Women of Rock: Tina Turner

What do fans want to know from Tina Turner?
[Laughs] Sometimes I feel like I'm Mother Teresa. Fortunately, I did not have an easy life. I've experienced a lot, and I can share it in terms that might help people. Let's just say I've offered good advice; I've been fortunate to give that. But it's all the time. I think people put a bit too much on me sometimes.

People want to know, of course, how I got through my life. They ask about relationships with men, but it's mostly to do with changes in life. A lot of people can't deal with changes.

After the big change came for you and you left Ike, when did you feel like you'd actually become the boss?
I must tell you, "boss" never fit into my way of thinking. I started coming into my own those last years with Ike, because I was in charge of the girls and the basic performance. I had also gotten involved with the arrangements. I don't play but I was able to communicate verbally with the musicians — Ike's musicians. So by the time I got my band, I was equipped.

I'd say I was about 30 when a lot of realizations happened. I remember I had always respected airline stewardesses. It was a fantasy, you know — the traveling, the way they dressed in their hats and suits. And on my 30th birthday, I remember sitting on a plane. I don't know what happened, but I finally saw that they were really making people comfortable and serving food. I don't mean it disrespectfully, but I thought, "Oh, my God, they're waitresses." I'd only seen the beauty and the glamour.

After that, I really started to think about everything in terms of movies and life and whatever is created. I started to analyze life and things dealing with my career. It all came from one thought: It's just creation. Materialization. And then it lasts or it doesn't.

Have you sensed any changes over the years in the public perception of who Tina Turner is?
I haven't changed a thing. What got me here was from the life that I live, that I went public with. Before, it was raunchy Tina, legs open, her red lips, her long hair. Wild! They just thought that I was just another of those raunchy singers, 'cause no one knew the other side. Only people very close to me knew. I've always been very spiritual, but my image — in terms of my work — was very far from that. And then when the book came out, and 60 Minutes filmed me chanting and being into meditation, everybody went, "What?" Everyone started to take a different view.

Did that old image make you unhappy?

The raunchy, the wild, sexy — it was uncomplimentary. But I understood it. I still see photographs, and my stance and my body form is very much like that. I have to stand like that to hit high notes, and high-heeled shoes will give you a certain body form. So I never liked [being thought of that way], but I thought, "Well, that's what you've done, Tina. I mean, you have stood there with crotch open, ripped at the seams."