Tina Turner: The trauma and triumph of a music legend

Published

11 months ago

May 25, 2023

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“Look what I have done in this lifetime, with this body,” said Tina Turner, in a documentary released about her life in 2021. “I’m a girl from a cotton field, that pulled myself above what was not taught to me.”

Tina Turner‘s life was a story of trauma and triumph – she was the star known for her energetic stage performances and her incomparable soulful, husky voice, who overcame several personal and professional struggles to become the Queen of Rock ‘n Roll.

Following her death at the age of 83, tributes have been paid to a “legend”, an “icon” and a “remarkable force of nature,” from fellow music stars to the White House, with clips of her biggest hits – including Proud Mary, Nutbush City Limits, The Best, We Don’t Need Another Hero, and What’s Love Got To Do With It – flooding social media.

‘The world loses a legend’ – tributes to Tina Turner

Throughout her career, Turner won a total of 12 Grammys and was a two-time inductee into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall Of Fame, as a solo artist and as part of the duo she formed with ex-husband, Ike Turner, in the 1960s.

She was the first woman to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone and a record breaker – previously holding the Guinness World Record for the largest paying audience for a solo performer, attracting an audience of 180,000 for her show at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1988.

And she also inspired an award-winning musical based on her incredible life – the story of the star who achieved stratospheric success, including sales of more than 100 million records worldwide, after overcoming years of abuse from both her father and ex-husband, and pushback from those who told her she could not make it as a solo star.

Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee, on 26 November 1939, to parents Zelma Priscilla and Floyd Richard Bullock. At the age of 11, she moved to live with her grandmother after her mother left her abusive relationship with her father.

Aged 16, she joined her mother and sister Alline in the city of St Louis in Missouri, which is where she encountered her future husband for the first time.

She soon joined his band The Kings Of Rhythm as its first female member – and when she reimagined herself as Tina Turner in 1960, the group reformed to become the Ike And Tina Turner Revue.

That same year, Turner gave birth to their first child Ronnie and the couple wed in Tijuana, Mexico, in 1962. Ronnie was her second child; her first, Craig Raymond Turner, was with the saxophonist for the Kings Of Rhythm, Raymond Hill.

The group produced a string of RnB hits, including A Fool In Love and It’s Gonna Work Out Fine, but it was the release of River Deep – Mountain High in 1966 that saw their popularity soar around the world. The release was followed by a UK tour with The Rolling Stones as the band’s support act.

Songs such as Come Together, Honky Tonk Woman and Proud Mary helped cement their status, with the latter winning them a Grammy in 1972.

But behind the scenes, Turner was enduring abuse at the hands of her husband.

She stayed with him until 1976, but later revealed she had attempted suicide during their relationship. “I simply couldn’t take any more,” she wrote in her 2018 memoir, of the moment she hit rock bottom.

During their divorce, she reportedly asked for nothing more than the right to keep the use of her stage name, and she went on to reinvent herself as a solo star.

It wasn’t easy, with a slow start for debut album Tina Turns The Country On! in 1974, followed by Acid Queen in 1975, but Turner pushed back against those who told her that, as a black woman approaching 40, she would never make the transition to rock.

Throughout the 1980s, she rebuilt her career, with a string of hits starting in 1983 with a cover of Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together, and the 1984 release of her album Private Dancer. Her most recognisable song, a cover of The Best, was released in 1989. By then, her image of big hair and mini-skirts had become iconic, her famous legs becoming almost as famous as her distinctive voice.

In 1986, Turner was honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. Her first induction into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall Of Fame, for her work with Ike, came in 1991, though neither attended the ceremony. Her induction as a solo artist came some 30 years later, in 2021.

“If they’re still giving me awards at 81, I must have done something right,” she said in a recorded acceptance speech.

She was inducted by Angela Bassett, the actress who portrayed Turner in the 1993 film What’s Love Got To Do With It. Both Bassett and Laurence Fishburne, who played Ike, were nominated for Oscars for their performances.

“Imagine, a black girl from Nutbush, Tennessee, who embodied more talent than her small town could have ever dreamed,” Bassett said at the Hall Of Fame ceremony. “Imagine that same girl breaking through every barrier to one day make history.

