Tina Turner Cause of Death: What to Know

Tina Turner died from natural causes, her representative told The Daily Mail on May 25, the day after her death was announced. The legendary rock ‘n’ roll singer, whose powerful voice drove hits like “Proud Mary” and “What’s Love Got to Do With It” to the top of the charts, died on May 24 in Zurich, Switzerland.

The specific cause of death has not been announced, although Turner was open about suffering from kidney disease due to decades of untreated high blood pressure. She also battled intestinal cancer in 2016. Previously, Turner’s publicist said she passed away peacefully after a long illness.

“Tina Turner, the ‘Queen of Rock’n Roll’ has died peacefully today at the age of 83 after a long illness in her home in Kusnacht near Zurich, Switzerland,” her representative told The Guardian on May 24. “With her, the world loses a music legend and a role model.”

Turner, born Anna Mae Bullock, began her career in the late 1950s as a member of her abusive ex-husband Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm. The two performed as Ike & Tina Turner into the 1970s, before their divorce in 1978. In the 1980s, she pulled off one of the greatest comebacks in entertainment history with a string of solo hits throughout the decade. Turner’s life was the subject of a jukebox musical and the 2021 documentary Tina. She also wrote three memoirs.

Turner met German music executive Erwin Bach in 1986, and they finally married in July 2013. She moved to Switzerland in 1994 and became a Swiss citizen in 2013. In her 2018 memoir My Love Story, Turner revealed that Bach donated one of his kidneys to her as her own continued deteriorating. By 2016, they were at “20 percent and plunging rapidly.” Bach’s offer “shocked” Turner, who was “overwhelmed by the enormity of his offer.”

Three weeks after her wedding to Bach, the “Proud Mary” and “Private Dancer” singer suffered a stroke and needed to learn to walk again. Turner told Oprah Winfrey in 2018 she experienced chest pains on the day of her wedding. “I have an old chest pain that actually I first felt in my 40s. It never left me. I have checked now, even still, all kinds of MRIs and X-Rays,” she said at the time. “They can’t find a thing but they end up thinking that it was something when you swallow, sometimes it spasms.”

In My Love Story, Turner also noted her “medical adventure is far from over,” although she felt “no pain” from intestinal cancer. “I had no pain but my body was reacting from cancer in the colon, from the kidney failure,” she wrote. “It sounds like it continues and goes on and it does. All of that was happening to the body but there was no pain, so I felt like what is it to the doctors. They were like we don’t know.”

Turner had two children, Raymond Craig, with Raymond Hill; and Ronald “Ronnie” Renelle Turner, with Ike. Raymond died of suicide in July 2018. Ronnie died after a battle with colon cancer in December 2022. 

The Grammy Award winner was mourned by equally iconic stars after her passing. The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger wrote, “I’m so saddened by the passing of my wonderful friend Tina Turner. She was truly an enormously talented performer and singer. She was inspiring, warm, funny and generous. She helped me so much when I was young and I will never forget her.”

Oprah Winfrey wrote, “I started out as a fan of Tina Turner, then a full-on groupie, following her from show to show around the country, and then, eventually, we became real friends. She is our forever goddess of rock ‘n’ roll who contained a magnitude of inner strength that grew throughout her life. She was a role model not only for me but for the world. She encouraged a part of me I didn’t know existed.

“Once she claimed her freedom from years of domestic abuse, her life became a clarion call for triumph. I’m grateful for her courage, for showing us what victory looks like wearing Manolo’s and a leather miniskirt. She once shared with me that when her time came to leave this earth, she would not be afraid, but excited and curious. Because she had learned how to LIVE surrounded by her beloved husband, Erwin, and friends. I am a better woman, a better human, because her life touched mine. She was indeed simply the best.”

Angela Bassett, who portrayed Turner in the biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It, wrote, “How do we say farewell to a woman who owned her pain and trauma and used it as a means to help change the world? Through her courage in telling her story, her commitment to stay the course in her life, no matter the sacrifice, and her determination to carve out a space in rock and roll for herself and for others who look like her, Tina Turner showed others who lived in fear what a beautiful future filled with love, compassion, and freedom should look like.

“Her final words to me – for me – were ‘You never mimicked me. Instead, you reached deep into your soul, found your inner Tina, and showed her to the world.’ I shall hold these words close to my heart for the rest of my days. I am honored to have known Tina Turner. I am humbled to have helped show her to the world. So on today, while we mourn the loss of this iconic voice and presence, she gave us more than we could have ever asked. She gave us her whole self. And Tina Turner is a gift that will always be ‘simply the best.’ Angels sing thee to thy rest…Queen.”