Tina Turner says goodbye to her fans in an emotional new film that shows how she has overcome her painful past and has finally found happiness.
In the feature-length documentary, simply titled “Tina,” the singer looks back at the camera for the first time in her younger years full of struggle and pain, after the true love and world fame she found as an average woman. age.
Now 81 years old and plagued by ill health, including a stroke and cancer, the soul and rock music legend also suffered from kidney failure which resulted in a transplant in 2017.
In the film she explains how she wants to get into the third and final chapter of her life out of focus and it is revealed that she has some form of post-traumatic stress disorder due to the domestic abuse she suffered at the hands of her first husband and partner. of music, Ike Turner.
Looking back, Tina reflects: “It wasn’t a good life. The good did not balance the bad.
“I had an abusive life, there is no other way to tell the story. It is a reality. It is a truth. That’s what you have, so you have to accept it.
“I should be proud”
“There are people who say that the life I lived and the performances I did, the gratitude, are spectacular with people. And yes, I should be proud of that. I am.
“But when do you stop being proud? I mean, when you do, how do you lean slowly? Just leave? ”
In the documentary, which airs this month, Tina is first seen talking to the man who finally gave her happiness, her second husband, Erwin Bach.
The couple takes a farewell trip to the U.S. for the Broadway premiere of their theatrical show, The Tina Turner Story, and Erwin, 65, reveals to the camera, “He said, ‘I’m going to America to say goodbye.’ of my American fans and I’ll finish it ‘. And I think this documentary and the play, that’s all, is a closure. “
Details of Tina’s life have been told before, first in her 1986 autobiography, “I, Tina,” and in the 1993 biographical, “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” with Angela Bassett as Tina.
But Tina has always been reluctant to talk about it on camera so far. This documentary will have been painful to make, but it is a gift for its worldwide army of fans.
She is dropping the curtain on a career that saw her sell more than 100 million records, and in her heyday in the 1980s she sold areas around the world.
Tina was born Anna Mae Bullock and her childhood was full of poverty and misery, harvesting cotton in the fields of Nutbush, Tennessee.
“Mom wasn’t kind … I didn’t like her”
Her mother, Zelma, suffered domestic abuse at the hands of her father, Floyd Bullock, before they both abandoned her as a child. Even when Tina reunited with her mother when she was a superstar, Zelma was cold and out of love.
Tina says in the documentary: “The mother was not kind. When I became a star, of course I was happy then because I bought him a house. I did all sorts of things for her, she was my mom.
“I tried to make her comfortable because she didn’t have a husband, she was alone, but she still didn’t like it.
“Even after I became Tina, Ma was still a bit like‘ Who did it? “and” Who did it? “And I said, ‘I did it, mother!’ I was happy to show my mother what I did, I had a house, I had a car, and she said, “No, I don’t believe it. No, you’re my daughter, no!
“He didn’t want me, he didn’t want to be around me, even though he wanted my success. But I did it for her as if she loved me. ”
This childhood full of cruelty and violence may explain why Tina initially seemed to accept the physical and mental torture she suffered after marrying Ike in 1962.
With the marriage, Anna Mae Bullock was reborn as Tina Turner, in a duo that would become soul stars for nearly three decades.
Her new name was so important to her that when she finally found the will to initiate divorce proceedings against Ike in 1976, after years of beatings and psychological torture, it was all she asked to get out of the their stormy union.
“It’s like a curse”
Leaving him became more difficult due to having a child, Ronnie, and she adopted two of Ike’s children, Ike Jr. and Michael, from their previous relationship. I already had a son, Craig, from a previous relationship.
Erwin tells the show that he still has nightmares about those dark days and that he suffers from something similar to the post-traumatic stress disorder that paralyzes the victims of battle.
He says: “She has dreams, they are not pleasant. It’s like when soldiers come back from the war. It’s not an easy time to remember them and then try to forget them. “
Tina, who tried to run away from Ike with an overdose of sleeping pills in 1968, admits, “This scene is back. You’re dreaming about it. The real picture is there, it’s like a curse.”
But the biggest antidote to trauma is forgiveness and claims to be at peace with Ike, who died from an accidental drug overdose in 2007.
Tina says, “I hated Ike for a long time, I have to say. But then, after I died, I realized I was a sick person. It got me started and it was good with me at first. So I have some good thoughts. Maybe it was good to meet him, which I don’t know.
“It hurts to have to remember those times, but at a certain moment forgiveness is taken away, to forgive means not to have to endure.
“He let go, because it only hurts you. By not forgiving, you suffer because you think about it over and over again. And for what? “
In the 1980s, Tina reinvented herself as a solo artist. With successful albums such as “Private Dancer” and “Break Every Rule”, he joined the pantheon of world music icons.
She even became a movie star, appearing with Mel Gibson in the 1985 action film “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.”
Her career earned her a dozen Grammys, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and she became the first black artist and first woman to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.
But in 1986, at the height of her fame, she was incredibly alone.
He looked very good. My heart was ba-bum ‘
Everything changed when he met German record producer Erwin while visiting 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: “She had the most beautiful face. It was like “where did it come from?” It was so beautiful. My heart went ba-bum. It means that a soul has been known. When he found out I liked him, he came to America and we were in Nashville and I said, “When you come to Los Angeles, 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, I liked her.
“There was nothing wrong, it was just sex. And he looked at me as if he didn’t believe what I was feeling.
“It was so different, so relaxed, so comfortable, so naughty, and that was the beginning of our relationship.”
When love blossomed, Tina began finishing her recording career, making her last album in 1999, at the age of 59. He made his final performance in 2009.
Last year, at the age of 80, he briefly returned to recording, collaborating with producer Kygo on the reinvention of the dance to his 1984 anthem, “What’s Love Got To Do With It.”
The documentary also explores how she was not deeply sure of the recording of the song, which became her only No. 1 American solo, as it was a pop song first recorded by Eurovision winners. British Bucks Fizz.
“He will always be my baby”
Today Tina spends most of her time in Switzerland with Erwin, where she lives permanently, after renouncing her American citizenship.
But he has still experienced trauma in his life. In 2018, her son Craig committed suicide in Los Angeles and, after scattering his ashes off the coast of California, said, “My saddest moment as a mother. I was 59 when he died so tragically, but he will always be my baby.
His most recent illness led to his kidney transplant, with Erwin as the donor. It was a risky process for such a large but inevitable couple as they remain madly in love.
Erwin says: “It’s something we both have for each other. I always refer to it as an electric charge. I still have it. “
Prior to the operation, Tina had been so ill that assisted suicide was being considered, which is legal in Switzerland, where she now has full citizenship.
He joined the Exit assisted suicide organization and recalled in a book three years ago, “It wasn’t my idea of life, but the toxins in my body had started to take over. I couldn’t eat.
“I survived, but I did not live. I started thinking about death. If my kidneys were and it was time to die, I could accept it, it was fine. When the time comes, it’s the real moment. “
The new documentary gives a glimpse of the couple’s beautiful house on the shores of Lake Zurich.
Packed with home furnishings, floral arrangements and ornaments, it is seen a million miles from the dusty Tennessee trails or the bright Tinseltown homes.
But there’s also a wall full of gold records and prize-covered shelves – a reminder that Tina will always be a star, in or out of the spotlight.