TINA TURNER STILL SMOLDERS ON LAST TOUR

When offered a role in Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of The Color Purple, Tina Turner graciously declined, explaining that she did not want to portray a hard-luck character. Her real life was tough enough.

But it was that roller-coaster past that molded her into a performer who, as she proclaimed in her 1971 hit Proud Mary, likes to sing it both easy and rough. And it is that rough, soulful side of Turner that has attracted audiences for 30 years.

Turner turns 60 next month and has decided that this big arena tour will be her last. But in this era of Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys, she still puts performers one-third her age to shame. She is part of the rare breed of truly electrifying performers, a singular artist who does not need VH-1 to designate her a diva.

She is also the queen of the comeback. No rock artist has returned from virtual obscurity the way Turner did in 1984 with her hit album Private Dancer, which featured her now-signature song, What’s Love Got to Do With It and has since sold 11 million copies.

It has been four years since her pop-oriented Wildest Dreams album, and her new release, Twenty Four Seven, continues on the path of pop acceptance. It is a more universal route than r&b; and soul, but sometimes a less satisfying one. Fortunately, Turner has grit deeply imbedded in her vocal cords, and even with the most insipid song, she sounds passionate.

On record, Turner is certainly a force to be reckoned with, but it is from her propulsive live performance that she has earned her title as queen of rock ‘n’ roll. Although her choreography, which has inspired such artists as Mick Jagger, has slowed down a bit, Turner is still a visual dervish onstage.

Raised in the small town of Nutbush, Tenn., the former Anna Mae Bullock rose to fame as Mrs. Ike Turner, singing with his Kings of Rhythm and later partnering with him in the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. Her big break was in 1960, when a singer failed to show up for a recording session. In what was to become another in a series of dramatic, cinematic-type moments in the entertainer’s turbulent life, Turner filled in for the missing singer and ended up recording her first hit single, Like a Fool.

The Turners enjoyed a series of r&b; hits in the 1960s and 1970s, including Nutbush City Limits, It’s Gonna Work Out Fine and River Deep, Mountain High. But their marriage turned violent, and Turner left both her husband and her successful career.

She made herself over, becoming a Buddhist and regaining enough self-confidence to strike out on her own. Impoverished (she was on food stamps) and ignored by the music industry, which once fawned over her, she saw a glut of r&b; singers finding success in a field where she had paved the way.

Things began to turn around for her as she took on several projects, including the role of the Acid Queen in the film adaptation of the rock opera Tommy. But the life-changing moment was in Las Vegas, where she was performing, and where she was discovered by Roger Davies. He became her manager, soon strategizing the most emotional comeback in rock history.

Davies did two major things to turn Turner’s career around: He had her perform in the New York rock club the Ritz, and he established her as a success in Great Britain, where her single Let’s Stay Together reached No. 6 on the charts. Suddenly, Tina Turner was hip.

In the spring of 1984, Lionel Richie invited Turner to join his Can’t Slow Down Tour. She returned the 16-year-old favor by having Richie, who has fallen on hard times, open for her on the first leg of her Twenty Four Seven Tour. Joe Cocker is her opening act on the current leg of the tour, which is scheduled Wednesday at National Car Rental Center in Sunrise.

Thanks to the single What’s Love Got to Do With It, Turner quickly became the hottest commodity in entertainment. She starred with Mel Gibson in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome; performed with Mick Jagger at Live Aid; was featured on the biggest-selling single, the all-star We Are the World; wrote a best-selling autobiography, I, Tina, and saw her life story reach the big screen in the film What’s Love Got to Do With It. She also won four Grammys the next year, including record of the year. In 1991, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Twenty Four Seven is Turner’s 10th album. Besides becoming an international recording sensation, she has also become one of the hottest tickets on the touring circuit, shattering attendance records around the world.

And those famous long legs of hers? They have their own career advertising pantyhose.

With Twenty Four Seven and the new tour, a two-hour retrospective of her career, Turner is again in the spotlight. She is going all out on this tour, with a 12-piece band, backup singers and five dancers. (Expect some real action from these Tina Tuner-styled dancers; they are not the run-of-the-mill robotic entourage usually seen at contemporary concerts.) In concert she performs incendiary versions of her early r&b; hits, such as A Fool in Love and River Deep. Of course, there’s What’s Love Got To Do With It, Private Dancer and new songs — When the Heartache’s Over and Whatever You Need, the slinky opening track from Twenty Four Seven.

Turner hired Brian Rawling and Mark Taylor (the masterminds behind Cher’s recent vocoder-distorted disco comeback I Believe) to produce the title track for the new album, and although the final result is a Cherlike catchy dance tune, she has undermined her own influence on contemporary music. (Such important artists as Janis Joplin have cited Turner as an influence.) But Turner doesn’t need such accouterments as disco beats and vocoders; she has her distinctive, unabandoned gospel-singer-gone-bad style that does not need to follow Cher’s lead.

Turner is still the smoldering vocalist she always was and she still knows how to entertain. Her unrestrained power and singular talent will be sorely missed when this larger-than-life diva stops touring.