CLEVELAND, Ohio - Rock and pop music and pop culture icon Tina Turner has died. Long live the Acid Queen of rock and soul and an icon of perseverance and finding one’s inner strength to move past your pain and remake yourself as whoever you strive to be.
Turner is one of the few two-time Rock Hall inductees having entered as half of Ike and Tina Turner in 1991 and then again in 2021 as a solo performer.
Related Listening: Cle Rocks Live Episode: The Legacy of Tina Turner
Throughout her 50-plus-year career, Turner earned her stellar reputation as one of the most exciting and energetic performers by grinding it out on the road in clubs, lounges and halls on the chitlin’ circuit throughout the South, Northeast and Midwest.
Turner, who died Wednesday at 83 following a lengthy illness and a string of health problems, last performed in Cleveland at Gund Arena in 2000 during her Twenty-Four Seven Tour, but her roots as an R&B and rock-star performer in Northeast Ohio go much further back into the 1960s, when Turner was the star of the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. That show, which featured The Ikettes, frequently stopped in Cleveland to perform multi-night stands at legendary local venues including Leo’s Casino.
An advertisement from June 1966 beckons music fans to come see the Ike & Tina Turner Revue featuring The Ikettes at Leo's Casino.The Plain Dealer
In 1972, The Ike & Tina Revue headlined Blossom Music Center to a crowd of more than 6,000 people and were an hour late to their performance much to the consternation of Plain Dealer reviewer Chris Columbi Jr., who described the frontwoman as “The sexy songstress who brings a tireless energy and an “entrancing vocal quality to the mike.”
In spring 1974, the Ike and Tina Revue played a benefit concert on the campus of Cuyahoga Community College co-sponsored by the school’s Afro-American Society and the Equality Society to help send a group of Tri-C students on a summer trip to Africa. Plain Dealer writer Roland Forte was a fan of Ike and Tina’s, calling them “show biz at its funky best.” And though he chose some outdated language to describe Tina Turner as literally seducing ”her audiences with her savage sweet sex-starved style,” he also praised her for putting some presumably metaphorical “red hot barbecue sauce on every rhythm and blues song she belts out. She pours her whole heart and soul into each song and goes into a frenzy, storefront church style.”
The Ike and Tina Turner Revue played a benefit concert on Tri-C's campus in 1974.The Plain Dealer
In spring 1975, a little more than a year before escaping her abusive husband and bandleader, The Plain Dealer’s Emerson Batdorff got to interview Turner during a press junket for the film “Tommy,” in which she plays the Acid Queen. Her debut acting gig was heralded by fans and critics. Chillingly, after expressing her own desire to record a few more songs from “Tommy” saying she’s “already told Ike,” Turner is asked, “Is Ike in charge?” to which she answers succinctly: ”Absolutely.”
Tina Turner talks to the Plain Dealer about how cornflakes help to keep her energy up on and off stage in a 1975 interview.The Plain Dealer
But Ike wouldn’t be in charge much longer. After leaving him in the summer of 1976, with only pennies and a mountain of bills and back taxes and canceled concert contracts, Turner returned to the stage. Now on her own, Turner had to rebuild her audience and professional life while rebuilding her offstage life by playing two shows a night at cabarets and smaller clubs including Northeast Ohio spots such as The Tangier in Akron and the Palace Theatre in 1978 with the now singular “Tina Turner Revue.”
A year later Turner would meet Australian manager Roger Davies, who would put Turner on the track to become one of the biggest and most admired and unlikely hitmakers and arena-filling popstars of the 1980s.
A 1978 ad touts the "Tina Turner Revue" at The Palace in Cleveland.The Plain Dealer
Turner began her climb to the top with a little help from some of her rock-star friends and admirers including Mick Jagger, who gave her an opening spot on the Rolling Stones’ 1981 tour and David Bowie, who inadvertently helped by allowing a bunch of Capitol record executives to tag along to see Turner, whom he deeply admired as a performer.
The album, “Private Dancer,” was recorded for and released by Capitol Records in 1984, her first record and record contract since 1979′s “Love Explosion,” which went unreleased in the United States. By steep contrast, “Private Dancer” sold millions worldwide and made Turner a big, global pop star and earned her three Grammys, quickly solidifying her rock and roll and pop icon status.
In August 1985, the now hitmaker and co-star of “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” performed her first concert as an arena headliner in Cleveland at the Richfield Coliseum. The Plain Dealer’s Jane Scott was there and praised Turner’s perseverance and performance. “At 45 she has made one of the most dramatic comebacks in pop music history,” Scott wrote.
“Turner’s shows not only have raw energy and gentle sexiness - remember the electric duo with Mick Jagger at Live Aid? - but that illusive something called heart that young things like Madonna don’t have yet. You know Turner’s warming smile is only a wink away. She has an amazing ability to connect with the audience. She made the cavernous Coliseum, seem like the old Agora. Besides, she’s graceful.”
A 1985 review of Tina Turner's first American arena show as a headliner at Richfield Coliseum by Jane Scott.The Plain Dealer
In 1985 Turner was one of the many famous voices to express her written support of the City of Cleveland becoming the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with a letter printed in The Scene praising Cleveland as the birthplace of rock and roll.
Related listening: CLE Rocks: Tina Turner’s Private Dancer Tour Podcast
A few years later during her 1987 “Break Every Rule Tour,” Turner performed at Blossom and charmed the PD’s Michael Heaton, who praised her professionalism and presence. “As it progressed, the show just got better and better due largely to Tina’s wonderful stage presence. She hasn’t been pounding the boards for 30 years for nothing,’ Heaton wrote.
“A consummate pro, the chanticleer chanteuse deftly balanced sweetness and sexiness. One minute she was clowning, the next she was alluring.” he wrote.
A few years later, in 1993, Turner returned to Cleveland as a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer alongside her ex-husband Ike during her “What’s Love’ tour, which managed to slip through the PD’s live review cracks,. But when 58-year-old Turner returned for her penultimate Cleveland performance in 1997 during her “Wildest Dreams Tour,” she was beyond being an improbable comeback pop star story or a living, breathing and still working inspiration or a Rock Hall inductee. Turner was an icon for women of all ages, for all domestic-violence survivors, and for anyone who had suffered through personal and professional pain and indignities without ever losing their dignity.
The PD’s Mike Norman was impressed by the soon-to-be sexagenarian’s seemingly boundless energy and talent, saying in part that Turner, “put on a show last night in Gund Arena that probably would have sent Eddie Vedder and his pals in Pearl Jam huffing and puffing to the nearest emergency room.”
The Plain Dealer praised Tina Turner's 1997 concert at Gund Arena.The Plain Dealer
Turner made her final tour stop in Cleveland during her first “final tour,” in October 2000. The now-beloved icon, who was a little more than a month away from her 61st birthday, performed to a near sold-out crowd despite having already performed in Cleveland in the spring of the same year. Freelancer Anastasia Pantsios noted that though it was her alleged final tour and her birthday was nearby, “her retirement was hardly dictated by a depletion of energy or vocal skills.”
The Plain Dealer gave Tina Turner's final show in Cleveland a positive review.The Plain Dealer
Turner toured again for her 50th anniversary in 2008-09 but unfortunately, Cleveland didn’t make the U.S. itinerary. Following that tour, which ended in England in May 2009, Turner kept a fairly low public profile for much of the remaining years of her life and was unable to attend her 2021 induction as a solo artist into the Rock Hall but sent a taped acceptance speech.