On the Death of Tina Turner: The Lioness

She was one of the most successful singers in music history. Some say: also to the biggest. Because with hits like “What’s Love Got To Do With It”, “The Best”, “We Don’t Need Another Hero” and “Typical Male”, Tina Turner helped define the sound of the 80s, the heyday of pop with its trinity from Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna, behind which she only stepped back a little.

Tina Turner was a fixture of this golden era with her animal strength, pride and innovative spirit. And that was her second stardom.

Now the singer has died at the age of 83 in her adopted country of Switzerland. The fact that the star had recently become quieter was due to the fact that Turner retired from the stage in 2009 and enjoyed her private life in Küsnacht near Zurich. She kept her word when she said that after more than 50 years in show business, that was enough because she was the kind of person who meant what she said.

“Let my sister sing”

Growing up in St. Louis, Anna Mae Bullock didn’t rush into the spotlight. If it wasn’t for this guitarist who was playing with his band at a hip club in town. During the breaks, he would sit at the piano while his fellow musicians ducked into the dressing room, and he would always have to listen to the same phrase from his drummer’s girlfriend: “Let my sister sing.”

What was meant was Little Ann, as Tina was called at the time. It went on like this for months, the musician always brushed the girl off. He thought to himself, “Everyone says they can sing, but they can’t.”

Ike Turner thought he knew what he was talking about. Until one evening, while he was strumming the piano again, someone passed the microphone to Tina. “‘Damn,’ I said, ‘that girl can sing.'”

Little Ann, the slender black girl from a humble background, was discovered by Ike Turner, her future husband and the cause of years of torment. With her, his career took off.

But not immediately. Because first she was still with his saxophonist, got pregnant, struggled through as an assistant nurse in the hospital. She approached Ike Turner for money. He gave her three dollars a week, but he still wouldn’t let her sing. In his band, the men sang.

Then, in 1960, chance came to the young mother’s aid. Ike Turner had written the soul number “A Fool of Love” and wanted to record it with a singer who, however, transferred him. Tina jumped in and because she sang like a man, which hardly any woman did at the time, the song became a hit. He paved the way to fame and fortune for the couple Ike and Tina Turner, who were initially artistic and later also family members.

The ascent was bumpy. As a live band, the Ike and Tina Turner revue, with its dancers in miniskirts, was a celebrated event. Only the record sales did not want to pick up. Ike explained it by saying that his singer was not liked by women. To address the problem, he wrote snazzy funk songs just for her, in which she said phrases “women everywhere want to say to their husbands,” as Ike Turner wrote in his memoirs. Sentences like: “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine”.

With hits like “Proud Mary”, “Nutbush City Limits”, which broke down the boundaries between soul and rock music, and the Beatles cover “Come Together”, Ike and Tina became a dream team of 60s R’n’B.

“It wasn’t a good life,” she said in retrospect. Ike’s difficult nature turned the relationship into a psychological hell from which Tina Turner was only able to escape in 1976, when she fled the hotel they shared. He only agreed to the divorce because she waived all financial claims from royalties.

If I had understood how cheeky the song is, I would have accepted it immediately.

Tina Turner about her biggest hit What’s Love Got To Do With It.

So the girl from the cotton-picking family, who had worked her way up to become a multiple millionaire and had a voice like no one else, was left with nothing again. As a single mother of two sons, the 40-year-old went cleaning again. She preferred that to being the wife of a narcissist who had offended and incapacitated her.

Sex is more important than love? Never

Only the voice, she still had it. It took her eight years to fuse her iron-bending organ with the synthetic sounds of the 80s. With the albums “Private Dancer” (1984), “Break Every Rule” (1986) and “Foreign Affair” she rose to the top again and became a sought-after duo partner of David Bowie and others.

She almost lost her success because she was trying too hard to distance herself from her old success. She initially declined to sing her comeback hit “What’s Love Got To Do With It” because she felt it didn’t suit her. How could something not be about love? she asked. And she felt the same coercion she had wanted to escape from by separating from Ike.

Only the persuasion of her co-producer Terry Bitten opened her eyes. “If I had understood how cheeky the song was, I would have accepted it immediately,” she said.

The epitome of the power woman

Her eccentric appearance, the lion’s mane and tiger costumes, made her a style icon. For the trash film “Mad Max – Beyond Thunderdome” she not only wrote the soundtrack, but also appeared as the fiery antipode of the hero.

It was inevitable that her life story, with all the dramatic twists and turns, did not also become the stuff of pop culture processing. With satisfaction she accepted the tributes for the musical that tells about her. But she didn’t have much to do with it anymore.

Tina Turner had said what she had to say. Hardly anyone knew how to describe the complexities of desire and love like she did. Her own dark experiences also played a role in this. Like in “Two People”, for example, where she admits that she cannot let go because two people have to offer each other protection. No matter what. Or in “Typical Male,” where she admits to using her feminine charisma to get ordinary men around—and getting herself into more and more trouble.

This kind of pop associated with her name and Phil Collins’ went down a long time ago. And yet the Nutbush City Queen, as Tina Turner swept through the nightclubs, will remain the epitome of the power woman.