My wedding day couldn’t have been more perfect and spectacular – and no one cared the least that the bride was 73 years old. I had organized the whole thing myself, and that included importing more than 100,000 roses to decorate the grounds of our home in Switzerland.
As friends gathered and sipped champagne on that glorious day in July 2013, the air was filled with a wonderful scent.
I put a lot of thought into choosing the wedding music. When listening to Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”, the words fit my life perfectly: “The record shows that I took the hits/and did it my way.” I had to have this! Despite my notoriously abusive first marriage to Ike Turner, I had managed to find love beyond my wildest dreams.
It wasn’t until we met to take photos that I felt a little strange. It must be the heat, I thought, or the dress—an Armani confection of green taffeta, black silk tulle, and Swarovski crystals that’s getting heavier by the minute.
In fact, this comic turn was the first sign of a hellish ordeal to come, a nightmare that would only end when my dear husband Erwin gave me the ultimate gift – the gift of life itself.
Tina Turner, who passed away this week aged 83, has revealed her romance with husband Erwin Bach in her memoir
Turner and Bach in a photo together in Basel, Switzerland, in 2005
Erwin and I first met 28 years ago. At that time I was traveling around the world with my Private Dancer Tour, which left me very little time for my private life.
Not that I ever had many friends – I spent my entire youth with Ike – and after my divorce, dating was often more difficult than it was worth.
In any case, I was never one of those women who absolutely had to have sex; To be honest I’ve sometimes gone up to a year without it. That week in 1985 the next date of my tour was in Cologne, Germany.
When my manager Roger and I flew into town, I was tired and a little depressed considering the busy schedule that lay ahead.
We were walking through the airport when a young man stepped out from behind a pillar to greet us. I thought he might be a fan, but Roger gave him a warm welcome. Erwin Bach, an executive at EMI, my record company in Europe, had turned up to bring me a surprise gift from Roger – a new Mercedes jeep, the hard-to-get G-Wagon. But the real surprise wasn’t the car, it was the man.
My heart suddenly started BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, drowning out all other sounds. My hands were freezing. So this is what they call love at first sight, I thought. Oh my god, I’m not ready for this.
The couple had a loving relationship for 38 years until she passed away on Wednesday aged 83 after a long, unspecified illness (Turner and her husband pictured at a show at Paris Fashion Week in July 2018).
Turner ended her recording career as her relationship with Bach blossomed. She recorded her last album in 1999 at the age of 59 and gave her last performance in 2009. Pictured: Turner and Bach at Spago’s Restaurant in Hollywood, California in 1985
Roger jumped into a waiting limousine while I got into the G-Wagon with Erwin so he could tell me all about it while he drove me to the hotel. I studied his profile. He was young – about 30, I’d guess – and he was very handsome, if not in a conventional way. Dark hair, really great hands. There’s something about a man’s hands.
I suddenly felt very insecure about my appearance. I was wearing an Issey Miyake sweater with leather jeans – rock ‘n’ roll stuff – and my hair was very, very, very big at the time. But if you ask me, I wasn’t that good looking and I doubt Erwin found me attractive.
Oh, and if the hairstyle wasn’t repulsive enough, I was 46, divorced, and had two sons and two stepsons who were practically men themselves by now.
What was going through Erwin’s mind? Later – much later – I found out that he had felt the same inexplicable electrical charge.
When he looked at me, he said he didn’t see the “star” or the color of my skin or any other detail. He has just seen a very desirable woman.
In the G-Wagon, our conversation was a bit strained. We managed to chat hesitantly about the dashboard and other harmless topics until we got to the hotel.
After saying goodbye, I threw myself on my hotel bed and thought, “Gosh, he’s wonderful.” Really beautiful. What do I do now?’
I happened to see Erwin again at some dinners organized by EMI. The second time we sat next to each other. I said to myself: I don’t care – I’ll just ask him.
“Erwin,” I whispered, “if you come to America, I want you to make love to me.”
He slowly turned his head and just looked at me like he couldn’t believe his ears. I couldn’t believe what I said either!
He later told me that no woman had ever proposed to him. His first thought was, “Wow, those California girls are really wild.” But I wasn’t wild. I had never done anything remotely like this before. I didn’t recognize myself. Eventually Erwin came to Los Angeles on business and I met him again at another dinner. After that I invited everyone to my house and then our true romance began.
Music played, the other guests moved away, the kissing started and we kissed all the way to the bedroom. Erwin stayed with me that night.
The next morning he was to go on a business trip to Hawaii. I kept thinking about him for two days – and then he called and casually mentioned that his trip had been cancelled.
He’d been a few miles away in Malibu the whole time, hanging out with his co-workers, and hadn’t thought to tell me.
