After Tina Turner’s death yesterday, Cher called into MSNBC’s The Beat With Ari Melber to discuss visiting her late pal amid her illness.
I started going to visit her because I thought,
‘I need to put this time into our friendship, so she knows we haven’t forgotten her,’
So we all took turns going and spending time with her and it made her happy.”
Tina’s cause of death has yet to be revealed, but Cher said that she
had her dialysis machine in her house.”
Dialysis is used for those who have kidney failure or at end-stage renal disease. Turner had a kidney transplant from her husband, Erwin Bach, in 2017.
She fought this sickness for such a long time and she was so strong as you think she would be, but I know towards the end, she told me once, she said,
‘I’m really ready. I just don’t want to put up with this anymore.'”
Cher recalled the first time she visited her friend at her home in Switzerland,
She said,
‘I can’t spend too much time,’ and then five hours later we were laughing like crazy and she wanted to get up and show everything she bought in the house… and boy, there were no surfaces in that house…
She was having a good time in spite of the fact that she was really sick and not wanting people to know about it.”
The final time Cher made the trip, she didn’t leave empty-handed.
She gave me a pair of shoes the last time I saw her.
What kind of shoes? Tina Turner shoes! The big high heels that she just [walked] around in like they were nothing.”
The pair met during Tina’s abusive relationship with Ike Turner,
When I first knew her, she was still with Ike. It was very strange to see her with Ike and afterward. I was so thrilled, because afterward, she was so free. You could just see her being able to take a big breath. Her new life was like a big, fresh breath.”
She was such a force. Honestly, I think she just hit everything head-on… She wasn’t about to stop. She might not have won every battle, but she fought every war. She was there fighting for all the things she believed in.
… She’s one of the great artists in our generation, in rock and roll.
There was no other person like her. There’s no other person who could come close to who she was.”
