Tina Turner, one of the greatest singers of all time, is dead at 83. Deadline reports she “died today after a long illness at her home in Küsnacht near Zurich, Switzerland.” Mere words can’t do justice to what an absolute legend she was, with a career that made her a top draw that spanned generations. She was a household name if you were a child of the 80s, but guess what? She was also a household name in the 60s, 70s, 90s and 2000s too. Arguably her greatest period as a solo artist was the eighties when the former soul diva reimagined herself as a rock goddess, topping the charts with a string of iconic hits, including “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” “Private Dancer,” “The Best,” “Better Be Good to Me” and “We Don’t Need Another Hero.” That last song was the lead single off the Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome soundtrack, a George Miller movie where she co-starred with Mel Gibson as the likeable villain, Aunty Entity. She even did most of her own driving. In an interview once, Gibson credited Turner with helping him sober up in the mid-eighties after the two worked together on the movie, saying “she sent me a photograph of myself one time and she said, ‘Please don’t mess this up.’ Because she was worried about me. I was touched by that, that went in somewhere.”
Turner’s career started in the late fifties when she joined Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm band. Soon, she and Ike married and formed their own duo, Ike & Tina, having a string of hits, including their cover of “Proud Mary” and the classic “River Deep, Mountain High.” She split from the abusive Ike Turner in the mid-seventies, with their tumultuous relationship memorably depicted in the film, What’s Love Got to Do With It, adapted from her autobiography, “I, Tina: My Life Story.” While she had some lean years following the split, the eighties proved to be good for Turner, with her reinvention as a rock star making her one of the most iconic performers of her day. Her career continued well into the nineties, with her memorably singing the theme song to the James Bond movie Goldeneye. She had been retired since 2009 but had been in the midst of a renewed wave of popularity after her song “The Best” became a recurring motif on Schitt’s Creek, while HBO made an excellent documentary about her life, Tina, in which she gave a lengthy interview about her life and career.
In addition to her musical career and her acting role in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, she memorably played The Acid Queen in Tommy and cameoed as the Mayor of Los Angeles in Last Action Hero. Over the course of her career, she won eight Grammys, held a Guinness Book of World Records title for “largest paying rock concert attendance for a solo artist,” and was inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame twice.
Truly she was one of a kind and will be missed.