The story of Tina Turner

Anna Mae from Nutbush

Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on the twenty sixth of November 1939 in Brownsville, Tennessee. Her family lived in the rural community of Nutbush, where her father Floyd was an overseer of sharecroppers on a farm off Highway one eighty. As a small child she picked cotton alongside her family. When her parents went to Knoxville to work at a defense plant during the Second World War, the girls were split up, and Anna Mae was sent to her strict, churchgoing grandparents, who were deacon and deaconess at their Baptist church. She loved to sing and act, sang in the choir at Spring Hill Baptist Church, and would perform in the street for coins so she could go to the movies.[1] [2]

Home was not a happy place. Her parents fought constantly, and in 1950 her mother Zelma walked out without warning, escaping an abusive marriage and moving to St. Louis. About two years later her father remarried and left for Detroit. Anna Mae and her sister Alline were sent to their grandmother Georgeanna Currie in Brownsville. Years later Tina said plainly that her mother did not love her the way she loved Alline, and that she had always felt unwanted. She told Rolling Stone she was a loner, and that it mattered that her mother had gone, but also somehow did not. What she wanted most, she said, was a home, because she had never really had one.[1] [2]

As a teenager she worked as a housekeeper and babysitter for a white family, the Hendersons, in Ripley, Tennessee. She later said Mrs. Henderson almost felt like a mother, teaching her manners and showing her what a loving household looked like. It was at the Henderson house that she learned her half sister Evelyn had been killed in a car crash, along with a cousin. At Carver High School in Brownsville she was a self described tomboy who joined the cheerleaders and the girls basketball team. She also fell hard for a boy named Harry Taylor, who had a string of girlfriends. They went steady for a year, until she heard on the school bus that he had married another girl who was expecting his child.[1] [2]

Music in those early days meant church, the radio and country songs. Tina remembered that the first live band she ever saw played what she called picnic music, and that she stirred up the crowd by shouting for everyone to sing along with the bandleader. That country thread never left her. Her grandmother died in 1956, and Anna Mae went to live with her mother in St. Louis, a move she later described as her way out of the South. She graduated from Sumner High School in 1958 and took a job as a nurse's aide at a St. Louis hospital. She planned to train as a practical nurse. The nightclubs across the river were about to change that plan.[1] [2] [3]

St. Louis nights and the Kings of Rhythm

In St. Louis, Anna Mae's sister Alline worked as a barmaid and dated a drummer named Eugene Washington. His boss was Ike Turner, a bandleader from Clarksdale, Mississippi, whose Kings of Rhythm were the hottest act in the clubs of St. Louis and East St. Louis. Ike already had a place in history. In 1951 his band had cut Rocket 88 at Sam Phillips's studio in Memphis, a record often called one of the first rock and roll songs, though it came out under the name of his saxophonist Jackie Brenston. One night in 1956 Anna Mae went with Alline to the Club Manhattan in East St. Louis. Watching Ike play, she said, she almost went into a trance.[1] [2] [3] [4]

She was desperate to sing with the band, but Ike kept saying he would call her up and never did. She believed he overlooked her because she was so skinny. Then, during an intermission, Eugene Washington handed her a microphone while Ike was playing the organ, and she sang the B.B. King ballad You Know I Love You. Ike was stunned that such a big voice came out of such a slight girl. He asked what else she knew, and by the end of the night the seventeen year old was singing with the Kings of Rhythm. Ike began coaching her on vocal control and stagecraft, and in 1958 she made her first record, a song called Boxtop, under the name Little Ann.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Her first real romance in St. Louis was not with Ike. She dated the band's saxophonist, Raymond Hill, and during her senior year of high school she became pregnant. Raymond broke his ankle in a wrestling match with the band's singer, left the band and went home to Clarksdale. Her son Raymond Craig was born on the twentieth of August 1958, and Anna Mae raised him as a single mother, working at the hospital while her mother and sister helped. Later, after Ike adopted the boy, he became Craig Raymond Turner. In the Rolling Stone interview of 1986 she said she had not loved Raymond as much as her first boyfriend, but she had thought her baby would be beautiful.[1] [2] [3]

She moved into Ike's house in East St. Louis, where several band members lived, and for a time they were close friends, more like brother and sister, she said. Ike lived with his girlfriend Lorraine Taylor, the mother of his two young sons. While Anna Mae was pregnant with Craig, Lorraine became convinced she was having an affair with Ike, threatened her with a gun, and then shot herself. Lorraine survived. The friendship between Anna Mae and Ike only turned physical in January 1960. She said she climbed into Ike's bed that night because another musician had threatened to come into her room, which had no lock. She became pregnant again.[1] [2] [3] [4]

