Tina Turner, the American-born singer who left a hardscrabble farming community and abusive relationship to become one of the top recording artists of all time, died on Wednesday at the age of 83. 

She died peacefully after a long illness in her home in Küsnacht near Zurich, Switzerland, her representative said.

Turner began her career in the 1950s during the early years of rock and roll and evolved into an MTV phenomenon.

In the video for her chart-topping song “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” in which she called love a “second-hand emotion,” Turner epitomized 1980s style as she strutted through New York City streets with her spiky blond hair, wearing a cropped jean jacket, mini skirt, and stiletto heels.

With her taste for musical experimentation and bluntly-worded ballads, Turner gelled perfectly with a 1980s pop landscape in which music fans valued electronically-produced sounds and scorned hippie-era idealism.

Sometimes nicknamed the “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Turner won six of her eight Grammy Awards in the 1980s. The decade saw her land a dozen songs on the Top 40, including “Typical Male,” “The Best,” “Private Dancer” and “Better Be Good to Me.”

Her 1988 show in Rio de Janeiro drew 180,000 people, which remains one of the largest concert audiences for any single performer.

By then, Turner had been free from her marriage to guitarist Ike Turner for a decade. The superstar was forthcoming about the abuse she suffered from her former husband during their marital and musical partnership in the 1960s and 1970s.

She described bruised eyes, busted lips, a broken jaw and other injuries that repeatedly sent her to the emergency room.

“Tina’s story is not one of victimhood but one of incredible triumph,” singer Janet Jackson wrote about Turner, in a Rolling Stone issue that placed Turner at No. 63 on a list of the top 100 artists of all time.

“She’s transformed herself into an international sensation – an elegant powerhouse,” Jackson said.

In 1985, Turner gave a fictional turn to her reputation as a survivor. She played the ruthless leader of an outpost in a nuclear wasteland, acting opposite Mel Gibson in the third instalment in the Mad Max franchise, “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.”

Most of Turner’s hit songs were written by others, but she enlivened them with a voice that New York Times music critic Jon Pareles called “one of the more peculiar instruments in pop.”

“It’s three-tiered, with a nasal low register, a yowling, cutting middle range and a high register so startlingly clear it sounds like a falsetto,” Pareles wrote in a 1987 concert review.

‘One-horse town’

She was born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26, 1939, in the rural Tennessee community of Nutbush, which she described in her 1973 song “Nutbush City Limits” as a “quiet little old community, a one-horse town.”

Her father worked as an overseer on a farm and her mother left the family when the singer was 11 years old, according to the singer’s 2018 memoir “My Love Story.” As a teenager, she moved to St. Louis to rejoin her mom.

Ike Turner, whose 1951 song “Rocket 88” has often been called the first rock and roll record, discovered her at age 17 when she grabbed the mic to sing at his club show in St. Louis in 1957.

The band leader later recorded a hit song, “A Fool In Love,” with his protégé and gave her the stage name Tina Turner, before the two married in Tijuana, Mexico.

Tina employed her strong voice and strenuously rehearsed dance routines as lead vocalist in an ensemble called the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. She collaborated with members of rock royalty, including The Who and Phil Spector, in the 1960s and 1970s and appeared on the cover of issue two of Rolling Stone magazine in 1967.

Ike and Tina Turner bounced between record labels, owing much of their commercial success to a relentless touring schedule. Their biggest hit was a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary.”

Turner left her husband one night in 1976 on a tour stop in Dallas, after he pummelled her during a car ride and she struck back, according to her memoir. Their divorce was finalized in 1978.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducted Ike and Tina Turner in 1991, calling them “one of the most formidable live acts in history.” Ike Turner died in 2007.

Europe bound

After leaving her husband, Turner spent years struggling to regain the limelight, releasing solo albums and singles that flopped and gigging at corporate conferences.

In 1980, she met new manager Roger Davies, an Australian music executive who went on to manage her for three decades.  That led to a solo no.1 – “What’s Love Got to Do With It” – and then in 1984 her album “Private Dancer” landed her at the top of the charts.

“Private Dancer” went on to become Turner’s biggest album, the capstone of a career that saw her sell more than 200 million records in total.

In 1985 Turner met German music executive Erwin Bach who became her long-term partner and in 1988 she moved to London, beginning a decades-long residency in Europe. She released two studio albums in the 1990s that sold well, especially in Europe, recorded the theme song for 1995 Bond movie “GoldenEye,” and staged a successful world tour in 2008 and 2009.

After that, she retired from show business. She married Bach, relinquishing her U.S. citizenship and becoming a citizen of Switzerland.

She battled a number of health problems after retiring and in 2018 she faced a family tragedy, when her oldest son, Craig, took his life at age 59 in Los Angeles. Her younger son Ronnie died in December 2022.

Her name continues to draw audiences years after her retirement. Musical stage show “TINA: The Tina Turner Musical,” with Adrienne Warren initially acting and singing the star’s life story, was a hit first in London’s West End in 2018, and later on Broadway, and is still running. And in 2021 HBO released a documentary about her life, “Tina.”

She is survived by Bach and two sons of Ike’s that she adopted.

Source: REUTERS

Over 10,000 Hollywood movie and television writers have gone on strike Tuesday due to unstable working conditions and pay, marking the first time US TV and film productions have taken a grinding halt after 15 years of labor peace.

After failed negotiations with studios and streamers, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) called for a work stoppage demanding higher pay, minimum guarantees of stable employment, and a larger cut of the profits from the booming streaming industry.

