Tina Review – how does an icon say goodbye to life in the public eye?
Female music artists are having their moment on the small screen. From Billie Holiday to Billie Eilish, Demi Lovato and Britney Spears, the spotlight is on female musicians. Next up? Tina Turner.
Directed by Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin, Tina is a personal and revealing documentary on the life and career of the queen of rock and roll. Structured into five parts, each based on one of her iconic songs, it tells the full story from her abusive marriage to American musician Ike Turner to swapping the States for the UK in the 1980s. Created from a combination of archive footage, interviews with friends such as Angela Bassett and Oprah Winfrey, and conversations with Turner herself (now 81), it is Tina Turner in her own words.
The feature, and Turner’s story, began in 1939 Nutbush, Tennessee. She was known by a different name then, Anna Mae Bullock. At the age of 17, Turner met Ike in St Louis, when she and her sister went to see his band perform. Eventually she persuaded the drummer to pass her the microphone and Turner cast her musical spell for the first time. She was soon singing with them every weekend. A legend was born, but so was her relationship with Ike.
The abuse soon followed. The documentary respectfully embeds its narrative in the toxic partnership she had with Ike, who changed her name without permission to Tina Turner in 1962. After performing on stage each night, Turner often came home to black eyes, beatings from shoe stretchers, boiling hot coffee scalding her body and sexual abuse.
After nearly 16 years, she had enough. In a cab ride from the airport to their hotel one night, she hit back for the first time. When Ike was later asleep in the hotel room she snuck out, took a flight at 3am and went into hiding. It was the 4th July – Independence Day.
But Turner held her silence until 1981. In People Magazine interview with Carl Arrington, she set the record straight. The documentary then turns to footage of a Turner reborn; unapologetically herself outrunning the shadow of her former spouse. At times, it would catch up to her, such is life in the public eye, but it would no longer control her.
Reclaiming her name in their divorce and redefining beauty standards, Turner went to work taking to stage after stage with her newfound look of wild shorter hair and even shorter spangly dresses. Never to be described as the comeback kid, she defines her success that followed the 1984 Private Dancer album as the beginning of her life. She was 40-years-old. Completing her final round of performances,Tina!: 50th Anniversary Tour, at 70-years-old, Turner is a force of nature not to be reckoned with.
She filled stadiums with 186,000 people, had countless number-ones and conquered the silver screen, but there was still something missing – love. After abuse and heartbreak, she was hesitant to fall in love again. Then, at Düsseldorf Airport in 1985, she met German music executive Erwin Bach.
Part five of the feature introduces the birth of their love story as the narrative begins to draw to a close. Asked if he could pick up Turner by her manager, Roger Davies, the airport collection transformed Turner and Bach’s lives forever. Still smitten, a giggling Turner looks beyond the camera to ask Bach, hidden from sight, how many years later it was they wed, and an affectionate German accent responds with “27 years”. Over one hour into the programme, Bach’s presence makes her demeanour changes entirely. What does love have to do with it? A great deal.
More than a story of her life, this documentary is a farewell. A voiceover from Turner in the closing few minutes poses a question, “how do you bow out slowly?” After a life in the public eye, this is her way to do it. A montage of the music icon waving to crowds from various tours and performances takes on this charge.
The audience now knows the story, so it can come to an end. The woman who taught Mick Jagger to boogie has hung up her dancing shoes for the last time. Before she goes, the documentary is an extraordinary insight to the life of an electrifying woman. Sensual, strong and mesmerising, Turner and her music were one in the same – simply the best.