“People still tell me how much Tina has meant to them. I know exactly what they mean, because she has meant that much and more to me. I too am one of those people blessed by Tina’s remarkable gift to inspire.”

In the 1990s, Turner joined the list of Bond musicians, voicing the title song for Pierce Brosnan’s Goldeneye.

After a brief break from showbusiness, she returned to the limelight in 2008 at the Grammy Awards, where she performed Proud Mary alongside Beyonce. Other notable duets through her career included performing with David Bowie, and with The Rolling Stones during Live Aid in 1985.

In 2008, she embarked on her 50th-anniversary tour, and in 2016 she announced Tina – The Tina Turner Musical.

In 2021, she sold the rights to her back catalogue after reaching an agreement with BMG for an undisclosed sum, and the last of her 34 UK Top 40 hits was released in 2020, when she re-recorded What’s Love Got To Do With It with Norwegian DJ Kygo.

Turner’s solo works include 10 studio albums, two live albums, two soundtracks and five compilations, which together have sold more than 100 million records. As well as her music, Turner also starred in films including Tommy in 1975, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome in 1985, and Last Action Hero in 1993.

In her personal life, she met music producer Erwin Bach in the 1980s and the pair married years later on the banks of Lake Zurich in Switzerland, where they lived. In 2013, Bach saved her life by donating her one of his kidneys, she revealed in her memoir in 2018.

She faced heartache that year, when her eldest son Craig died by suicide, and again in 2022 when her second son Ronnie died of cancer.

Known for her strength and resilience throughout her life, in an interview with the New York Times in 2019, she said: “I don’t necessarily want to be a ‘strong’ person. I had a terrible life. I just kept going.”

Turner always kept going.

And in what must have been one of her last interviews before she died, she told The Guardian exactly how she wanted to be remembered – as the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll. “A woman who showed other women that it is okay to strive for success on their own terms.”

World

Iran grounds flights across country after reports of explosions

Published

13 hours ago

April 19, 2024

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Iran grounds flights across country after reports of explosions

Iran has grounded commercial flights across parts of the country after reports of explosions.

State media also said Iran fired its air defence systems after reports of blasts near the city of Isfahan.

It remained unclear if the country was under attack.

But tensions remain high in the wider Middle East after Iran’s missile and drone attack on Israel over the weekend.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment, AP reported.

Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency said its air defences fired across several provinces – but did not elaborate on what caused the batteries to fire.

State television noted a “loud noise” in the area.

A major airbase for the Iranian military is in Isfahan, as well as sites associated with its nuclear program.

Iranian state TV said its nuclear facilities remain unharmed, Reuters news agency reported.

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.

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World

Deaths of 48 people in 1981 fire at Dublin’s Stardust nightclub were unlawful killing, jury rules

Published

1 day ago

April 18, 2024

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Deaths of 48 people in 1981 fire at Dublin's Stardust nightclub were unlawful killing, jury rules

The deaths of 48 people in the worst fire in the history of Ireland have been ruled by a jury as unlawful killing.

A jury at Dublin District Coroner’s Court delivered majority verdicts on the victims of the 1981 Stardust nightclub fire in the city on Thursday.

The venue in Artane, north Dublin, was packed with around 800 people when the fire broke out in the early hours of Valentine’s Day.

More than 200 people were injured in the disaster.

Fresh inquests into the deaths, the longest held in Ireland, were ordered by the country’s attorney general in 2019, but only began last year.

A jury, made up of seven women and five men, delivered the verdict on Thursday after 11 days of deliberation.

Some family members of the victims jumped to their feet and clapped at the verdict, while others were moved to tears as they remained in their seat.

Others embraced each other as soon as the foreman said “unlawful killing”.

The jury also established that the fire started as a result of an electrical fault in an airing cupboard.

In the ballroom, foam in the seating, the height of the ceiling in an alcove, and carpet tiles on the wall all contributed to the spread of the fire, the jurors found.

Several factors, including lack of visibility because of black smoke, the toxicity of the smoke or the gases, the heat of the fire, the speed of the fire’s spread, lack of staff preparedness and the failure of the emergency lighting system were all factors that impeded the victims in escaping the building.

It was unable to determine when the blaze started but said it was first seen outside the building between 1.20am and 1.40am.