The strike could have catastrophic effects on the US entertainment industry as late-night shows will come to an immediate stop and television series and movies scheduled for later this year will face major delays.

According to WGA statistics, half of TV series writers now make minimum wage, as the average payment for a senior writer has dropped 4 percent over the past decade.

While writers’ pay has decreased, the entertainment industry has paid executives extravagant salaries including a total of one billion dollars to the top twelve media executives in 2021.

The issue of artificial intelligence (AI) is yet another one up for discussion. The WGA wants to put safeguards in place to prevent studios from using AI to create new scripts from existing text. Additionally, writers wish to avoid being asked to revise AI-created draft scripts.

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which negotiates on behalf of Comcast Corp, Disney, Warner Bros Discovery, Netflix, and hundreds of production companies, said in a statement that its offer included “generous increases in compensation for writers.”

The studio also stated that it is committed to reaching a fair agreement and is still willing to engage in further talks.

Meanwhile, the union, representing the writers, said in a statement that they had “unanimously voted to strike.”

Other Hollywood labor unions, including the actors’ SAG-AFTRA and the directors’ DGA, have expressed their support for the writers as they plan to hold separate talks with studios this summer.

The WGA stated, “Here is what all writers know: the companies have broken this business.”

“They have taken so much from the very people, the writers, who have made them wealthy.”

The last WGA strike, in 2007 and 2008 lasted 100 days while costing the California economy an estimated $2.1 billion as a result of production being halted.

Source: Presstv

In Cameroon, hundreds of singers are using their voices to call for a cease-fire between the military and separatist forces in restive western regions. The conflict has killed thousands of people and displaced 750,000 since 2017.

In the courtyard of the Yaoundé city council, the singers performed songs calling for an end to the killing and destruction of property in the restive Northwest and Southwest regions.

Among the several hundred civilians listening to the singers is Dieudonne Bitam, a 24-year-old university student. Bitam said the songs speak to the conscience of Cameroonians who live in fear and uncertainty.

The peace singers are pulling in crowds because their music includes traditional rhythms from all the regions of Cameroon, he said, so the songs appeal to people of all generations and of different social, cultural, religious and professional backgrounds.

Similar events, organized by Cameroonian Artists for Peace, will take place in towns and villages across the central African state, the organizers say.

In the songs, the artists ask communities in safer localities to accommodate displaced persons. They also request fighters and government troops in conflict areas to observe a cease-fire so peace can return.

The singers say they will not travel to towns and villages prone to regular separatist attacks. They say singers and choral groups in western towns and villages where clashes are ongoing should sing in public squares when possible.

Ateh Francis, board chair of the Cameroon Musical Art Corporation SONACAM, said the singers are tired of the bloodshed, rape, maiming, stealing and abduction for ransom in the two western regions where separatist forces are fighting to set up an English-speaking state.

He said SONACAM assisted the artists in their peace caravan.

“These songs that call for peace and reconciliation are released by artists who are expressing concerns on the sufferings of the people and hoping to touch hearts,” he said. “The artists themselves are living and suffering with the people and decide to put it in song, hoping to touch the hearts of the government [officials] and the boys [fighters] to sit down and solve this problem, which is bringing untold suffering to our people.”

The large-scale appeal for peace by singers in Cameroon is the first since separatist crisis degenerated to an armed conflict in the central African state in 2017.

The peace singers say they rely on personal contributions and assistance from well-wishers to organize the musical peace caravans.

The governors of Cameroon’s restive northwest and southwest regions say they support all efforts to restore peace but insist that fighters who do not surrender and drop their weapons will be killed. Separatists also say they support the initiative, but fighters will continue their struggle for self-determination.

The separatist conflict broke out in 2016 when Anglophone Cameroonians protested what they said was discrimination by the Francophone majority.

The U.N. says fighting has since killed at least 3,500 people and displaced at least three-quarters of a million.

The singers are performing songs in both English and French, hoping to appeal to both sides of the conflict.

Source: VOA

A former president, a world-famous Hollywood director and a rock music icon walk into a restaurant.

It sounds like the setup to a joke, but staff at Amar restaurant in Barcelona witnessed just that on Thursday night.

Employees were left in shock when 44th US president Barack Obama, director Steven Spielberg and musician Bruce Springsteen walked in unannounced.

Chef Rafa Zafra said Amar had been suggested by Spanish-American celebrity restaurateur José Andrés.

“They came recommended by José Andrés, who has a very close relationship with Obama,” Mr Zafra told Spanish radio.

Mr Zafra said José Andrés told him that the booking was important. It was then that he realised that Mr Obama and his wife Michelle were in the city to attend a Springsteen concert, as was Spielberg.

Staff member Pol Perello uploaded a photo of them posing with wait staff and chefs to Instagram with the comment: “The pleasure this job brings you!”

“We gave them oysters, shellfish and fish from Roses, my classic – the caviar bikini – a little bit of everything… and super grateful!” Mr Zafra said.

Accompanied by security detail, the Obamas and Spielberg used Friday to visit some of Barcelona’s most famous sights, such as the Sagrada Familia basilica and the Picasso museum.

Springsteen’s E Street band began their European leg of their tour on Friday at the city’s Olympic Stadium.

The former president first met the rock legend on the presidential campaign trail in 2008. In 2021, they hosted the podcast Renegades: Born in the USA.

Source: BBC