After a long illness: Tina Turner died at the age of 83

Rock legend Tina Turner is dead. She died in Zurich on Wednesday at the age of 83. This was announced by a spokesman in the evening. She died in Küsnacht after a long illness.

The “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll” has brought an audience of millions into ecstasy with her powerful voice, daring costumes, sexy dance routines and exuberant energy. That was mainly in the 80s and 90s.

Turner lived quietly on Lake Zurich

After a farewell tour in 2009, she retired into private life at the age of 70. According to her own statements, after decades of hard work, she now enjoyed life without obligations.

After that, Turner rarely appeared in public, for example to promote a book or a musical about her life story. With her German partner Erwin Bach, who is 16 years her junior, she has lived on Lake Zurich in Switzerland since the 1990s. The two celebrated a lavish wedding party there in 2013. Turner later even accepted Swiss citizenship.

Their marriage was marred by violence

She rose to fame as a duo with then-husband Ike Turner in the ’60s and ’70s. Hits like “River Deep – Mountain High” and “Nutbush City Limits” stormed the charts in many countries. As Turner revealed much later, the marriage was an ordeal for her. Ike beat and bullied her. She fled from him at the age of 37. Turner gave up all financial claims from the joint music creation in order to get through the divorce quickly and started with a solo career.

At the age of 45 she shone in the spotlight again: the album “Private Dancer” was her solo breakthrough in 1984. From then on she filled stadiums and music stages all over the world. She landed numerous hits: “What’s Love Got To Do With It?”, “Proud Mary”, “We Don’t Need Another Hero” or “Be Tender with Me Baby” are just a few of them.

Turner has won numerous music awards. In 2021 she was inducted into the “Rock & Roll Hall of Fame” in Cleveland, USA. “If they’re still giving me awards at 81, I must have done something right,” she joked at the ceremony via video link from Switzerland.

Turner had two biological sons who predeceased her at ages 59 and 62. She herself had colon cancer and kidney failure. Her husband donated one of his kidneys to her in 2017. In the 2019 autobiography “My Love Story” she reported on many painful experiences in life, but honored Bach as her savior and the greatest love of her life. (dpa)