Tina Turner bids a final farewell to her fans in a touching new film that shows how she has overcome her painful past and finally found happiness. In the feature-length documentary, simply titled “Tina,” the singer looks back on camera for the first time at her younger years filled with struggle and pain, then the true love and global fame she found as a middle-aged woman.

Now 81 and plagued by ill health, including a stroke and cancer, the soul and rock music legend also suffered kidney failure that led to a transplant in 2017. In the film, she tells how she wants to enter the third and final chapter of her life out of the spotlight, and it is revealed that she has a form of post-traumatic stress disorder from the domestic abuse she suffered at the hands of her first husband and music partner, Ike Turner. Looking back, Tina reflects: “It wasn’t a good life. The good did not balance the bad.

“I had an abusive life, there’s no other way to tell the story. It’s a reality. It’s a truth. That’s what you’ve got, so you have to accept it. ‘I should be proud.’ “Some people say the life that I lived and the performances that I gave, the appreciation, is blasting with the people. And yeah, I should be proud of that. I am. “But when do you stop being proud? I mean, when do you, how do you bow out slowly? Just go away?” In the documentary, which airs this month, Tina is seen for the first time talking with the man who finally brought her happiness, her second husband, Erwin Bach.

The couple make a farewell trip to the US for the Broadway premiere of her stage show, “The Tina Turner Story,” and Bach, 65, reveals on camera: “She said, ‘I’m going to America to say goodbye to my American fans, and I’ll wrap it up.’ And I think this documentary and the play, this is it — it’s a closure.” The details of Tina’s life have been chronicled before, first in her 1986 autobiography, “I, Tina,” and in the 1993 biopic “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” with Angela Bassett as Tina.

But Tina has always been loath to discuss them on camera until now. This documentary will have been painful to make but is a parting gift to her global army of fans. She is bringing down the curtain on a career that saw her sell more than 100 million records, and at her peak in the ’80s sell out arenas around the globe. Tina was born Anna Mae Bullock, and her childhood was filled with poverty and misery, picking cotton in the fields around Nutbush, Tennessee. ‘Mom was not kind … she didn’t like me.’

Her mother, Zelma, suffered domestic abuse at the hands of her father, Floyd Bullock, before they both abandoned her as a child. Even when Tina was reunited with her mother when she was a superstar, Zelma was cold and unloving. Tina says in the documentary: “Mom was not kind. When I became a star, of course back then she was happy because I bought her a house. I did all kinds of things for her; she was my mother.

“I was trying to make her comfortable because she didn’t have a husband, she was alone, but she still didn’t like me. “Even after I became Tina, Ma was still a little bit like, ‘Who did that?’ and ‘Who did this?’ And I said, ‘I did that, Mom!’ I was happy to show my mother what I did. I had a house, I had got a car, and she said, ‘No, I don’t believe it. No, you’re my daughter, no you didn’t!’ “She didn’t want me, she didn’t want to be around me, even though she wanted my success. But I did for her as if she loved me.” This childhood filled with cruelty and violence may explain why Tina initially seemed to accept the mental and physical torture she put up with after she married Ike in 1962.

The marriage saw Anna Mae Bullock reborn as Tina Turner, in a duo who would become soul stars for almost three decades. Her new name was so important to her that when she finally found the will to start divorce proceedings against Ike in 1976 — after years of beatings and psychological torture — it was all she asked to take from their stormy union. ‘It’s like a curse.’

Leaving him was made harder by the fact that they had a son, Ronnie, and she adopted two of Ike’s children, Ike Jr., and Michael, from his previous relationship. She already had a son, Craig, from a previous relationship. Bach tells the program she still has nightmares about those dark days and is suffering from something similar to the post-traumatic stress disorder that cripples war veterans.

He says: “She has dreams about it, they’re not pleasant. It’s like when soldiers come back from the war. It’s not an easy time to have those in your memory and then try to forget.” Tina, who first tried to escape from Ike with a sleeping pill overdose in 1968, admits: “That scene comes back. You’re dreaming it. The real picture is there, it’s like a curse.”