A Fool in Love and the birth of Tina Turner

In March 1960 Ike booked a session to record his song A Fool in Love for a singer named Art Lassiter. Lassiter never turned up. Ike had already paid for the studio, so Anna Mae, who knew the song from rehearsals, offered to sing a guide vocal that Ike planned to replace later. A local disc jockey urged Ike to send the tape to Juggy Murray of Sue Records in New York. Murray loved the raw voice, bought the song and told Ike to make her the star of the show. The record came out in July 1960, reached number two on the R&B chart and crossed over to number twenty seven on the pop chart. Kurt Loder later called it the blackest record to reach the white pop charts since Ray Charles.[1] [2] [3]

With the hit came a new name. Ike called her Tina, because it rhymed with Sheena, the jungle queen of comics and films, and gave her his surname. He then trademarked the name Tina Turner, so that if she ever left him the way earlier singers had, he could put another woman on stage under it. Family and friends still called her Ann. According to the BBC, Ike made the choice without even telling her. When she told him she did not want to continue their relationship, she later said, he hit her on the head with a wooden shoe stretcher. It was the first time he made her afraid, and she stayed because she cared about him.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The Ike and Tina Turner Revue was born, with the Kings of Rhythm, a trio of dancing backing singers called the Ikettes, and Tina out front. On the third of October 1960 they made their national television debut on American Bandstand, with Tina more than eight months pregnant. Their son Ronald, known as Ronnie, was born on the twenty seventh of October. Ike was not at the birth. In February 1961 a bleaching job before a show in Washington went wrong and her hair fell out, so Ike bought her a wig, and wigs became part of her look for the rest of her career. That summer It's Gonna Work Out Fine became their second million seller and earned a Grammy nomination.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In 1962 Ike and Tina married in Tijuana, Mexico, and moved the whole operation to Los Angeles. Tina later described being taken to a live sex show on the wedding night, and Ike himself said the point of the trip was the Tijuana nightlife. They settled in a house in View Park and brought all four boys to live with them, Craig, Ronnie, and Ike's sons Ike Junior and Michael. The Revue played the Chitlin' Circuit relentlessly, sometimes three hundred nights a year, and built a name as one of the most explosive live acts in R&B, rivaling James Brown's show. Ike insisted on playing to mixed audiences, and the money they brought in helped open up hotels and clubs in the South.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Offstage, the violence grew. Tina later described being hit with hangers, telephones and his fists, having hot coffee thrown in her face, and performing with a broken nose, tasting blood as she sang. Ike ran the band with fines and tight control. Former Ikettes told Rolling Stone in 1971 about penalties like ten dollars for a run in their stockings and twenty five dollars for laughing too loud. Line ups changed constantly. In the middle of the decade a young guitarist named Jimi Hendrix briefly played in the band, and future stars such as P. P. Arnold and Bonnie Bramlett passed through as Ikettes.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

River Deep, the Stones and Proud Mary

In 1965 the producer Phil Spector saw the Revue on the Sunset Strip and put them in the concert film The Big T.N.T. Show. He wanted Tina's voice for his Wall of Sound, and he paid twenty thousand dollars to free the duo from their contract, with Ike agreeing to stay out of the studio as long as the record carried both names. On the seventh of March 1966 Tina began work on River Deep, Mountain High at Gold Star Studios in Hollywood. The track used twenty one musicians and cost a then unheard of twenty two thousand dollars. Spector made her sing it over and over for hours, until she was drenched in sweat and stripped down to her bra.[1] [2] [3]

Spector considered it his best work. America disagreed. The single stalled at number eighty eight on the Billboard chart, and Ike said it had no home, too black for white radio and too white for black radio. In Britain it went to number three, and George Harrison called it a perfect record from start to finish. The failure hit Spector hard, and he withdrew from the music business for about two years. For Ike and Tina, the British hit opened a door. The Rolling Stones invited them to open their UK tour, which began at the Royal Albert Hall on the twenty third of September 1966, and suddenly a rock audience was paying attention.[1] [2] [3]

