Tina Turner Recalls Tragically Losing Son Craig to Suicide in 2018: He ‘Was Lonely’

“Proud Mary” singer Tina Turner is baring it all. In a new interview with Gayle King, the 79-year-old performer recalled the moment her son Craig committed suicide when he fatally shot himself in 2018.

“I think Craig was lonely, that’s what I think really got him more than anything else,” she said about Craig, who was 59 years old at the time. “I have pictures all around of him smiling, and I think I’m sensing that he’s in a good place. I really do.”

During the interview, Tina also opened up about her new memoir, My Love Story, and said she went through a very tough time when she had a stroke, intestinal cancer and kidney failure. When her husband, Erwin, 63, offered to give her one of his kidneys, she remembered telling him: “Yes, but darling, you’re young, and I’m already old. And I don’t mind.”

It wasn’t until Tina thought about religion that she decided to take Erwin up on his offer. “In Buddhism, you’re taught that you live and you die. It’s something that’s accepted. And so then after Erwin said that, I said, ‘OK, darling, if you’re willing to give up a kidney, then fine,’” she recalled to Gayle.

Tina and Erwin got married in 2013 decades after the musician got divorced from her first husband, Ike Turner, in 1978. “When Ike asked me to marry him, I knew it was for a reason,” she said. “But I had to say yes … or it was gonna be a fight. And so then, when we drove to marry, that wasn’t my idea of my wedding.”

Ike later died from an accidental drug overdose in 2007 and, in that same year, Tina retired from singing after. “I got on that plane … I took a deep breath, and I said, ‘It’s over.’ I really felt like it’s over,” she recalled. “And I’m glad it’s over. And I went home.”

Even though Tina doesn’t plan on making a comeback anytime soon, her music still touches so many people today!

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