The queen of our souls With the tank delivery, Switzerland only gains some time

The queen is dead Let’s grieve and put it on a disc or put in a CD and she’ll hurtle across the stage again, the way she used to, until her seventh decade. That explosion of energy, that powerful voice, those spinning legs, those flowing hair. She screamed her heart out. She always gave her all and that’s why her audience loved her unconditionally.

The lyrics of their songs were pure life, hard life. “Private Dance” is about a woman who dances for money for horny men who all look the same and have no name – “you think about the money and you look at the wall,” she sings, trying to be laconic, but actually death is sad. At its core, “Proud Mary” also tells the story of a woman who does lousy odd jobs and only sees the beautiful parts of the city from the river, which she sails down in the steamer.

Or “Steamy Windows”: The windows in the car are cracked due to the body heat generated by the couple in the backseat during sex. It is what it is, she’s not complaining. The man, her baby, has no face, no name. Only his body exhalation is worth mentioning.

“Nice and easy” is nothing in this life, at most “nice and rough”. Tina Turner’s lyrics come from a hard life and of course she sings stories with the experience of a black woman. She was born in 1939 in the small town of Brownsville, deep in Tennessee. The Southern United States 83 years ago: pure racism. Black and white segregation.

Tina Turner was in her mid-twenties when the president, whose name was Lyndon B. Johnson, sent the National Guard to the stubborn South so that women and men of color could go to white schools, not sit in the back of the bus, and so on.

Music saved her from this bipolar world. A man named Ike Turner had been in a popular band for years and Anna Mae Bullock, Tina’s first name, was allowed to sing backing vocals and then lead the mic at the front. We know enough about Ike from two autobiographies published under the name Tina Turner. He was a criminal. A tyrant.

Ike & Tina Turner is inextricably linked to a beautiful, touching, touching song: «River deep, mountain high». The funny origin story is worth telling. Producer Phil Specter, then a big name in Los Angeles (and convicted of murder many years later), gave Ike $20,000 to stay away from the studio. It took five sessions, 21 prominent studio musicians participated and 21 backing singers helped out. Also jumping around the studio were Dennis Hopper and Mick Jagger. It was mixed and sampled until one of the greatest songs in recent music history was pressed to disc.

From that moment on it went musically uphill with Ike & Tina Turner. They were booked as the opening act for the Rolling Stones. They hit the charts. They succeeded. But Tina was too unhappy to enjoy the triumph. So unhappy that in 1976 she took over her husband’s tax debts and divorced.

Now she was free, 37 years old, had several children and had to start all over again. She played in small clubs for a few people. Their albums sold poorly. Others would have broken. Women had a damn hard time anyway in the male-dominated business. But Tina Turner didn’t give up. And she met manager Roger Davies, who recognized her talent and turned her into the stunning stage star, the queen of our souls.

Davies first got her guest starring roles on Tom Jones, Rod Stewart, David Bowie. Then she finally stood on her own stage. It had taken her almost ten years to get from the bottom to the top. “What’s love got to do with it?” she now sings, the love song of a woman who is careful from experience, because “who needs a heart, when a heart can be broken”. The tone is new, the story is different, the woman Tina sings about thinks of love. The song now has a meta level. Tina Turner, a woman in her 40s, is now at the peak of her abilities.

She’s on tour. Fill big houses, big arenas. It enters the Guinness Book of World Records for filling Rio’s Maracaña Stadium with 188,000 spectators. She has fans all over the world. Sell ​​their records and CDs. She meets a man, Erwin Bach from Cologne, music manager of her record company, 16 years younger, but who cares. The two marry in a Buddhist ceremony. A musical about her life is coming out, authorized by her.

She lives in Switzerland, she even becomes Swiss. But the diseases are on the rise. Shortly after the wedding, she suffered a stroke. She has kidney disease; Erwin Bach implanted his kidney in her. You can’t think about performances anymore.

She passed away on Wednesday evening. We think of you. To the podium storm! The timelessness! Her voice! Of this life that was no longer rough until late. She remains the Queen of Brownsville, a great fighter to bow to.

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