Tina Turner obituary: A walking, strutting, shimmying ball of talent and contradiction

Born: November 26th, 1939

Died: May 24th, 2023

During the first half of her 60-year career, global pop superstar Tina Turner, who died last month aged 83, was a walking, strutting, dancing and shimmying ball of confusion and contradiction. During the 1960s and 1970s, she was billed as one half of R&B duo Ike & Tina Turner, but in reality she was only a cog in an entertainment machine controlled by her abusive husband – and if she dared try to step outside her carefully choreographed role, Ike would quickly turn the screw.

Turner’s public image at the time was that of a confident and sexually voracious woman. Strutting the stage in miniskirts, her signature legs moving almost independently of the rest of her body, she was raunchy, lascivious, fearless.

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When Ike & Tina Turner covered Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love, slowing down the tempo to a languid, seductive rhythm, she turned up the heat to Hindenburg levels.

In 1975, she played up this female predator persona to the hilt when she starred as the Acid Queen in Ken Russell’s film version of The Who’s musical Tommy. The titular deaf, dumb and blind kid, played by Who singer Roger Daltrey, is sent to the Acid Queen for some sexual healing, and she promises to “make a man of him”. Instead, she leaves poor Tommy practically unmanned.

She went on to marry Ike and worked with him for the next 16 years as part of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, until finally, in 1976, she walked out of the relationship with little more than the sequins on her back

Tina Turner may have been considered untameable, but behind the scenes, she was a victim of a violently abusive husband. The abuse began early in their relationship; in 1960, when she tried to break off with him, he beat her about the head with a wooden shoe stretcher.

She went on to marry Ike and worked with him for the next 16 years as part of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, until finally, in 1976, she walked out of the relationship with little more than the sequins on her back.

Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock in Brownsville, Tennessee, on November 26th, 1939, the second child of Floyd and Zelma Bullock. With an older half-sister Evelyn and older sister Ruby Alline, she grew up in the rural community of Nutbush, Tennessee, attended Flagg Grove Elementary School and sang in the choir at Spring Hill Baptist Church. Their mother suffered abuse at the hands of Floyd, and walked out of the family home when Anna Mae was just 11.

[ Tina Turner: her 20 greatest songs and performances – in order ]

A natural caregiver, Anna Mae considered a career in nursing after graduating, but the world of music and entertainment proved too big a temptation, and she and Alline would frequent the nightclubs and venues of St Louis, Missouri, where they lived with their mother. Anna Mae was always in the front row when Ike Turner and his band came to town – she was entranced by him, and pestered him to let her join the band. Ike finally relented after she took the mic during a break in one of his shows and let loose with those pipes.

Cash cow

Ike knew he was on to a good thing with this talented young singer, but he knew he also had to protect his cash cow. He gave her the stage name Tina Turner, and also registered the name so he could keep it for his next singer should she ever quit. When Tina finally divorced him in 1978, she said he “put up a little bit of a fight” over her name - he knew the sheer power of the Tina Turner brand, but not even he could predict the stratospheric heights to which her solo career would subsequently soar.

Following her divorce, Tina Turner spent a number of years in the pop wilderness. Her prospects didn’t look promising. She was in her 40s and it looked as though she was doomed to play the nostalgia circuit

Nowhere was the confusion and contradiction more apparent than in her 1966 hit River Deep – Mountain High, which was produced by Phil Spector. The music mogul, famed for his trademark Wall of Sound, was another abuser with a talented wife, Ronnie Spector, whom he coercively controlled for years. Spector believed Tina’s voice was big and brassy enough for his Wall of Sound, so he persuaded Ike to let him produce the record without any input from Ike. The two toxic males locked horns but Ike relented, though he still demanded that his name be put on the record. The song itself was a musical maelstrom, Spector piling on the instrumentation and Turner’s voice battling to be heard in the soundstorm.

[ Tina Turner: broken and beaten survivor reinvented herself to become a superstar ]

The record, alas, fell foul of the musical segregation in the US: considered too rocky for R&B radio and too soulful for white rock stations, it limped in at Number 88 in the Billboard Hot 100. It fared much better in Europe, though, becoming a UK number three hit and helping Ike & Tina break through to the mainstream – a difficult feat for a black R&B act at the time. Subsequent hits such as Proud Mary and Nutbush City Limits showcased their effective blend of rock and R&B. Turner’s star status on this side of the Atlantic would stand to her when she was forging her solo career.

Following her divorce, Turner spent a number of years in the pop wilderness. Her prospects didn’t look promising. She was in her 40s – considered old in rock ‘n’ roll years then – and it looked as though she was doomed to play the nostalgia circuit. She took on every job she could get, including guesting on gameshows, but she still had many admirers and well-wishers in the business. In the early 1980s, the English band BEF, a side-project of Heaven 17, asked her to sing on their version of The Temptations’ Ball of Confusion, on their album Music of Quality and Distinction. Then she released her cover of Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together, and it became a surprise hit, and marked the beginning of rock’s biggest rebirth.

When she released her fifth solo album, Private Dancer, in May 1984, her years of hard work and dogged persistence paid off in spades, propelling her into that rarefied realm of pop royalty occupied by the likes of Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna. The single What’s Love Got to Do With It? became her first and only Billboard number one, but she went on from strength to strength, enjoying massive global hits with such songs as Private Dancer, We Don’t Need Another Hero and The Best. Ironically, the more she took back her personal power, the more she was able to show her vulnerability. Tina Turner reborn was still sassy, still strutted her stuff and could still play the temptress, but she was now in full control of that power. She’d been there, done that, and had the emotional scars to prove it – and this fed into her new music.

In a spectacular second act, she went on to sell more than 100 million records globally, win 12 Grammy awards, receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and be inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She regularly broke concert attendance records, starred in the 1985 movie Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome with Mel Gibson, and shared stage and recording studio time with some of the world’s biggest artists, including David Bowie, Mick Jagger and Beyoncé.

As Turner reached new heights of success, her ex-husband’s fortunes faded. Ike Turner died in 2007 of a drug overdose, while svengali producer Phil Spector was convicted of murder and died in prison in 2021

All felt privileged to work with her, including Irish men Bono, The Edge and Paul Brady. The U2 duo wrote Turner’s hit theme song for the James Bond film Goldeneye, and Brady’s song Steel Claw was covered by Turner on the Private Dancer album. Brady subsequently wrote Paradise Is Here for Turner, which features on her album Break Every Rule.

As Turner reached new heights of success, her ex-husband’s fortunes faded. Ike Turner died in 2007 of a drug overdose, while svengali producer Phil Spector was convicted of murder and died in prison in 2021. But Tina Turner was no longer defined by the men in her life, and she enjoyed a glittering career on her own terms. Having resolved the contradictions in her early life, she could finally become herself: a walking, singing, strutting, dancing ball of raw, indomitable talent.