Success and misery ran side by side. In 1968, worn down by Ike's violence and his affairs, Tina swallowed a large quantity of Valium before a show and nearly died. She later wrote that she survived and went back on stage. In November 1967 she had become the first woman and the first Black artist on the cover of Rolling Stone. By 1969 the Revue was headlining in Las Vegas, and that November they opened for the Rolling Stones across America. Critics said they often upstaged the headliners, and their slow, sensual performance at Madison Square Garden ended up in the Stones documentary Gimme Shelter. It was also in Las Vegas that Ike, who had never used drugs, first tried cocaine.[1] [2] [3]

Tina and the band started covering rock songs by the Beatles and the Stones, and crowds loved it. Ike was not keen on Creedence Clearwater Revival's Proud Mary, but he liked a soulful cover by another group, and he and drummer Soko Richardson rebuilt it, starting slow and exploding into a frantic rock and soul workout. Released in January 1971, it reached number four and sold more than a million copies. It won them a Grammy for best R&B vocal performance by a group. That year a live album recorded at Carnegie Hall went gold, and the Revue's fee jumped from about a thousand dollars a night to five thousand.[1] [2] [3]

That same year they toured Europe to rave reviews. The French paper Le Monde called them the voice of desire, and they recorded a live album at the Olympia in Paris. They also played a festival in Ghana marking its independence, filmed for the movie Soul to Soul. At home, Ike's cocaine habit was growing fast. His old associate Bob Krasnow told Rolling Stone about Ike's first big purchase of the drug, and Ike later estimated he spent eleven million dollars on it over the years. The habit burned a hole through his nasal septum, and he treated the pain with more cocaine.[1] [2] [3]

Bolic Sound, Nutbush and the road out

With the money from their hits, Ike built a lavish studio complex in Inglewood called Bolic Sound, named after Tina's maiden name, Bullock. It opened to the public in February 1972 with closed circuit cameras, a private apartment for Ike, and top of the line equipment. Frank Zappa made much of two albums there. Tina was writing more now. She wrote nine of the ten songs on the 1972 album Feel Good, and in 1973 she wrote Nutbush City Limits, a funky portrait of her tiny hometown. It reached number four in Britain and number one in Austria, and it earned the duo the first ever Golden European Record Award, for selling over a million copies in Europe.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Around 1973 Tina found the spiritual practice that she said saved her life. According to her autobiography, a woman named Valerie Bishop, who worked around the studio, introduced her to Nichiren Buddhism and the Soka Gakkai chant nam myoho renge kyo. She said chanting gave her clarity and confidence and made her less afraid of Ike, and at the hardest times she chanted for hours a day. Raised a Baptist, she later sometimes called herself a Buddhist Baptist. She kept a Buddhist altar for the rest of her life, and in 1997 she even chanted on Larry King's show on CNN.[1] [2] [3]

She was also starting to step out on her own. Her first solo album, Tina Turns the Country On, came out in 1974, full of country songs by writers such as Dolly Parton and Kris Kristofferson, and it earned a Grammy nomination, though she lost to Aretha Franklin. Then she flew to London to play the Acid Queen in Ken Russell's film of the Who's rock opera Tommy. Filming alone gave her a taste of independence. She told People in 1975 that she had learned she could do things without Ike, and that he would be proud, but that he would miss her. A solo album, Acid Queen, followed in 1975.[1] [2] [3] [4]

By 1976 the Revue seemed to be on top. They played the Waldorf Astoria and signed a deal for a CBS television series. Ike planned to move to a new label, Cream Records, for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, a contract that would have tied Tina to him for five more years. On the first of July 1976 they flew to Dallas for a show at the Statler Hilton. In the car on the way to the hotel, Ike beat her. When he fell asleep, Tina slipped out with thirty six cents and a Mobil gas card, ran across a busy freeway and asked for a room at a Ramada Inn. A clerk saw her bloodied face and let her in.[1] [2] [3]

She later said that when she landed back in Los Angeles her heart was pounding, because Ike had once tracked her down on a bus, and she told herself she would die before she went back. On the twenty seventh of July 1976 she filed for divorce. That November she was stopped for a traffic violation in Beverly Hills and police found a loaded revolver in her purse. Her lawyer said she carried it because of threats on her life. The divorce was finalized on the twenty ninth of March 1978. She took on the debts from canceled shows and a tax lien, and gave up the studio, publishing and property. What she kept was her stage name.[1] [2] [3]

