Tina Turner on a turbulent life, Buddhism and the musical TINA
The Amazonian songstress spoke with The Australian a month ago ahead of the premiere of TINA – The Tina Turner Musical in Sydney.
Tina Turner, Amazonian songstress of big hair and leggy-costume fame, practises Buddhism. In fact, the retired star three years ago wrote a book of life advice called Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good, punctuated with quotes from Louise Hay (“I choose to make the rest of my life my best life”), Oprah Winfrey (“Step out of the history that is holding you back”) and Rumi (“Beyond the right and the wrong there is a field. I’ll meet you there”).
She happened upon Buddhism at 34, when she desperately wanted to be free of her abusive marriage to Ike Turner, after three unconnected people told her to try chanting. By taking time to repeat the mantra Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, which means “glory to the Dharma of the Lotus Sutra” every day, she noticed a gradual yet powerful shift in her outlook that enabled her to change her life. The doyenne of reinvention would be entitled to claim the mantle of self-help hero.
“Ultimately, I’m proud that I never gave up,” says Turner, whose story of survival is almost as famous as her music. “I battled for years even after leaving Ike, and that battle felt lonely and impossible for what seemed a long time. I’m proud I didn’t give up, I’m proud that I fought for my dream.”
The 83-year-old is answering Review’s questions via email, typing with authority in capital letters, ahead of the Australian premiere at Sydney’s Theatre Royal of the twelve-time Tony Award nominated musical TINA. The production has showed on Broadway and has been running for five years in London’s West End.
Born Anna Mae Bullock in Tennessee, Turner found fame as a singer under the iron fist of husband Ike who suggested she change her name to Tina Turner and then cunningly had it trademarked. For 16 years, the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, a hugely popular R&B duo, relentlessly toured the US, finding hits with songs such as River Deep, Mountain High, Nutbush City Limits and Proud Mary, which won them a Grammy in 1972.
But after countless beatings at the hands of her cocaine-addicted husband – as recalled in her 2018 autobiography, My Love Story – the mother of four fled the marriage in 1976 with just the clothes on her back, 36c and a credit card.
A couple of things would prove vital in Turner’s rebranding as a solo artist: in 1979, Australian manager Roger Davies agreed to take her on; and then in 1983 she signed with Capitol Records.
Private Dancer, her first studio album with the label, solidified her comeback and has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. Its single, What’s Love Got to do With It?, made her the oldest solo female artist to top the Billboard Hot 100 – at age 44 – and to date remains her biggest hit.
The singer retired from performing in 2009 with a 90-show world tour, and today lives the quiet life with her second husband, music producer Erwin Bach, who she married in 2013, at their chateau in Switzerland. It was here on a winter’s evening back in 2014 that producers Tali Pelman and Joop van den Ende approached Turner about turning her life into a musical.
“I was curious to meet everyone, but was ready with my answer, which was ‘No!’,” says Turner, who stayed up talking to the producers well after dinner until 2am. “I had retired from my performing career, and was enjoying the next part of my life in Zurich. But Tali and Joop were clearly so passionate and committed to telling my story authentically and honestly that by the end of the night I had changed my mind.”
Turner wrote in a 2019 essay for Rolling Stone that she had recently retired and was “content to be Mrs Erwin Bach”. “The last thing on my mind was working anywhere but in my garden,” she wrote. “But Erwin had other plans. I was battling several medical problems at the time (she suffered a stroke three weeks after their wedding), and he wisely knew that working on the show would be a healthy distraction for me, as much as I wanted to do absolutely nothing.”
What changed her mind? “I felt very comfortable with the female lead team in handing over my life story and knowing that it was in safe hands,” Turner says.
Tennessee-raised playwright Katori Hall was enlisted as writer and Phyllida Lloyd (The Iron Lady and Mamma Mia!) as director of the musical, which features 20 of Turner’s songs including Simply the Best, What’s Love Got to Do with It and Proud Mary.
The story spans Turner’s life from an aspiring 11-year-old through to her tenacious comeback as a divorced woman in her forties. Speaking in Sydney where she is working with the cast, Pelman acknowledges there were many ways in which to frame the survival story, which may have contributed to Turner’s initial reservations. While Turner’s 16-year relationship with Ike has been the subject of films such as What’s Love Got to do With It, based on her 1986 biography, she has spent the vast portion of her life touring as a multi-Grammy Award winning artist and having a loving relationship with Bach.
