After a 50-year career that rode the extreme highs and lows of the
music business, the legendary Tina Turner has reached another
milestone as she celebrated her 80th birthday on Tuesday, November 26.
Tina Turner sold over 180million albums and won many prizes including
eight Grammies — not to mention the hearts of countless fans. On her
sold-out farewell tour in 2009 when she was nearly 70, the Queen of
Rock ‘n’ Roll swept the stage like a whirlwind. Many young stars could
only dream of maintaining the sex appeal she still radiated at that
age.
Soul diva Tina Turner might have played her last show in 2007, but she
continues to sell records and remains a high rotation FM radio
favorite, the singer having shipped over 200 million albums at last
count.
But the native of Nut Bush, Tennessee, who was born Anna Mae Bullock
on November 26, 1939, went through a lot to get there. Abandoned by
her parents as a child, she was still a teenager when her powerful
vocals and vivacious stage presence caused Ike Turner to hire the
singer for his band, Kings of Rhythm, in 1958.
But having infamously faced constant abuse from her husband and
musical collaborator, Ike, Tina Turner finally found the strength to
leave the relationship in 1976. It was a long time coming, she told
Rolling Stone in 1986.
After a few years in the musical wilderness, Tina Turner’s sputtering
solo career gained traction in the early 1980s, especially following
the release of the chart-topping, Grammy Award-winning Private Dancer
album in 1984 that went on to sell 10 million copies.
A year later, she co-starred with Mel Gibson in the 1985
post-apocalyptic film, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, which included two
songs performed by Turner, “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)”
and “One of the Living.”
As she approached the age of 50, she had become a certified global
superstar, setting world records for live audiences — 180,000 turned
up to see her at a Rio de Janeiro concert in 1988.
The decade ended with the multi-million selling album Foreign Affair
(1989), her seventh solo studio record that included the single “The
Best,” a top five hit in the UK that has become an unofficial anthem
at Donald Trump rallies.
Over the past decade, Tina Turner has married her longtime partner
Erwin Bach, a German music manager, in 2013 in Zurich, where she has
also been living since 1994. Having survived stroke just weeks after
her wedding, a cancer scare in 2016 and a kidney transplant surgery a
year later, she continues to fight on.
