The Pop Corporation

“Without Tina Turner we have no Beyonce. We have no Rihanna. We have no generation of Black women performers who transgressed all sorts of musical genres and without Tina Turner, we have no reclamation of Black woman’s sexuality in the context of rock and roll.”

“Without Tina Turner, we have a new bereft in terms of our conversations about domestic abuse, about Black woman’s ability to be able to withstand patriarchy,” Daphne Brooks, a scholar of popular music studies and Black feminist literature and culture at Yale University.

To say that the news of Tina Turner’s passing has left a huge hole in popular culture is an understatement. Of course, we’ll remember the music, but the story of Tina Turner is more than just a cover of ‘Proud Mary’ or ‘[Simply] The Best’ – she embodied something much more than a back catalogue that would have been more than enough all by itself. She gave us everything of herself and there’s no-one more real.

Obviously, she was a dynamic, hair-raising performer of so many wonderful songs, and Elton John saying she was “electric” and “untouchable” is exactly right. Given that she was able to be such a force of nature on record and on-stage is one thing, but to be able to be such a poster child for triumph over adversity is quite another. Abusive, controlling relationships are so prominent and well documented that we almost forget that she was a powerful, forthright black performer in a very racist America.

Born Anna Mae Bullock in rural Nutbush, Tennessee, her beginnings were humble, before she left a sharecropping household to become a singer in The Kings of Rhythm band. Such was her talent, a new stage name and fronting the band wasn’t far away.

Minor hits under the belt, it wouldn’t be long before major hits were in store. However, Ike’s physical and emotional abuse began to take it’s toll, and while it may have been known in entertainment circles, it would be Angela Bassett’s portrayal of Tina in ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It?’ that would be many people’s first knowledge of it, giving Tina’s powerful performances a renewed quality. The pain and pleas were real. She was telling us right there, on stage.

Even infamous baddie Phil Spector knew. When he produced ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ with Tina, so well known were Ike Turner’s controlling and abusive behaviour, he paid Ike to stay away from the studio completely. Soon enough, tours with the Rolling Stones and an appearance in 1973’s ‘Tommy’ saw Tina’s stock rise, which made Ike’s behaviour worsen.

Even through all this, she was recording incredible music. She could tackle songs from other bands and completely own them. Of course, ‘Proud Mary’ is her signature cover, but she looked at The Beatles’ ‘She Came In Through The Bathroom Window’ and turned it on it’s head. Fearless in performance, anyone who was anyone knew that Tina was going to bring her A-game.

In one of the most infamous and harrowing moments in rock ‘n roll history, it’s around this time that we learn of Ike beating a pregnant Tina with a wire coat hanger and burning her with boiling coffee that eventually sees Tina fleeing with barely a penny to her name and hiding at friends, suing for divorce. Eventually, she would break free and become a solo artist in her own right and, for the first time, her story started to become her own, rather than with the caveat of ‘…& Ike’.

The ’70s may have been a critical success, but it wouldn’t be until the ’80s when she went stratospheric.

It seemed she could do little wrong as hit followed hit and she played to sell-out tours throughout the 1980s. A cover of Al Green’s ‘Let’s Stay Together’, ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It?’, ‘The Best’, ‘Private Dancer’, ‘Steamy Windows’, ‘We Don’t Need Another Hero’, Bond themes, and electrifying tours, Tina tore up every town she played in and seemingly had the entire world rooting for her.

“I stayed on course from the beginning to the end,” she said, “because I believed in something inside of me that told me that it can get better.”

At her induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame as a solo artist, the show noted how Tina had “expanded the once-limited idea of how a Black woman could conquer a stage and be both a powerhouse and a multidimensional being”.

Powerhouse is absolutely spot-on. Throughout her career, the rawness of Tina’s voice was unmatched and hugely influential. She was mesmerising, sexy, dangerous, and at the same time, vulnerable, relatable and humble. She showed the rest of soul, rock & roll and anyone who was listening, just how to leave it all on stage and bulldoze everyone in their wake.

Such is the debt of anyone who saw Tina perform, it’s unsurprising so many were willing to offer a hand when her career and personal life faltered. Mick Jagger’s debt to Tina started when Ike & Tina’s revue were opening for the Stones in ’66, and Jagger could regularly been seen at the side of stage, in awe and taking notes about how to give the crowd more than they’d bargained for. Subsequently, the Stones would bring Tina back for a lucrative support slot on their Tattoo You tour. Rod Stewart would take her on tour also, and David Bowie would champion her to anyone who would listen, and often to record execs.

By the time the ’90s came around, Tina had nothing to prove to anyone but herself. She’d conquered the charts, told her story in her autobiography which was turned into the legendary Angela Bassett movie, and began to bow out of the spotlight with a string of late-period singles, choosing instead to semi-retire in domestic bliss in Switzerland.

After some health issues, appearances were sporadic but always warmly greeted. Fact is, Tina Turner is the people’s champ. There was nobody quite like her, and we’ll never see her like again. All of rock and pop’s greats acknowledge the influence she’s had on them, and the tributes that followed the news of her passing came in droves.

We were lucky to have her.