AK's column: Lessons learned from Tina Turner
{Photo Credit: Adobe}
“People think my life has been tough, but I think it has been a wonderful journey. The older you get, the more you realize it’s not what happens, but how you deal with it.” ~The late Tina Turner
Somewhere between five and six years old on Lexington’s Longview Street, I soaked up Tina Turner’s songs dripping with complexities. Tina Turner transitioned on May 24, 2023, at the age of 83. A representative said she died peacefully after a long illness in her home in Küsnacht near Zurich, Switzerland. Now my close to 45-year-old mind is stretching to fully comprehend.
Rosalyn, Maudiette and I shared a love of the Queen of Rock N’ Roll. We danced in the living room of our apartment to “Proud Mary” and later “Simply the Best.” My favorite childhood song was Private Dancer, which was a selection my mother quickly disapproved of as a preschooler’s anthem.
Mom was right; it would take a more mature mind to fully unpack the beauty of not just Tina’s words but the heavy voice that carried so many through pain.
I did not feel what the adults in the room heard, and I liked “the private dancer song.” Leave it to the youngest to innocently wonder what was wrong with someone getting paid to dance?
Private Dancer was a controversial ballad on Turner’s fifth solo studio album bearing the same name. It was released on May 29, 1984 after several challenging years of going solo after divorcing Ike Turner. Private Dancer is said to have “propelled Turner into becoming a viable solo star.”
Rolling Stone claimed to know, “Few would have predicted Tina Turner’s triumphant comeback in 1984, when Private Dancer put her on top of the album charts – least of all, perhaps, Turner herself…With 36 cents to her name, Turner slipped away when her husband was asleep, escaping their hotel room in Dallas and making her way to a friend’s house. She found a good Samaritan in the shape of a lawyer friend, who paid for an airplane ticket for her to Los Angeles… Initially, she eked out a living by doing a cleaning job to pay her rent.”
After her divorce from Ike, in 1978, Turner began taking steps to begin a new career as a solo performer. She had recorded albums under her own name “unsuccessfully.”
Ironically, I was born the year of Turner’s divorce. I was too young to understand the meaning of the lyrics, but I could intrinsically hear triumph in her voice. The little girl in me knew that her voice would be viable even if people “didn’t like her private dancing.” Mom did not appreciate my adoration of Private Dancer so I flipped the record to "I Might Have Been Queen." We could openly rock out to the song where writers turned Turner’s small-town life, starting with the cotton fields in Nutbush, Tennessee, to a future Pharoah slighted from the throne. Yes, writer folks tend to make music “complicated.”
Fast forward, I am thankful for this misty Memorial weekend. Holiday weekends are the busiest for people in journalism, media and marketing. My ritual for honoring Memorial Day weekend was slightly interrupted by rain and the need to unpack heroes, queens, sovereignty and loss. I’ve found another thing I wanted to read or write about with every drip. I’ve enjoyed listening to the rain, dancing and remembrance.
Documentaries have also become one of my favorite sources. Learning more about the mysterious myth we called Tina Turner— one who sold over 100 million records worldwide. I credit an interview with Angela Bassett for insight. The Oscar-nominated “What’s Love Got to Do With It” actor said it best.
“It’s hard when the worst parts of your life have been an inspiration,” Bassett said. “Watching the 2021 documentary that Tina called her goodbye to the public, I also understood how she was retraumatized over the decades by interviewers who asked her to describe, again and again, how she got away from Ike, while overlooking greater career accomplishments that were disconnected from her ex-husband. And that was on top of the racism and sexism she faced in the music industry.”
In the words of her iconic song, “We Don’t Need Another Hero,” so let’s not call her THAT. We use the word hero too often. If all is fair, then heroes are unnecessary.
Turner’s thoughts were recently printed in British Vogue; “What does well-lived mean?” she pondered. “My life has been full, but with lots of sad times that I now forgive and strive to forget. Maybe that’s the answer: to keep moving forward, to let go and aim to fill your life with love. That is where I am now and I am grateful.”
From one small-town girl to another, I thank Tina Turner for teaching us how to handle things. We hold our heads high; move forward and master this complex “dance” we call “life.” I will resist the urge to use the “Hero” word — this time.
So, Rest in Power Tina Turner. Thank you for sharing your personal story with the world. All hail the not so “private dancer” and mighty “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll.”
