The difficult story of Tina Turner - a strong woman who ran away from her sadistic husband, survived the suicide of her son and believed in love again:.

Wild, captivating, incomparable - there are not enough words to describe Tina Turner, who won the hearts of millions of people around the world with her crazy energy and amazing voice. We pay tribute not only to the talent of this woman, but also to the strength with which she overcame all the trials that befell her.

Tina Turner died on May 24, 2023. It is absolutely impossible to believe this - only one image appears before your eyes: Tina in a daring miniskirt, showing off her indecently beautiful legs, performs one of her most famous songs, Simply the Best, to the roar of a maddened crowd of fans. This is definitely the best one. And you are convinced of this for the thousandth time after learning these facts from the artist’s autobiography.

In it, Anna Mae Bullock ( the singer's real name - approx. ProPedia) spoke about a life that you cannot envy: about a terrible first marriage, about violence - physical and moral, about trying to start everything from scratch in adulthood, about how to meet the love of your life in your fifties and believe in her.

It seems that after all the trials that befell this woman, she finally deserves to live happily. But the villainous fate continues to test her strength, cruelly confronting her with the suicide of her eldest son, with a fatal diagnosis, or with the loss of her youngest son. But first things first...

Love is pain

“In the family where I grew up, love was tight. I became an unwanted child because I tied my mother to a father she no longer wanted to be with,” Tina Turner begins her story.

Who knows, perhaps it was the lack of warmth and affection that pushed young Anna Mae Bullock to a man named Ike Turner. A famous musician noticed a fragile girl with a strong voice and invited her to join his band Kings of Rhythm as a backing vocalist. The relationship between them did not arise immediately - our heroine had an affair with saxophonist Turner, from whom she gave birth to a son, Craig. The young father did not want to fulfill his duties and was like that. Ike took care of the newborn and his mother. They soon became lovers, and then parents - in 1960, baby Ronnie was born.

In 1962, a wedding took place, which the singer is still ashamed to remember.

Hasty registration in an institution with dirty floors and walls, no banquet and first dance, instead - a trip to a brothel . The shocked newlywed sat with her eyes full of horror and looked at the disgusting pornographic performance that had nothing to do with eroticism. She would then have taken it and run far away from such a hubby, but the singer did not do this. She continued to believe in love and wanted to become a star, because Ike had just told her that he was planning to create a musical duet. The only condition was that Anna change her name to Tina. The girl did not like this idea and objected. Without further explanation, the man took a heavy wooden shoe stand and hit his lover on the head. This was the first time he laid a hand on her.

A 16 year nightmare

Since then, fear has taken the place of love in Tina’s heart  - she was afraid to leave Ike, afraid to disappoint him, to say the wrong thing, to do the wrong thing, she endured beatings and bullying. Sex with a once desirable man has turned into a real rape: instead of foreplay there is a beating, instead of a final kiss, spitting.

Their house turned into a brothel: Ike Turner shared his bed not only with his legal wife, but also with many other women. In order to become more resilient in bed, the musician began taking drugs, which made him even more aggressive.

Nobody paid any attention to Tina’s bruises and bruises, as well as to her broken jaw and third-degree burn from a glass of hot coffee thrown in her face...

All this lasted for 16 long years! After another assault, Tina’s patience finally ran out. Or maybe she just realized that she would die if she didn't leave right now. After waiting for this sadist to fall asleep, Turner ran away from the hotel where they were staying before the next performance.

Life from a clean slate and an empty pocket

Having hidden from her husband, Tina realized that she was left with nothing. She had only a handbag in her hands, and 36 cents jingled pitifully in her pocket. How and, most importantly, where to live on this with two children? It seemed like there were three times more problems. But all this was no longer important: Tina Turner began her new life on July 4 - Independence Day. Never before, according to the artist, has this holiday meant so much to her.

For the next few months, the singer wandered around among friends and acquaintances and, in order to somehow repay the help, scrubbed the floors in their apartments and houses.

After the divorce, she somehow miraculously managed to win back her creative pseudonym from her ex-husband in order to continue performing. But then an unexpected problem arose - in the early eighties, Tina was perceived exclusively as part of a duet with Ike Turner. And without him, no one needed her. Besides, she was 40... Not the best age to start everything from scratch.

Cher was the first to lend a helping hand, inviting her stage colleague to her show. It was thanks to her that Tina was able to earn some money, which was enough to rent a small house and buy food. And so it slowly began to spin and spin. Soon she met manager Roger Davis, who created the Tina Turner they know and love today.

After the first performance he organized, David Bowie, Mick Jagger and Ron Wood poured into the singer’s dressing room with champagne to see the woman who had stolen their hearts forever.

All three helped her with the recording of her first solo album - some with money, some with advice, some with songs. And no one demanded anything in return, which was very important for Tina - she still could not trust male representatives and did not allow them to approach her.

