Between them, a look was enough. Tina Turner, a music icon who died on May 24 at the age of 83, after a long illness, met her second husband, Erwin Bach, in 1985, on the tarmac of Düsseldorf airport in Germany. A love at first sight that the "tigress", usually so discreet about her private life, never tired of telling. A survivor of domestic violence, the one who had escaped from the grip of her first husband and musical partner, Ike Turner, nearly a decade earlier, lived this new love as a real revival of life.
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"He was 16 years younger than me, so 30 at the time and had the most beautiful face. It was crazy, I thought, "Where did it come from?" He was really handsome. My heart was beating so fast and my hands were shaking," she said in March 2021, during a cross-interview with music producer Erwin Bach in the HBO documentary Tina. "Her manager Roger Davies had asked me to come and get her (...), he had completed. Normally I should have been nervous, but I wasn't."
Donate of yourself
After this car ride, the two begin to see each other; first as friends, then as lovers. Although their age difference feeds all sorts of rumors, including that Erwin is with the interpreter of Proud Mary for his fame and money, the two quickly settle together, on the side of Switzerland, where the producer works. They married on July 21, 2013, after 27 years of dating. Their union was pronounced in a civil ceremony on the shores of Lake Zurich in Küsnacht, near their home.
At the time, he was 57 years old. She, already 74. After three years of marriage, Tina Turner has a series of health problems: colon cancer diagnosed in 2016, then kidney pain that earned her an emergency kidney transplant. "Erwin became aware of the reality of my death. With strong emotion, he said that he did not want to lose me, that he did not want another woman, or another life. That he was willing to do anything to keep us together," she explained in her 2020 memoir, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good. As proof of ultimate love, he offers to donate his kidney. The transplant will take place on April 7, 2017.
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After years under the blows of an abusive husband, Tina Turner had finally managed to find happiness with the music producer. Born in Cologne in 1956, Erwin Bach is best known for being the director of the EMI label in Germany. A record company of great renown, which has collaborated on the albums of Queen, Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd or Radiohead. In her autobiography, Tina Turner confided that her second husband, "the man of her life", had taught her to "love without the need to lose herself". "We give ourselves the freedom and space to be individuals at the same time as we are a couple," she wrote. "Erwin, who is a force of nature, has never been intimidated by my career, my talents or my fame. He shows me that true love does not require the attenuation of my light in order to shine."
My sons, my battle
It must be said that the star had until then only known that. Married in 1962 to Ike Turner, with whom she shared the stage, Tina often confided about the sixteen years of hell with the musician. "When he started cocaine, things got worse... Sex with Ike was hostility, it was a kind of rape, especially when it began or ended with a beating," between broken jaws and repeated hospital stays. From their union was born Ronnie Turner, in 1960, who died in December 2022, at the age of 62.
Tina Turner had another child two years earlier, in 1958, the result of her relationship with saxophonist Raymond Hill. Named Craig, the boy committed suicide in 2018, at the age of 60. "The saddest moment for a mother," she wrote on her Instagram account, captioning a photo showing her on a boat, ready to throw a rose in the water in memory of her son. At his side, his eternal Erwin Bach, pointing to the horizon.
If both have never had children, it is to him that we owe it to have accompanied him in the most difficult moments of his life. And this until his death, as they had promised.