Tina Turner: legendary rock’n’roll singer dies aged 83

By editorial board on May 24, 2023

Tina Turner, the pioneering rock’n’roll star who became a pop behemoth in the 1980s, has died aged 83 after a long illness.

She had suffered ill health in recent years, being diagnosed with intestinal cancer in 2016 and having a kidney transplant in 2017.

Rock and Roll icon Tina Turner passed away today and the hip-hop community is paying homage.

Tina Turner died on Wednesday (May 24), at the age of 83, the singer's publicist confirmed with People.

"Tina Turner, the 'Queen of Rock'n Roll' has died peacefully today at the age of 83 after a long illness in her home in Küsnacht near Zurich, Switzerland. With her, the world loses a music legend and a role model," Turner's team confirmed in a statement to the publication. "There will be a private funeral ceremony attended by close friends and family. Please respect the privacy of her family at this difficult time."

Turner affirmed and amplified Black women’s formative stake in rock’n’roll, defining that era of music to the extent that Mick Jagger admitted to taking inspiration from her high-kicking, energetic live performances for his stage persona.

After two decades of working with her abusive husband, Ike Turner, she struck out alone and – after a few false starts – became one of the defining pop icons of the 1980s with the album Private Dancer. Her life was chronicled in three memoirs, a biopic, a jukebox musical, and in 2021, the acclaimed documentary film, Tina.

In a statement on Wednesday night, her publicist Bernard Doherty said: “Tina Turner, the ‘Queen of Rock’n Roll’ has died peacefully today at the age of 83 after a long illness in her home in Kusnacht near Zurich, Switzerland. With her, the world loses a music legend and a role model.”

Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on 26 November 1939 and raised in Nutbush, Tennessee, where she recalled picking cotton with her family as a child. She sang in the tiny town’s church choir, and as a teenager talked – or rather, sang – her way into Ike’s band in St Louis: he had declined her request to join until he heard her seize the microphone during a Kings of Rhythm performance for a rendition of BB King’s You Know I Love You.

After her vocal talents became apparent, Ike gave her the name Tina Turner – and trademarked it in case she left him and he wanted to replace her in his act. He quickly became abusive: when Turner tried to leave the group early on after having got a sense of his mercurial character, he hit her with a wooden shoe stretcher.

Tina Turner: ‘I always had a crush on Mick Jagger'

"Mick wanted to dance - and I was a dancer i was the one who taught the Rolling Stones frontman his moves, despite his claims he was taught by his mother.

But he never gave me the credit! We worked with him in the dressing room, me and the girls, and we taught him how to Pony." I taught Mick to dance, but he never made a move on me! Jagger and David Bowie were 'like the brothers I never had'.

Recently she opened up about her retirement, her old poker pals David Bowie and Mick Jagger, and of course, the point of the evening, the upcoming musical on her life opening next year in London. As a follow-up to her first best-selling memoir, I, Tina, the book will go into more detail about the nearly fatal moments with Ike during their violently toxic relationship that ended in 1973.

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