TINA, An Intimate Portrait Of The Legendary Singer Tina Turner
There are a million different ways to earn the status of an icon and in some cases, the road is hard and long, which for Tina Turner is an understatement. Even if you’re not into R&B music or music in general, the name Tina Turner will still register an image of this wild-hair goddess with legs for days who captured your attention no matter what music you were into.
If I started singing “What’s Love Got To Do With It,” 99% of people would be able to hear the tune playing in their head with Turner’s wise, soulful voice melting over the track. If you haven’t heard it, do yourself a favor and listen to it below. This hit record earned her a spot in the Grammy Hall of Fame (Tina’s third, might I add).
HBO Max delivers us a documentary, directed by T.J. Martin and Daniel Lindsay, celebrating Tina Turner’s rise to stardom and giving audiences an intimate look into the experiences that made up the powerhouse she eventually became. With exclusive tour footage, photos, and interviews, this piece was clearly a labor of love and opportunity to give audiences a better understanding of all that Tina went through to be where she is today. While we all acknowledge the tragedies of her life, the true power in this tale is the redemption and justice Tina Turner earned for herself through resilience and determination.
Born Anna Mae Bullock in Tennesse to a sharecropper father and absent mother, Tina Turner started her young life picking cotton and singing in the local gospel choir. A small-town girl who witnessed violence in her home, she believed she could do more with her life despite the odds. Growing up, Tina saw all these beautiful, white starlets and saw them as the ideal beauty, discounting her own and feeling as if she’d never be in that position, even though she dreamed of living that way.
Only a teenager, she sought out the attention of a rock pioneer, Ike Turner, who is credited with one of the first-ever rock and roll songs. Once he heard her powerhouse of a voice, he took her under his wing as a protégée, and eventually, she fell in love with the genius musician. As a young and naive girl from the country, she promised to stay by his side and commit to him unlike his musical collaborators in the past.
Ike married Tina and they blew up as the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. For most of her life, she was misunderstood and struggled to feel like she had a place, which is exactly why it’s so powerful to see how she made her own among the stars.
With harrowing accounts of the torture, she experienced at the hands of Ike Turner, I’m very reluctant to spend much time discussing him due to the fact he was so horrible to our Queen Tina. It was very clear that some mental illnesses inspired the sociopathic and masochistic treatment he took out on Tina. With a family of four and an extremely busy music career, Tina somehow made it all look so effortless despite how broken she felt on the inside.
Viewing the footage from the ’60s with Tina Turner jovially dancing across the stage and singing without any pause, you would never know the tragic pain she endured. Not only was her home life abusive, but she also grew up witnessing it through her parents, which normalized the idea that the abuse dealt to her from Ike was okay in some sense of the word. Ultimately, Ike only married Tina in a form of control and after they separated, Tina was left with nothing. In the divorce, Ike took all the money and assets they created together and Tina only cared about keeping her name, which she won.
This, folks, is what “making Lemonade” is all about because life gave Tina lemons and she made the best damn lemonade anyone ever thought she could. Most people would crack under the mixed pressure of fame, family, and an intense marriage all within the public eye, but Tina Turner puffed her chest out and kept working.
In her late 40s, Tina jumped right into the scene and did every gig given to her until she met with Roger Davies, the manager that helped shape her vision of being a rock star with a full band. However, the shadow of Ike Turner still loomed over her career, constantly having journalists asking about it, which reminded her of her deep trauma.
She finally opened up about this story, which created more interest in their relationship even though she wanted no parts of it. Tina Turner believed in herself no matter how many roadblocks were thrown her way. She moved to London to continue pursuing her career and found a home in Europe, leaving everything she once knew behind.
Terry Britten and Roger Davies provided “What’s Love Got To Do With It,” which Tina Turner originally hated but somehow she struck gold with it. At her age, most record labels scoffed at the idea of someone older making hits, until she broke the barrier and became the oldest woman to have a hit record and Grammy win at that time.
This was what Tina considered her debut, and to see crowds filling stadiums and celebrating her in the way she deserved drove me to tears due to the fact that this was justice in its most pure form. At her old and ripe age, she was the hottest woman and artist in the world for all ages, which had her fulfill her dream of playing shows with crowds bigger than what The Rolling Stones would draw and earning her a status of an ICON. After all she had sacrificed and been through, her moment had finally come and it was genuine and well-earned.
From that point, Tina Turner was a household name and continued to rise to stardom. One hard thing to shake off was her dark history with her ex-husband. Tina was constantly reminded of her trauma through a biopic and incessant questions about him from the press. She handled this all with poise and grace, but this goes to show how tone-deaf our modern world is to the experiences of survivors of abuse.
People don’t realize how hard it is to escape the nightmares of the past so she had to fight to change the subject to remind people that it was no longer a part of her story. Her story resonated with millions of women in similar situations which also fed the frenzy of people being curious about her past.
What resonated with me the most was her estranged relationship with her mother, who only showed up in Tina’s life when she was successful and no matter what she did there was no true love between them. After many years of failures in love and losing faith in it, she met Erwin Bach, a man who she eventually married and is still with to this day.
The documentary pulls interviews with Tina Turner and her sons, as well as Kurt Loder, Roger Davies, John Carter, Oprah, Angela Basset, her current husband, Erwin Bach and so much more. The deep reverence from the powerful interviewees and fans goes to show how impactful her presence on the world stage was.
To see her in her 80’s, smiling in her beautiful home in Switzerland, not carrying any weight of the past in her face was awe-inspiring. In our modern-day, we millennials and other youth whine about some of the most trivial matters, so when I see a journey that someone like Tina endured, it shakes me out of whatever first-world-problem-inspired funk I might’ve been wrapped up in.
Tina Turner is a perfect example of gritting in the face of adversity and making it her bitch whilst this documentary is what giving someone their flowers while they can still smell them truly means. I highly recommend watching this deep dive into the legacy of a small-town girl turned superstar, it is well made and extremely interesting. The rare footage and narrative journey presented to us through this documentary are worth every minute. Long live Tina Turner!!
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