Tina Turner
She became a role model and style icon for generations
Tina Turner: The epitome of energetic stage presence
© imago/Viennareport
After her death, the world agrees: Tina Turner was unique. There are many reasons why she became a role model for many generations.
In one of her last interviews, led from the British newspaper “The Guardian” in April 2023, Tina Turner (1939-2023) was asked what she would like to be remembered as after her death. Her response was short and to the point: “As the queen of rock ‘n’ roll. As a woman who showed other women that it’s okay to strive for success on your own terms.”
The singer, who died on May 24, was fully aware of her outstanding role as a role model and encourager for future generations.
“People say I gave them hope.”
When her management approached her a few years ago with the idea of producing a musical about her eventful life, she was initially strictly against it. She explained why she finally gave her consent to the project in a teaser for the musical, which has been running since 2018 “Tina – The Tina Turner Musical” says: “I don’t need a musical. I don’t need another show. But I get cards and letters, you can’t believe what people say about me on stage and the legacy I’m leaving think. People said I gave them hope.”
A cinematic story of female self-empowerment
Few musician biographies would have provided such a strong plot for a musical or a film. Because Tina Turner’s career tells the unique story of a woman who fought her way from the bottom to the top of world fame – and who repeatedly managed to free herself from conditions determined by others on her own.
An outrageous career start
This self-confident success story began in 1956 when the singer, born in 1939 under the name Anna Mae Bullock, threw herself at the band leader of the then popular Kings Of Rhythm in a music club in St. Louis to convince him to sing in the band’s backing choir to permit. After his name, Ike Turner (1931-2007), rebuffed her several times, she simply grabbed a microphone during a break in the band and started singing. With this outrageous stunt, the girl, who comes from a poor background, not only convinced the skeptical band leader, but also self-confidently fired the starting signal for a music career the likes of which the world had never seen before.
“Rather someone else’s cleaning lady than Ike Turner’s wife!”
The fact that her subsequent relationship and later marriage with bandleader Ike Turner soon developed into a nightmare of manipulation and domestic violence is now just as much a part of pop history as her consistent path to freeing herself from it. In the lengthy divorce process in 1978, she waived alimony and all rights to their music just to get away from her dominating husband faster. As a result, she had to start all over again financially and musically. At times she even went cleaning to support her four sons. Nevertheless, for her: “Better someone else cleaning lady than Ike Turner’s wife!”
Mega comeback in the eighties
From then on, the singer made sure that she no longer became dependent and consistently did her own thing until the end of her life. Only a few years later she had worked her way back to the top on her own. She made a triumphant comeback with her album “Private Dancer”, which was certified five times platinum in the USA alone. One world hit followed the next throughout the 1980s with songs like “What’s Love Got to Do with It”, “We Don’t Need Another Hero” or “Typical Male”. In the nineties she took it a little easier, but she always appeared with highlights such as the theme song to the James Bond film “GoldenEye” (1995) and regular tours.
Consistent stage farewell
In 2009, at the age of 69, she left the music business just as consistently as she had entered her career at the beginning of her career and devoted herself to her private life alongside her German husband Erwin Bach (67).
Style icon Tina Turner
However, Tina Turner became a role model for several generations not only because of the self-confident consistency with which she repeatedly freed herself from heteronomous circumstances, but also because of her unique, energetic stage presence and her striking stage outfits.
Especially with the beginning of her solo career, she developed into a much-noticed style icon, who embodied a self-confident femininity that had never been seen before and set new standards with her stage performances, from which musicians such as Beyoncé, Rihanna or Lady Gaga are still inspired today.
Her looks, consisting of what are probably the tightest leather miniskirts in pop history, high heels, fishnet stockings over immaculate legs and a lion’s mane (often enhanced by wigs) perfectly matched her driving, grating voice and also ensured that her relatively small height of 1.63 meters height caught no one’s eye.