How Tina Turner crowned one of the greatest comebacks in music history after years of abuse cut her off from the world
WHEN Tina Turner lifted up her raw, high-voltage voice and let loose with What’s Love Got To Do With It at the 1985 Grammy Awards, the standing ovation started before she had finished.
Years later she wrote of that moment, which crowned one of the greatest comebacks in music: “I think I spoke to all the people who dream of getting a second chance.”
The singer, who died today aged 83, did not just have one of music’s most powerful voices — she also had one of its most powerful stories.
After years of abuse that cut her off from the world, robbed her of her identity and even a sense of being alive, she broke free.
She was then dismissed for years as an ageing has-been, before roaring back with an album that changed the world’s idea of what a rock star could be.
Along the way, she taught Mick Jagger how to dance, made what John Lennon called the greatest single ever recorded — and provided the backdrop to some of Prince William’s happiest memories of his mother.
Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, and grew up in Nutbush, Tennessee.
Her parents fought violently and when Tina was 11, her mother Zelma left.
Father Floyd took off soon afterwards, dumping Tina and older sister Alline on relatives.
Tina always believed her mother never even liked her, admitting: “That’s a heavy burden for a little girl to bear.”
But at 16, Tina re-joined Zelma in St Louis, Missouri.
There, in 1956, her sister took her to a club to see Ike Turner, who a few years earlier had recorded what is now often regarded as the first rock ’n’ roll single, Rocket 88.
More than 50 years later, Tina still recalled the first time she heard him strike a guitar chord, unleashing an energy that sent her into “a trance”.
She and Alline became regulars, and one night when one of Ike’s bandmates tried to get her sister to sing into the microphone, Tina grabbed it instead.
At the time she thought her voice “was kind of ugly because it didn’t sound like Diana Ross”.
But Ike was thunderstruck by her rasping, powerhouse sound and instantly made her part of his act.
Tina later said: “He was the best then.
“When I met him, I was in awe.
“I gave myself up.”
Ike controlled how she sang, danced and looked, and when by 1960 record labels began noticing her potential, he changed her name to Tina Turner to make sure it was linked with his.
By then, Tina had had son Craig with another band member.
He left her so she reluctantly started a relationship with Ike.
But she did not want to change her name — and when she said as much Ike reacted by pounding her face with a shoe stretcher, then raping her.
Tina was in shock.
She was pregnant to Ike, and believed she was dependent on him for her career.
So she stayed, despite regular beatings and rapes, and hated herself for staying.
That self-hatred robbed her of any self-belief.
She admitted in 2021: “I was living a life of death. I didn’t exist.”
Numb, she agreed to wed Ike in 1962.
Writing in her 2018 autobiography My Love Story, Tina said: “People can’t imagine the kind of man he was — a man who takes his brand new wife to a live, pornographic sex show right after their marriage ceremony.”
But in 1965 she got her first glimpse of freedom, when producer Phil Spector wrote River Deep, Mountain High for her.
Spector, Tina later said, “stripped away all traces of Ike from my performance”, harnessing her power.
She wrote in 2018: “I feel it even now, how exhilarating it was to be given permission to use my voice in a new way.”
The track flopped in the US. But in the UK its extraordinary, welling-up of sound and emotion was a sensation.
It reached No3 and John Lennon declared it the greatest single ever recorded.
Meanwhile The Rolling Stones asked Ike and Tina to open for them on their 1966 British tour.
Tina was shocked at how Mick Jagger stood still on stage, occasionally shaking a tambourine, so took him aside and showed him how to dance and strut.
But back home, Ike ramped up his beatings, making sure her rising fame never translated into self-confidence.
He also took every cent they made, not even giving her an allowance.
Tina later admitted: “I was insanely afraid of him.”
Her first step towards freedom came in 1973, when an acquaintance mentioned Buddhism as a way of making change.
In her book she wrote: “When I embraced Buddhism, I realised that I, alone, was responsible for my life.”
She also learned that she could see her years of suffering not as shameful weakness but as a foundation for unimagined strength.
Tina finally left Ike in July 1976 — running away at night after another beating.
Still bleeding, she found a hotel where, despite only having 36 cents, the manager not only gave her a room but also sent up soup and crackers.
It was a kindness she remembered for the rest of her life.
When she filed for divorce she asked for nothing except the use of the name Tina Turner.
It had symbolised Ike’s ownership of her.
Now she was taking it for herself.
But record companies were not interested — and she scraped a living by singing covers in clubs and performing on TV variety shows.
Her breakthrough came thanks again to a Brit.
In 1983, David Bowie was in New York and mentioned to record executives that he was heading out to see his favourite singer — Tina Turner.
That night, the club was full of execs desperate to prove to Bowie that they had the same taste.
Tina said: “It changed my life.”
The executives offered her a contract, and later that year she had a UK hit with a cover of Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together.
She moved to London, where her manager came across a track recorded by Buck’s Fizz but which was never released.
It was called What’s Love Got To Do With It.
Tina’s megawatt version became the breakout hit from 1984 album Private Dancer,
At 1985’s Grammys it won Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance — and her performance is still regarded as one of the greatest Grammy moments of all time.
The album sold 20million copies and stayed in the US charts for more than two years.
Then, in 1989, came The Best — the song Princess Diana always played when dropping her sons at boarding school.
Prince William revealed in 2021: “She’d be driving along singing at the top of her voice.
“When I listen to it now it takes me back to those car rides and brings back lots of memories of my mother.”
In 1986 Tina met German record executive Erwin Bach, 16 years her junior.
She later recalled her hands shaking when they were introduced, saying: “It means that a soul has met.”
From 1988 the couple made their home on Lake Zurich in Switzerland, where Tina found the calmness she had always yearned for.
But she kept packing out stadiums on tour, finally doing her last show at Sheffield Arena in May 2009, aged 69.
Tina and Erwin married in 2013, after 27 years together.
Three months later she had a stroke, then developed intestinal cancer, which led to kidney failure in 2016.
Erwin donated one of his kidneys to save her life.
But darker times were ahead, when in 2018, eldest son Craig committed suicide aged 59.
Despite it all, in 2020 Tina said: “My life over the past ten years has been my ideal version of happiness.
“Real joy doesn’t mean having a problem-free life.
“True and lasting happiness comes from having an unshakeable, hopeful spirit that can shine, no matter what.
“That’s what I’ve achieved.”