But the greatest antidote to the trauma is forgiveness, and she claims to be at peace with Ike, who died of an accidental drug overdose in 2007. Tina says: “For a long time I did hate Ike, I have to say that. But then, after he died, I really realized that he was an ill person. He did get me started and he was good to me in the beginning. So, I have some good thoughts. Maybe it was a good thing that I met him, that I don’t know. “It hurts to have to remember those times, but at a certain stage forgiveness takes over, forgiving means not having to hold on.

“It was letting go because it only hurts you. By not forgiving, you suffer, because you think about it over and over. And for what?” In the ’80s, Tina reinvented herself as a solo artist. With hit albums such as “Private Dancer” and “Break Every Rule,” she joined the pantheon of global music icons.

She even became a film star, appearing with Mel Gibson in the 1985 action movie “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.” Her career has seen her win a dozen Grammy Awards, get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and become the first black artist and first woman to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. But in 1986 — at the peak of her fame — she was incredibly lonely. ‘He was so good-looking. My heart went ba-bum.’ That all changed when she met German record producer Bach while visiting Europe.

She was 46 and he was 30, but it was love at first sight — though they didn’t marry until 2013. Tina recalls: “He had the prettiest face. It was like, ‘Where did he come from?’ He was so good-looking. My heart went ba-bum. It means that a soul has met. When he found out that I liked him, he came to America and we were in Nashville and I said to him, ‘When you come to LA, I want you to make love to me.’ “I thought that I could say that because I was a free woman, I didn’t have a boyfriend, I liked him. “There was nothing wrong with it — it was just sex.

And he looked at me as if he didn’t believe what he was hearing. “He was just so different, so laid back, so comfortable, so unpretentious, and that was the beginning of our relationship.” As love blossomed, Tina started to wind up her recording career, making her last album in 1999, at age 59.

She gave her final performance in 2009. Last year, at 80, she briefly returned to recording, collaborating with producer Kygo on a dance reinvention of her 1984 anthem, “What’s Love Got To Do With It.” The documentary also explores how originally, she was deeply unsure about recording the song — which went on to be her only US solo No. 1 — as it was a pop track first recorded by British Eurovision winners Bucks Fizz. ‘He will always be my baby’ Nowadays Tina spends most of her time with Bach in Switzerland, where she lives permanently, having renounced her US citizenship.

But she has still known trauma in her life. In 2018, her son Craig committed suicide in Los Angeles, and after she scattered his ashes off the California coast, she said: “My saddest moment as a mother. He was 59 when he died so tragically, but he will always be my baby.” Her most recent illness led to her kidney transplant, with Bach the donor. It was a risky process for such an elderly couple, but an inevitability, given that they remain madly in love. Bach says: “It’s something we both have for each other. I always refer to it as an electrical charge. I still have it.”

Before the operation, Tina had been so ill that she was considering assisted suicide — which is legal in Switzerland, where she now has full citizenship. She joined the assisted-suicide organization Exit and recalled in a book three years ago: “It wasn’t my idea of life but the toxins in my body had started taking over. I couldn’t eat. “I was surviving, but not living. I began to think about death. If my kidneys were going, and it was time for me to die, I could accept that, it was OK. When it’s time, it’s really time.”

The new documentary gives a glimpse inside the couple’s beautiful house on the edge of Lake Zurich. Filled with homey furniture, flower arrangements and ornaments, it looks a million miles from the dusty tracks of Tennessee or the glitzy homes of Tinseltown. But there is also a wall filled with gold discs and shelves covered with awards — a reminder that Tina will always be a star, in or out of the spotlight.

Credits: New York Post / By Rod McPhee, The Sun

In new interviews, members of the supergroup reflect on CSNY’s 1970 masterpiece and what to expect on an upcoming expanded edition. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Déjà Vu this spring with an expansive reissue, out May 14th via Rhino.

The box set will span four CDs and one LP, containing the original record, unreleased demos, outtakes, and alternate takes. Its packaging replicates the original album’s deep-brown leather-like sleeve, paired with a hardcover book including rare photos and liner notes by Cameron Crowe. A deluxe five-LP vinyl version of the set is now available for preorder at CSNY50.com and Amazon.com.

