How Tina Turner changed the rules of rock
When Tina Turner broke back into the charts, she smashed stereotypes and changed our ideas of what a rock star is. This is how she did it.
Entertainment
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She never ever did nothin’ nice and easy.
Among the many accolades flowing for singer Tina Turner since her death on Wednesday, aged 83, the powerhouse singer is being remembered for ripping up the rule book for how a woman of a certain age could look, dress and behave – and what a female performer of that certain age could achieve, too.
When she hit the top of the charts in 1984 with her single What’s Love Got To Do With It?, the second single from her comeback album Private Dancer, she broke a music industry longevity record: it had been 24 years since she first appeared on the charts.
It’s strange to recall the clamour around the accompanying video for that single. In her leather mini skirt, fitted denim jacket, towering stilettos and even more towering hair, Turner strutted the streets of New York, flirting with dancers and casually torching antiquated ideas of what a 44-year-old could or should look like.
Incredulous commentators introduced her as a “rocking grandmother”, testament to her novelty at the time.
Now, while popular music remains an industry dominated by youth, 44 seems like nothing. Nicole Sherzinger, John Legend and Adam Levine are all 44. Coldplay’s Chris Martin is 46 and Jennifer Lopez is 53.
But 44 was just the new beginning for Tina Turner.
The next year she would steam up the Live Aid stage with Mick Jagger in a performance remembered this week as “unquestionably the high-energy climax of the star-studded concert”. She would also appear as Aunty Entity in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, her chain link shoulder pads, silver crossbow and commanding performance creating an image of strong feminine power that remains iconic to this day.
Four more hit studio albums were to come, along with barnstorming world tours, a best-selling autobiography, a James Bond theme song, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Guiness World Record for the largest paying concert attendance for a solo artist. (One hundred and eighty thousand people at a concert in Rio.)
Along with that voluminous blond ’do, Turner’s legs became integral to her look, although she was to tell The Sun she “only had [them] on show so much as it made it much easier to dance”.
It was often reported that she had had her gams insured for $3.2 million, but in later interviews she would tell journalists: “My whole body’s insured”.
She titled one of her albums Break Every Rule, but in a 2021 interview with the Harvard Business Review, Turner said she never wanted “to break rules just for the sake of being a rule breaker”.
“But there is value in breaking norms, in challenging the status quo — as I did to break through those ‘isms’ that suggested I couldn’t achieve my dreams because of my skin colour, my age, and my gender,” she said.
“Through hard work and determination, I showed all the naysayers that maybe their preconceived doubts were wrong. The force of my positivity pushed all the discriminatory ‘isms’ standing in my way right out the window.”
She would continuing singing for several decades, performing her last concert at the age of 69.
The vocals remained strong, the choreography intense.
“She put Beyonce to shame,” one fan told the BBC this week about one of her farewell performances.
But retirement did not come easily for the star.
“I’m in the business of making music for the people; this is my work,” Turner told the Washington Post in 1997. “If I don’t go on tour, what am I going to do? Go into fashion? Hair? What? People don’t understand that it’s not about having to do something, and it’s not about retiring and not doing anything. It’s your job and what you do.”
But by 2013, having moved permanently to Switzerland and married again to German music executive Erwin Bach, illness forced Turner into a quieter life. Besides a stroke, she suffered intestinal cancer, high blood pressure and kidney disease.
She retired to semi-seclusion on the shores of Lake Zurich, with locals recalling her settling into a quieter life. In interviews this week, neighbours said she never played the star, but it’s worth noting the inscription written in German on the imposing gates of her mansion Algonquin, which warned would-be visitors: “Do not dare to bother Tina Turner before the afternoon.”
She made just a handful of appearances in her final years, joining the cast on stage at the opening nights of her eponymous stage musical in both New York and London.
Her last social media post was in March 2021 when she tweeted a photo of herself dancing in her living room to tease a then-upcoming HBO documentary.
Wearing black plants and top, and a neatly styled wig, the poignant photo was a far cry from her rock heyday.
It’s not the look the world will remember. Fans will prefer to recall Turner as she presented herself, all legs, leather and rock attitude, defying those age stereotypes. Nice, and rough.
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