“Tina understood by the end of our conversations that our primary intention was to tell her story with integrity and authenticity,” Pelman says. “It is a survival story but she also wanted it to be joyful because as a woman she is incredibly optimistic, incredibly uplifting, a sunny personality. It is a story of self-belief.”
For a project she was not initially keen on, Turner became intimately involved in its development and went along to readings, workshops and rehearsals leading up the premiere of the musical in the West End. When the team was trying to perfect the star’s characteristic onstage movements, Turner stepped in and held an impromptu workshop attended by international associate choreographer Simone Mistry-Palmer, who is working on the show in Sydney.
“I got way more involved than I thought I would,” says Turner, who is credited as executive producer with Bach. “I loved teaching the actresses my dance moves, especially the Pony!”
The Pony is the signature footwork Turner pioneered on stage with the Ikettes, the backing vocalists for the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. “It was meant to mimic a pony when a lady rides it,” she wrote in her 2018 autobiography. “It kept us moving back and forth across the stage, like Michael Jackson did much later with his Moonwalk.”
In the Sydney production, the role of Tina will be played by Australian-Zimbabwean performer Ruva Ngwenya, 30. “We’ve been doing long hours trying to nail the show and keeping in mind sound, automation and lighting,” says Ngwenya, eating lunch as she Zooms Review in her rehearsal break. “Everyone’s trying to figure out what the show means for them. So it’s been a very hectic few weeks.”
With her huge smile, sparkly hoop earrings and red nail polish, Melbourne-raised Ngwenya exudes optimism and excitement as she talks from her dressing room, which she has jazzed up with fairy lights. (It’s easy to see what Turner means when she says: “Oh, Ruva has the spirit! I never want the actresses to copy me, but I want them to find my essence and they always do.”)
And while there are little parallels between Ngwenya’s life and a 30-year-old Turner, she relates to the feeling of having a gift. “It feels like it’s beyond you and comes from a higher power and it just comes out of you. And just the way Tina poured it out of her was amazing. It wasn’t something you could teach – you either have it, or you don’t.”
Ngwenya has been singing her entire life but it wasn’t until she was 15 that she realised she had something rare to offer when she sang River Deep, Mountain High as part of her high school musical. “That was a moment of just ‘Wow. I’m really good at this and I can do this for real.’ At the time I didn’t realise it was Tina Turner. I liked the song and the costume was cool – I got to wear fishnets and the funny wig.”
Ngwenya has been rehearsing since Christmas for the production so she has the stamina to be on stage for more than two and half hours each night. The first act of the musical is especially emotionally taxing as it features Turner being hit by Ike, played in Sydney by Tim Omaji.
“I feel it’s very important to be able to separate yourself from your job and your role, especially because Tina’s life is very hard,” Ngwenya says. “And it was very intense and quite traumatic. And so there has to be a level of dissociation between playing a role of Tina and telling that really challenging story, and then stepping away and going back to being myself.”
The production’s content warning foreshadows scenes of domestic violence, sexual abuse, firearms, drug use, coarse language and racial slurs. Turner says that while it was difficult to revisit the time she spent with Ike, it was important they didn’t shy away from the truth of the story.
“I find it hard to look back, and it isn’t something I want to dwell on,” Turner says. “But it was very important to me that we showed it how it really was, not a sanitised version of it. Not just for me but for the many women who experience domestic abuse. And it shows that I created change … My faith (Buddhism) gave me the strength and belief I needed to leave Ike and move forward.”
To celebrate the five-year anniversary of the production in the West End last month, Pelman says a gala was held in London with domestic abuse charity Women’s Aid, whose ambassadors know something of Turner’s experience.
“It was really something to watch the show with survivors in the house. Afterwards they wanted to speak with me and they were just telling me it is so real. (They said) ‘Thank you for putting this on stage for showing what it can be like’.”
TINA – The Tina Turner Musical is showing at the Theatre Royal Sydney from May 18 to October 8.
