It’s difficult to realise that the great Tina Turner has died.
According to sources, the (Simply) The Best singer died on May 24 at her home in Switzerland after struggling with health concerns for several years.
Needless to say, tributes have poured in for the legendary singer, dubbed “the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” Of all, such an outpouring of sadness is only appropriate when all of Turner’s hardships and tribulations are considered, almost all of which she was able to overcome.
After all, the Brownsville-born singer’s remarkable journey to the top of the entertainment business was anything but smooth.
Turner severed all links after her divorce from Ike in order to start a fresh life for herself. Unfortunately, some indicate that this resulted in a breach in the singer’s connection with Ike’s children, whom Tina adopted after marrying their father.
Ike Turner Jr., Ike Turner’s biological son and Tina Turner’s adopted son, is now a Grammy-winning producer and performer. However, his path to fame, like Turner’s, was far from easy.
His parents’ relationship, Ike Turner and Lorraine Taylor, dissolved while he was a child, but when his father began dating Tina Turner, a new motherly figure entered his life.
Tina became a stepmother to Ike Turner Jr. and his brother, Michael, when the couple married.
Given their father’s six marriages, the siblings were no strangers to many women in their life, but by all accounts, Tina was the one they most identified with being there.
Of course, as we all know now, Ike and Tina’s marriage was doomed to fail, with Tina suffering years of violence and abuse at the hands of her husband. Then, one day, she mustered the resolve to go, leaving Ike – and his children – behind.
Turner’s disappearance was a blow to Ike Jr., and not just because she had played a significant role in providing Jr. with the tools he needed to follow in his parents’ footsteps into the music industry.
“My father took me out of school when I was 13,” Ike Jr. once stated. I ended up overseeing his recording facility and accompanying them on tour. My father used to make me count the money they made on tour.
According to sources, after Turner departed – 16 years after marrying Ike Jr.’s father – her connection with Ike Jr. and his brother Michael deteriorated to the point where neither of them spoke with the lady who had been their stepmother for so long
Ike Jr. previously stated that the last time he spoke with his stepmother was about 2000, and that he doubted his siblings had heard from her since then.
Ike Jr., on the other hand, went on to find professional success, with an album he produced for his father winning a Grammy in 2007.
Turner moved to Switzerland in 1995 and became a Swiss citizen shortly after marrying Erwin Bach in 2013. Tina and her husband acquired a house on Lake Zurich.