Even since she first stepped into the spotlight, Tina Turner has enjoyed the highest highs
stardom has to offer, and suffered the lowest of lows, too.
From her difficult childhood to her horrific marriage to the very end of her singing career,
this is the tragic real-life story of Tina Turner.
Anna Mae Bullock grew up in Nutbush, Tennessee, as the daughter of two sharecroppers: Floyd
and Zelma Bullock.
When Anna, later Tina, was 10-years-old, her mother left her family and her home, in search
of a better life for herself.
Tina's dad eventually split as well, forcing her to grow up quickly.
During this time, she and her older sister Alline were raised by their grandmother, and
when she died they made their way to St. Louis, where her estranged mother had settled.
But these were just the beginnings of the hard times for the little girl who would grow
up to become one of the best-selling recording artists in the world.
While living in St. Louis, Tina and her sister would frequent R&B clubs in the area.
It was during a night out at Club Manhattan that she met the man who would come to cause
her so much distress and pain: Ike Turner.
Tina's own sister Alline was the one responsible for introducing Tina to Ike Turner.
Alline was a barmaid at a popular R&B club in St. Louis, where Ike Turner's band, the
Kings of Rhythm, would regularly perform.
One night, while Tina was watching the band, the drummer put a mic in front of her, and
she started to join in.
Later, Ike ran over saying:
"Girl, I didn't know you could sing!"
In a 1986 interview with Rolling Stone, Tina explains that everyone was happy for her,
because they had heard so many stories from her sister about Tina wanting to be a singer.
And from that night on, she was.
Ike started giving Tina clothes and jewelry to wear for performances, already doing his
best to mold her into what he expected her to be.
Tina, on the other hand, didn't want anything to do with him at first.
She later told Rolling Stone:
"I thought he was terribly ugly."
Although she had been born Anna Mae Bullock, Ike Turner soon decided that his new partner's
name wasn't flashy enough.
While recording his first demo, which featured Tina heavily, he decided they needed to come
up with a name, and that's when the Ike and Tina Turner Revue came to be.
In a 2013 interview with Oprah, Tina admitted that Ike was clever in changing her name,
because then he would essentially own her.
"If I ran away, Tina was his name, it was patented, or whatever you call it, so…"
"So he could own you!"
"So he could own me!
He was smart."
Ike made a point of attaching his name to hers for future recordings, too, because he'd
had experiences in the past where he produced people to the point of fame, only for them
to score record deals by themselves and leave.
He wanted to do all that he could to hitch a ride on her star, and he was prepared to
go to drastic measures in order to do so.
From the sounds of it, Ike and Tina Turner's marriage was doomed from the very beginning.
In Tina Turner's 2018 memoir, My Love Story, she opens up about her ill-fated marriage
to Ike Turner in 1962.
According to Tina, she accompanied Ike to Tijuana, Mexico for a quick wedding at the
age of 22.
A far cry from her ideal wedding scenario, she went along with his plans in an effort
to placate him and avoid further abuse.
Following the ceremony, the couple spent their first few hours as newlyweds attending a live
show at a brothel.
That was obviously not where she wanted to be, of course.
Tina describes her wedding night as being a miserable experience that left her on the
verge of tears.
In a later interview, she said:
"The experience was so disturbing that I suppressed it, scratched it out, and created a different
scenario, a fantasy of romantic elopement."
Tina kept the more perverse details of her marriage a secret for many years out of nothing
less than sheer embarrassment.
In a 2013 interview with Oprah, Tina Turner described the first time her husband Ike ever
beat her.
According to Turner, she had expressed concerns about tying her name to his as a musical partner
to a colleague of his, and when word got back to Ike about it, he told Tina that he wanted
to speak with her.
He started out by questioning what Tina was trying to "do to him," and then he picked
up a wooden shoe stretcher and beat her across the head with it.
"So, if you play guitar, you can't fight and play the guitar, so he always fought with
something."
And the abuse didn't stop there.
In Tina's memoir, she alleges that Ike Turner was merciless in his beatings, going so far
as to throw hot coffee in her face, resulting in third degree burns, and even breaking her
jaw at one point.
In the end, the pressures of her horrific marriage became too much to bear.
In My Love Story, Tina Turner shockingly reveals that she was at such a loss during her marriage
to Ike, and so morbidly depressed, that, at one point, she attempted to take her own life.
Tina went to the doctor and claimed she was having trouble sleeping, so he would prescribe
her pills for it.
That night, she took 50 of them, with the intent to end her suffering with Ike, and
her troubled life as a whole.
She also describes her attempt as being far more than a classic "cry for help," and that
she truly wanted to die.
Tina goes on to say in her memoir that she was unhappy when she woke up, but walked away
from the experience believing it was a sign that she was meant to be alive.
She never attempted suicide again.
Of course, her husband Ike offered no words of consolation after the event.
