Tina Turner was recovering from bowel cancer and a stroke when her kidneys started malfunctioning, only 20%: they were “falling rapidly”. In front of her, a crossroads. Dialysis or a transplant. And the choice had to be made quickly. It was 2016. That was when her second husband, the German music executive Erwin Bach she made the decision that changed her life, saving it: he donated her a kidney. The singer recalled that difficult day in her autobiography My Love Story. Pages that recount her extraordinary vision of the disease and the value of the relationship with her husband, married in a civil ceremony, after 27 years together, in July 2013, on the shores of Lake Zurich. He was 57, she was 73.
Tina Turner, who is Erwin Bach, the second husband who saved her life
“Only the transplant would have given me a good chance of continuing to lead an almost normal life. But the chances of getting a donor kidney were remote,” the singer recalled. «Living hanging from machines was not my idea of life. But the toxins in my body had started to take over. I couldn’t eat. I survived but I didn’t live. I began to think about death. If my kidneys were really failing, if it was time for me to die, I could accept it. It was fine. When it’s time, it really is time.” Such was the physical and psychological condition of her that Tina Turner even signed up for the assisted suicide. That was before her husband told her about another possibility.
“He told me he didn’t want another woman, or another life. Then she shocked me. He said he wanted to give me one of his kidneys». Erwin underwent various tests to see if he was compatible. When he had the confirmation, the couple underwent surgery: it was April 2017.
Tina Turner with husband Erwin Bach at the 2018 Giorgio Armani Prive Haute Couture show in Paris. (Photo by Bertrand Rindoff Petroff/Getty Images)
The kidney transplant was a success
The surgery was successful and Tina fondly recalled the first time she saw her husband after the transplant. She said: «The best moment was when Erwin entered my room, rolling over in his wheelchair. Somehow he even seemed handsome to me, while he greeted me with an energetic: ‘Hi, honey!’. I was so happy we made it out alive». While Erwin made a complete recovery after the operation, Tina continued to take immunosuppressants for the rest of her life, essential to avoid rejection of the kidney.
Erwin Bach and Tina Turner in California in August 1985 in California. (Photo by Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)
Love with her second husband Erwin Bach
Tina Turner first met Erwin Bach at the airport in Cologne, Germany. It was 1985: she was 46 and he was 29. He came to pick up Tina in a Mercedes Jeep, a gift for her from manager Roger Davies. The star was shocked, not by the car but by the man who was driving it.
“My heart suddenly started pounding: boom, boom, boom, drowning out all other sounds. My hands were frozen,” she wrote in her autobiography. «“So this is what they call love at first sight”, I thought. Oh my God, I’m not ready for this.”
Over the course of their decade-long relationship, the couple has shared many happy moments with the singer’s audience. Turner also credited Bach with teaching her how to “love without giving up who I am.” “We give each other the freedom and space to be individuals at the same time we are a couple,” wrote the singer in her book, Becoming happiness (Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good). “Erwin, who is a force of nature in his own right, is not never been the least bit intimidated by my career, from my talents or from my fame. He shows me that true love doesn’t require dimming my light so he can shine. In reverse, we are the light of each other’s life and we want to shine as much as possible, together».
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