end of 1983, “Let’s Stay Together” was a hit throughout Europe and on the verge of breaking in the states. An A&R man at Capitol Records, John Carter, urged the label to sign her up and make an album. Among the material presented to her was a reflective pop-reggae ballad co-written by Terry Britten and Graham Lyle and initially dismissed by Tina as “wimpy.”
“I just thought it was some old pop song, and I didn’t like it,” she later said of “What’s Love Got To Do With It.”
Turner’s “Private Dancer” album came out in May 1984, sold more than eight million copies, and featured several hit singles, including the title song and “Better Be Good To Me.” It won four Grammys, among them record of the year for “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” the song that came to define the clear-eyed image of her post-Ike years.
“People look at me now and think what a hot life I must have lived — ha!” she wrote in her memoir.
Even with Ike, it was hard to mistake her for a romantic. Her voice was never “pretty,” and love songs were never her specialty, in part because she had little experience to draw from. She was born in Nutbush, Tennessee, in 1939, and would say she received “no love” from either her mother or father. After her parents separated, she moved often around Tennessee and Missouri, living with various relatives. She was outgoing, loved to sing, and as a teenager would check out the blues clubs in St. Louis, where one of the top draws was Ike Turner.
They were married in Tijuana in 1962, a union Tina Turner did not write about in her memoir and later described as a mistake. They had a son, Ronald, before she filed for divorce in 1968 and they soon separated. But Ike would not let her go. He locked her in a room, with a guard outside the door, until she agreed to come back. She returned to the tour and gave birth to their son, Ronnie, in October 1960. Ike and Tina were officially divorced in 1978. Tina Turner’s attorney announced in 1976 that the marriage was “irretrievably broken,” but a court did not grant her a divorce until 1978. She surrendered her name, and Ike got to keep “Ike and Tina Turner Revue.”
Tina later became involved with a record producer, Roger Davies, who helped engineer her remarkable comeback. She told him she didn’t want to be pigeonholed as an “oldies” act, singing songs from the Ike and Tina days, and he assembled a group of young British rockers to play behind her. It worked. “Private Dancer” came out in 1984 and became a worldwide success, thanks to hits such as “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” “Private Dancer,” “Better Be Good to Me” and “Let’s Stay Together.”
As she told Oprah Winfrey in a 1997 interview, she got more than her career back.
“One day I became happy with myself,” she said. “You can’t be happy with yourself if you’re doing something you don’t want to do. I didn’t want to be married. I didn’t want to have Ike’s children. I didn’t want to be a performer who sang in a group for the rest of her life. I wanted to sing alone. So I was happy with myself.”
She lived in Europe for many years before settling in Switzerland with Bach. In 2013, they got married in a civil ceremony. The couple’s Buddhist beliefs led them to mark the union with a private ceremony at their home on Lake Zurich.
Throughout her life, Turner was known for her electrifying stage presence, powerful vocals, and indomitable spirit. Her impact on the music industry and her inspiring journey as a survivor of domestic abuse continue to resonate with fans around the world.
Rest in peace, Tina Turner.