Starting over with nothing but a name

For almost two years Tina lived partly on food stamps while she paid off debts from the canceled Ike and Tina dates. She took whatever television work came, appearing on Hollywood Squares, Donny and Marie, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour and The Brady Bunch Hour. In 1977 she put together a new band, got flashy costumes from Bob Mackie, and played cabaret shows at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, followed by her first solo tour of Australia. Her solo albums Rough in 1978 and Love Explosion in 1979, which flirted with disco, both failed to chart, and United Artists let her go. Much of the industry saw her as a nostalgia act.[1] [2]

Things began to turn when a young Australian manager, Roger Davies, came into her life. He later said he first met her in 1980, and she told him she wanted to get out of cabaret and play rock venues. Davies had her drop the Las Vegas style revue and rebuilt the show around a tight rock band. There were missteps too. In 1979 she did a five week tour of South Africa under apartheid, and she later admitted she had been naive about the politics. She also turned down a song her team was offered called Physical, finding it too obvious, and it went to Olivia Newton-John instead.[1] [2] [3]

In 1981 Tina gave a long interview to People magazine and, for the first time in public, described the abuse she had suffered from Ike. She was so nervous, she said in the documentary Tina, that she asked her psychic whether it would ruin her career, and was told it would do the opposite. That October Rod Stewart saw her at the Ritz in New York and invited her to sing Hot Legs with him on Saturday Night Live. In November she opened three shows for the Rolling Stones on their American tour. Domestic violence experts later said her decision to speak out helped other women believe they would be heard.[1] [2] [3]

In Britain, the producers Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh of Heaven 17 invited her to sing the Temptations' Ball of Confusion for their project British Electric Foundation in 1982. The video aired on the young MTV, making her one of the first Black American artists on the channel. In January 1983 Davies booked her into the Ritz for three nights. David Bowie came, and so did people from Capitol Records. The label's John Carter signed her despite resistance inside the company. In November 1983 her cover of Al Green's Let's Stay Together, produced by Ware, reached number six in the UK and topped the American dance chart. At forty four, Tina was back.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Private Dancer and the greatest comeback in pop

Capitol wanted an album fast, and Tina had about two weeks to record it in London with four different production teams. Private Dancer came out on the twenty ninth of May 1984. The title song had been written by Mark Knopfler for Dire Straits, but he decided the lyric did not suit a male singer, so members of Dire Straits recorded it for her, with Jeff Beck on the guitar solo. Terry Britten and Graham Lyle wrote What's Love Got to Do with It, which had been turned down by Cliff Richard and recorded by the British group Bucks Fizz. Tina disliked the song at first and had to be talked into it.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

On the first of September 1984, What's Love Got to Do with It reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed there for three weeks. It was her first and only number one there, and at forty four she became the oldest solo woman to top that chart up to then. Better Be Good to Me and Private Dancer both made the top ten. The album reached number three in America, went five times platinum there and sold more than ten million copies worldwide. Rolling Stone found her that summer finishing a string of McDonald's convention gigs she had booked when she needed the money, while her album was selling in the millions.[1] [2] [3] [4]

At the Grammy Awards in February 1985 What's Love Got to Do with It won record of the year and song of the year, and Tina won best female pop vocal, with Better Be Good to Me also winning in the rock category. She sang on We Are the World and set off on a world tour. Then she flew to Australia to play Aunty Entity, the ruler of Bartertown, opposite Mel Gibson in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Her song from the film, We Don't Need Another Hero, reached number two in America and topped the charts in several countries, sung with a school choir from Richmond in London that included the future England rugby captain Lawrence Dallaglio.[1] [2] [3]

In July 1985 she joined Mick Jagger at Live Aid in Philadelphia, a duet remembered for the moment he tore off her skirt. She also recorded It's Only Love with Bryan Adams, which won an MTV award. In 1986 she published her autobiography, I, Tina, written with the Rolling Stone journalist Kurt Loder. She said she hoped that putting the whole story in a book would stop journalists from making her relive it in every interview. It became a bestseller. That year she got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and released Break Every Rule, with Typical Male reaching number two in America with Phil Collins on drums.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

In 1986 her European record company sent a young German executive named Erwin Bach to meet her at Düsseldorf airport. Tina said it was love at first sight. He was more than sixteen years younger than her. They started as friends and began dating later that year, beginning a partnership that would last the rest of her life. That same year she performed at the Prince's Trust rock concert at Wembley, where she first met the man who is now King Charles. In a 1986 interview she said she was no longer afraid, and that she did not want to depend on a man for anything but love.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Queen of the stadiums