I tried to keep my cool, but inside I was angry. “Tina, you stupid old idiot,” I got annoyed. Why did I make such bad choices with men? Why were there always disappointments? I couldn’t bear the thought of getting hurt again. I was better off alone, I decided.
A few months passed. I met Erwin again while promoting Private Dancer, this time in Basel, Switzerland and all my feelings came back.
I had rented a house in Gstaad for the holidays and invited him and some other people from EMI to visit. And one night Erwin turned up alone, wearing a funny little German hat and exuding a manliness I found irresistible.
Tina Turner found her true love in Erwin Bach after fleeing her abusive first husband. In 2017, the music executive donated his kidney to save her life. In the picture she celebrates her 50th birthday with Bach in London in November 1989
By the end of the evening I had decided to pack up and move in with him. From now on, wherever Erwin was, my home would be.
This is how my love story began with a man who was 16 years younger than me. But that wasn’t an issue for me then, nor is it now. The world may think of Erwin as Tina’s “younger man”, but actually he’s 60 and I’m 16. He’s always been an old soul. And he’s much more mature than me: he thinks ahead and cautiously, while I’m more inclined to jump without looking.
In any case, at 46 I didn’t look any older than Erwin, who was 30.
I never think about the age difference. I don’t even feel like I need to work on looking pretty in bed – I’ve already done that. What does love have to do with it? A lot!
So I made the right decision when I packed my ten Louis Vuitton suitcases and headed to Erwin’s two-room apartment near Cologne. I noticed that it included a great sound system, but not much else.
As I got to know Erwin a little better, I learned that “minimalist” is his middle name: he hates things. I cover every surface with books, candles, photos, potpourri and anything that adds personality.
So my first thought was, “Well, this room really needs decorating.” I waited until Erwin had to fly to Brazil on business, then I made a quick purchase at an interior design store and rearranged everything in his apartment. It was supposed to be a big surprise, and it was. He was horrified. Everywhere he looked there was stuff, stuff and more stuff.
Luckily a friend joined us for dinner that night, so Erwin had to suppress his anger. The next day he had calmed down a bit. Isn’t it funny that he had a harder time adjusting to the new furniture than to the new woman in his life? We survived that battle, but the decoration war continues to this day.
A more pressing problem was my ten suitcases (for a month’s stay) for which there was no space in the apartment.
“You know that wonderful expression, ‘If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans’?”
So I stored my bags in the communal basement and kept running downstairs to get my clothes.
Imagine the surprise of his neighbors when they went into the laundry room in the basement and came across Tina Turner looking for something to wear.
My security guards had to stay at a nearby hotel and communicate with me via walkie-talkie. I’m sure Erwin rolls his eyes from time to time as he is never impressed by celebrity and all that entails.
I was already head over heels in love with him. For the first time I felt like I was really in a relationship. That’s the way it should be, I said to myself.
One day he asked me in his charming German way: “Are we together?” – That is, are we a couple? Recalling the naughty pass I made right after we met, he feared I might be wild and unpredictable, that I was just playing, that one day I might run away.
But instead of wanting to run away – like I’d always felt with Ike – I just wanted to be with Erwin more and more.
I wasn’t looking for a husband; I just wanted to be loved. Childhood – never loved. Previous relationships – never loved. All my life I’ve never really loved.
More than anything, I needed the feeling that Erwin loved me. And he did. He really did.
In 1989, when I was about to turn 50, he proposed to me. But I wasn’t sure what I thought of the marriage. Marriage can change things and in my experience not always for the better.
Over the next few years we spent a lot of time together in Cologne and in a house I bought in the south of France.
When Erwin was asked to run the EMI office in Switzerland in 1995, I accompanied him like a good German woman.
We moved into an old-fashioned villa on Lake Zurich called Château Algonquin.
I felt good. I have never smoked or taken drugs. After 50 years of intensive stage training, I was still in good shape. I was still pretty good-looking too: in 2013 German Vogue asked me to be on their cover. I think it’s safe to say that at that point, at 73, I was the oldest cover girl in Vogue history.
The year before, Erwin had proposed marriage again, and this time I’d answered with a resounding “Yes!” It was a commitment I didn’t take lightly, but I knew he was the love of my life.
You know that wonderful expression, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans”? On an ordinary October morning in 2013, just three months after our glorious wedding, I woke up to feel lightning strike my head and right leg. I tried to speak but couldn’t get the words out. I had a stroke.
The stroke had dealt a severe blow to my body: my entire right side was numb. I would need to work with a physical therapist to learn to walk again, the doctor told me, and using my right hand would be a problem.
But the psychological effects were even more profound.
I was miserable. The struggle to recover left me with neither strength nor vitality.