Jurors said the fire was first seen inside the ballroom between 1.35am and 1.40am.

Coroner Dr Myra Cullinane paid tribute to the “persistence and commitment” of the families who had campaigned for fresh inquests.

“To the families I acknowledge the deaths of these 48 young people is a source of ongoing grief to those who loved them and it remains the defining loss of their lives,” she said.

“However, I hope that family members will have taken some solace from the fact that these fresh inquests were held, that the facts surrounding the deaths were examined in detail, that moving testimony was heard from many of those involved in the events of the night and, most importantly, that you the families felt fully involved in proceedings, however difficult it was to hear all of the evidence.

“The fact that these inquests have been held at all is in no small part due to the persistence and commitment of families over the years.

“And, finally, we remember those 48 young people who lost their lives on that fateful night. It is their lives that we’ve sought to vindicate by way of these inquests.”

On Wednesday, the foreman told coroner Myra Cullinane they had been unable to reach a unanimous verdict.

Ms Cullinane said she would accept a simple majority of seven and allowed the jury’s deliberations to continue.

A tribunal of inquiry set up soon after the fire found arson was the “probable” cause, something the families rejected as it appeared to blame those attending the disco and absolved the club’s owners.

This is despite evidence that exits in the ballroom were locked, chained or otherwise obstructed, which the jury confirmed this afternoon.

They were themselves awarded IR£581,000 compensation by a Dublin court in 1983.

But victims’ relatives kept pushing for a new investigation and, eventually, new inquests were announced, only for legal arguments and wrangling over juror pay to delay proceedings by a further four years.

Ireland’s prime minister, Simon Harris, described the Stardust tragedy as “one of the darkest moments in our history”.

“A heartbreaking tragedy because of the lives that were lost, the families that were changed forever, and the long, drawn-out struggle for justice that followed,” he said.

In a statement after a jury at inquests into the deaths of the 48 people in the Dublin nightclub disaster in 1981 returned a verdict of unlawful killing, Mr Harris remembered those who lost their lives and paid tribute to their families for pursuing truth and justice “to ensure that such a disaster never happens again”.

He said the Irish government will consider the verdict in full, and the recommendations of the jury.

“I want to acknowledge and thank the coroner, and her team and the jurors,” he said.

“48 young people never came home that night, but as Taoiseach I want to say this to their families; You never gave up on justice for them, you never let Ireland forget about them. They were never alone, and our country owes you a great debt for that.”

World

Bodies fused together in death: How Stardust was seared into Irish consciousness

Published

1 day ago

April 18, 2024

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Bodies fused together in death: How Stardust was seared into Irish consciousness

It was a night of giddy teenage romance that suddenly turned into Ireland’s worst ever fire disaster. The Stardust inferno killed 48 young people, injured hundreds more and led to a decades-long search for answers and justice.

Around 800 youngsters had made their way to the Stardust, a nightclub housed in a converted factory in the north Dublin suburb of Artane, on the night of 13 February 1981.

An evening of dancing and drinking on the eve of Valentine’s Day was promised. There was even a dancing competition.

Seventeen-year-old Marie Kennedy from nearby Kilbarrack was among the partygoers. “Disco dancing was her really big thing,” recalled her sister Michelle.

“She loved the Bee Gees, The Jackson 5, Leo Sayer and Abba. Her love of music and dancing was the reason she was in the Stardust on that night – she wanted to see the dancing competition.”

George O’Connor was also 17. His mother ironed his shirt while George got his hair just right. His sister Donna remembers “critiquing his outfit and telling him no girl would ask him to dance dressed like he was”.

The night of revelry was passing unremarkably until the small hours of Valentine’s Day.

Suddenly, at around 1.40am, a fire was spotted in a sectioned-off area of the ballroom known as the west alcove.

Witnesses remember hearing a bang

As the alarm was raised, the fire spread at a terrifying pace.

The DJ halted the music and asked people to evacuate. Witnesses remember hearing a bang, and the power failed.

As panicked patrons fought to find exits, molten ceiling material showered down on them in the darkness, which was filling with noxious smoke and fumes.

Survivors reported seeing exit doors chained and locked, adding to the chaos.

The inquest heard that most of the victims were already dead by the time the first fire engines arrived at the scene. The firefighters found unimaginable carnage; heaps of bodies and body parts.