“I learned to be happy regardless of men. This is quite rare in life. My success made me happy. I don’t really believe that any man could handle this,” Turner said exactly until she met Erwin Bach.

Alphonse or the man of your dreams?

At the time of their meeting, she was 46 years old, he was 30. She is a world celebrity, a superstar in the truest sense of the word, he is an EMI manager who came to present the singer with a brand new Mercedes G-Wagen as a gift from the studio.

Tired after a long flight, Tina, as soon as she got into the car, felt something wrong - her heart began to pound wildly at the first glance at the man to her left, with very beautiful hands, as Turner later recalled.

Many reproached the artist for falling for the young man - he, they say, just needs her money and fame. But the singer knew that the heart cannot deceive. Not hers. Not this time!

Their next meeting happened two weeks later at some banquet after some event - neither he nor she remembers the details. While dancing, Tina whispered in Erwin's ear: "When you fly to America, I want to make love to you." After that they never parted. Following her beloved man, Tina left her native America and settled in Switzerland.

Down the aisle in your eighties

In 1989, shortly before the star’s 50th birthday, Erwin Bach invited Tina Turner to a restaurant and proposed marriage over a glass of excellent Riesling. More than a quarter of a century has passed since her first wedding, but the horrors of that time still did not allow her to forget about herself.

Frightened, the singer asked her boyfriend to wait. And he waited... For 24 years!

On July 4, 2013, the couple had a civil wedding ceremony , and two weeks later they threw a lavish party on the shores of Lake Zurich. The singer asked all the guests to dress in white - in order to comply with Buddhist canons - and she herself chose a dark Armani Prive outfit for the holiday with a fluffy skirt made of greenish-yellow taffeta and sparkling leggings .

Seventy thousand snow-white roses and one hundred of her closest friends - finally Tina Turner got the wedding she deserved!

Death is always near

In her eighties, Tina Turner could afford to rest as much as she wanted, so she wanted to stretch out her honeymoon for almost six months. Unfortunately, it ended earlier than planned. Three weeks after the wedding, the 74-year-old singer suffered a stroke. It all started with a sharp headache, which strong women like Tina were not used to paying attention to. Then one leg started to hurt - unpleasant, but tolerable. Afterwards, speech was lost and the entire right half of the body became numb. 

Having barely recovered from this blow, Tina fell under the next one - in 2016 she was diagnosed with intestinal cancer, which caused complications in her kidneys. Doctors have found that they work at only (!) 35 percent of normal. The singer, who always charged her fans with her crazy energy and appeared on stage like a hurricane, could not afford to stay in the hospital or depend on the devices attached to her. Therefore, having refused hemodialysis, she turned to homeopathy specialists. This was a big mistake.

Traditional medicine could not help the star, and meanwhile doctors reported that the kidneys were functioning at only 20 percent...

Will it all end now? Could this really be the end of a life in which she had always been a winner? Tina Turner's emotional state was depressing: she began to think more and more often about death and even joined a group that helps organize legal euthanasia in Switzerland. “I didn’t want to sit and suffer. I decided that my time had come and it would be better to leave this world,” the singer wrote in her memoirs.

Erwin Bach, who always supports his wife, this time had a different opinion: “No, Tina, I don’t want another woman to appear in my life.” And these were not just words.

And in sorrow and in joy

As it turned out, Erwin consulted with doctors for several months and, having passed all the necessary tests, found out that he could become a donor for his wife. To save his beloved woman, Bach, without hesitation, went under the knife and shared his kidney with her . The operation, which only the closest couple knew about, took place on April 7, 2017. Despite the fact that everything went well, the singer’s body still rejected the organ.

“I know my medical journey is far from over, but I’m still here,” Tina said.

On July 3, 2018, she traveled to Paris to attend the couture collection of her dear friend Giorgio Armani. That same evening, her eldest son, Craig Raymond Turner, committed suicide . It is unknown what forced the star’s first-born to take his life shortly before his 60th birthday. But they say that it’s all about an unsettled personal life and an unfulfilled career. Add to this the violence against his mother by his stepfather, which he witnessed throughout his childhood, the lack of support from his own father, and the lack of parental love.

Tina Turner did not comment on this tragedy, but 16 days later she announced that she had scattered the ashes of her deceased son over the California coast. She posted a photo on Twitter of herself holding a red rose a second before throwing it into the water: “The saddest moment for me as a mom.”

On December 9, 2022, it became known about the death of the youngest son of a world celebrity. It is known that he had health problems, including oncology, which he managed to defeat.

Six months later, Tina herself died. The cause of death has not yet been reported.

Farewell legend!

Photo: Getty Images, Rex Features/FOTODOM.RU, EAST-NEWS