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The term legend, in our internet-dominated age, is often overused and yet in describing Tina Turner it actually feels in many ways too small, too constrained for such a powerful life force. A singer with a startling powerful voice and a towering stage presence, someone whose artistic legacy will equal that of her good friend David Bowie. The friend who was in many ways largely responsible for the second part of her career. Tina showed that artists can indeed have a second act and for her it was a second act, which would spectacularly tower far above her first. Long before there was Beyoncé there was Tina Turner.

Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, in Brownsville, Tennessee, not far from Nutbush, Tennessee a place where her father worked as an overseer of sharecroppers. Turner herself picked cotton at a young age, before her family relocated in pursuit of work, causing Turner to be sent to live with her grandparents. Tina Turner’s mother eventually left the family home, in order to escape an abusive relationship with her father, foreshadowing Tina’s own abusive relationship with her future husband Ike Turner.  Her father remarried, leaving her with a sense of abandonment something, which would follow her for the rest of her life.   She though found solace in singing and one evening while still a teenager, she saw Ike Turner’s band perform.  Mesmerised by what she saw, she asked if she could sing one song with them, Ike Turner was impressed and asked her to join the group. Worried that the still very young girl was breaking the law simply by being there, he renamed her Tina Turner and called the group the Ike and Tina Turner Review.  Ike having been one of the country’s first black music producers and talent scouts had a vision for the group and created an entire look for both Tina and the new backing singers/ dancers known as the Ikettes. The Ike and Tina Turner Review became one of fixtures on the then “chitlin circuit”, a specific network of clubs for black acts in a still segregated America. The tours were gruelling but it also brought the group to the attention of music producer Phil Spector who signed them to his label and recorded one of Tina Turner’s most iconic songs, River Deep Mountain High, many see this recording now as the epitome of Spector’s much vaunted “wall of sound”.  Although “River Deep Mountain High” only reached no 88 on the Billboard charts (doing far better abroad) the single did get the group a spot on an early Rolling Stones tour and by doing so introduced them to a much wider audience.

The Ike and Tina Turner Review then signed with Blue Thumb Records and the group’s growing success lead to them headlining in Las Vegas.  Their growing success coincided with the new popularity of rock and roll and their electric up-tempo Rhythm and Blues perfectly fit the bill.  Appearances on many of the country’s popular television shows soon followed and Tina also started writing, including hits such as the autobiographical “Nutbush City Limits” which would go on to become one of her signature tunes. In 1974 they produced the Grammy nominated The Gospel According to Ike and Tina.  That year Turner also appeared to acclaim as the Acid Queen in Ken Russell’s globally successful film of the musical Tommy. 

The group’s growing popularity though sadly coincided with Ike Turner’s escalating cocaine dependency, which fuelled his now well-documented domestic abuse.  His rampant infidelity as well as a level of violence even musicians working with them at the time found hard to watch, led to a failed suicide attempt by Turner. But, this was also the period in her life where she discovered Nichiren Buddhism.  A school of Buddhism which originated in 13^th century Japan and one which is based on the fundamental respect for all life, including that of the life of the practitioner.   Through her practice, Tina Turner found the strength to eventually leave Ike, hiding bleeding in a hotel directly across the road from where they had been booked to stay.  Tina Turner not only left with nothing financially but because of the cancelled shows they were both booked to play, the act was thousands of dollars in debt. In an interview years later for the Daily Beast, a sad and emotionally bewildered Ike Turner stated of their relationship, “I still don’t know why she left me.”

In order to pay some of their joint debts Tina Turner took on countless appearances on American television game shows and toured a cabaret style act which could have left her relegated to music’s nostalgia wasteland. But something magical happened in the early eighties.  Because of David Bowie’s insistence Capital Records, the label he himself was then signed to, re-signed her.  And they released a recording of Turner singing the Al Green classic Let’s Stay Together, followed soon after by What’s Love Got to do With it, the video of which, featured a restyled Turner striding down a city street in a denim jacket and eighties spiked hair on the embryonic MTV station. These recordings went on to define an era and reignited her career. Many people think about Michael Jackson and Prince breaking down the racial barriers, which blocked African American performers from accessing a wider audience, people forget that Turner’s name should be added to that list.  The release of the album Private Dancer, which included both tracks, propelled her to global stardom. Private Dancer was literally gold dust, selling six million copies worldwide. 

The single “What’s Love got to Do With it” became her first and only Billboard number 1.  She went on to win three Grammy awards and appeared alongside Mel Gibson in Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome.  The film was a global smash hit as was the film’s title track written by Graham Lyle and Terry Britten. The song “We Don’t Need Another Hero” became one Turner’s biggest international hits.

During this period Tina smashed record after record becoming the fifth bestselling female artist of all times.  Selling over two hundred million records. To put these numbers into perspective, only  Madonna (who holds the record at three hundred million) Rihanna, Mariah Carey and Whitney Huston are above her with current chart toppers Beyoncé, Adele and Taylor Swift behind.

And her tours were legendary including the Break Every Rule Tour which broke box office records in thirteen countries. Her show in Rio de Janeiro remains the largest paying concert audience with 180,000 spectators anywhere in the world.  The 90’s saw the publication of Tina Turner’s autobiography I, Tina: My Life Story, which was turned into the acclaimed film, What’s Love Got to Do with It, in 1993 starring Angela Bassett and Lawrence Fishburne.  Both actors would receive Oscar nominations. In 2018 Turner’s life would become a hit musical opening in London before transferring to Broadway.

Perhaps though Tina Turner’s greatest achievement was being an inspiration to women around the world in abusive relationships.  Through her example, they could see that it was possible to leave an abusive partner and rebuild their lives.  She often stated that it was her Buddhist practice, which saw her through hardships, which would have in normal circumstances destroyed her.  Those included the death of both of her biological sons and numerous illnesses toward the end of her life. Including kidney failure, which propel her second husband, Erwin Bach, to donate one of his own.  It’s perhaps karmic that her first husband through his violence toward her could have taken her life but her second husband because of his devotion to her saved it.

Her recent book Happiness Becomes You is a beautiful portrait of a woman who has survived life’s many turbulent storms and, in the process, finds what the true meaning of happiness is.  The New York Times recently ran a lovely account from Turner’s neighbours in her adopted home of Switzerland of her daily life there, they remarked on the fact that she could often be seen at the local shops buying her own groceries or eating out with her husband in several of the local restaurants there just like any other resident.  One of her final stage performances was with Beyoncé and there is beautiful photo of them both in full flow, a portrait of two generations of iconic black women, and perhaps an unwritten caption would say “I have opened the door for you, now it’s your turn to walk through it.”    

A French version is available : La mort d’une icône : Tina Turner