Ahead of the release, the label shared an unreleased demo of Neil Young’s “Birds” recorded with Graham Nash, which you can hear below. It opens with Young strumming a guitar, to which Nash softly asks, “Are you sure you’re completely in tune?” in his polite British accent.

“I know it’s just me and Neil doing it with his acoustic guitar, but that’s a beautiful piece of music,” Nash tells Rolling Stone over the phone from his Manhattan apartment. “It’s me trying to be the best harmony singer I can be with somebody of the stature of Neil Young. I don’t want to stick out singing extra words that he’s not singing. I have to be on my game. And ‘Birds’ is a perfect example of that.”

The box set arrives 51 years after the landmark album’s original release on March 11th, 1970. It was delayed by the pandemic and the inevitable difficulties that arise when a group has broken up and relations among the members are strained. It was produced by photographer-archivist Joel Bernstein and Rhino’s Patrick Milligan, with each band member voting for their respective songs, yielding 38 bonus tracks in addition to the original album.

David Crosby, who recently sold his catalog to Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group, admits he wasn’t directly involved in the project. “Eh, I’m happy about it,” he says during a recent phone interview. “But I don’t have a dog in that fight, really. I sold my piece. I am very proud of the record, [but] this is like a repackaging. It’s probably a good thing, but it’s not that big a deal to me. The guy who looks backwards and does this kind of stuff is Nash. He always has been. I don’t really give much of a shit about that.”

Young originally contributed several bonus tracks but ultimately removed them, leaving “Birds” and a stunning “Helpless” on harmonica. “We found out during the Déjà Vu record just who Neil was and just how strong an individual personality he has,” Nash says. “And to this day, Neil does what he wants to do. We have to respect each member’s desires, and his desire was to not put on two or three of his songs.”

Still, the box set is packed with gems and highlights, including Nash and Joni Mitchell’s intimate “Our House” duet on piano (he screws up halfway and exclaims, “Shit!” with Mitchell erupting in laughter), the Stills rarity “Ivory Tower,” and a 10-minute alternate take of Crosby’s “Almost Cut My Hair.” A version of “Know You Got to Run,” taken from the supergroup’s first session at 3615 Shady Oak Road — Stills’ Studio City home, which he famously rented from Peter Tork — also appears.

Heard for the first time is the second take of “4 + 20,” which Stills had recorded to correct a flubbed line from the first attempt. Now, fans can hear Stills smoothly singing, “I embrace the many-colored beasts” in the third verse without the catch in his voice between “I” and “embrace” — but the take isn’t nearly as emotional and raw.

According to Nash, he and Crosby persuaded Stills to go with the first take. “I’ve done songs where we’ve been into 50 takes, and after a dozen, you’re not singing the same song,” Nash says. “You’re not into it the same way as you are when you first do it.” Adds Stills over a Zoom call: “They didn’t convince me. I pretty much realized that it had a dramatic quality to it, but they said, ‘Do another one just to be safe.’ So, I did another one, and now you’ve got both of them. This one is orange and that one is green. Of course, they’ll tell me that I’m completely wrong and I have it backwards, which is pretty much par for the course.”

Demos of Crosby’s “Song With No Words (Tree With No Leaves)” and “Laughing,” two tracks that would wind up on his solo debut If I Could Only Remember My Name, are also featured. Crosby wrote the latter as a message to George Harrison after the musician met a guru and became introduced to Hinduism. “I wanted to tell him, ‘Take it with a grain of salt, because anybody that tells you they know who God is, is usually a scam,'” Crosby says. “I was chicken because it was George and I fucking worshiped the Beatles, and I still do. So, I wrote that song to him to say, ‘Listen, I don’t think people who tell you they know what’s going on actually know what’s going on.’ The wisest person I’ve ever seen was a child just playing in the sun.”

Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s 1969 self-titled debut is packed with sunny harmonies and lyrics about love and the counterculture, but things began to sour by the time they worked on the follow-up, with each member going through emotional turmoil — especially David Crosby, whose girlfriend at the time, Christine Hinton, was killed in a car accident. “The difference between the CSN record is that I was in love and living with Joni, Stephen was in love with Judy Collins, and David was in love and living with Christine,” Nash says. “But by the time the Déjà Vu record came around, Christine had been killed, Joni and I weren’t together anymore, and Stephen and Judy weren’t together. So right now, our own personal lives are in complete disarray, and we have to make this record.”

“We tried not to let it take over the album altogether, but it was hard not to,” Stills says of the dark cloud that had surrounded the group. Adds Crosby: “I was devastated by that girl being killed and I had no equipment to deal with it, and it was pretty freaking crazy.” When they decided to add a fourth member, Young wasn’t their first choice. John Sebastian, Steve Winwood, and Jimi Hendrix were all considered — though Stills denies the latter. (“Complete fabrication …,” he says with a laugh.) Atlantic Records’ Ahmet Ertegun ultimately suggested Young, Stills’ former Buffalo Springfield bandmate. “My first reaction was, ‘Are you out of your mind?'” Stills recalls. “He already left the Buffalo Springfield in a lurch. But as I was saying it, I was thinking that that little angular tension that we had was actually kind of healthy. We were glued together with Silly Putty.”

Nash was also reluctant to have Young join the band. “We had just created a wonderful three-part harmony with the first record, and why should we fuck with that?” he said. “I said, ‘I need to meet him to see if I can be his friend, if I can tell him a secret, if I can hang with him.’ I went to breakfast on Bleecker Street here in New York City. And after that breakfast, I would have made him king of the world. He was funny. He was self-deprecating. He was confident. And look at the songs he had.”

With the addition of Young, a new supergroup was born, making its live debut at Chicago’s Auditorium Theater on August 16th, 1969. The quartet was short-lived, breaking up and forming in different iterations over the decades, but Déjà Vu was a new peak for the band, featuring timeless classics like Young’s “Helpless,” Crosby’s “Almost Cut My Hair,” Nash’s “Teach Your Children,” and the Joni Mitchell–penned, Stills-sung “Woodstock” — and the reissue celebrates that. “I feel only pretty much joy at the music that we recorded,” Crosby says. “Man, there was an incredible chemistry, the four of us. Really, really wonderful.”

“When you just listen to Déjà Vu and you appreciate it, you have no idea what went into the making of the record,” Nash says. “This release will give you a great idea of how this record came together. We were all four strong writers. We were all four strong singers. I don’t believe there’s a band in the world with four writers and four singers. And don’t forget, we may be the only original band that’s still around. The Beach Boys and the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones aren’t the original bands. Carl Wilson died, and Brian Jones died. But the four of us are still rocking, and it’s kind of interesting.”

Credits: Rolling Stone Magazine – By Angie Martoccio

Cheap Trick have released a new song, "Boys & Girls & Rock N Roll," from their upcoming album, In Another World, due out April 9.

"She lives and bleeds rock & roll," frontman Robin Zander sings. "Now see what she's done to me boys/Well she lays it down for me boys/She says she's got to save the best for me boys/Now see what she's done to me boys."

"Boys & Girls & Rock N Roll" follows the previously released "Light Up the Fire," which arrived in January.

In Another World is Cheap Trick's 20th studio album and a follow-up to their two 2017 offerings, We're All Right! and Christmas Christmas. The album was produced by longtime collaborator Julian Raymond.

The 13-track album also features a previously issued cover of John Lennon's "Gimme Some Truth" featuring former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones.

Credits: By RTTNews Staff Writer

Blues may be “America’s music,” and Bobby Rush certainly is our best ambassador since the death of B.B. King. Why then is this award never shown on TV?

No single event in the music calendar brings into sharper focus the dance between roots music as an art and “popular” music as a commodity than the Grammy Awards. Root’s music needs popular music to build a large enough fan base for the artists creating this music to give up their day job and follow their muse. Popular music needs the cultural roots of blues, soul, R&B, country, and Americana to inspire them to rise above the pablum that often dominates the top 100 charts.

