Tina Turner Dead at 83, The Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll Passes Away

Music legend Tina Turner has died at the age of 83 in Switzerland following a long illness. Turner was rock’n’roll royalty with instantly recognizable tunes such as What’s Love Got to Do With It which featured her distinctive phrasing and husky voice.

She was nicknamed the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll, and her concert performances were full of playful, sometimes edgy, NSFW body language. According to reports, the rock’n’roll Hall of Famer had suffered from several health issues in recent years including cancer, a stroke, and kidney failure.

Tina Turner Dead

Turner got her musical start in the 1960s, singing beside her husband Ike Turner. Their hits included Proud Mary and River Deep, Mountain High.

After the couple divorced in 1978 she went public with her stories of marital abuse in the hopes of helping other women; as a solo act Tina eclipsed anything she did with Ike and continued to churn out hits into the 1980s.

Tina Turner Overcame Adversity

Tina earned eight Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2021 as a solo artist; she and Ike were inducted in 1991.

When she joined the Hall of Fame she said that her career “expanded the once-limited idea of how a Black woman could conquer a stage and be both a powerhouse and a multidimensional being.”

Tina Turner Rock’n’Roll Legend

The Daily Mail noted that Tina’s music influenced included powerhouse female singers such as Beyonce, Janet Jackson, and Rihanna.
But before she became a larger-than-life music legend she endured years of abuse at the hands of Ike Turner. As one example of his controlling behavior the outlet reported that Ike changed her name from Anna Mae Bullock to Tina Turner without her knowledge.

She later “recalled the trauma she suffered throughout their relationship in her 2018 memoir, My Love Story, in which she compared sex with the late musician to “a kind of rape.”

“He used my nose as a punching bag so many times that I could taste blood running down my throat when I sang,” she wrote.

Once free of Ike she became “one of the biggest pop and rock stars of the 80s and 90s, with hits including Let’s Stay Together, Steamy Windows, Private Dancer, James Bond theme GoldenEye, I Don’t Wanna Fight and It Takes Two, a duet with Rod Stewart.” She also starred in the films Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and Tommy.

Tina Turner’s Later Life

Before her death Tina married German music executive Erwin Bac in 2013. They lived in Switzerland, where Turner took Swiss citizenship. In 2017 he donated one of his kidneys to her as she was suffering from kidney failure.

Tina has two adopted sons, Ike Jr. and Michael, Ike’s children from a previous relationship. But she lost her son Ronnie in 2022 and her eldest son Craig committed suicide in 2018.

Tina Turner Music Icon Dead at Age 83

Tina’s incredible life story was told in the 1993 film What’s Love Got To Do With It. She was played by Angela Bassett. Tina told Marie Claire South Africa in 2018 “People think my life has been tough, but I think it’s been a wonderful journey. The older you get, the more you realise it’s not what happened, it’s how you deal with it.”

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