Tina Turner: ‘My legacy is that I stayed the course… from beginning to the end because I believed in something inside me’

It was confirmed by representatives that Tina Turner, the global superstar and icon passed away at the age of 83. 

She famously overcame hardship and domestic abuse to become a global star with several accolades and achievements to her name. For Life Stories, we chart the star’s historic career and life. 

When a neighbour invited schoolgirl Tina Turner to her house to watch television because Turner’s family didn’t own one, she was overjoyed. Not only was the invitation itself momentous (this was the 40s in America’s Deep South where black people were still segregated and her neighbour was white) but it opened her eyes to a world she never knew existed. ‘I didn’t know anything about being a star until the white people allowed us to come down and watch their television once a week,’ Turner later recalled. ‘That’s when I saw Loretta Young fan actress who was nominated for two Best Actress Oscars in the 40s, winning one of them in 1947] on TV. I thought that someday I’d have a star on my dressing room.’ 

As history proved, she got her star. Turner grew up to become one of the 20th century’s most successful recording artists, earning twelve Grammys and holding the record for being the highest-grossing female concert performer. She is also the woman who famously clawed her way back to the top after fleeing an abusive marriage with only 36 cents to her name, an inspiring story that has been immortalised in a  West End stage show, Tina: The Musical. 

Born Anna Mae Bullock on 26 November 1939 in Nutbush, Tennessee, her father, Floyd, was a crop workers’ supervisor, and her mother Zelma, a housewife. It wasn’t a happy home: Zelma hadn’t wanted a second child after having their first daughter Alline, so Turner, born two years later, became the focus of her unhappiness. ‘My mother didn’t love me; it was as simple as that. Even as a little girl, I knew she didn’t love me,’ Turner later said. ‘When I was born she felt trapped into staying with my father.’ 

By 16, Turner was living in St Louis, Illinois, with relatives. One Saturday night, Alline sneaked her underage sister into a club to see Ike Turner play with his band, Kings of Rhythm. Ike, a major recording star locally, made an impression on Turner, although not in the way he hoped. ‘His music charged me [but) I was never attracted to him,’ she said. Turner began going to watch Ike’s band play and aspired to a musical career herself, but her own dreams were set back significantly when at 18, she fell pregnant while dating Ike’s bandmate Raymond Hill. Their partnership was short-lived and following the birth of their son Craig in 1958, they split, making Turner even more determined to make it. Her big chance came when, during one performance, the band’s drummer passed Turner the mic and told her to sing. ‘Ike said, “Girl, I didn’t know you could sing!” I was so happy,’ she later recalled of her stage debut. ‘That’s when I learned I was truly talented. Before I met Ike, I was singing at church and at picnics.’ 

Initially, Turner’s relationship with Ike was platonic, she told her close friend Oprah Winfrey in a 2005 interview. ‘We were close, like brother and sister. We had so much fun,’ she said. ‘On his nights off, we’d drive around town and he would tell me about his life, his dreams.’ But Ike soon laid sexual claim to Turner – against her wishes. ‘I didn’t like it, but I didn’t know what to do or say,’ she said. ‘In those days, everybody did what Ike said. He had the power.’ The pair recorded their first hit, A Fool In Love, in 1960, when Turner was 21, and the band was renamed The Ike & Tina Turner Revue (Ike chose Tina because it sounded like Sheena, the Qµeen of the Jungle cartoon character popular at the time). Despite her misgivings about the partnership, she continued the relationship and their son, Ronnie, was born that same year. They married two years later in Mexico. 

Turner knew Ike was volatile – she’d seen him beat other girlfriends – but it wasn’t until she tried to leave the band over a financial dispute that he attacked her for the first time. Afterwards, he made her have sex – a pattern he would repeat throughout their marriage.