She overcame domestic violence and cancer, now she's saying goodbye to her fans. "It wasn't a good life, but I had to accept it," Tina Turner sums up
Much could be said about Tina Turner's career, but no words would be enough. The mark she has left on popular (rock) music is without question indelible. And the feet she has trodden on are, in a sense, the most expensive feet in the world (Tina is said to have taken out a multi-million pound insurance policy on them with the British company Lloyd's). But of course, as the singer herself admits in a unique documentary, success doesn't come without sacrifice and collateral damage.
Hate is not the way...
Tina Turner's story would practically make several separate books, considering everything that has happened to her in her life. Her tumultuous marriage to Ike Turner, who abused and beat her, could be the subject of one of them. As well as the hatred Tina had long felt for him. "But when Ike died, I realized he was a sick man. Still, he got me started on my career and was nice to me early in our relationship. So maybe it was a good thing that I met him. Today, I've come to forgiveness. And that's actually a relief. Because if you don't forgive, you just keep suffering - because you think about everything over and over again," Tina recounts her first marriage in one of the five parts of the documentary, simply titled "Ike & Tina."
It was Ike Turner, the musician and also producer whom the singer married in 1958 (and with whom she also raised two sons), who actually supported her in the early days of her career, or rather, they performed together, Tina then still under her stage name Anna Mae Bullock. However, Ike suffered from alcohol and drug addiction, which manifested itself in the marriage - he beat and sexually assaulted his wife, the singer even attempted suicide, and the marriage eventually ended in divorce in 1976. Ike then died in 2007, fittingly of an overdose.
But leaving her husband was not only a kind of liberation for Tina, but also a fall to the bottom - both career and financial, as she left her ex-partner the copyrights to their joint songs as part of the post-divorce settlement. In the aftermath of the divorce, the singer was even left on food stamps, yet she refused to give up and after a few years of singing only in small clubs and casinos, she released the album Private Dancer in 1984, which became the first step towards worldwide success. It was between 1984 and 1992 that Tina achieved her greatest fame, collecting a number of Grammy Awards, winning her first gold record, and in 1988, 182,000 people watched her in concert in Rio de Janeiro - a record that was also recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records. Tina then made her mark on classic pop culture with the theme song to the "Bond" film Golden Eye.
Hand in hand with professional success went happiness in her personal life. Tina found love with German music producer Erwin Bach, 16 years her junior, whom she married in 2013 after a 27-year relationship. "I met him at the airport, he was younger, he was 30 at the time and had the most beautiful face. I thought, where did he come from? He looked really fantastic. And my heart started beating really fast, and that meant that our souls met," the singer describes the "fateful meeting" - not least because Erwin basically saved her life. After all, when Tina was suffering from severe kidney disease - and was considering assisted suicide, which is legal in Switzerland, where she has lived for a long time, because of her refusal to live on dialysis - her husband decided to give her his.
When (and how) to leave?
Of course, the singer doesn't shy away from taking stock in the documentary and touches logically on a topic that probably every artist has dealt with (with varying degrees of success). That is, determining when - and how - to leave the scene. "Some people say the life I've lived and the shows I've done have been great. And yes, I should be proud of that. I'm proud of it. But when does one stop being proud - I mean, when and how do you step back from that glory? Or just walk away?" And this is probably the key question that runs like a red thread through the whole documentary, in which Tina actually says goodbye to her fans. This is after she has overcome a series of personal and health problems, from a stroke, cancer, a kidney transplant, domestic violence and the death of her eldest son. Meanwhile, Erwin Bach admits on camera, in the context of the singer's last trip to the US (in 2019) for the premiere of the musical bearing her name, that the documentary is really the closure of a great chapter and career. "Tina said to me, 'I'm going to America to say goodbye to my American fans, and then I'm going to wrap it up,' and I think it's her musical and this documentary that is the final closure."
And then Tina herself, by recapitulating a series of her own ups and downs that she had to deal with, to some extent provides everyone with a basic and valuable recipe for how to cope with whatever one may encounter. "It was not a good life - and the good could not balance the bad. But there is no other way to tell my story. It's reality. It's the truth. You have to accept what you get from life," he sums up.
The documentary TINA premiered on HBO and on the streaming platform HBO Max on Saturday, March 27, 2021, so it is also now free to watch for subscribers on HBO Max.
