2023-05-24 22:47:17
CARLOS MARCOS | THE COUNTRY
You can not use a better definition for her: the queen of rock and roll. Nothing less. Tina Turner He has died this Wednesday at the age of 83, as confirmed by his representative. “Tina Turner has passed away peacefully today at the age of 83 after a long illness at her home in Küsnacht, near Zurich (Switzerland),” the statement said. “With her, the world loses a music legend and a role model.” She had been retired for years and suffered from intestinal cancer, diagnosed in 2016. She had received a kidney transplant in 2017.
It is difficult to find in the history of rock a singer so influential, popular and with such a complicated life. “The list of obstacles is long: an unhappy childhood, abandonment, a violent marriage, a stagnant career, financial ruin, the premature death of family members, and multiple illnesses,” she says in the introduction to her memoirs. Happiness comes from you which she published in 2021. But she went ahead, stumbled and also strengthened to create her own style that paved the way for black rock singers and many white stars. Mick Jagger acknowledged that he had designed his way to dominate an audience by watching Turner move on a stage. The list of hits sung by her is long: Proud Mary, River Deep, Mountain High, What’s Love Got To Do With It o The Best.
He also challenged sexual conventions. In the sixties, when she began her career with Ike Turner, her presence was volcanic, exuberant, a rare sexual catharsis for those years, and even less so in a black singer. There she began to forge her style, inherited from gospel, soul and incipient rock. Turner enjoyed and suffered the performances while hiding the tragedy of a marriage full of abuse. The physical and psychological torture to which Ike Turner subjected her led to a suicide attempt.
Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, and grew up in Nutbush, Tennessee. “I was brought into the world in a windowless basement relegated to the maternity ward for women. color at the county hospital. My mother, Zelma, was affectionate with my sister, but she was different with me. I knew that she had never loved me. That is a heavy load for a little girl,” she wrote in her memoir.
He sang in the church choir in his town and in the early sixties he joined Ike Turner’s band. Ike immediately saw Tina’s potential and began designing her for her success, exerting physical and psychological control. The hits, meanwhile, began to arrive, with songs like A Fool in Love. But the couple’s forte was live performances, where Tina, as she later confessed, unleashed all the rage at the oppression that lived far from the spotlight. Already in the seventies, Ike and Tina Turner became the favorite opening act for white rock stars.
The duo and their band preceded the performances of the Rolling Stones, Elton John or The Who. There was no better show to animate an audience. In the late 1970s, Tina got a divorce. On the one hand, she was relieved, but on the other, she had to start over, since Ike had legal issues well tied up and he put all the obstacles in place so that she could not relaunch her career.
And in the eighties, it was reborn. She changed the sound, adapted to the times and delivered frothy pop pieces that reached the top of the charts. The disc Private Dancer (1984) made her an even bigger star. She subsequently edited Break Every Rule (1986) y Foreign Affair (1989), which contained the hit single The Best. Tina Turner had adapted to the times and entered the synth sound of the eighties, but contributing her torrent of voice, hurt and hungry, and live performances in which it seemed that the stage was going to burn.
Turner also had a presence in the movies. She played the Acid Queen in the film version of Tommy by Ken Russell, The Who’s rock opera, and also participated in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, in 1985. When he turned 60 and with the release of his album Twenty Four Seven (1999), began a withdrawal with low-intensity interventions over the next few years. Until in 2013 his presence was testimonial. He spent many years of his life in Switzerland, where he died, and had to see how loved ones around him were disappearing. The most tragic thing was the death of two of her children: the eldest, Craig, committed suicide in 2018 at the age of 59, and the youngest, Ron, died of complications from colon cancer in 2022 at 62. One of the first to react to her death has been Mick Jagger, who has written: “I am very saddened by the passing of my wonderful friend Tina Turner. She was an enormously talented performer and singer. She was inspiring, warm, funny, and generous. She helped me a lot when she was young and I will never forget her”.
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