SIMPLY THE BEST!
THERE WAS A MOVIE ABOUT TINA TURNER’S LIFE 25 YEARS AGO, BUT 2018 IS THE YEAR OF HER MUSICAL
Tina Turner’s next stage
Tina Turner is a big fan of retirement. “It’s wonderful,” says the 78-year-old singer, who hung up her short, sparkly dresses and killer heels eight years ago. “You sleep long, do what you want, decorate the house two or three times – just easy things that you dreamed about when you were working and that’s all you did.”
After a career that spanned five decades, Tina deserves to put her feet up. Which is exactly what she’s been doing – enjoying a peaceful life in the Swiss home she shares with her German husband Erwin Bach.
But then a couple of years ago, Phyllida Lloyd – the theatre producer behind the hugely successful stage show Mamma Mia! – knocked on her door to ask if she could make a musical about the singer’s life.
Tina took a deep breath and raised her palm. “No, I don’t need a musical,” she said.
And who could blame her? Her life had already been adapted into the 1993 movie What’s Love Got to Do with
It?, which told how she rose from poverty to become an international music legend, enduring violent treatment at the hands of her ex-husband Ike Turner along the way.
“I didn’t want to do a musical because I didn’t really understand it or agree with it,” Tina says.
Phyllida was persuasive, but it was thinking about her fans, who constantly tell her she’s an inspiration, that finally got Tina to green-light the project.
“I get cards and letters,” she says. “People say I gave them hope. It means so much to people and I have to pass it on.”
She now understands the “magic between stage and music is totally different”, having learned a lot about musicals.
Tina: The Musical, which stars Adrienne Warren, opened in London on April 16 to rave reviews – and Tina the superstar says she’s glad she changed her mind about allowing it to be made.
“This took me out of retirement and I am really excited to be a part of it. I really want it to be a success and I hope it will travel the world.”
Tina’s often seen as a role model, not just because of her outstanding achievements in a tough industry – she’s one of the best-selling recording artists of all time and has won 12 Grammys – but because of her resilience and determination.
Her career was launched by band leader Ike and together, as the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, they had huge hits in the 1960s such as Proud Mary, Nutbush City Limits and River Deep, Mountain High. But Ike had drug and anger-management issues and would often take his temper out on Tina.
“There were many times when I got knocked out,” she recalls now. “Sometimes I stood on stage with pain that you cannot imagine – black eye, swollen nose... But you had to plow through it.”
Ike once hit her in the face just before she went on stage. “I think my nose was broken because blood was gushing into my mouth when I sang.”
Tina stayed with Ike out of loyalty, a lack of self-esteem and because she didn’t know where to go. But after 14 years of marriage, she plucked up the courage to leave him in 1976, fleeing with just 36 cents to her name. She got no money from their earlier hits and cleaned houses while re-establishing herself as a cabaret singer.
Eventually, in 1984, she released her first solo album, Private Dancer, which went on to sell more than 20 million copies. In 1985, at the age of
46, she fell for music producer Erwin, who was then 30, and they lived together for 27 years before marrying in 2013.
The story of Tina’s triumphs and traumas is told in Tina: The Musical. It also features all her hits – including those she recorded with Ike. Tina admits she still thinks about her ex – who died in 2007 – and even has dreams about him.
“I don’t know what the dreams are about, but it’s not the violence, the anger. I wonder if I’m holding something in. As an old person, I have forgiven him, but it would not work with him. He asked for one more tour with me and I said, ‘No, absolutely not.’ But it’s all gone, all forgotten.”