TRIBUTE TO THE ROCK & ROLL ICON

TINA TURNER

Two days after the death of Tina Turner at the age of 83, a report specifies the causes of her death.

As reported by the Daily Mail, the singer died of "natural causes" at her home in Switzerland .

The "queen of rock & roll", however, suffered from many health problems.

The press release announcing her death also indicated that she had died “peacefully at her home in Küsnacht in Switzerland following a long illness”.

"I believed that my body was an untouchable and indestructible bastion."

In 2013, three weeks after her marriage to the Swiss, Erwin Bach, Tina Turner suffered a stroke.

This attack had made the interpreter of What's Love Got to Do With It lose the ability to walk and it took him several months before managing to move normally. "I put myself in great danger".

Three years after her stroke, Tina Turner was also diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2016.

She had to undergo a kidney transplant in April 2017 thanks to the donation of her husband, Erwin Bach.

On March 9, 2023, on the occasion of World Kidney Day, the singer also confided on social networks that she had put herself "in great danger" by not taking enough interest in her health problems. kidneys.

"I didn't realize that my high blood pressure should have been treated with conventional medicine," she said.

And to add: "I put myself in great danger by refusing to see reality in the face: I needed daily drug treatment for life. For too long, I believed that my body was a bastion untouchable and indestructible."

The tumultuous beginnings of the duo The Ike and Tina Turner Revue

Tina Turner, whose real name is Anna Mae Bullock, was born on November 26, 1939 in Nutbush, Tennessee.

Daughter of a worker and a foreman on a farm, she comes from a modest background.

Raised by her grandmother, she spent her childhood in Tennessee with her sister. As a child, she began to sing in the church choir. As a teenager, she joined her mother in Missouri.

Discovered at the age of 18 in Saint-Louis by the rocker Ike Turner, she became one of his choristers and took part in his concerts. In 1960, he asked her to record a duet, A fool in love, which met with great success.

The young woman changes her first name and is now called Tina.

Meanwhile, she marries Ike Turner, and their duo, The Ike and Tina Turner Revue, will experience a succession of hits; River deep, Mountain high, Come together, I want to take you higher…

Indispensable, the duo went on tours during the 60s.

But the aggressive temperament of Ike Turner and his drug addictions plunge the couple adrift in the mid-1970s.

"My relationship with Ike was doomed the day he realized that I was going to become his livelihood," she explained in 2021 to the American channel HBO.

The relationship quickly turns into a nightmare, Ike Turner is violent and beats the singer daily.

She will eventually file for divorce in the late 1970s.

After their separation in 1976, Tina Turner moved away from the stage for a while. In 1978, she returned with her first solo album, Rough, but public reception was mixed.

In 1983, she released Let's stay together in England, which quickly rose to the top of the charts and relaunched her career.

She made her real comeback in 1984 with the release of the album Private Dancer, carried by the hit What's love got to do with it.

Success and love with Erwin Bach

In 1985, she met Erwin Bach, a manager of the EMI record company, in Europe. "We met at Cologne airport, and her manager Roger Davies asked me to pick her up," said Erwin Bach in the documentary "Tina".

At the time, the man was 16 years younger and the singer immediately fell in love with him:

"That was crazy, I thought:

"But where does it come from?"

My heart was beating fast and my hands were shaking," she confided in "Tina."

Tina Turner lives a beautiful and long love story.

The singer then experienced a resurgence of success with two other albums Break Every Rule (1986) and Foreign Affair (1989).

She multiplies artistic collaborations and sings in duet with Bryan Adams (It's only love) and Rod Stewart (It takes two).

She also recorded the soundtrack for the film Jours de Tonnerre (Break through the Barrier).

During the 90s, she released new albums Wildest dreams (1996) and Twenty four Seven (1997).

Since the beginning of the 2000s, Tina Turner has gradually moved away from the front of the stage.

However, it publishes best of; All the best (2004) and Tina! Her greatest hits (2008).

In October 2008, she returned to the stage with a tour after several years of absence. In 2009, Turner retired after completing his Tina!: 50th Anniversary Tour.

At the same time, the singer made some forays into the cinema; Tommy (1975), Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) and Last Action Hero (1993).

In 2000, she made an appearance in the series Ally McBeal. A biopic titled What's Love Got to Do with It is adapted from her autobiography I, Tina: My Life Story.

Her consistent contributions to rock music have earned her the title "Queen of Rock & Roll" ("Queen of Rock & Roll"). In addition to rock, she has also distinguished herself in R'n'B, soul, dance and pop.

She was the first black artist and the first woman to grace the cover of Rolling Stone magazine which listed her among the 100 greatest artists of all time and the 100 greatest singers of all time.

She is one of the most influential African-American singers of the 20th century with Diana Ross and Aretha Franklin.

BEETHOVEN'S HAIR DNA

MAESTRO'S HEALTH SECRETS REVEALED

It is genealogical genetics that arrives to partially lift the veil on the causes of his suffering. In this case Ludwig van Beethoven, the German composer whose DNA, from several strands of hair, could be analyzed in order to determine the causes of his deafness and his death. The work, which took almost eight years to complete, was carried out by an international team led by Johannes Krause, a paleogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, and is published in the journal Current Biology.

It is indeed nearly three meters of hair attributed to the famous composer that an international team of researchers has analyzed in the laboratory. Died of an unknown cause in 1827 at the age of 56, Beethoven nevertheless bequeathed to the world 34 locks of hair, not all of which have been formally authenticated, and eight of which made it possible to carry out these new works published in the Current Biology journal.

These are seven locks, entrusted by various private collectors and museums, which were thus digested by special solutions, and from which the scientists then extracted and analyzed the DNA. "It was a long and complicated process before we could use our sequencing," recalls Tristan Begg, first author of the study, which began in late 2014.

Of the eight samples, three were discarded because the DNA did not match that of the other five.

A genetic predisposition to liver disease

The expectations surrounding this work are high, as the mystery surrounding Beethoven's death persists despite the rich documentation relating to it. These include the composer's own writings and those of his contemporaries kept during his lifetime and after his death, an autopsy, descriptions of his skeleton twice exhumed, but also the literature produced since.

We do know, however, that he suffered from liver disease, the first symptoms of which appeared six years before his death and of which he himself related at least two attacks of jaundice. Given his regular and sometimes heavy consumption of alcohol, cirrhosis of the liver has long been strongly suspected to have led to his death. “A close friend is said to have said that around 1825-1826 Beethoven consumed at least a liter of wine for lunch every day,” the researchers report in the publication.

Thanks to their DNA analysis, they reinforce the credibility of this hypothesis by detecting a genetic predisposition for liver disease. In particular, they detect the presence of two copies (homozygosity) of a variant of the PNPLA3 gene. This finding, however, greatly strengthens the cirrhosis hypothesis.

A deafness that remains mysterious

The researchers also focused on the composer's most famous impairment: his deafness, which occurred in his twenties. Hearing loss with tinnitus, over-perception of sound volume and loss of high frequencies that finally ended his career as an artist in his mid-forties. Unfortunately, no known damage could be identified in Beethoven's DNA.

An illegitimate affair

A surprise however emerged from the comparison of Ludwig van Beethoven's DNA with several of the descendants of his family branch.

The study has indeed highlighted the existence of an illegitimate child in Beethoven's paternal line, which researchers place between the birth of Hendrik van Beethoven in Kampenhout in Flemish Brabant around 1572 and that of the composer seven generations later.