The Break Every Rule tour opened in Munich in March 1987 and broke box office records in thirteen countries. Germany adored her, and she played more than forty shows there. For the first few shows she dropped Proud Mary, tired of singing it, until a crowd in Rotterdam sang it back to her and she put it back in. In January 1988 she played the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro to about one hundred and eighty thousand people, a Guinness World Record at the time for the largest paying audience for a solo artist. The live album Tina Live in Europe won another Grammy. It was the highest grossing tour by a woman in the nineteen eighties.[1] [2] [3]

In September 1989 she released Foreign Affair, which went to number one in Britain and several other countries and sold over six million copies. Its lead single, The Best, had first been recorded by the Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler, whose version barely charted. Tina asked the writer Holly Knight to add a bridge and a key change, and it became one of her signature songs. Tyler later admitted Tina did it much better. The song took on a life of its own in Australian rugby league adverts, at football grounds and at weddings. Her 1990 European tour drew nearly four million people, beating a record set by the Rolling Stones.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

While Tina's star rose, Ike's life fell apart. He was arrested again and again on drug and weapons charges through the nineteen eighties, and Bolic Sound burned down in 1981. In 1990 he was sentenced to four years in prison for cocaine offenses and served eighteen months. In January 1991 Ike and Tina Turner were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Ike was in prison, and Tina stayed away, saying through her publicist that she felt emotionally unequipped to return for the celebration. Phil Spector accepted the award for them. Her first greatest hits album, Simply the Best, sold about seven million copies.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In 1993 Disney's Touchstone released What's Love Got to Do with It, based on I, Tina. Angela Bassett played Tina and Laurence Fishburne played Ike, and both were nominated for Oscars. Bassett lip synced to new recordings Tina made of her old songs, and the single I Don't Wanna Fight was a top ten hit. Tina was not closely involved and disliked parts of it. She told Vanity Fair she had never been a weak victim, and years later told Oprah Winfrey she could not finish watching it because the details had been changed so much. Ike called both the book and the film full of lies, and said the film destroyed his reputation.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In 1994 Tina settled for good in Europe, at a lakeside villa in Küsnacht near Zurich, with Erwin Bach. In 1995 she sang GoldenEye, the James Bond theme written for her by Bono and the Edge of U2, after Depeche Mode had been unable to take the job. Her album Wildest Dreams followed in 1996, with a duet with Barry White and a song by the Pet Shop Boys. Twenty Four Seven arrived in 1999, and its tour became the highest grossing tour of the year 2000, taking more than one hundred and twenty million dollars. At a show in Zurich in July 2000 she announced it would be her last.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Farewells, heartbreak and a love story

Retirement did not quite stick. A compilation, All the Best, reached number two in America in 2005, her highest charting album there. That December she received the Kennedy Center Honors, where Beyoncé sang Proud Mary for her and President George W. Bush called her legs the most famous in show business. On the twelfth of December 2007 Ike Turner died at his home near San Diego at seventy six. The medical examiner ruled the cause as cocaine toxicity, with heart disease and emphysema as contributing conditions. Tina's spokesperson said she had not had contact with him in more than thirty years and would make no further comment.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In February 2008 Tina returned to the Grammy stage, singing Proud Mary with Beyoncé. That October she launched the Tina fiftieth anniversary tour, marking fifty years since she first sang with the Kings of Rhythm, and chose to start it in Missouri, where her career began. It grossed over one hundred and thirty million dollars and ended at Sheffield Arena in England on the fifth of May 2009. That was her last concert. She then turned to spiritual music with Beyond, a project with the Swiss singers Regula Curti and Dechen Shak-Dagsay that mixed Buddhist and Christian prayers.[1] [2] [3]

In April 2013 she became a Swiss citizen, and that October she gave up her American citizenship. In July 2013, after twenty seven years together, she married Erwin Bach at their home in Küsnacht. Three weeks after the wedding she had a stroke and had to learn to walk again. She had suffered from high blood pressure since 1978, which went largely untreated and damaged her kidneys, and in 2016 she was diagnosed with intestinal cancer. Facing kidney failure, she signed up with an assisted dying organization, telling the BBC that as a Buddhist she accepted death. Instead, on the seventh of April 2017, Erwin gave her one of his kidneys.[1] [2] [3]

