Tyrant husband, son's suicide and late love: the difficult fate of Tina Turner
'15.12.2020'
Source: Woman.ru
Wild, captivating, incomparable - there are not enough words to describe Tina Turner, who with her crazy energy and amazing voice won the hearts of millions of people around the world. Woman.ru pays tribute not only to the talent of this woman, but also to the strength with which she overcame all the trials that fell to her lot.
On November 26, Tina Turner turned 81 years old. Just think about it! Believe it is absolutely impossible - only one image appears before your eyes: Tina in a daring mini-skirt, showing indecently beautiful legs, sings one of her most famous songs Simply the Best to the roar of a maddened crowd of fans. Certainly the best. And for the thousandth time you are convinced of this, having learned the new facts of the biography of the artist, who came out exactly to the birthday of the star.
In it, Anna May Bullock (the real name of the singer - approx.) Talks about a life that you cannot envy: about a nightmarish first marriage, about violence - physical and moral, about trying to start from scratch in adulthood, about how to meet love all my life in my fifties and believe in it.
It seems that after all the trials that befell this woman, she finally deserves to live happily. But the villainess-fate continues to test her strength, brutally confronting the suicide of her eldest son, then with a fatal diagnosis. But first things first ...
Love is pain
“In the family where I grew up, love was tight. I became an unwanted child because I tied my mother to a father with whom she no longer wanted to be, ”- this is how Tina Turner begins her story.
Who knows, perhaps it was the lack of warmth and affection that pushed young Anna Mae Bullock to a man named Ike Turner. The famous musician drew attention to a fragile girl with a strong voice and invited him to join his group Kings of Rhythm as a backing vocalist. The relationship between them did not arise immediately - our heroine was having an affair with the saxophonist Turner, from whom she gave birth to her son Craig. The young father did not want to fulfill his duties and was like that. Ike took care of the newborn and his mother. Soon they became lovers, and then parents - in 1960, baby Ronnie was born.
In 1962, a wedding took place, which the singer is still ashamed to remember.
Hasty check-in at an institution with dirty floors and walls, no banquet or first dance, instead, going to a brothel. The shocked newlywed sat with horrified eyes and stared at the hideous pornographic performance that had nothing to do with eroticism. She would then have taken and run away from such a hubby, but the singer did not. She continued to believe in love and wanted to become a star, because Ike had just told her that he was planning to create a musical duet. The only condition was for Anna to change her name to Tina. The girl did not like this idea, and she objected. Without further explanation, the man took a heavy wooden shoe rack and hit his beloved on the head. This was the first time he raised his hand to her.
16 years long nightmare
Since then, the place of love in Tina's heart has been taken by fear - she was afraid to leave Ike, she was afraid to disappoint him, say the wrong thing, do wrong, endured beatings and bullying. Sex with a once desired man turned into a real rape: instead of foreplay, beating, instead of a final kiss - spitting.
Their house turned into a brothel: Ike Turner shared a bed not only with his legal wife, but also with many other women. In order to become more resilient in bed, the musician began to take drugs, which made him even more aggressive.
Nobody paid any attention to Tina's bruises and bruises, as well as to a broken jaw, and a third-degree burn from a glass of hot coffee thrown in her face ...
All this lasted 16 long years! After another assault, Tina's patience finally snapped. Or maybe she just realized that she would die if she didn't leave right now. Waiting for this sadist to fall asleep, Turner ran away from the hotel where they were staying before the next performance.
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Life from scratch and from an empty pocket
Hiding from her husband, Tina realized that she was left with nothing. She had only a handbag in her hands, and 36 cents in her pocket rang pitifully. How and, most importantly, where to live with two children? It seemed that there were three times more problems. But all this was no longer important: Tina Turner began her new life on July 4 - Independence Day. Never before, according to the artist, this holiday meant so much to her.
For the next few months, the singer wandered around friends and acquaintances and, in order to somehow thank for the help, scrubbed the floors in their apartments and houses.
After the divorce, she miraculously managed to win her creative pseudonym from her ex-husband in order to continue performing. But then an unexpected problem arose - in the early eighties, Tina was perceived exclusively as part of a duet with Ike Turner. And without him, no one needed her. Moreover, she was 40 ... Not the best age to start from scratch.
The first helping hand was Cher, who invited a colleague on stage to her show. It was thanks to her that Tina was able to earn some money, which was enough to rent a small house and buy food. And so it slowly spun, spun. Soon there was an acquaintance with the manager Roger Davis, who created that Tina Turner, whom they know and love today.
After the very first performance he organized, the singers burst into the dressing room with champagne David Bowie, Mick Jagger and Ron Wood to see the woman who stole their hearts forever.
