Most shocking revelations in career-spanning Tina Turner documentary

From horrifying secret abuse to the iconic song she “hated”, Tina Turner’s new tell-all documentary is full of jaw-dropping insights.

Tina Turner’s new tell-all documentary Tina is an emotional ride, detailing the star's tragic upbringing, and brutally violent marriage to Ike Turner, through to her unlikely triumph, finally becoming a global music icon well into her 40s.

It also ends on a bittersweet note, as it’s revealed Turner, 81, intends the doco to be her swan song: Telling her story one last time, she now feels free to live the rest of her life away from the fans who’ve adored her since she and Ike’s first hit single way back in 1960.

But what a life it has been. Here are the key revelations from Tina, which airs on Foxtel in Australia on Sunday.

ABANDONED BY HER PARENTS

Soul survivor: Tina Turner.

Several people interviewed in the documentary draw a connection between the abuse Tina suffered in her relationship with Ike and the appalling mistreatment she received as a child. Tina herself remembers it matter-of-factly: She recalls her mother always standing in the window of the family home. One day, her mother was no longer there. Later on, her father followed: Both parents had abandoned the family, not even sending letters or money back home to the children they’d left behind. Abandoned and unloved, Tina felt worthless – a feeling that continued into her first adult relationship …

IKE’S ABUSE WAS “TORTURE”

Tina was trapped in an abusive marriage with Ike.

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Tina was a teenager when she met Ike Turner, and soon he was her whole world, with their professional relationship turning into an offstage marriage. The film includes a wealth of early footage of Tina live, and she’s a vision of pure power, totally in command of her body and a world away from the usual demure female performers of the era. But behind the scenes, Tina had “no life”, enduring regular beatings and horrific sexual abuse from her husband.

One photo shows the darkness just beneath the surface: Tina looks glamorous and poised, smiling for the cameras. But a closer look shows she cannot hide the black eye received in her latest beating from Ike:

Tina smiles for the cameras with a visible black eye.

ICONIC SONG WAS A HUGE FLOP

It’s one of the greatest pop songs of the 20th century, so it’s staggering to think that Turner’s Phil Spector collaboration River Deep, Mountain High flopped in the US, making it to a lowly 88 in the charts. It was a big hit in the UK, but in archival footage shown in the doco, Ike’s seen explaining how such a classic song fell through the cracks in their native America: Pop radio stations considered it too Black, R&B stations thought it was too pop, and so it just never got the airplay that could turn it into a smash.

NIGHT HER LIFE CHANGED FOREVER

Ike and Tina in 1976.

Fans who’ve watched the 1993 biopic What’s Love Got To Do With It will remember this as the film’s pivotal scene: The night Tina finally fought back at Ike, before fleeing into the night with nothing but her handbag and starting a new life. It’s incredibly emotional hearing Turner recall that night in her own words – bruised and bloody, waiting until Ike was asleep before sneaking out of their hotel and running across a busy freeway to find a safe haven in another hotel across the road. It was her break for freedom – after a fierce court battle, she left the partnership with nothing but her stage name.

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THE DAY SHE WENT PUBLIC

Tina (centre) worked tirelessly to carve out a solo career after Ike. Picture: NBC Universal/Foxtel

RELATED: Tina Turner’s retreat from public life explained

Archival footage shows exactly what Turner had to endure in the years after her split from Ike as she tried to make a name for herself. Interviewer after interviewer would ask questions like “Where’s Ike?”, leaving her to explain patiently that they had gone their separate ways. In 1981, Turner made a decision she hoped would clear things up once and for all: She would give a tell-all to People Magazine, for the first time publicly detailing the abuse she suffered at his hands.

Finally, fans knew the truth of the couple’s split – but it didn’t make life any easier. Now that she’d opened up about the abuse, she had to field more questions about it, and Tina found it difficult to relive that past trauma over and over again.

SHE HATED HER SIGNATURE SONG

It’s incredible to think Turner only released her worldwide breakthrough album, Private Dancer, when she was 44 years old. It launched her into a new, global career playing to packed out stadiums into her 50s and beyond – a longtime career goal finally realised.

That album was home to the worldwide smash What’s Love Got To Do With It – a song that sounded very different before Tina got her hands on it, and that she was reluctant to record.

British pop act Bucks Fizz had recorded a chintzy, whitebread version before Tina’s:

“It was terrible, it was awful … I was rock and roll, that was a pop song,” Tina recalls of hearing the track.

That is, until she sang it. Tina brought her self-described “heavy voice” to the song, her powerhouse vocal performance turning it into one of the biggest-selling singles of the 1980s.

THIS REALLY IS HER GOODBYE

Tina gave what’s expected to be her final in-depth interview for the doco. Picture: NBC Universal/Foxtel

RELATED: Tina Turner’s final farewell to fans

Late in the documentary, Tina asks a question she’s obviously been wrestling with for some time: How does a superstar fade away gracefully? At 81, she’s been beset with serious health problems for much of the past decade: cancer, a stroke and a kidney transplant have all taken their toll. She intends this two-hour documentary to be her swan song, a final goodbye to the public so she can enjoy the rest of her life in peace, living at her lakeside Zurich home with her beloved husband Erwin by her side.

After watching the incredible life story detailed across two hours of Tina, you can’t blame her.

Tina premieres express from the US on Sunday, March 28 at 11am AEDT, with a prime time encore at 8.30pm AEDT on Foxtel Movies Premiere channel and available On Demand

Foxtel is majority owned by News Corp, publisher of this website

Originally published as Most shocking revelations in career-spanning Tina Turner documentary