This story has been updated from a previous version.
The Queen of Rock ‘N’ Roll, Tina Turner has died at the age of 83.
The iconic singer died today at her home in Küsnach near Zurich, Switzerland, following a long, unspecified illness.
We have more in this report from Nora Gaye Banton.
Tina Turner overcame a turbulent childhood and abusive marriage to become a musical sensation and legendary performer.
She was born Anna-Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939 in Brownsville, Tennessee.
In her early 20s, she found fame with the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, a live act with her former husband. Behind the facade of success and marital bliss, she endured brutal and horrific abuse throughout the marriage. She and Ike divorced in 1978.
By the early 1980s, she was a musical powerhouse as a soloist, an equal of the world’s most revered rock stars.
The year 1984 marked a seismic moment in Tina Turner’s career. That year she released her fifth solo album, Private Dancer, a piece of work driven by the smash single of the same name.
That album helped her shed the old image of a pensioned rock and roller and vaulted her into pop consciousness as a powerful, mullet-sporting, leather-clad icon.
Outside music, she starred in ‘Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome’ opposite Mel Gibson in 1985.
She published her first memoir, the global bestseller ‘I, Tina’, in 1986. That book was later adapted into the 1993 film ‘What’s Love Got to Do With It?’ starring Angela Bassett as Turner.
In 1995, she sang the theme tune to the James Bond film ‘GoldenEye’.
Throughout her career, Tina Turner won eight Grammy’s from 25 nominations and three lifetime Grammy Awards.
Her final stadium concert was in Sheffield, England, in 2009. Her final cameo appearance came in New York City in 2019.
She gave one of her final interviews to the Guardian newspaper in April this year. In it she was asked how she wanted to be remembered. Her response? As the Queen of Rock and Roll.
Tina Turner is survived by two of her four sons and her husband, Erwin Bach.
