Tina Turner: The trauma and triumph of a music legend

Published

2 years 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.”

Entertainment

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs loses bid to delay sex-trafficking trial

Published

12 hours ago

April 18, 2025

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Sean 'Diddy' Combs loses bid to delay sex-trafficking trial

Hip hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs has lost a bid to delay his upcoming sex-trafficking trial by two months.

US district judge Arun Subramanian said the 55-year-old rapper made his request too close to his trial, which is due to start next month.

Jury selection is currently scheduled for 5 May with opening statements set to be heard seven days later.

Combs has pleaded not guilty to five criminal counts including racketeering and sex trafficking.

Prosecutors with the Manhattan US attorney’s office accuse Combs of using his business empire to sexually abuse women between 2004 and 2024.

Combs’s lawyers say the sexual activity described by prosecutors was consensual.

In a court filing on Wednesday, Combs’s lawyer Marc Agnifilo asked Mr Subramanian to delay the trial because he needed more time to prepare his defence to two new charges which were brought on 4 April.

The charges were of sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.

Mr Agnifilo also said his team needs extra time to review emails it wants an alleged victim to turn over.

The new allegations brought the total number of criminal charges against the rap mogul to five – following the three original counts, which also included racketeering conspiracy, filed in September.

Federal prosecutors were opposed to any delay, writing in a Thursday court filing that the additional charges brought
earlier this month did not amount to substantially new conduct.

They also said Combs was not entitled to the alleged victim’s communications.

Meanwhile, Mr Subramanian is weighing other evidentiary issues, such as whether to allow alleged victims to testify under pseudonyms.

Also known during his career as Puff Daddy and P Diddy, Combs founded Bad Boy Records and is credited with helping turn rappers and R&B singers such as Notorious B.I.G, Mary J. Blige, Faith Evans and Usher into stars in the 1990s and 2000s.

But prosecutors have said his success concealed a dark side.

They say his alleged abuse included having women take part in recorded sexual performances called “freak-offs” with male sex workers, who were sometimes transported across state lines.

Combs has been in jail in Brooklyn since September, having been denied bail.

He also faces dozens of civil lawsuits by women and men who have accused him of sexual abuse.

Combs has strenuously denied all allegations of wrongdoing.

Entertainment

Warfare’s Alex Garland: ‘Being anti-war is not the same as saying it should never happen’

Published

1 day ago

April 18, 2025

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Warfare's Alex Garland: 'Being anti-war is not the same as saying it should never happen'

Alex Garland says while it’s “the most obvious statement about life on this planet” that the world would be a better place without war, it “doesn’t mean it should never happen”, and there are “circumstances in which war is required”.

The Oscar-nominated screenwriter and director told Sky News: “I don’t think it is possible to make a statement about what war is really like without it being implicitly anti-war, inasmuch as it would be better if this thing did not happen.

“But that’s not the same as saying it should never happen. There are circumstances in which war is required.”

His latest film, Warfare, embeds the audience within a platoon of American Navy SEALs on an Iraqi surveillance mission gone wrong, telling the story solely through the memories of war veterans from a real 2006 mission in Ramadi, Iraq.

Garland says the film is “anti-war in as much as it is better if war does not happen,” adding, “and that is about the most obvious statement about life on this planet that one could make.”

Comparing it to ongoing geopolitical conflict across the world, Garland goes on: “It would be better if Gaza had not been flattened. It would be better if Ukraine was not invaded. It would it better if all people’s problems could be solved via dialogue and not threat or violence…

“To be anti-war to me is a rational position, and most veterans I’ve met are anti-war.”

The screenwriter behind hits including Ex Machina, 28 Days Later and The Beach says this film is “an attempt to recreate something as faithfully and accurately as we could”.

‘War veterans feel invisible and forgotten’

Almost entirely based on first-person accounts, the 15-rated film opens with soldiers singing along to the video of Swedish dance hit Call On Me – complete with gyrating women in thong leotards.

It’s the only music in the film. The remaining score is made up of explosions, sniper fire and screams of pain.

Garland co-wrote and co-directed the film alongside Hollywood stuntman and gunfight coordinator Ray Mendoza, whom Garland met on his last film, Civil War.

Mendoza, a communications officer on the fateful mission portrayed in the film, says despite the traumatic content, the experience of making the film was “therapeutic”.

