Rock ‘n’ Roll Icon Tina Turner Dies at 83

Tina Turner, the legendary singer who rose from humble beginnings and overcame a notoriously abusive marriage to become one of the most popular Black, femme artists of all time, has died after a long illness at her home in Switzerland. She was 83.

The news was confirmed on Turner’s official Facebook page.

“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Tina Turner,” the statement says. “With her music and her boundless passion for life, she enchanted millions of fans around the world and inspired the stars of tomorrow. Today, we say goodbye to a dear friend who leaves us all her greatest work: her music. All our heartfelt compassion goes out to her family. Tina, we will miss you dearly.”

A riveting performer who was known for her powerfully gritty and sultry voice, Turner had a string of R ‘n’ B hits in the 1960s and early 70s with her domineering and abusive husband, Ike Turner. After their divorce, she pursued a solo career which floundered for years before she mounted a stunning comeback in 1984 with her multiplatinum album Private Dancer and its No. 1 hit, “What’s Love Got to Do With It.”

Before long, Turner was a global superstar, commanding MTV with her spiky wigs, short skirts, and famously long legs strutting across concert stages in three-inch heels. Her talent earned her acclaim as the “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” while her resiliency made her a hero to women and femme folks everywhere.

When she sang of pain and heartache, every word rang true.

“For a long time, I felt like I was stuck, with no way out of the unhealthy situation I was in,” she said in a 2021 interview with Harvard Business Review. “But then I had a series of encounters with different people who encouraged me. Once I could see myself clearly, I began to change, opening the way to confidence and courage. It took a few years, but finally, I was able to stand up for my life and start anew.”

Born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, to poor sharecroppers near Nutbush, Tennessee, a rural community north of Memphis, she spent her early years living with her grandmother after her parents split. Following the death of her grandmother in the 1950s, Turner and her sister Ruby moved to live with their mother in St. Louis, Missouri, and it was there that she began to visit local clubs and met Ike, whose band, Kings of Rhythm, were popular in the area.

Launching her career at 17 as a singer of Kings of Rhythm in 1957, she debuted under the name Tina Turner in 1960 with her duet with Ike titled “A Fool in Love.” A string of songs followed that became standards in the artist’s repertoire, including “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine,” “River Deep – Mountain High,” “Nutbush City Limits,” and “Proud Mary.”

Turner also released two solo albums while she was with Ike—Tina Turns the Country On! in 1974 and Acid Queen in 1975.

Although the duo’s relationship evolved, Turner stated in interviews and her biography, I, Tina: My Life Story, that the physical abuse began almost immediately from the start. According to her, Ike would fly into fits of rage at the slightest provocation, adding that he would hit her with whatever was available—coat hangers, telephones, a wooden shoe stretcher, and his fists. Often, he would beat her before they went onstage.

“He’d hit me in the ribs, and then always try to give me a black eye,” she said in a 2005 interview with Oprah Winfrey. “He wanted his abuse to be seen. That was the shameful part.”

After a long legal battle, Turner formally divorced Ike in 1978. The split almost ruined her financially, and for the next few years, Turner performed on TV specials and in Las Vegas as she struggled to rebuild her career. It wasn’t until September 1984 when she released Private Dancer and achieved her first No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with “What’s Love Got To Do With It,” which earned her a Grammy for record of the year in 1985.

This was a turning point for the singer’s career because in the same year, she sang on the all-star charity single “We Are the World,” performed with Mick Jagger at the historic Live Aid concerts, and co-starred in Mel Gibson’s post-apocalyptic film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, scoring another hit with “We Don’t Need Another Hero,” a song from the movie.

In 1993, What’s Love Got to Do With It, a semi-autobiographical film starring Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne, was released and became a box office success. Both actors received Oscar nominations for their roles, and although Turner says she was not heavily involved with the film, she did re-recorded old songs for it.

As a two-time inductee in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and a perennial on Greatest Performer lists, Turner was a 2005 recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors and retired in 2009 following her Tina!: 50th Anniversary Tour, which remains one of the highest-grossing tour of the 2000s. In 2018, she received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Turner re-entered the public spotlight with the 2018 West End musical hit Tina – The Tina Turner Musical, starring Adrienne Warren in a career-making role. The production, with Warren reprising her role, moved to Broadway in 2019 but was suspended the following year due to the COVID shutdown.

Tina resumed performances in 2021 and continued until the following year. It earned 12 Tony nominations, but won only for Warren’s leading performance.

“Without Tina Turner, we have no Beyonce. We have no Rihanna. We have no generation of Black women performers who transgressed all sorts of musical genres, and without Tina Turner, we have no reclamation of Black woman’s sexuality in the context of rock and roll,” Daphne Brooks, a scholar of popular music studies and Black feminist literature and culture at Yale University, told ABC News. “Without Tina Turner, we have a new bereft in terms of our conversations about domestic abuse, about Black woman’s ability to be able to withstand patriarchy.”

Turner is survived by her children, Raymond Craig and Ronnie Turner, as well as her sons Ike Turner Jr. and Michael Turner, whom she adopted from Ike. A private funeral ceremony is expected for family and close friends.

Photos courtesy of Tina Turner’s Facebook Page