Rock'n'roll legend Tina Turner dead at 83

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Tina Turner, the pioneering rock'n'roll diva who rose to pop stardom in the 1980s, died at the age of 83 after a protracted sickness in her home in Kusnacht near Zurich, Switzerland

Turner battled intestinal cancer since 2016 and underwent a kidney transplant in 2017.

The star reinforced and strengthened Black women's essential interest in rock'n'roll, becoming an icon for that era of music.

Mick Jagger previously stated that he was inspired by her live appearances.

Turner was given the name Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, in Nutbush, Tennessee, and grew up harvesting cotton with her family. She performed in the church choir and, as a teenager, negotiated her way into her former husband Ike Turner's band in St Louis: He had denied her request to join until he saw her take the microphone during a Kings of Rhythm concert for a version of BB King's You Know I Love You.

Turner worked with Ike, who later became abusive, for 20 years before branching out on her own.

Her life has been detailed in three memoirs, a biography, a jukebox musical, and the acclaimed documentary film Tina that was released in 2021.

In 1985, she co-starred in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome with Mel Gibson. In 1986, she released her first book, I, Tina, which was eventually transformed into the 1993 film What's Love Got to Do With It? featuring Angela Bassett as Turner. She recorded the theme song for the James Bond film GoldenEye in 1995.

Daphne A. Brooks told The Guardian in 2018 that Turner's character in music "has always been a charged combination of mystery as well as light, melancholy mixed with a ferocious vitality that often flirted with danger.”

When she decided to retire in 2000 she told The New York Times that she was "just tired of singing and making everybody happy. That’s all I’d ever done in my life.”

Turner worked with Phyllida Lloyd on the musical Tina, which opened in 2018, and said of the show that it was not about her stardom but rather her journey to it. "You can turn poison into medicine," she said.

"I don’t necessarily want to be a ‘strong’ person," she said to the Times. “I had a terrible life. I just kept going. You just keep going, and you hope that something will come.”

Turner's first child Craig Raymond Turner passed away in July, 2018. In 2021 her second child, Ronnie, died at 62. 

Ike Turner's sons, Ike Turner Jr. and Michael Turner, who were adopted by Tina, survive her.

Turner told The Guardian in 2020 that “true and lasting happiness comes from having an unshakeable, hopeful spirit that can shine, no matter what."