Tina Turner gives her fans a final farewell in a moving new film that shows how she overcame her painful past and finally found happiness.
In the feature-length documentary, simply titled “Tina”, the singer looks at the camera for the first time in her younger years full of struggle and pain, then the true love and global fame she found as a middle-aged woman .
Now 81 and plagued by health problems, including a stroke and cancer, the legend of soul and rock music also suffered from kidney failure, which led to a transplant in 2017.
In the film, she tells how she wants to enter the third and final chapter of her life out of the spotlight, and it is revealed that she has a form of post-traumatic stress disorder due to the domestic violence she suffered at the hands of her first husband and musical partner. , Ike Turner.
Looking back, Tina reflects, “It was not a good life. The good does not balance the bad.
“I had an abusive life, there is no other way to tell the story. It is a reality. It is true. This is what you have, so you have to accept it.
‘I should be proud’
“There are people who say that the life I lived and the performances I gave, the appreciation, is exploding with people. And yes, I should be proud of that. I’m.
“But when do you stop being proud? I mean, when you, how do you get out slowly? Just go away? “
In the documentary, which will air this month, Tina is seen for the first time talking to the man who finally brought her happiness, her second husband, Erwin Bach.
The couple takes a farewell trip to the United States for the premiere of their Broadway show, The Tina Turner Story, and Erwin, 65, reveals on camera: “She said, ‘I’m going to America to say goodbye to my American fans and I will wrap it ‘. And I think that this documentary and the play, that’s it – it’s a closure. “
The details of Tina’s life have been narrated before, first in her 1986 autobiography, “I, Tina”, and in the 1993 biography “What does love have to do with it?” with Angela Bassett as Tina.
But Tina has always been reluctant to discuss them on camera until now. This documentary will have been painful to make, but it is a farewell gift for its global army of fans.
She is closing the curtain on a career that has seen her sell over 100 million records, and at its peak in the 1980s it filled arenas around the world.
Tina was born Anna Mae Bullock and her childhood was filled with poverty and misery, harvesting cotton in the fields around Nutbush, Tennessee.
‘Mom wasn’t kind … she didn’t like me’
Her mother, Zelma, suffered domestic violence at the hands of her father, Floyd Bullock, before they both abandoned her as a child. Even when Tina was reunited with her mother when she was a superstar, Zelma was cold and loveless.
Tina says in the documentary: “Mom wasn’t kind. When I became a star, of course, at that time she was happy because I bought her a house. I did all kinds of things for her, she was my mom.
“I was trying to make her comfortable because she didn’t have a husband, she was alone, but she still didn’t like me.
“Even after I became Tina, Mom was still a little bit like, ‘Who did this?’ and ‘Who did this?’ And I said, ‘I did it, mom!’ I was happy to show my mom what I did. I had a house, I had a car and she said, ‘No, I don’t believe it. No, you are my daughter, no, no!
“She didn’t want me, she didn’t want to be around me, even though she wanted my success. But I did it for her as if she loved me. “
This childhood full of cruelty and violence may explain why Tina initially seemed to accept the mental and physical torture she endured after marrying Ike in 1962.
The wedding saw Anna Mae Bullock reborn as Tina Turner, in a duo that would become soul stars for nearly three decades.
Her new name was so important to her that when she finally found the will to initiate divorce proceedings against Ike in 1976 – after years of beatings and psychological torture – it was all she asked to get out of their stormy union.
‘It’s like a curse’
Leaving him was made difficult by the fact that they had a son, Ronnie, and she adopted two of Ike’s children, Ike Jr. and Michael, from their previous relationship. She already had a son, Craig, from a previous relationship.
Erwin tells the program that she still has nightmares about those dark days and is suffering from something similar to post-traumatic stress disorder that incapacitates battle victims.
He says: “She dreams of it, they are not pleasant. It is like when the soldiers return from the war. It is not an easy time to keep this in mind and then try to forget. “
Tina, who tried to escape Ike for the first time with an overdose of sleeping pills in 1968, admits: “This scene comes back. You are dreaming. The real picture is there, it’s like a curse. “
But the biggest antidote to trauma is forgiveness, and she claims to be at peace with Ike, who died of an accidental drug overdose in 2007.
Tina says: “For a long time I hated Ike, I have to say that. But then, after he died, I really realized that he was a sick person. It helped me get started and it was good for me at the beginning. So, I have some good thoughts. Maybe it was good to have met him, I don’t know about that.
“It is painful to have to remember those times, but at a certain stage forgiveness takes over, to forgive means not having to wait.
“It was letting go, because it just hurts you. For not forgiving, you suffer, because you think about it indefinitely. And for what?”
In the 1980s Tina reinvented herself as a solo artist. With successful albums like “Private Dancer” and “Break Every Rule”, she joined the pantheon of global music icons.
She even became a movie star, appearing with Mel Gibson in the 1985 action movie “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome”.
Her career saw her win a dozen Grammy awards, get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and become the first black artist and the first woman to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.
But in 1986 – at the height of her fame – she was incredibly lonely.
‘He was so handsome. My heart raced
Everything changed when she met the German music producer Erwin, while visiting Europe. She was 46 and he was 30, but it was love at first sight – although they didn’t get married until 2013.
Tina remembers: “He had the most beautiful face. It was like, ‘Where did he come from?’ He was so handsome. My heart raced. This means that a soul has found itself. When he found out that I liked him, he came to America and we were in Nashville and I said to him, ‘When you come to LA, I want you to make love to me.’
“I thought I could say that because I was a free woman, I didn’t have a boyfriend, I liked him.
“There was nothing wrong with that – it was just sex. And he looked at me as if he didn’t believe what he was hearing.
“He was so different, so relaxed, so comfortable, so unpretentious, and that was the beginning of our relationship.”
As love blossomed, Tina began to end her recording career, making her last album in 1999, at the age of 59. She made her last presentation in 2009.
Last year, at the age of 80, she briefly returned to recording, collaborating with producer Kygo in a reinvention of the dance of her 1984 anthem, “What’s Love Got To Do With It”.
The documentary also explores how originally she was deeply unsure about recording the song – which became her only # 1 solo in the U.S. – since it was a pop track recorded for the first time by British Eurovision winners Bucks Fizz.
‘He will always be my baby’
Today Tina spends most of her time in Switzerland with Erwin, where she lives permanently, having renounced American citizenship.
But she still experienced trauma in her life. In 2018, her son Craig committed suicide in Los Angeles, and after she spread her ashes off the California coast, she said, “My saddest moment as a mother. He was 59 when he died so tragically, but he will always be my baby. “
His most recent illness led to a kidney transplant, with Erwin as the donor. It was a risky process for such an elderly couple, but inevitable, as they remain hopelessly in love.
Erwin says: “It is something that we both have for each other. I always refer to this as an electrical charge. I still have that. “
Before the operation, Tina was so sick that she was thinking about assisted suicide – which is legal in Switzerland, where she now has full citizenship.
She joined the assisted suicide organization Exit and recalled in a book three years ago: “It was not my idea of life, but the toxins in my body started to take over. I couldn’t eat.
“I was surviving, but not living. I started thinking about death. If my kidneys were failing and it was my time to die, I could accept that, everything was fine. When the time comes, it really is the time. “
The new documentary shows the interior of the couple’s beautiful home on the shores of Lake Zurich.
Full of home-made furniture, flower arrangements and ornaments, it looks like a million miles from Tennessee’s dusty trails or flashy Tinseltown houses.
But there is also a wall full of gold records and shelves covered with prizes – a reminder that Tina will always be a star, in or out of the spotlight.