Tina Turner, the exuberant, heel-stomping, wild-haired rock goddess who sold out stadiums, won a dozen Grammy Awards and captivated fans worldwide for five decades, d!ed Wednesday at her home near Zurich after a long illness. She was aged 83.

“With her, the world loses a music legend and a role model,” Turner’s spokesman Bernard Doherty said. Doherty said close friends and relatives would attend a private funeral. De@th was unspecified.

Turner’s high-flying but troubled life inspired a 1986 autobiography, a Hollywood film, and a Broadway jukebox musical. She rose from rural beginnings to national popularity as one-half of the rhythm-and-blues combo Ike & Tina Turner and then as one of the world’s most successful Black female solo singers.

She was the first woman and Black musician to appear on Rolling Stone’s second cover, and her hugely successful solo career shattered barriers for future Black women in music. Turner had personal hardships. Her ex-husband and collaborator, Ike Turner, allegedly abused her for years and sought to control her life.

My connection with Ike made me miserable. I loved him first. He helped me. “But he was unpredictable,” Turner said in “I, Tina,” a book co-written by music critic and MTV News correspondent Kurt Loder. Turner divorced her spouse in the late 1970s. Turner had one of rock’s most remarkable comebacks in the 1980s, remaking herself as a joyfully unfettered hitmaker who topped the Billboard charts.

Turner’s 1984 hit “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” a show-stopping hymn, made her a celebrity. Turner’s other significant songs from the era were “Better Be Good to Me,” “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome),” “Typical Male,” “The Best,” and “I Don’t Wanna Fight.”

She traveled the world, won honors, and appeared in films in the following decades. She retired in 2009 following her 50th-anniversary tour. Turner told 75,000 people at Zurich’s Letzigrund Stadium that year, “I’ve done enough.” 44 years of performing. I should stop dancing.”

Turner won eight competitive Grammys, three Hall of Fame awards, and a Lifetime Achievement award. She was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice—first with Ike Turner (1991) and then solo (2021).

Tina Turner Early Life And Career

Sharecroppers raised Anna Mae Bullock in rural Brownsville, Tennessee, on November 26, 1939. Singing was her childhood passion. She joined the St. Louis R&B scene after the family relocated there.

At a mid-1950s Kings of Rhythm concert, she met Ike Turner. He named her Tina Turner, and she joined the group. The Ike and Tina Turner Revue was noted for its colorful performances. Tina’s singing, dancing, and energy stole the show from Ike, a great guitarist.

“A Fool in Love” hit the pop charts in 1960 and made the revue famous. Two years later, Ike and Tina married and recorded numerous hits. “Tina Turner is an incredible chick,” Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner remarked in 1967. She wears a short miniskirt covered with silver sequins and sparkles. She dances freely.

“Unlike the polite hand-clapping Motown groups, she and the Ikettes scream, wail, and do some fantastic boogaloo,” the reporter added. “No matter what you may think of the music, Tina Turner is worth sitting down and paying close attention to.”