Tina Turner is an undisputed musical legend. The best-selling diva has had a one-of-a-kind career spanning more than five decades, from her early success in the 1960s to her climb to solo superstardom in the 1980s. However, the elderly diva has had continuing health issues that have kept her out of the spotlight in recent years. So, Tina Turner, where are you in 2022? Here’s the latest on the rock legend’s life.
Tina Turner was born on November 26, 1939, in Brownsville, Tennessee, making her 82 years old today. She lives in Switzerland with her husband, German music executive Erwin Bach. They have been together for over 25 years and got married in 2013.
The pair has lived in Switzerland since the 1990s, but Turner only became a Swiss citizen in 2013, giving up her US citizenship in the process.
“I am extremely pleased in Switzerland, and I feel at home here,” the “Private Dancer” singer said in a 2013 interview with the German tabloid Blick. “I can’t think of a better location to live.”
In 2009, after beginning her 11th performance tour, fittingly titled Tina! : The: 50th Anniversary Tour, the music legend decided she was ready to retire from her life on stage. “I was simply weary of singing and making people happy,” Turner explained in a 2019 New York Times interview. “I’d never done anything else in my life.
But the rock icon did not vanish entirely. Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, which premiered in the United Kingdom in 2018 and will be performed on Broadway in 2019, was co-created with her in 2016. Critics liked the show, and it was up for 12 Tony Awards. Adrienne Warren won the award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical.
In 2020, she also teamed with Kygo on a remix of “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” “I couldn’t be more delighted to collaborate with Tina Turner, who is a legend that I grew up listening to,” Kygo said in a release statement. “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” is one of my all-time favorites, so having the opportunity to remix it has been a really memorable milestone in my career.
Turner also released Tina Turner: My Love Story, which rapidly became a New York Times bestseller. It was her second autobiography, following the renowned I, Tina, which was published in 1986. Turner’s third book, “Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for the Better,” will be released in 2020.
Since her retirement, the eight-time Grammy Award winner has received other major honors, including the Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. She was inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2019 as well as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice: once in 1991 for her work as one half of the duo Ike and Tina Turner and again in 2021 for her extraordinary solo career.
Unfortunately, the megastar has not been immune to health issues as she has gotten older. Turner, who had a stroke and was diagnosed with colon cancer, also had major renal impairment and was placed on dialysis in the mid-2010s.
In her autobiography, My Love Story, the singer confessed that by 2016, she was on the verge of death, with only 20% of her kidneys functional. Her husband, Erwin Bach, was eventually the one who saved her.
“He maintained he didn’t want another woman or a different life; we were happy, and he’d do everything to keep us together,” she wrote. Bach gave his kidney to Turner, and both survived their surgeries in 2017. “His willingness to donate his kidney to me was a gift of love,” the thankful musician revealed.
Turner, on the other hand, confessed that she is aware that she will have health concerns for the rest of her life. “I know my medical journey is far from done,” she added. “It seems like there’s always another test, doctor’s visit, or biopsy to go through after a transplant,” but I’m still around. “We’re both still here, closer than we could have imagined—and that’s reason to rejoice.”