Why Tina Turner wanted to ‘just go away’ to escape fame

“What’s Love Got to Do With It” singer Tina Turner didn’t always feel the love from the world. 

In fact, being constantly reminded by the public of the savage abuse she endured at the hands of her late ex-husband, Ike Turner, inspired the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll to spend her latter days out of the spotlight. 

“When do you, how do you bow out slowly? Just go away?” said Turner, who died Wednesday at age 83, in the 2021 Max documentary “Tina.”

In the doc — which the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer dubbed a bittersweet goodbye to fans — Turner, who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, lamented over the unending media headlines about the torture bore during her 16-year marriage to Ike. (Ike Turner died from a drug overdose at 76 in December 2007). 

“I wasn’t interested in telling that ridiculously embarrassing story of my life,” said Turner, born Anna Mae Bullock, in the film. “But I felt that’s one way I can get the journalists off my back.”

Years prior to releasing the documentary, the Nutbush, Tennessee, native shockingly exposed Ike’s domestic violence in her 1986 memoir, “I, Tina,” and again in the 1993 biopic, “What’s Love Got To Do With It,” starring Oscar-nominee Angela Bassett. 

“The story was written so I would no longer have to discuss the issue,” Turner said of her torment. 

“I don’t love that it’s always talked about. I made a point of putting the news out … so I could go on with my life,” she added. “But this constant reminder is not so good. I’m not so happy about it.”

In the doc, the “Fool in Love” songstress detailed the physical and sexual battering she underwent for years. 

“He beat me with a shoe stretcher,” Turner, a mother of four boys, said in featured footage of an interview with People, adding that she was pregnant with her son Ronnie at the time. 

“After that he made me go to bed and he had sex with me. I was all swollen. That was the beginning of the torture,” she continued. 

“It was coat hangers. I had to lay down and he’d stand over me and [slap] this hanger on my fanny,” recalled the singer. “I swear to God, my fanny swelled two inches higher.”

Turner continued, “And then he would screw me. And then he made me go right back on stage and say, ‘You sing mother f–ker, because you made me do it.’”

She went on to describe life with Ike as “living a life of death.”

However, owing to the many pop cultural references made to the abuse over the past three decades, Turner — who married to husband Erwin Bach in 2013 — forever struggled to escape the trauma she sustained. 

“You don’t want to think about those times — you just want it to go away,” said the powerhouse, who spent her final under-the-radar years at homes in Switzerland.

“But it keeps being brought up. That scene keeps coming back,” groaned Turner. “The real picture is there. It’s like a curse.”