A Metro Vancouver woman who has been performing Tina Turner songs for decades is grieving the loss of the music superstar.
Tina Turner, the American-born “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” died Wednesday at the age of 83.
Luisa Marshall has been a Tina Turner tribute artist since 2000, performing her songs around the world.
“It’s devastating, it’s overwhelming and unthinkable,” she told Global News.
“When you think of the queen of rock of roll, you think she is indestructible.
“There’s been rumours about her dying, her passing, for years because she was sick and I was hoping (her death) was fake news but, no, it wasn’t.”
Marshall says when heard from her sister that the queen of rock and roll was gone, at first she didn’t believe it.
“When I realized it wasn’t (a mistake) I just started to (cry),” she said.
While Marshall never met Tina Turner in person, Turner was in the audience when Marshall performed one of her songs on the Oprah Winfrey Show back in 2005.
On Wednesday, a representative for Turner said she died peacefully at her home in Küsnacht near Zurich, Switzerland, after a long illness. She had become a Swiss citizen a decade ago.
Turner was best known for her dynamic stage presence, long, muscular legs and powerful vocal, churning out a run of hit records and live shows in the 1960s and ’70s with then-husband, Ike Turner.
She sold more than 150 million records worldwide, won 12 Grammys, and was inducted along with Ike into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. She joined the Hall of Fame on her own in 2021.
— with files from Michelle Butterfield, the Associated Press and Reuters