Tina Turner dies at 83 after a long illness

• Legendary singer Tina Turner dies after a long illness.
• She died peacefully in her home in Switzerland.
• She was 83 years old.

On Wednesday it was confirmed that legendary singer Tina Turner had passed away at the age of 83. The news was confirmed by The Associated Press and other media.

According to the Daily Mail, the iconic singer passed away at her home in Switzerland after a long illness and, according to early reports, she died peacefully.

TINA TURNER DIES

Tina Turner was an unstoppable singer and actress who teamed up with her husband Ike Turner for a dynamic series of hit records and live shows in the 1960s and ’70s. She survived domestic violence in the marriage, which is depicted in the hit What’s Love Got to Do With It.

Turner died Tuesday after a long illness at her home in Küsnacht, near Zurich, Switzerland, her manager said. She became a Swiss citizen a decade ago.

TINA TURNER OVERCAME DOMESTIC ABUSE

Few stars have traveled this far. Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock in a segregated Tennessee hospital and spent her final years in a 260,000-square-foot estate on Lake Zurich. She was physically battered, emotionally devastated and financially ruined by her 20-year relationship with Ike Turner. She ultimately became a superstar in her own right at age 40.

With celebrity fans ranging from Beyoncé to Mick Jagger, Turner was one of the world’s most successful artists. She’s known for pop, rock, and rhythm and blues songs such as: Proud Mary, Nutbush City Limits, River Deep, Mountain High and the ’80s hits like What’s Love Got to Do with It, We Don’t Need Another Hero and a cover of Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together.

TINA TURNER AND HER FAMOUS LEGS

Her trademarks were her snarling contralto, her bold smile and strong cheekbones, her range of wigs, and the fast-stepping, muscular legs she wasn’t ashamed to show off. She has sold more than 150 million records worldwide, won 12 Grammy Awards. She was voted with Ike into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991, and alone in 2021. She was honored at the Kennedy Center in 2005. Her life became the basis of a movie, a Broadway musical, and an HBO documentary in 2021.

Until she left her husband and revealed her backstory, she was known as the energetic onstage foil to Ike Turner in the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. Ike ran the show, chose the material, the arrangements and the backing vocalists. They toured constantly for years, partly because Ike was often short of money and unwilling to miss a concert. Tina Turner was forced to carry on with bronchitis, with pneumonia and with a collapsed right lung.

IKE TURNER STARTED BEATING HER SHORTLY AFTER THEY MET

As she recounted in her memoir, Me, Tina, Ike began beating her soon after they met, in the mid-1950s, and he only got crueler. Provoked by anything and anyone, he would throw hot coffee in her face, choke or beat her until her eyes bulged, then rape her. Before a show, he broke her jaw and she walked onstage with her mouth full of blood.

Terrified of both being with and without Ike, she credited her emerging Buddhist faith in the mid-1970s with giving her a sense of strength and self-esteem and she finally left him in early July 1976. The Ike and Tina Turner Revue was scheduled to open a bicentennial tour of the country when Tina snuck out of her Dallas hotel room, with only a Mobil credit card and 36 cents, while Ike slept. She hurried across a nearby highway, narrowly missing a speeding truck, and found another hotel to stay. «I looked at him (Ike) and thought, ‘You just beat me one last time, you fool,'» she recalled in her memoir.

TINA TURNER WAS ONE OF THE FIRST TO SPEAK OUT ABOUT DOMESTIC ABUSE

Tina Turner was one of the first celebrities to speak candidly about domestic abuse, becoming a hero to battered women and a symbol of resilience to all. Ike Turner did not deny mistreating her, although he did try to blame Tina for her problems. When he died in 2007, a representative for her ex-wife said simply: «Tina is aware that Ike has passed away.»

Little of this was apparent to the many Ike and Tina fans. The Turners were a hot act for much of the 1960s and early 1970s, evolving from bluesy ballads like A Fool in Love and It’s Going to Work Out Fine to flashy covers of Proud Mary and Come Together.