“After a while, I resented the medications I was taking to control my high blood pressure – I was sure they were making me feel less clear-headed and less energetic” (Image: Tina Turner in Rome in 2013)
And it wasn’t just the effects of the stroke that I was dealing with: My doctor was concerned that my high blood pressure was affecting my kidneys, so he referred me to a specialist.
dr Jörg Bleisch, an experienced nephrologist, broke the news that my kidneys were only performing 35 percent of their normal function. “We’d have to monitor her carefully,” he said, and prescribed more medication to control my blood pressure.
What I didn’t know was that greater battles were yet to come. Battles where I’d ask myself, “How did I go from being a health icon, a cover girl, a bride for goodness sake, to this one?”
After a while, I resented the medications I was taking to control my high blood pressure – I was sure they were making me feel less clear-headed and less energetic.
Not long after this blow, my health began to deteriorate again. I became so weak that I could not leave the house; It took all my strength to waver between the bedroom and the bathroom.
This time I was diagnosed with early stage colon cancer – a carcinoma and several malignant polyps. While I was waiting for the operation, I called out to Erwin: “Aren’t you sorry that you married an old woman?” Luckily for me, he always radiated confidence, optimism and joie de vivre and helped me to keep calm. A month after my diagnosis, I had part of my intestine removed. The doctors were optimistic and I felt a glimmer of hope again. But only a glimpse and only for a moment. In December 2016, my kidney values hit a new low of 20 percent and were falling rapidly. I was faced with a choice: regular dialysis or a kidney transplant.
Only the transplant would give me a very good chance of leading a near-normal life. But the chances of getting a donor kidney were slim. Back then, the organ donation rate in Switzerland was one of the lowest in Europe – which meant that at 75 I would probably never end up at the top of the waiting list.
So Dr. Bless me to start dialysis. “Oh no, no, no,” I told him. “I don’t live on a machine.” It wasn’t my idea of life. But the toxins in my body had started to take over. I couldn’t eat. I survived but did not live.
I started thinking about death. If my kidneys failed and it was time for me to die, I could accept that. It was OK. When it’s time, it really is time. I didn’t mind the thought of death, but I worried about how I would fare.
One of the perks of living in Switzerland is that assisted suicide is legal, but the patient has to inject the deadly drug herself.
There are several organizations supporting the process, including Exit and Dignitas. Just in case, I signed up as a member of Exit.
I think that’s when the idea of my death became reality for Erwin. He was very emotional because he didn’t want to lose me and didn’t want to leave.
He said he didn’t want another woman or another life; We were happy and he would do anything to keep us together. Then he shocked me.
He said he wanted to give me one of his kidneys.
I was blown away by the magnitude of his offering. But because I love him, my first reaction was to stop him from taking such a serious and irreversible step.
He was a young man. Why would he take such a risk to give an older woman a few extra years? What if one day he had a problem with his remaining kidney?
“Darling, you are young. Don’t, don’t, don’t interfere in your life. “Think about your own future,” I urged. But Erwin had made up his mind. “My future is our future,” he told me.
“I was already a high-risk patient because of my recent cancer, but the risk escalated when tests showed my heart had been damaged by so many years of high blood pressure” (Image: Turner in Boston in 2008)
At the University Hospital in Basel, Erwin had to undergo a series of psychological tests to ensure that he was donating a kidney for the right reasons.
As I expected, the doctors accepted that he knew what he was doing. Erwin always knows exactly what he is doing; that is his nature. His offer to give me his kidney was a gift of love and he remained unwavering and relaxed.
Next there were medical tests to determine our compatibility and we received the encouraging news that we had the same type A blood. All I could hear was the clock ticking. I couldn’t afford to lose any of my strength, energy or courage.
I was already a high-risk patient because of my recent cancer, but the risk escalated when tests showed that my heart had been damaged by so many years of high blood pressure: the muscle had enlarged and the vessels had hardened.
There were doubts as to whether a weakened heart would withstand the rigors of surgery. But in the end our big day was certain: April 7, 2017.
Two operating rooms were prepared, one for the donor and one for the recipient, and two operating teams. Erwin operated first. While I was understandably scared about the transplant, I was much more worried about him. After about an hour it was my turn.
When I woke up, I was so groggy that everything—lights, sounds, snippets of conversation, visits from doctors and nurses—felt like a dream.
It took me a while to realize that I was lying in ICU surrounded by what appeared to be 100 machines, beginning my new life as a woman with a healthy kidney. The next day, after a few gentle movements of my fingers and toes, I found I was fine.
The best moment was when Erwin rolled into my room in his wheelchair. He somehow managed to look good, even handsome, as he greeted me with an energetic “Hello, darling!”
I was so emotional – happy, overwhelmed and relieved that we got through this alive.
Adapted by Corinna Honan from Tina Turner: My Love Story by Tina Turner published by Cornerstone for £10.99. © Tina Turner 2018. To order a copy for £9.89 (offer valid until 06/10/23; free UK postage on orders over £25), visit www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 0203 176 2937 at.