All three helped her with the recording of her first solo album - some with money, some with advice, some with a song. And no one demanded anything in return, which was very important for Tina - she still could not trust the male representatives and did not allow them to come to her.
“I learned to be happy regardless of men. In life, this is quite rare. My success made me happy. I don't really believe that any man could handle this, ”Turner said exactly until she met Erwin Bach.
Alphonse or the man of dreams?
At the time of their meeting she was 46 years old, he was 30. She is a world celebrity, a superstar in the truest sense of the word, he is an EMI manager who came to present the singer with a brand new Mercedes G-Wagen as a gift from the studio.
Tired after a long flight, Tina, barely getting into the car, felt something wrong - her heart began to pound madly at the first glance at the man on her left, with very beautiful hands, as Turner later recalled.
Many reproached the artist for falling for a young one - he, they say, only needs her money and fame. But the singer knew, the heart cannot deceive. Not her. Not this time!
Their next meeting happened two weeks later at some kind of banquet after some event - neither he nor she remembers the details. During the dance, Tina whispered in Erwin's ear: "When you arrive in America, I want to make love to you." After that they never parted. Following her beloved man, Tina left her native America and settled in Switzerland.
Down the aisle on the eighth ten
In 1989, shortly before the 50th anniversary of the star, Erwin Bach invited Tina Turner to a restaurant and over a glass of excellent Riesling made a marriage proposal. More than a quarter of a century has passed since her first wedding, but the horrors of that time still did not let her forget about herself.
Frightened, the singer asked her boyfriend to wait. And he waited ... For 24 years!
On July 4, 2013, the couple's civil wedding ceremony took place, and two weeks later they threw a lavish party on the shores of Lake Zurich. The singer asked all guests to dress in white - in order to observe Buddhist canons - and she herself chose a dark Armani Prive outfit with a fluffy skirt made of greenish-yellow taffeta and sparkling leggings for the holiday.
Seventy thousand snow-white roses and one hundred closest friends - finally, Tina Turner got the wedding she deserved!
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Death is always near
In her eighties, Tina Turner could afford to rest as much as she wanted, so she wanted to stretch her honeymoon for almost six months. Unfortunately, it ended earlier than planned. Three weeks after the wedding, the 74-year-old singer suffered a stroke. It all started with a sharp headache that strong women like Tina were not used to paying attention to. Then one leg hurt - unpleasant, but bearable. After that, speech was lost and the entire right half of the body became numb.
Barely recovering from this blow, Tina fell under the next - in 2016, she was diagnosed with bowel cancer, which gave complications to the kidneys. Doctors have found that they work only (!) 35 percent of the norm. The singer, who always charged fans with her crazy energy and appeared on stage like a hurricane, could not afford to lie in the hospital or depend on the machines attached to her. Therefore, abandoning hemodialysis, she turned to specialists in homeopathy. This was a big mistake.
Traditional medicine could not help the star, and doctors, meanwhile, reported that the kidneys work only 20 percent ...
Is it really over now? Will this really be the end of life, in which she has always been the winner? Tina Turner's emotional state was depressing: she began to think more and more about death and even joined a group that helps organize legal euthanasia in Switzerland. “I didn't want to sit and suffer. I decided that my time has come and it would be better to leave this world, ”the singer wrote in her memoirs.
Erwin Bach, always supporting his wife, this time adhered to a different opinion: "No, Tina, I do not want another woman to appear in my life." And these were not just words.
And in sorrow and in joy
As it turned out, Ervin consulted with doctors for several months and, having passed all the necessary tests, found out that he could become a donor for his wife. To save his beloved woman, Bach, without hesitation, went under the knife and shared a kidney with her. The operation, which only the closest couples knew about, took place on April 7, 2017. Despite the fact that everything went well, the singer's body still rejects the organ.
“I know that my medical adventure is far from over, but I'm still here,” - now Tina Turner does not intend to say goodbye to life so early!
On July 3, 2018, she went to Paris to show her dear friend Giorgio Armani's couture collection. On the same evening, her eldest son, Craig Raymond Turner, committed suicide. What made the first-born of the star give up his life shortly before his 60th birthday is unknown. But they say that the whole thing is in an unsettled personal life and an unsuccessful career. Add to this the violence against the mother by the stepfather, which he witnessed throughout his childhood, the lack of support from his own father, the lack of parental love.
Tina Turner did not comment on this tragedy in any way, but after 16 days she announced that she had scattered the ashes of her deceased son over the California coast. On Twitter, she posted a photo of herself holding a scarlet rose in her hand a second before throwing it into the water: "The saddest moment for me as a mom."