In July 2018 her eldest son Craig was found dead at his home in Studio City, California, at fifty nine, from a self inflicted gunshot wound. Tina told the BBC he had seemed happy with a new job and a new girlfriend, and that she still did not know what took him to the edge. She scattered his ashes in the Pacific off the California coast. That April the stage musical Tina opened in London with Adrienne Warren, who later took it to Broadway. Tina coached her and said watching it made her proud. In 2018 she also received a Grammy for lifetime achievement and published a second memoir, My Love Story.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In 2021 the HBO documentary Tina presented her final public reckoning with her life. That October she sold her music rights to BMG for a reported fifty million dollars or more, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a second time, as a solo artist, introduced by Angela Bassett. In December 2022 her son Ronnie, her child with Ike, died at sixty two after years of health problems including cancer. On the twenty fourth of May 2023 Tina Turner died at her home in Küsnacht, aged eighty three, after a long illness. She was cremated after a private funeral.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Simply the best

The tributes came from everywhere. Mick Jagger said she had helped him so much when he was young. Beyoncé called her the epitome of passion and power, Barack Obama called her raw and unstoppable, and President Joe Biden noted she began life as a farmer's daughter in Tennessee. Flowers covered her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and candles were lit outside her Swiss home. West End theatres dimmed their lights for two minutes, and King Charles let the band of the Welsh Guards play The Best at the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. A week later Beyoncé began her Renaissance tour, singing River Deep, Mountain High in her honor.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Her legacy is double. Musically she was a rock and soul singer of enormous power, with eight competitive Grammys and sales estimated at over one hundred million records. She was the first artist with top forty hits in the UK in seven different decades, thanks to a Kygo remix of What's Love Got to Do with It in 2020. And she became a symbol for survivors of domestic abuse. Oprah Winfrey recalled a woman at a 1997 concert who said she had come looking for the courage to leave the man who beat her, and had found it. Domestic violence campaigners credit her 1981 decision to speak out with helping other women be believed.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Her story keeps being retold. The musical has played in London, New York, Hamburg and beyond, and in 2023 it partnered with the charity Women's Aid. In March 2025 a deluxe edition of Private Dancer included a previously unreleased song from the sessions called Hot for You Baby, written by George Young and Harry Vanda. In Nutbush, the one room Flagg Grove School she attended is now a museum about her life, moved to the West Tennessee Delta Heritage Center in Brownsville. As of 2026 her husband Erwin Bach, her manager Roger Davies and her fans still speak of her as simply the best.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The people around Tina Turner

Tina Turner and Ike Turner. Ike discovered her, named her, trademarked her name and built the Revue around her voice. He also abused her for most of their sixteen years together, by her account, while he always denied beating her. They married in 1962, she fled in 1976, and they divorced in 1978. They never worked together again. He died in 2007 after years of addiction and a prison term. In 2018 she said she had forgiven him but could never let him back in.[1] [2] [3]

Tina Turner and Erwin Bach. A German record executive sent by EMI to meet her at Düsseldorf airport in 1986. She called it love at first sight, though he was more than sixteen years younger. They moved to Switzerland together, married in Küsnacht in July 2013 after twenty seven years as a couple, and in 2017 he gave her one of his kidneys. She called him her soul mate, and he was with her until her death.[1] [2] [3]

Tina Turner and Roger Davies. The Australian manager who turned a cabaret act back into a rock star. He met her around 1980, rebuilt her show, booked the Ritz shows that led to her Capitol deal and guided the Private Dancer comeback. He managed her for about three decades. He later managed Janet Jackson, Cher, Sade and Pink, who sought him out after seeing him portrayed in the Tina biopic.[1] [2]

Tina Turner and Phil Spector. Spector produced River Deep, Mountain High in 1966 and called it his best work, but its American flop drove him into seclusion. He accepted the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame award for Ike and Tina in 1991. At Ike's funeral in 2007 he attacked her autobiography as a book that demonized Ike, and called the film a piece of trash. Tina had inducted Spector into the Hall of Fame in 1989.[1] [2] [3]

Tina Turner and Mick Jagger. The Rolling Stones took Ike and Tina on their 1966 British tour and 1969 American tour, and Tina opened for them again in 1981. Their Live Aid duet in 1985 became famous for the skirt he pulled off. When she died, he called her a wonderful friend who had helped him so much when he was young.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Tina Turner and Angela Bassett. Bassett played Tina in the 1993 film and was nominated for an Oscar, winning a Golden Globe. Tina helped her with the dance routines and even did her make up, while recording new versions of the songs Bassett mimed to. Bassett inducted her into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021. She said Tina's last words to her were that she had never mimicked her but found her own inner Tina.[1] [2] [3]

