Tina Turner says goodbye to her fans 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 back in front of the camera for the first time to her early years of struggle and pain, and then to the true love and worldwide fame she found as a middle-aged woman.
Now 81 and plagued with ill health, including stroke and cancer, the soul and rock music legend also suffered from kidney failure, leading to a transplant in 2017.
In the film, she tells how she wants to get out of the spotlight for the third and final chapter of her life, and it is revealed that she has some form of post-traumatic stress disorder from the domestic violence she suffered at the hands of her first husband and music partner, Ike. Turner.
Looking back, Tina reflects: “It was not a good life. The good did not balance the bad.
‘I’ve had an insulting life, there’s no other way to tell the story. It’s a reality. It’s a truth. That’s what you have, so you have to accept it.
‘I should be proud’
“Some people say that the life I’ve lived and the performances I’ve given, the appreciation, explodes in people. And yes, I can be proud of that. I’m.
“But when do you stop being proud? I mean when do you, how do you slowly bend out? Just go away?”
In the documentary, which airs this month, Tina can be seen for the first time talking with the man who finally brought her happiness, her second husband, Erwin Bach.
The couple takes a farewell trip to the US for the Broadway premiere of her show, The Tina Turner Story, and Erwin, 65, reveals to the camera: “She said, ‘I’m going to America to say goodbye to my American fans. and I’ll wrap it up. “And I think this documentary and the play, this is it – it’s closing.”
The details of Tina’s life have been chronicled before, first in her 1986 autobiography, “I, Tina,” and in the 1993 biopic “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” with Angela Bassett as Tina.
But Tina has always hated discussing them in front of the camera until now. It will have been painful to make this documentary, but it is a parting gift for her worldwide army of fans.
She lowered the curtain to a career in which she sold more than 100 million records, and sold out arenas around the world at her peak in the 1980s.
Born Anna Mae Bullock, Tina’s childhood was filled with poverty and misery as she picked cotton in the fields around Nutbush, Tennessee.
‘Mom wasn’t nice … 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 children. Even when Tina was reunited with her mom when she was a superstar, Zelma was cold and loveless.
Tina says in the documentary, “Mom wasn’t nice. Of course, when I became a star, she was happy because I bought her a house. I did everything for her, she was my mother.
“I tried to put her at ease because she didn’t have a husband, she was alone, but she still didn’t like me.
Even after I became Tina, Ma still kind of thought, ‘Who did that? ‘and’ Who did this? ‘ And I said, “I did, Mom!” I was happy to show my mom what I was doing. I had a house, I had a car and she said, ‘No, I don’t believe it. No, you are my daughter, no you didn’t! ‘
She didn’t want me, she didn’t want to be around me, even though she wanted my success. But I pretended to love me for her. “
This childhood rife with cruelty and violence may explain why Tina initially seemed to accept the mental and physical torture she endured after marrying Ike in 1962.
The marriage saw Anna Mae Bullock reborn as Tina Turner, in a duo that went on to become soul stars for nearly three decades.
Her new name was so important to her that when she finally found the will to file divorce proceedings against Ike in 1976 – after years of abuse and psychological torture – all she wanted to take over from their stormy union.
‘It’s like a curse’
Leaving him was complicated by the fact that they had a son, Ronnie, and she adopted two of Ike’s children, Ike Jr. and Michael, from his 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 suffers from something akin to the post-traumatic stress disorder that paralyzes war victims.
He says: “She has dreams about it, they are not pleasant. It’s like when soldiers come back from war. It’s not an easy time to have them in your memory and then forget about them. “
Tina, who first tried to escape Ike in 1968 with an overdose of sleeping pills, admits, “That scene is coming back. You dream it. The real picture is there, it’s like a curse. “
But the greatest antidote to the trauma is forgiveness, and she claims to be at peace with Ike, who died of an accidental drug overdose in 2007.
Tina says, “I hated Ike for a long time, I have to say that. But then, after he died, I really realized he was sick. He got me started and he was good to me in the beginning. So I have some good thoughts. Maybe it was a good thing I met him, I don’t know.
“It hurts to have to remember those moments, but at some point forgiveness takes over, forgiveness means you don’t have to hold on.
“It was letting go, because it only hurts you. By not forgiving you suffer because you think about it again and again. And for what? “
In the eighties, Tina reinvented herself as a solo artist. With hit albums like “Private Dancer” and “Break Every Rule” she joined the pantheon of worldwide music icons.
She even became a movie star, appearing with Mel Gibson in the 1985 action movie ‘Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome’.
In her career, she won a dozen Grammys, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and became the first black performer 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 looked so good. My heart went ba-bum ‘
That all changed when she met German record producer Erwin on a visit to Europe. She was 46 and he was 30, but it was love at first sight – even though they didn’t get married until 2013.
Tina recalls: “He had the most beautiful face. It was like, “Where did he come from?” He looked so good. My heart was beating. It means that a soul has met. When he found out that I liked him, he came to America and we were in Nashville and I said to him, “If 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, that I liked him.
“There was nothing wrong with it – it was just sex. And he looked at me like he didn’t believe what he was hearing.
“He was just so different, so relaxed, so comfortable, so flawless, and that was the beginning of our relationship.”
As love blossomed, Tina began to wrap up her recording career, making her last album in 1999 when she was 59. She gave her last performance in 2009.
Last year, when she was 80, she briefly returned to recording and collaborated with producer Kygo on a new dance invention of her 1984 anthem, “What’s Love Got To Do With It.”
The documentary also explores how she was originally very insecure about recording the song – which became her only US No. 1 solo – as it was a pop track first recorded by British Eurovision winner Bucks Fizz.
‘He will always be my baby’
Tina spends most of her time in Switzerland with Erwin, where she lives permanently after renouncing her US citizenship.
But she still experienced trauma in her life. In 2018, her son Craig committed suicide in Los Angeles, and after scattering his ashes off the coast of California, she said, “My saddest moment as a mother. He was 59 when he died so tragically, but he will always be my baby. “
Her most recent illness resulted in her kidney transplant, with Erwin as the donor. It was a risky process for such an older couple, but unavoidable as they remain madly in love.
Erwin says, “It is something that we both have for each other. I always call it an electric charge. I still have it. “
Before the surgery, Tina was so sick that she considered assisted suicide – which is legal in Switzerland, where she now has full citizenship.
She joined the aid organization Exit and recalled in a book three years ago, “It wasn’t my idea of life, but the toxins in my body were starting to take over. I couldn’t eat.
‘I survived, but I was not alive. I started to think about death. If my kidneys were going, and it was time for me to die, I could accept that, it was okay. When it is time, it is really time. “
The new documentary takes a look at the couple’s beautiful home on the edge of Lake Zurich.
Filled with homey furnishings, floral arrangements and ornaments, it seems a million miles away from the dusty trails of Tennessee or the glitzy homes of Tinseltown.
But there’s also a wall filled with gold disks and shelves covered in awards – a reminder that Tina will always be a star, in or out of the spotlight.