Mendoza told Sky News: “It actually mended a lot of relationships… There were some guys I hadn’t spoken to in a very long time. And this allowed us to bury the hatchet, so to speak, on some issues from that day.”

Turning to Hollywood after serving in the Navy for 16 years, Mendoza says past war film he’d seen – even the good ones – were “a little off” because they “don’t get the culture right”.

Mendoza admits: “You feel like no one cares because they didn’t get it right. You feel invisible. You feel forgotten.”

With screenings of Warfare shown to around 1,000 veterans ahead of general release, Mendoza says: “They finally feel heard. They finally feel like somebody got it right.”

As to whether it could be triggering for some veterans, Mendoza says decisively not: “It’s not triggering. I would say it’s the opposite, for a veteran at least.”

‘I’m an actor – I love my hair’

A tense and raw 90-minute story told in real time, the film’s ensemble cast is made up of young buzzy actors, dubbed “all of the internet’s boyfriends” when the casting was first announced.

Mirroring the Navy SEALs they were portraying, the cast initially bonded through a three-week bootcamp ahead of filming, before living together for the 25-day shoot.

Black Mirror’s Will Poulter, who plays Eric, the officer in charge of the operation, says the film’s extended takes and 360-degree sets demanded a special kind of focus.

Poulter said: “It required everyone to practise something that is fundamental to Navy SEAL mentality – you’re a teammate before you’re an individual.

“When a camera’s roaming around like that and could capture anyone at kind of any moment, it requires that everyone to be ‘on’ at all times and for the sake of each other.

“It becomes less about making sure that you’re performing when the camera lands on you, but as much about this idea that you are performing for the sake of the actor opposite you when the camera’s on them.”

Another of the film’s stars, Reservation Dogs’ D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, plays Mendoza and is the heart of the film.

Woon-A-Tai says the cast drew on tactics used by real soldiers to help with the intense filming schedule: “Laughter is medicine… A lot of times these are long takes, long hours, back-to-back days, so uplifting our spirit was definitely a big part of it.”

He also joked that shaving each other’s heads in a bonding ritual the night before the first day of filming was a daunting task.

“As actors, we love our hair. I mean, I speak personally, I love my hair. You know, I had really long hair. So yeah, it definitely takes a lot of trust. And you know, it wasn’t even at all, but you know it was still fun to do.”

Warfare is in cinemas now.

Entertainment

UB40 say striking Birmingham bin workers ‘shouldn’t give up’

Published

1 day ago

April 18, 2025

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UB40 say striking Birmingham bin workers 'shouldn't give up'

Birmingham band UB40 say the city’s striking bin workers and their union should “keep fighting” in their dispute over pay.

It comes as the government and the council urged them to accept a “fair and reasonable offer”.

“We’re fully on their side,” drummer Jimmy Brown told Sky News. “I think they shouldn’t give up, they should still be fighting.

“Working people shouldn’t have to take a reduction in their incomes, which is what we’re talking about here.

“We’re talking about people being paid less and it seems to me with prices going up, heating, buying food, inflation and rents going up then people need a decent wage to have a half decent life… keep going boys!”

Workers joined picket lines again on Thursday, with some fearing they could be up to £600 a month worse off if they accept the terms.

“We have total utter support for the bin men and all trade unions,” said guitarist Robin Campbell.

“The other side is always going to say they’ve made a reasonable offer – the point is they’re the ones who’ve messed up, they’re the ones who’ve gone bankrupt, they’re the ones now trying to reduce the bin men’s wages.”

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Lead singer Matt Doyle told Sky News: “It’s a shame that what we’re seeing is all the images of rats and rubbish building up, that is going to happen inevitably, but we’ve just got to keep fighting through that.”

About 22,000 tonnes of rubbish accumulated on the city’s streets after a major incident was declared last month by Birmingham City Council.

On a visit to the city, local government minister Jim McMahon said the union and local authority should continue to meet in “good faith” and the government felt there was a deal that could be “marshalled around”.

He paid tribute to the “hundreds of workers” who have worked “around the clock” to clear the rubbish.

“As we stand here today, 85% of that accumulated waste has been cleared and the council have a plan in place now to make sure it doesn’t accumulate going forward,” said Mr McMahon.

Sky News understands talks are not set to resume until next week.