TINA TURNER 1939-2023 On Silent Wings

The music legend dies after battling a long illness — inside her final days

When Tina Turner turned 80, in November 2019, she made a video for her fans reflecting on the milestone. “Yes, I’m 80. How did I think I would be at 80?” she wondered. “Well, I look great,” she said with a laugh — and she did. “I feel good. I’ve gone through some very serious sicknesses that I am overcoming. So it’s like having a second chance at life.”

But, sadly, nearly four years later, on May 24, Tina passed away after a “long illness,” her publicist, Bernard Doherty, said, at her home near Zurich in Switzerland. The singer, who crawled out of the depths of abuse and despair to reinvent herself in the 1980s, underwent a kidney transplant — with her husband, Erwin Bach, as her donor — in 2017 after being diagnosed with intestinal cancer and kidney failure. “With her,” Doherty said in a statement, “the world loses a music legend and a role model.”

SURVIVAL STORY