2023-05-25 12:51:00
QWhen she came back into the limelight in the early 1980s, flamboyant, wild, full of rage, Americans called her: “She’s so bad! Mean by that “she is so incredible, so fantastic”. Hoarse and angry voice, lioness hair, miniskirt, high heels, devastating smile, she was like a hurricane sweeping away everything in its path.
Born Anna Mae Bullock, November 26, 1939, in Nutbush (Tennessee), Tina Turner, who died on May 24 at the age of 83, was the only African-American singer at the time. [aux origines indiennes également, NDLR] to fill football stadiums, like in Rio in 1988, to line up several Bercys in a row with a two-hour non-stop show during which she sang and danced with crazy energy, with all her soul and body.
It is no coincidence that Tina Turner commands the admiration of her peers, Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, Elton John and many others, who salute this outstanding rocker temperament, a fighter who has always picked herself up after having experienced so many hardships in his private life. With hits such as “Proud Mary”, “River Deep – Mountain High” or “The Best”, she sets fire to each of her concerts, to the point that the media nickname her “TNTina”.
Lookouts in Monte-Carlo
Abandoned by show business after her divorce in 1978 from Ike Turner, who beat her and behaved with her like a pimp, Tina never stopped believing in her star.
There is always a second chance in America, Tina Turner proves it with great panache when, single mother of two boys, she starts from scratch by running the cachet in Las Vegas or in McDonald’s conventions. Admired and protected, it seems, by someone close to the prince, she performed regularly in Monte-Carlo, became a real star of the Rock, to the point of settling for a few years in a villa on the side of Èze.
Nothing scares him. Life taught him to fight, to always move forward. It’s a kind of female Rocky, who continues to record albums (Rough in 1978, followed byExplosion) and landed a hit in the United States in 1983 with « Let’s Stay Together”, a cover of a song by Al Green. Enough to attract the attention of a Capitol Records producer, John Carter, who signs her on his label by offering her « Private Dancer”, a song by Mark Knopfler, the guitarist of Dire Straits, which she recorded alongside another legendary guitarist, Jeff Beck. It is the story of a prostitute who thinks she is a “private dancer”, an image far removed from her background. But whatever, it works!
New start in the 1980s
The album, carried by the hit “What’s Love Got to Do with It”, was a hit (25 million copies sold worldwide) and relaunched the career of Tina Turner, who went on to hit hits with two other successful albums. , Break Every Rule (1986) et Foreign Affair (1989). She then sang a duet with Bryan Adams (“It’s Only Love”) et Rod Stewart (« It Takes Two »). The cinema then makes him the soft eyes. And she comes to add to her appearance in Tommyby Ken Russell (1975), the incredible Mad Max: Beyond Thunder Domeby George Miller (1985), whose flagship song “We Don’t Need Another Hero” she recorded, which propelled her to the top of the charts around the world, including in France where she ranked number 3 on the sacrosanct Top 50. Next Will Come Last Action Hero by John McTiernan (1993) and, on television, the series Ally McBeal (2000), in which she will make a remarkable appearance.
Suddenly, she becomes an essential star with a unique career, in no way similar to those of her compatriots Aretha Franklin or Diana Ross, who do not have the same thirst for revenge as her. To her fans Tina Turner offers sweat and tears and assumes the feminist image of a true warrior who manages to impose herself in the macho and mercantile world of show business. Where so many others have burned their wings, like Billie Holiday or Nina Simone. Fifty years of career, eight Grammy Awards and two inductions into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, she was the artist of all records.
Tireless, she still fights despite a private life marked by mourning with the disappearance of her two sons, Craig, who committed suicide at 59, and Ronnie, who died of colon cancer at 62 after ten years of marriage with the artist from the reality TV show Afida Turner. Converted to Buddhism, Tina Turner has accepted the good as well as the bad all her life, never shrinking from the darkest reality and always maintaining a kind of humor, distance, strength that made her charisma.
“I had to believe in myself and in my abilities, she told the magazine The world, in 2021. Because by truly believing in ourselves we gain confidence. And that is precisely the message that we then pass on to others. This is the very simple lesson of an artist who is “inspiring, warm, funny and generous”, to quote her friend Mick Jagger’s tribute.
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