The 63rd annual Grammy Awards Show, often painful to watch, showcased the biggest – and occasionally best – artists who engage in that dance. That the dancers often have “partners” grooving to a completely different tune is part of what makes this awards show a four-and-a-half-hour circus.

Bobby Rush took home his second traditional blues Grammy for his album Rawer Than Raw. It was the obvious choice, by the Recording Academy that more often than not fails to make the right decisions. Rawer Than Raw on Deep Rush/Thirsty Records was recorded in Jackson, Mississippi over several years, it features five originals and six covers by Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny boy Williamson II, Skip James, and Elmore James.

The award and its presentation never made it onto the four and a half hour show on CBS. In my review of the album in American Blues Scene I said, “Perhaps what’s most telling about this collection is that if you gave a blindfold test to someone unfamiliar with the classic cuts, they would be unable to distinguish the Bobby Rush originals from the covers.

That’s because he was THERE when all these cuts first went down. And there’s no smoke or mirrors on this LP. It’s just Bobby, his guitar and his harmonica having a Saturday rent party in rural Mississippi.”

If a cat has nine lives, 85-year-old Bobby Rush has had a lucky 13. He was never diagnosed with Covid 19, but in April he was “out of my head” with a temperature of 105, but he’s back in fighting condition now. He has hope for society’s future and intends to be around to help make that future happen.”

Blues may be “America’s music,” and Bobby Rush certainly is our best ambassador since the death of B.B. King. Why then is this award never shown on TV?

There were many high points, however.

Host Trevor Noah did a fabulous job of fitting a thousand-pound bag of entertainment into a four-hour television extravaganza with jokes and quips delivered without the usual studio audience feedback because of pandemic restrictions.

Mickey Guyton sang her country hit “Black Like Me” with its lyric “If your think we live in the land of the free/you should try to be black like me.” She has broken a couple of important ceilings as the first female African American singer to be nominated in the category of Country Solo Performance. That said, she lost to a giant multi-Grammy winner Vince Gill. Guyton will co-host Academy of Country Music Awards in April.

Legacy soul artist Lionel Richie re-cast “Lady” in a touching tribute to Kenny Rogers. His was one of those performances that make you feel like you’re hearing an old chestnut for the first time. Kenny was Lionel’s friend, and his version not only did honor to Kenny but reminded me of Kenny’s whole repertoire of songs that touch the heart.

The Black Pumas’ performance early in the show cemented their position as up and comers in the blues/R&B crossover category: impassioned singing, spot-on big band sound and good material. They didn’t win Band of The Year, but that they were even up for the award signals a strong future.

Bruno Mars captured all the urgency of Little Richard in his musical homage to the “Good Golly Miss Molly” shouter. And his singing with his new group Silk Sonic was a shoutout to the kind of Motown R&B crooners of the 1970s who still have a place in today’s music.

Brandi Carlile hit John Prine’s “I Remember Everything” out of the ballpark.

And Taylor Swift who took home record of the year for “Folklore” illustrating just why she touches all of humanity’s love for pop confections.

Lil Baby brought home the nightmare of racial bigotry and the horrors of police brutality in a visual re-enactment. It’s not new, and it hasn’t gone away. I will never forget interviewing Bobby Rush for the University of Arkansas Pryor Film Archives a few years ago, and after the cameras shut down, he got tears in his eyes, reminding me of a terrible car crash he’d been in. Lying prostrate on the ground, he overheard a cop walk by his body telling another officer, “that (n-word) is dead.”

One of the songs on Rawer Than Raw is Skip James’ “Hard Times” which Bobby finds apropos of society’s current situation. I asked him if he knew what happened to Skip in those 30 years when he didn’t tour. “He was like most of those guys farming and planting cotton, picking cotton, and trying to survive. You know. He was like Bobby Rush.”

Fantastic Negrito, a perennial favorite with the Academy, took home Contemporary Blues Album of The Year over strong competition including my pick Bettye LaVette’s Blackbirds, Ruthie Foster’s Live at The Paramount, Up and Rolling by The North Mississippi Allstars, and G. Love’s The Juice.

CREDITS: American Blues Scene – Don Wilcock