What was the Stardust disaster?

A fire ripped through the Stardust nightclub in Dublin in the early hours of 14 February 1981.
48 young people were killed, with 214 injured. The average age of the fatalities was 19.
It was Ireland’s worst ever fire disaster.
Witnesses spoke of fire exits being locked and chained, denied by management.
A tribunal found the “probable cause” was arson, angering families.
Nobody was ever charged in connection with the fire.
A review in 2009 found no evidence of arson.
After years of campaigning a new inquest was announced in 2019. It started in 2023.

Fireman James Tormey entered the club to find a “massive glow with intense heat”, and his ears started to burn as they weren’t covered by his equipment.

He found a man’s torso clad in a red jumper near one of the exit doors. He was “just two or three steps” from safety, the firefighter told the inquest.

‘They were trying to comfort each other before their demise’

Mr Tormey also discovered the bodies of two young people “arms around each other and the bodies were fused together as one”. He said he believed they were “trying to comfort each other before they met their demise”.

Another firefighter, Noel Keegan, saw six to eight bodies piled on top of each other in the toilets. Another was inside an exit, still on fire.

He remembered another body near the toilets appeared to have been trodden on.

“It was burnt beyond recognition and the intestines were showing,” he said.

A fleet of ambulances and taxis took the dead and dying to several Dublin hospitals, which were in danger of becoming overwhelmed by the casualties.

Marie Kennedy and George O’Connor were among the 48 who did not make it. It was soon clear that this was a tragedy unlike anything Ireland had seen.

Compensation payout for owners infuriated relatives

The demand for answers started immediately. Later in 1981, a tribunal found no definitive origin for the fire, but that the “probable cause” was arson. This infuriated survivors and relatives of the dead, who saw it as victim-blaming.

And so a long campaign began. The finding of arson not only protected the nightclub’s owners, the Butterly family, from any criminal charges or civil lawsuits, but also entitled them to compensation.

They were awarded IR£581,000 from a Dublin court in 1983.

The Stardust families were enraged, but it took until 2009 for a new independent review to finally dismiss arson as a cause.

That was one victory, but fresh inquests remained elusive. After years of pressure and lobbying, a new inquest into the Stardust deaths was eventually ordered in September 2019, but agonisingly for the families, didn’t get under way until 2023.

At an anniversary event in 2022, Samantha Mangan, whose mother Helena was killed, told Sky News that the new inquest couldn’t come soon enough.

She said: “It’s like a brick, it’s killing me. It feels like there’s a chain around my neck. I can’t move forward until I find out what happened to her and why she didn’t come home.”

Scar on the city

Now, after nearly a year of hearings and 373 witnesses, the bereaved families are at the end of the inquest process.

In the decades since the inferno claimed their loved ones, the word Stardust has become synonymous in Ireland with tragedy and injustice on a massive scale.

Much like “Hillsborough” on Merseyside, or “Grenfell” in more recent times, the mere mention of “Stardust” can evoke pain and anger in Dublin – the mass death of innocents, exacerbated by an exhausting battle for answers by those left behind, who perceive an ingrained socioeconomic bias against their cause.

Time will tell if that scar on the city’s story will now begin to fade.

Those who never came home – some of the Stardust victims:

Caroline McHugh (17): A lover of singing, swimming and Enid Blyton books, Caroline’s parents allowed her to skip a family wedding in Manchester to stay in Dublin and go to the dancing competition in the Stardust, a decision which has haunted them ever since.

Phyllis and Maurice McHugh were “advised not to see the remains because of severe burns and that she had no hair, was unrecognisable and unidentifiable.

“We were informed that Caroline had been bagged and tagged as number six.”

Michael Barrett (17): “Michael was always smiling and had an infectious laugh”, recalled his mother Gertrude, who was “catapulted into unimaginable grief and sorrow.”

She spent four days at the morgue. “Michael would be the last identified victim of the Stardust… as a family we will never recover.”

Caroline Carey (17): “Our beautiful, bubbly, witty Caroline is gone”, said her sister Maria. “While watching news reports on TV, we saw Caroline being carried out in the arms of a fireman.

“He placed her down and tried to resuscitate her, but it was too late. There wasn’t a mark on her. Even her nails were perfect.”