Tina Turner (1939 - 2023)

“I got to thinking that maybe I was such a mixture of things that it was beyond black-or-white, beyond just cultures — that I was universal!” (I, Tina: My Life Story, 1986)

Turner Performing in 1987 (photo by Bertrand Guay)

I never got closer than a Broadway musical to Ms. Turner, who hovered in the background of my musical appreciation (mostly because of my youthful passions for the Rolling Stones and Creedence Clearwater Revival, and her crimson turn as the Acid Queen in Ken Russell's delirious film of the Who's Tommy), until the release of Private Dancer in 1984 which coincided with the launch of the CD player.  Why do I remember this detail?  Because Bartley, a friend of Barnet's who stripped and deejayed at the Gaiety Theater, played the title song for us on his new-fangled machine as if it were a hymn.  The weary cynicism of "What's Love Got To Do With It?" perfectly reflected by own romantic ambivalence after the break-up of my only long-term relationship.  I aspired to come out of it half as well as the glorious Tina.  Her give-it-all-everytime energy and megawatt smile reflected a positivity as powerful as the sun in spite of every shitty thing that had befallen her.  No victim she, and her refusal to watch Laurence Fishburne beat up Angela Bassett struck me as being the healthiest possible response to the kind of fame she had achieved.  Has there ever been a finer avatar for the American work ethic?  How many stories have an ending as happy as Tina's?  Girl, you were the best!

More People I Loved:

Burt Bacharach

Angela Lansbury

Queen Elizabeth II

Sidney Poitier

Joan Didion

Stephen Sondheim

Edward Albee

Muhammad Ali