Tina Turner would have been 85: Cologne cult around the rock icon

When Tina Turner (1939-2023) died on May 24, 2023 in Küsnacht, Switzerland, countless people around the world spoke up to express their sadness at the loss of the American rock star. In addition to superstars like Mick Jagger (81), Elton John (77) and Oprah Winfrey (70), Cologne’s mayor Henriette Reker (67) also expressed moving words of condolence to the late singer’s relatives.

“Only a few people in the world, like Tina Turner, have been able to inspire people across generations and continents with their music for decades,” she wrote in an official statement. And continued: “The people of Cologne and I personally will remember her as an outstanding artist and an impressive woman. She will be missed, but her music will remain. Our city was able to be the home of Tina Turner and Erwin Bach for several years I extend my heartfelt condolences to him and all his family and friends.”

In her letter of condolence, the mayor of the Rhenish metropolis of cheerfulness not only indicated her personal concern, but also the special status that Tina Turner still enjoys in the city today. When the singer moved to Cologne to live with her new boyfriend Erwin Bach (68) in 1986, the people of Cologne were thrilled and immediately proudly recognized her as a “Cologne world star”. She was welcomed with open arms in Cologne – and in the eight years she lived there, she presented herself as an approachable artist without any star appeal.

How Tina Turner ended up in the unglamorous Cologne of all places is well documented in her autobiography “My Love Story,” published in 2018. In it she describes her first meeting with her future husband Erwin Bach, who, as the marketing manager of her record label, picked her up from Düsseldorf airport in 1985 to drive her to a press event as part of her ongoing “Private Dancer Tour”. In her autobiography, Turner described this encounter as love at first sight and wrote: “My heart suddenly started beating: boom, boom, boom! It drowned out all other sounds. My hands were ice cold.”

His colleague at the time, Lothar Meinerzhagen, later confirmed to WDR that he had an immediate connection. There he remembered: “We had organized a convention in Nashville. I was sitting on the lawn, with Tina on my left and Erwin Bach on my right. I noticed behind my back that there was suddenly some fiddling.” The artist “had such a crush that she decided to move in with him”.

As a shared residence, they moved into a spacious villa in Cologne’s posh Marienburg district, which met the singing superstar’s demands. As Meinerzhagen reported, the property was so luxurious that even the driveway to the garage was heated so that Turner could always get into the house with dry feet. According to a report in the “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger”, the singer occasionally indulged in a few crazy extravagances there and allegedly once had masses of artificial snow spread around her villa for her birthday.

Otherwise, Tina Turner and her German boyfriend led a relatively quiet life in Cologne without any big star airs until they moved to Switzerland in 1994. From the beginning, they enjoyed mingling with the people and were often to be found taking walks along the Rhine or in the meeting places of Cologne’s local celebrities, where they became friends in particular with the star presenter Alfred Biolek (1934-2021).

The couple obviously also had a close relationship with the owners of various high-end restaurants in Cologne, where they were regular guests. One of the most popular gourmet temples was the Marienburg restaurant “Tullio”, where the singer – as the “Express” found out – preferred to have calamari fritti or spaghetti carbonara served. The celebrity bar “La Vita” in Cologne’s old town also became a second home, with the owner Salvatore Luca the singer allegedly had a close friendship with until her death.

Wolfgang Niedecken (73), singer of the band BAP and a Cologne veteran, also has only positive memories of Tina Turner’s years in Cologne. When you met her on the street, the musician told WDR, she “dressed up inconspicuously and wanted to be left alone.” Nevertheless, he is sure: “I think she was very happy in Cologne.”

The fact that the name Tina Turner is very present around her 85th birthday, especially in Cologne, also has to do with the Canadian musician Chilly Gonzales (52), who moved his main residence to the Rhenish carnival stronghold a few years ago. In April 2024 he started a petition to rename the centrally located Richard-Wagner-Straße to Tina-Turner-Straße.

His reasoning: As a musician with Jewish roots, it was difficult for him to bear walking every day through a street that was named after a man who composed outstanding music, but who distinguished himself through writings such as the 1850 essay “Judenthum in of music” clearly stood out as an anti-Semite.

The ex-Cologne resident Tina Turner, who is extremely popular in the city, would have deserved a place on the street sign much more than the “monster” Richard Wagner (1813-1883). After over 15,000 Cologne residents signed the petition, Gonzales submitted the application for a renaming to the responsible district mayor a few months later. However, whether Tina-Turner-Straße will actually come is still up in the air.

It’s hardly surprising that the people of Cologne, who are notorious for being extremely hard-partying, wanted to throw a big party for “their Tina’s” 85th birthday. On a specially created website called tinaturnerparty.com, ardent admirers of the singer called on fans all over the world to come to Cologne to “honor the life and legacy of the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll” with them.