“Tina Turner, the ‘queen of rock ‘n’ roll,’ passed away peacefully today at age 83 after a long illness at her home in Cusnacht near Zurich, Switzerland. With her, the world is losing a musical legend and role model,” said her spokesman.
The singer was born November 26, 1939, as Anna May Bullock in the small town of Netbush, Tennessee, to a working-class family. In the mid-1970s, the artist dedicated one of her songs to that town.
She took the stage at the age of 18, becoming a vocalist in Ike Turner’s band Kings of Rhythm. In 1962, the couple married; Anna changed her name to Tina.
In 1976, the singer ran away from her husband after another beating, taking her two sons and two of his, began practicing Buddhism and took up solo performances.
Over the years of her career the artist received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, many music awards, and in 1988 she made it into the Guinness Book of World Records by performing for the largest paying audience – more than 188,000 people came to her concert at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro.
Ike and Tina Turner were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. In October 2021, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the second time. She has also won eight Grammy Awards.
Turner has done dozens of world tours. In 2000, the Twenty Four Seven Tour was the most lucrative tour of the year, according to Pollstar, grossing more than $100 million. It was later reported that Tina Turner again entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the solo artist who sold the most tickets to her concerts in music history.
At the age of 46, the singer met and married 30-year-old German music producer Erwin Bach. In 2013, the artist gave up her American passport and became a Swiss citizen. Since that time, the singer has had serious health problems. It was reported that Bach donated a kidney to his wife for a transplant.
In July 2018, it was revealed that the singer’s eldest son had committed suicide in his own home in Studio City. In an interview with reporters, she revealed the reason for his suicide. In 2021, Turner said in a Sky News documentary about her that she was no longer giving concerts and had stopped performing because she wanted to spend the last years of her life away from the public.
