Proud TINA!

Happily retired music legend Tina Turner appeared tonight on the Jonathan Ross Show on ITV. And what incredible joy for us fans to see Tina looking healthy, serein, funny and back in the spotlight for a short while.

Wearing a chic comfy ensemble, the idol arrived on the set of the show with a really cool ‘TINA, The Musical’ bag, the diva opened up about her retirement, her old pals Mick Jagger and David Bowie and of course, the point of the evening, the upcoming musical on her life opening next year in London.

Talking about the upcoming musical, Tina reveals that the story will start all the way back in the cotton fields, being raised by her grandmother in her native Nutbush as well as her debuts in Saint Louis with Ike Turner:

It starts from Nutbush growing up, all the involvment with the coton fields, church house, gin house, school house, out house, it really quite old now but it’s still there… It starts with that, it starts with the grandmother raising me and all of the early stages into moving into teenager and then into St Louis

Later on the show, Jonathan Ross mentions Tina’s collaboration with David Bowie, and the retired singer has some pretty emotional words about her late good friend:

“I saw him, he was performing some place in Brussels and I went to see him and that was the actual last time I went to his dressing room and said hello and talked about the show.

“I remember the last thing he said. He said, ‘I love you Tina’ and I said ‘I love you David.’

The next thing I heard he was sick and then after that I saw Iman and asked her how he was and she said “He is Ok” but they kept it undercover and then the news came through.”

If you are talking about David, you cannot forget to mention Mick whom Tina had just happened to see recently while The Rolling Stones were playing in Zurich. On her past collaborations with Jagger she said:

 “First of all, Mick wanted to do the dance.

“David was just a gentleman, being there in some kind of way, trying to find out what he wanted to do with Tina.

“They were like brothers, kind of like brothers or close, close, close friends and then I ended up doing an album with David and a live show.”

Evidently, even 40 years after her split from Ike Turner, the shadow of the late musician is always there when it comes to interviewers. Tina doesn’t like to dwell on the past and has long forgotten Ike but it seems that as long as there will be interviews, he’ll somehow pop up somewhere in the conversation. When asked about her ex-husband and music partner, the constant abuse she suffered, the absence of freedom, Tina recalls:

I walked out without anything and had to make it on my own for my family and everyone so I just went back to work for myself,” she explained. “It was very difficult and dangerous because Ike was a violent person and at that point, ​he was on drugs and very insecure. I had no money. I had no place to go.

And when Tina found the courage and strength to leave this nightmarish life, one harrowing night in Dallas, she almost lost her own life running across a freeway:

I didn’t measure the speed of a car. I was running across the freeway and this big truck was coming and it (beeped its horn). It felt like it was over me and I thought, ‘Well, I won’t try that again,'” Turner recalled.

“It was just time to not take any more. It was constantly abusive, other things going on, there was no control, there was no freedom, it was just the same this, same this and the violence. You just get fed up and you say, ‘Life is not worth living if I’m going to stay in this situation.

Happy in retirement? Tina Turner certainly is! Unlike many stars, Tina doesn’t crave for the spotlight and her Swiss home is where her heart is. Still having a lot of golden years ahead of her, and to conclude with the words of Jonathan Ross: If someone really deserves the best of retirement, that is you, TINA! You truly earned it! We love you!