Tina Turner, the pioneering rock 'n' roll star who became a pop giant in the 1980s, has died aged 83 after a long illness.
She has suffered from poor health in recent years, was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in 2016 and underwent a kidney transplant in 2017.
Turner affirmed and advanced the formative role of black women in rock 'n' roll, defining this musical era to the point that Mick Jagger admitted to drawing inspiration from her energetic live performances for his stage persona. After two decadesworking with her abusive husband Ike Turnershe started out on her own and, after a few false starts, became one of the defining pop icons of the 1980s thanks to Private Dancer. Her life is presented in three memoirs, a biographical film andjukebox musical, and in 2021 a respected document entitledTina.
In a statement released on Wednesday evening, her publicist Bernard Doherty said: "Tina Turner, the 'Queen of Rock 'n' Roll', has died peacefully at the age of 83 after a long illness at her home in Kusnacht, near Zurich, Switzerland. With her the world is losing a musical legend and role model."
In 2018, scholar Daphne A Brooks wrote for the Guardian, "Turner's musical character has always been a charged combination of mystery as well as lightness, melancholy mixed with a wild vitality that often flirted with danger."
Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, and grew up in Nutbush, Tennessee, where she remembered picking cotton with her family as a child. She sang in a small-town church choir, and as a teenager she spoke - or rather sang - in Ike's band in St. Louis: He refused her request to join in until he heard her grab the mic during BB King's Kings of Rhythm's You Know I Love You.
After her singing talent was discovered, Ike gave her the name Tina Turner – and registered it as a trademark in case she left him and he replaced her. He quickly became aggressive: when Turner had earlier tried to leave the group after sensing his erratic nature, he hit her with a wooden shoe rack.
"My relationship with Ike was doomed the day he found out I wanted to make him money," Turner wrote in her 2018 biography, My Love Story. - He had to control me, financially and mentally, so that I would never leave him.
She debuted under the stage name Ike with Tina Turner's single A Fool in Love in July 1960, which broke into the US Top 30 and began a string of major chart successes. But their live performances made them a sensation. Ike toured aggressively in the Ikea and Tina Turner Revue on the Chitlin' Circuit - including to desegregated audiences, such was their commercial strength. In 1964, they signed a contract with the record company Warner Bros. Loma Records, which released their first chart-topping album: Live! The Ike and Tina Turner Show.
In the second half of the 1960s, many of the biggest names in rock courted the duo. Phil Spector produced the 1966 single River Deep - Mountain High; they supported the Rolling Stones in the UK and later in the US, and stars including David Bowie, Sly Stone, Cher, Elvis Presley and Elton John visited their Las Vegas mansion.
They were chart-topping, Grammy-winning stars in the 1970s - a period that ended when Turner left Ike in 1976, who was consistently aggressive and unfaithful. Her last single with the group was Baby, Get It On, from the 1975 film adaptation of the rock opera Who's Tommy, in which she played Acid Queen, the eponymous character from her second solo album.
In the divorce, which was finalized in 1978, Turner walked away with only two cars and the rights to her stage name. "Ike put up a little fight because he knew what I wanted to do with it," Tina said in the documentary.
Turner, who had already released two solo albums, pursued a solo career, although it wasn't until her fifth album, 1984's Private Dancer, that she shed her old flashy rock 'n' roll image - and ran away. a premature fall to the old track - with one of pop music's powerful, sporty icons dressed in leather.
In the documentary, Tina described Private Dancer as her debut. "I don't see it as a comeback," she said. - Tina never came.
Turner credits Buddhism, and especially chanting, as a positive influence on her life in the 1980s. Outside of music, she starred in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome opposite Mel Gibson in 1985. In 1986, she published her first memoir, the worldwide bestseller I, Tina, which was later adapted into the 1993 film What's Love Got To Do With It? with Angela Bassett as Turner. In 1995, she sang the theme song for the James Bond film GoldenEye.
Turner announced her retirement in 2000, a year after the release of her last solo album, Twenty Four Seven, although she returned to the stage in 2008, appearing at the Grammys with Beyoncé and on her final 50-year career tour.
It was the final end. "I just got tired of everyone's singing and cheering"she told the New York Times in 2019. - That's all I've done in my life.
Turner collaborated on the musical Tina with Phyllida Lloyd, which premiered in 2018 and won Laurence Olivier and Tony Awards for its West End and Broadway performances. "This musical is not about my fame," Turner said of the production. "It's about the path I took to get there. Every night I want the audience to take away from the theater that you can turn poison into medicine."
Turner has often said that she doesn't associate herself with the "invincible" persona that others impose on her. "I don't necessarily want to be a 'strong' person," she told the New York Times. "I had a terrible life. I just kept walking. Just keep going and hope something comes along."
w 2020 rremiks ovog hita iz 1984. What's Love Got to Do With It?Norwegian producer Kygo made Turner the first female artist to chart in the UK Top 40 for seven consecutive decades. In 2021, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist, 30 years after Ike and Tina Turner were inducted.
Turner is survived by her second husband, the German music director Erwin Bach. They married in July 2013 after 27 years together and lived in Switzerland. In 2013, Turner renounced his American citizenship to become a Swiss citizen.
Her first child, Craig Raymond Turner, died in July 2018. Last year, following the death of her second son Ronnie aged 62, Turner said he had "left the world too soon". Ike Turner is survived by his two sons, Ike Turner Jr. and Michael Turner, whom she adopted.
In 2020, Turner told the Guardian that despite serious health issues, the last 10 years of her life embodied her ideal vision of happiness.
"True and lasting happiness comes from an unwavering, hopeful spirit that can shine no matter what."she said. "That is what I have achieved and my greatest desire is to help others become truly happy."