Tina Turner bids farewell to fans
<p><span>In the feature-length documentary, simply titled Tina, the singer has opened up about her younger years, and how she found true love, global fame and healing as a middle-aged woman.</span><br /><br /><span>The 81-year-old now suffers from a number of health issues and revealed in her film that she wants to enter her final chapter of life out of the spotlight.</span><br /><br /><span>Looking back at her life, Tina revealed: “It wasn’t a good life. The good did not balance the bad.</span><br /><br /><span>“I had an abusive life, there’s no other way to tell the story. It’s a reality. It’s a truth. That’s what you’ve got, so you have to accept it.</span><br /><br /><span>“Some people say the life that I lived and the performances that I gave, the appreciation, is blasting with the people. And yeah, I should be proud of that. I am.</span><br /><br /><span>“But when do you stop being proud? I mean, when do you, how do you bow out slowly? Just go away?”</span></p>
<p><img style="width: 500px; height: 281.25px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7840314/tina-turner.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/e7d755a0bcad466ca87e57cdcdd72195" /><br /><br /><span>The documentary, set to release in the US on Sunday, March 28, shows Tina speaking with her second husband, Erwin Bach.</span><br /><br /><span>After their farewell trip to the US for the Broadway premiere of her stage show, The Tina Turner Story, Erwin, 65, revealed: “She said, ‘I’m going to America to say goodbye to my American fans and I’ll wrap it up.’ And I think this documentary and the play, this is it – it’s a closure.”</span><br /><br /><span>Tina’s documentary is a painful reminder of her past, but she chose to share her life on film for her global army of fans.</span><br /><br /><span>In her career, she has sold more than 100 million records, and at her peak in the 1980s, sold out arenas around the globe.</span><br /><br /><span>Tina was born with the name Anna Mae Bullock, and her childhood days were filled by picking cotton in the fields around Nutbush, Tennessee.</span><br /><br /><span>Her mother, Zelma, suffered domestic abuse at the hands of her father, Floyd Bullock, before they both fled and abandoned her as a child.</span><br /><br /><span>Tina revealed that when she reunited with her mother as a superstar, Zelma was cold and unloving.</span><br /><br /><span>“Mum was not kind. When I became a star, of course back then she was happy because I bought her a house. I did all kinds of things for her, she was my mother,” Tina revealed.</span><br /><br /><span>“I was trying to make her comfortable because she didn’t have a husband, she was alone, but she still didn’t like me.</span><br /><br /><span>“Even after I became Tina, Ma was still a little bit like, ‘Who did that?’ and ‘Who did this?’ And I said, ‘I did that, Mum!’ I was happy to show my mother what I did. I had a house, I had got a car, and she said, ‘No, I don’t believe it. No, you’re my daughter, no you didn’t!’</span><br /><br /><span>“She didn’t want me, she didn’t want to be around me, even though she wanted my success. But I did for her as if she loved me.”</span><br /><br /><span>Tina experiences domestic violence and cruel abuse firsthand when she married her first husband Ike Turner in 1962.</span><br /><br /><span>The marriage saw Anna Mae Bullock reborn as Tina Turner and together they made a duo that would see them become soul stars for almost three decades.</span><br /><br /><span>When they split in 1976, Tina’s new name was the only thing she asked for in their divorce proceedings.</span></p>
<p><img style="width: 500px; height: 281.25px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7840313/tina-turner-1.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/84784d36687a46a1a153a7097f8ac4cf" /><br /><br /><span>Together they Ronnie, and she adopted two of Ike’s children, Ike Jr and Michael, from his previous relationship.</span><br /><br /><span>She also had another son, Craig, from a previous relationship.</span><br /><br /><span>Erwin said in the documentary that his loving wife still has nightmares about those dark days and is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result.</span><br /><br /><span>“She has dreams about it; they’re not pleasant. It’s like when soldiers come back from the war. It’s not an easy time to have those in your memory and then try to forget,” he said.</span><br /><br /><span>Tina first tried to escape from Ike with a sleeping pill overdose in 1968 and admitted: “That scene comes back. You’re dreaming it. The real picture is there, it’s like a curse.”</span><br /><br /><span>She has come to terms with her past, and found peace with Ike, who died of an accidental drug overdose in 2007.</span><br /><br /><span>Tina revealed: “For a long time I did hate Ike, I have to say that. But then, after he died, I really realised that he was an ill person. He did get me started and he was good to me in the beginning. So I have some good thoughts. Maybe it was a good thing that I met him – that, I don’t know.</span></p>
<p><img style="width: 500px; height: 281.25px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7840311/tina-turner-3.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/fe67a33f41fb4da48080aea63a83282e" /><br /><br /><span>“It hurts to have to remember those times, but at a certain stage forgiveness takes over, forgiving means not having to hold on.</span><br /><br /><span>“It was letting go, because it only hurts you. By not forgiving, you suffer, because you think about it over and over. And for what?”</span><br /><br /><span>Tina would go on to reinvent herself as a solo artist, and had hit albums such as Private Dancer and Break Every Rule.</span><br /><br /><span>Tina met German record producer Erwin while visiting Europe in 1986. She was 46 and he was 30, but it was love at first sight.</span><br /><br /><span>“He had the prettiest face. It was like, ‘Where did he come from?’ He was so good looking,” she said.</span><br /><br /><span>“My heart went ba-bum. It means that a soul has met. When he found out that I liked him he came to America and we were in Nashville and I said to him, ‘When you come to LA I want you to make love to me.’</span><br /><br /><span>“I thought that I could say that because I was a free woman, I didn’t have a boyfriend, I liked him.</span><br /><br /><span>“There was nothing wrong with it – it was just sex. And he looked at me as if he didn’t believe what he was hearing.</span><br /><br /><span>“He was just so different, so laid back, so comfortable, so unpretentious, and that was the beginning of our relationship.”</span></p>
<p><img style="width: 500px; height: 281.25px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7840312/tina-turner-2.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/6c613152303548a7a08d1b11eda79b10" /><br /><br /><span>Tina made her last album in 1999, at age 59. She gave her final performance in 2009.</span><br /><br /><span>Tina now lives in Switzerland with Erwin, after renouncing her US citizenship.</span><br /><br /><span>In 2018, Tina lost her son Craig when he committed suicide in Los Angeles.</span><br /><br /><span>After scattering his ashes, she said: “My saddest moment as a mother. He was 59 when he died so tragically, but he will always be my baby.”</span><br /><br /><span>Her most recent illness led to her kidney transplant.</span><br /><br /><span>Erwin ended up being the donor, and while the process was risky for an elderly couple, they came out okay.</span><br /><br /><span>Erwin said: “It’s something we both have for each other. I always refer to it as an electrical charge. I still have it.”</span><br /><br /><span>Before the operation, Tina had been so ill that she was considering assisted suicide, as it is legal in Switzerland.</span><br /><br /><span>She joined the assisted-suicide organisation Exit, and recalled in a book three years ago: “It wasn’t my idea of life but the toxins in my body had started taking over. I couldn’t eat.</span><br /><br /><span>“I was surviving, but not living. I began to think about death. If my kidneys were going, and it was time for me to die, I could accept that, it was OK.</span><br /><br /><span>“When it’s time, it’s really time.”</span></p>