Tina Turner and Beyoncé. Beyoncé named Tina as a major inspiration. She sang Proud Mary for her at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2005, and they performed it together at the 2008 Grammys, Tina's return to the American stage. When Tina died, Beyoncé called her my beloved queen, and she paid tribute by singing River Deep, Mountain High on her Renaissance tour.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Tina Turner and Kurt Loder. The Rolling Stone writer interviewed her during the 1984 comeback and went on to co-write her autobiography I, Tina, published in 1986. The book gave the full account of her abuse, became a bestseller and was the basis of the 1993 film. Loder also appeared in the 2021 documentary Tina.[1] [2]

Tina Turner and Terry Britten. Britten and his writing partner Graham Lyle wrote What's Love Got to Do with It, which Tina disliked at first, and Britten produced it. The song won them song of the year at the 1985 Grammys. The pair also wrote We Don't Need Another Hero, produced half of Break Every Rule and kept writing hits for her into the nineteen nineties.[1] [2] [3]

Tina Turner and Bryan Adams. As a teenager in Vancouver, Adams went to see her in concert. In 1985 they recorded the duet It's Only Love, and he produced and co-wrote Back Where You Started, which won her a Grammy. He toured with her, attended her fiftieth birthday party in London and sang on Twenty Four Seven. After her death he thanked her for time on tour, in the studio and as friends.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Tina Turner and Rhonda Graam. Graam was Tina's close friend, road manager and personal assistant for more than forty five years, from the Revue days onward. She appears as a character in the stage musical, and the 2021 documentary Tina is dedicated to her and to Tina's son Craig.[1] [2]

Tina Turner and David Bowie. Bowie was among the stars at her Ritz shows in New York in January 1983, the run that brought Capitol Records to see her. The next year they duetted on his cover of Iggy Pop's Tonight, and she later recorded his song Girls on Break Every Rule. He was reported to be among the invited guests at her wedding in 2013.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Rare facts about Tina Turner

