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Accounts of the
life of Anna Mae Bullock of Nutbush, Tenn., known to the world as Tina
Turner, read like survivor stories. There was the sharecropper childhood
in the segregated South and the abandonment by her parents. The turbulent
marriage to a domineering alcoholic whose abuse drove her to attempt
suicide. And that stint on welfare.
Tina Turner emerged from all this -- the physical and mental cruelty, the
waxing and waning of fickle fame -- as a towering figure in pop music, a
symbol of black female resiliency. This weekend, Miss Turner will
receive a Kennedy Center Honor. The tribute comes on top of seven Grammy
awards and membership in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (She shares
the last with notorious ex-husband Ike Turner.)
Miss Turner is 66 and, like many an aging Kennedy Center honoree, past the
peak of her creative powers. It's been six years since her last studio
album and five since her last concert tour. A putative movie project, "The
Goddess," for which Miss Turner was tapped to play a Hindu deity, was
nixed after the death of director Ismail Merchant.
Yet her shadow is long. "My role model," talk-show veteran
Oprah Winfrey recently cooed of Miss Turner. Indeed, it is hard to imagine
the likes of Janet Jackson or Beyonce Knowles without Miss Turner's
influence. She was hardly the first woman to overtly use her
sexuality as an artistic device. But she was arguably the first to do so
in the rock arena. She was the frenetic, downtown alternative to Diana
Ross' polished urbanity, the foremother of every pop diva who unabashedly
flashes her gams.
Miss Turner bluffed her way into Ike Turner's band, the Kings of Rhythm,
in a St. Louis club. They began cutting singles such as "A Fool in Love"
in 1960 and married hastily in 1962 in Tijuana, Mexico. Success was modest
at first. "River Deep, Mountain High," a galvanizing 1966 set produced by
Phil Spector. Bigger hits came later, when Mr. Turner retooled the band to
appeal more broadly to white audiences. In addition to the soul and funk
rave-ups for which they were known, Ike and Tina covered rock songs such
as the Beatles' "Come Together" and Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud
Mary," the latter interpretation reaching the Top 5.
The red-hot
images of Miss Turner captured by Albert and David Maysles in the
documentary "Gimme Shelter" -- the Ike and Tina Turner Revue opened for
the Stones in 1969 -- are, in retrospect, still quite provocative. As she
croon-moans her way through an aching cover of Otis Redding's "I've Been
Loving You Too Long," Miss Turner grips the microphone in ways that are
blush-making to this day.
"Her male audience sat transfixed while she crooned and panted her
way to the grand finale," wrote a young and breathless Bob Geldof
in a 1974 review of an Ike and Tina show for the Vancouver Sun. In 1985,
Mr. Geldof, by then the world's most famous humanitarian impresario,
paired Miss Turner with an exquisitely appropriate male counterpart, Mick
Jagger, for the grand finale at Live Aid. There, in the heat of a duet,
Mr. Jagger snapped off Miss Turner's skirt. Unsuspecting and, at first,
perhaps a touch embarrassed, Miss Turner quickly gave in to the moment;
she can be seen reveling in the sexual abandon of the stunt. Credit
Miss Turner, then, with the first "wardrobe malfunction" in the history of
live television.
The litheness of
Miss Turner's body was as vital an element of her appeal as was the
expressive rasp of her voice. An indelible image on MTV in 1984 (the high
point of her "Ike who?" comeback) was of a denim-clad Miss Turner, her
hair a spiky, feral pile, strutting down a city street in high heels and
spitting out the cautionary lyrics of "What's
Love Got to Do With It."
Miss Turner won four Grammy awards in 1984, including record of the year
for "What's Love Got to Do With It" and best female rock performance for
"Better Be Good to Me." The success of the album "Private
Dancer" -- it sold 11 million copies worldwide -- was the culmination
of a slow recovery that began with separation from Mr. Turner in 1975.
(The couple divorced in 1978.)
Miss Turner
followed "Dancer" with "Break Every Rule"
in 1986. The world tour that followed proved an enormous draw, with
more than 180,000 fans turning out to see her in Brazil. With one foot
firmly in pop music, Miss Turner hewed close to her rocker supporters,
touring with Rod Stewart and performing songs by the Beatles, David Bowie
and Mark Knopfler.
She also followed up in earnest her interest in movies. Ten years after
appearing briefly as the Acid Queen in a misbegotten big-screen adaptation
of the Who's rock opera "Tommy," Miss Turner starred opposite Mel Gibson
in "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome." (Its soundtrack yielded the hits "We
Don't Need Another Hero," and "One
of the Living.")
With help from
rock journalist and MTV talking head Kurt Loder, Miss Turner set down an
account of her life in the 1986 autobiography "I, Tina," in which the
singer cited her Buddhist faith as a decisive factor in her post-Ike
recovery. (The book would become the basis of the 1993 biopic "What's Love
Got to Do With It," starring Angela Bassett.)
Throughout the 1990s, Miss Turner recorded sporadically; she retreated
from the scene, became unadventurous. The louche "Steamy
Windows" and the anthemic "The Best,"
both 1989 singles, were the last gasps of the rejuvenated singer.
Eventually, Miss Turner found herself literally in retreat, living
permanently in Europe. (Semiretired, she shares homes with German-born
record tycoon Erwin Bach in Switzerland and France.) "Success in America
-- what I find with my homeland, nothing lasts very long," Miss Turner
told CBS' Mike Wallace in 2002. "Europe is different. You're right there
with them until you come back."
Perhaps a celebratory weekend in the nation's capital will once again
nudge Tina Turner home.
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