When Tina woke up in the hospital after recovering from the overdose, Ike simply told her that
she should have died.
In 1976, Tina Turner fled Ike Turner with nothing more than 36 cents and a gas card
in her pocket.
In a 2019 profile by The New York Times, the singer reveals that she was swollen from beatings,
in debt, and didn't even take her wigs with her, she just up and left.
She stopped in the first safe hotel she could find, and pled with the manager there to give
her a room, which he did.
Ike and Tina were in the middle of touring when she finally got up the courage to leave
him, and although she was relieved to finally be free, it wasn't all that easy at first.
A good number of promoters tried to sue to recoup expenses and ticket sales, and Ike
himself retaliated.
According to her memoir, Tina says that once she filed for divorce Ike would send his "stooges"
to intimidate her.
One night, according to Tina, they went so far as to shoot bullets into the house she
had relocated to.
She would get so scared, in fact, that on some nights she'd be forced to sleep in the
closet.
In a 1985 Spin Magazine feature, Ike Turner was flippant at best when asked to respond
to the long-running story that he had beaten Tina during their marriage.
He explained:
"It's years ago that I had a temper.
I don't regret nothing I've ever done, absolutely nothing.
Yeah, I hit her, but I didn't hit her more than the average guy beats his wife."
Ike repeatedly allowed his true personality to reveal itself during that Spin interview,
first by bragging that he was personally responsible for making Tina into a sex symbol by styling
her that way, and then by admitting she was right to think he was sleeping around on her,
because he definitely was.
In 2007, Ike Turner was found dead at his home in California, having died due to what
was later ruled as a cocaine overdose.
He was 76 years old.
In response to his passing, a representative for Tina issued the statement:
"Tina hasn't had any contact with Ike in more than 30 years.
No further comment will be made."
In her 2019 profile by The New York Times, Tina said she wasn't sure if she could ever
forgive everything that Ike ever did to her, but she also pointed out that he's dead, so
she doesn't really have to worry about him any more.
That's a sentiment that many thought she had reconsidered when The Tina Turner Musical
debuted in London in 2018, and she walked on stage during the curtain call to tell the
actor portraying her abusive ex-husband that she forgives him.
Still, Tina has fluctuated on her forgiveness towards Ike in the recent past.
In a 2018 interview with People magazine, Tina said that as "an old person" she does
forgive him, but that Ike was the type of person you could never forgive and let back
in.
She went on to say in that same interview that:
"It's all gone, all forgotten."
As you'd expect with a star as bright as Tina Turner, it can sometimes become a little difficult
to share the stage with someone else, especially when there are egos involved.
In Elton John's autobiography, Me, published in 2019, the legendary singer spills the details
of a feud between he and Tina Turner dating back to 1997.
Apparently the two had been planning a joint tour, but that all went up in flames when
Tina allegedly called him on the phone to berate him about his piano playing, his clothes,
and a number of other grievances.
Tina apparently said:
"You wear too much Versace, and it makes you look fat."
He went on to dish that, during rehearsals for the tour that would never be, Tina was
rude to his band and to him, accusing him of playing her classic hit "Proud Mary" incorrectly.
Other sources such as the New York Post have also suggested the two had an ongoing feud.
Apparently Elton and Tina had it out during another rehearsal, this time for VH1's Divas
Live '99.
This particular rift was again caused by Tina taking issue with Elton's piano playing.
In 2009, Tina Turner toured the world on her 50th Anniversary tour, ending with a final
date at Sheffield Arena on May 5th 2009, after which she retired from performing.
The final song played that night was "Be Tender With Me Baby," off of her album Foreign Affair,
which was released in 1989.
The tour was her first tour in 8 years, and is said to have grossed $130 million.
After that, however, she was done, for good.
"Me, Erwin, and Mike Cook got on the plane, and I just took a deep breath, and I said,
'This is it.
I'm not going back for anything."
Tina had been singing since her twenties, right up until she was 70 years old, and,
according to her, had enjoyed no personal life to speak of outside of the showbiz world.
In 2013, Tina Turner married again, this time to Erwin Bach, a German music executive.
The couple knew each other for a long time prior to getting married, having originally
met in 1985 at a record label party in London.
In 1994, they moved together to Switzerland, and Tina eventually applied to become a Swiss
citizen, giving up her American passport.
Unfortunately, Tina suffered a stroke just three weeks after their marriage, which rendered
her unable to walk.
She got through that, however, learning how to walk all over again, only to learn in 2016
that she was suffering from intestinal cancer.
Turning down standard medical treatments in favor of homeopathic remedies turned out to
be a bad choice, and eventually Tina suffered total kidney failure.
In desperate need of a kidney replacement, her new husband stepped in as a donor.
The transplant took place in 2017 and was mostly a success, but Turner now suffers from
a host of side-effects and conditions, as a result of her body attempting to reject
the organ.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.