‘Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll’ Tina Turner, whose triumphant career made her world-famous, passes away aged 83

Tina Turner, the unstoppable singer and stage performer who teamed with her husband Ike Turner for a dynamic run of hit records and live shows in the 1960s and ‘70s and survived her horrifying marriage to triumph in middle age with the chart-topping What's Love Got to Do With It, passed away on Tuesday aged 83. The singer passed away after a long illness, at her home in Küsnacht near Zurich, according to her manager. She became a Swiss citizen a decade ago.

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Few stars travelled so far — she was born Anna Mae Bullock in a segregated Tennessee hospital and spent her latter years on a 260,000 square foot estate on Lake Zurich — and overcame so much. Physically battered, emotionally devastated and financially ruined by her 20-year relationship with Ike Turner, she became a superstar on her own in her 40s, at a time when most of her peers were on their way down, and remained a top concert draw for years after.

"How do we say farewell to a woman who owned her pain and trauma and used it as a means to help change the world?" Angela Bassett, who played Tina in the 1993 biopic What's Love Got to Do With It, said in a statement.

With admirers ranging from Mick Jagger to Beyoncé to Mariah Carey, the “Queen of Rock 'n' Roll” was one of the world's most popular entertainers, known for a core of pop, rock and rhythm and blues favourites: Proud Mary, Nutbush City Limits, River Deep, Mountain High, and the hits she had in the '80s, among them 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.

Her trademarks included a growling contralto that might smoulder or explode, her bold smile and strong cheekbones, her palette of wigs and the muscular, quick-stepping legs she did not shy from showing off. She sold more than 150 million records worldwide, won 12 Grammys, was voted along with Ike into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991 (and on her own in 2021 ) and was honoured at the Kennedy Center in 2005, with Beyoncé and Oprah Winfrey among those praising her. Her life became the basis for a film, a Broadway musical and an HBO documentary in 2021 that she called her public farewell.

Tina had two sons: Craig, with saxophonist Raymond Hill; and Ronald, with Ike Turner. (Craig Turner was found dead in 2018 of an apparent suicide). In a memoir published later in 2018, Tina Turner: My Love Story, she revealed that she had received a kidney transplant from her second husband, former EMI record executive Erwin Bach.

Tina’s life seemed an argument against marriage, but her life with Erwin was a love story the younger Tina would not have believed possible. They met in the mid-1980s when she flew to Germany for record promotion and he picked her up at the airport. He was more than a decade younger than her — “the prettiest face,” she said of him in the HBO documentary — and the attraction was mutual. She wed Erwin in 2013, exchanging vows at a civil ceremony in Switzerland.

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“It’s that happiness that people talk about,” Turner told the press at the time, “when you wish for nothing, when you can finally take a deep breath and say, ‘Everything is good.’”