• Ike named his studio Bolic Sound after Tina's maiden name, Bullock. The Inglewood studio complex opened in 1972. Frank Zappa recorded much of two albums there, and Nutbush City Limits was cut there in 1973. It was destroyed by fire in 1981 after Ike got it in the divorce.[1] [2]
• Ikettes could be fined ten dollars for a run in their stockings. Former Ikettes told Rolling Stone in 1971 that Ike ran a system of fines, including twenty five dollars for laughing too loud, even offstage in a hotel room.[1]
• Bonnie Bramlett was an Ikette for just three days. She was seventeen and white. She said she wore a dark wig over her blonde hair and darkened her skin to perform with the Revue.[1] [2]
• Jimi Hendrix briefly played guitar in the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. In the mid nineteen sixties, before he became famous, Hendrix spent a short spell as a backing guitarist in Ike's band.[1] [2]
• Tina's famous wigs began with a hair disaster in 1961. Before a show in Washington, a bleaching job went wrong and her hair fell out. Ike bought her a wig, and wigs became part of her look.[1]
• She made her national TV debut more than eight months pregnant. Ike and Tina appeared on American Bandstand on the third of October 1960. Their son Ronnie was born on the twenty seventh of that month.[1] [2]
• Sammy Davis Jr. once surprised her with a Jaguar. After she filmed an episode of The Name of the Game with him in Las Vegas, Davis gave her a Jaguar XJ6 as a gift.[1]
• River Deep, Mountain High used twenty one session musicians and cost twenty two thousand dollars. That was an unheard of sum in 1966. Brian Wilson reportedly sat in on the session, transfixed, without saying a word.[1]
• Her first solo album was a country record. Tina Turns the Country On, from 1974, covered songs by Dolly Parton and Kris Kristofferson and was nominated for a Grammy. She lost to Aretha Franklin.[1]
• Tina turned down the song Physical before Olivia Newton-John made it a hit. The song was offered through her then management team, but Tina found it too obvious. Roger Davies later managed Olivia Newton-John as well.[1]
• During her 1984 comeback she was still playing McDonald's conventions. She had booked fourteen corporate shows when she needed money. By the last one, in Ottawa, Private Dancer was already selling in the millions.[1]
• What's Love Got to Do with It was first offered to Cliff Richard. He turned it down. The British group Bucks Fizz recorded a version in early 1984, but shelved it when Tina's came out first.[1]
• Prince kept What's Love Got to Do with It off the top of the R&B chart. The song spent five weeks at number two on the Black singles chart in 1984, stuck behind When Doves Cry.[1]
• Private Dancer was written for Dire Straits. Mark Knopfler felt the lyric did not suit a man. He later joked that Jeff Beck's solo on Tina's version was the world's second ugliest guitar solo.[1]
• Future England rugby captain Lawrence Dallaglio sang on We Don't Need Another Hero. He was a member of the children's choir from King's House School in Richmond that backed Tina on the Mad Max song.[1]
• Bonnie Tyler recorded The Best a year before Tina. Tyler's 1988 version barely charted in Britain. It had also been offered to Paul Young, who passed. Tyler later said Tina did it much better.[1] [2]
• Tina asked for The Best to be changed before she recorded it. She told writer Holly Knight it needed a bridge and a key change. Edgar Winter played the saxophone solo.[1]
• Ayrton Senna once joined her on stage. The Formula One champion made a surprise appearance during her show at the 1993 Australian Grand Prix in Adelaide, tying The Best to him forever.[1]
• Princess Diana used to sing The Best with her sons on the school run. Prince William recalled it in 2021. After Tina's death, King Charles let the Welsh Guards play it at Buckingham Palace.[1]
• Mick Jagger was reportedly offered the Acid Queen role in Tommy first. He reportedly wanted to sing three of his own songs in the film, so the part went to Tina instead.[1]
• Depeche Mode were approached for GoldenEye before Tina. They were finishing a world tour and could not fit it in. Once Tina agreed, Bono and the Edge wrote the song for her.[1]
• Nutbush has no city limits. It is an unincorporated rural community, so there are no official boundaries, just highway signs reading Nutbush, Unincorporated.[1]
• At seventy three she became the oldest person on a Vogue cover. She appeared on the cover of German Vogue in April 2013.[1]
• She was the first artist with UK top forty hits in seven decades. The record came in 2020 with Kygo's remix of What's Love Got to Do with It, her last release in her lifetime.[1] [2]
• Karl Lagerfeld once sent his models down the runway in Tina Turner wigs. The Paris designer said he was mad for her, dressing the models for his show in late 1984.[1]
• Whitney Houston was offered the lead in the Tina biopic. She turned it down because she was expecting a baby. Halle Berry and Janet Jackson were among others considered.[1]
• Laurence Fishburne turned down the role of Ike five times. He felt the script showed Ike as a pure villain without explanation. Rewrites finally persuaded him, and he was nominated for an Oscar.[1] [2]
• Pink hired Tina's manager after seeing him in a movie. The singer watched What's Love Got to Do with It, where Roger Davies is played by James Reyne, and asked to meet the man who managed Tina.[1]
• George W. Bush called her legs the most famous in show business. He said it at the 2005 Kennedy Center Honors, where Beyoncé sang Proud Mary and Al Green sang Let's Stay Together for her.[1]
• Solomon Burke said he told Ike to cover Proud Mary. Burke, who had his own version in 1969, said he urged Ike that he and Tina could tear the song up.[1]
• For all her giant stage presence, she stood only five foot four. She told Rolling Stone in 1971 that her grandmother was part Cherokee, and that Ray Charles and Sam Cooke were her main influences.[1]
• She dropped Proud Mary from her 1987 tour, then brought it back. Tired of it, she left it out, until a crowd in Rotterdam sang it anyway and she decided it was still rolling.[1]
• Her Küsnacht neighbors got an apology before her wedding. Before marrying Erwin Bach in 2013, the pair wrote to their neighbors apologizing in advance for any noise.[1]
• Elton John and Tina clashed when they tried to work together. In his autobiography he described heated arguments during a collaboration in 1997, yet called her untouchable when she died.[1] [2]
• Bill Clinton met her twice, years apart. He met her in Little Rock after Private Dancer in 1984, and again on her sixty seventh birthday in St. Petersburg at a charity show with Elton John.[1]
• Her old school is now a museum. The one room Flagg Grove School she attended in Nutbush opened as a museum about her in 2014 in Brownsville.[1]
• A Bryan Adams song was written for her but went elsewhere. Adams and Jim Vallance wrote Nature of the Beast for Tina, but it was recorded by the band The Law in 1991.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.