Tina Turner was extremely worried that her son Ronnie would follow in his abusive father Ike Turner's footsteps, it has been revealed.
The late icon, who passed away on 24 May after a long illness at her home in Küsnacht near Zurich in Switzerland, suffered physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her first marriage Ike.
Ike first met Tina when she was a vulnerable teenager named Annie Mae Bullock. He renamed her Tina and went on to form the musical duo Ike & Tina Turner.
According to Tina, he micromanaged her career, withheld her finances and beat her while she was pregnant. She fled the marriage and frequently credited her second husband, Erwin Bach, for helping her find true happiness. Meanwhile, Ike died in 2007 at the age of 76 following a drug overdose.
Now it has been revealed by Tina's son Ronnie's wife, Afida Turner, that she was so haunted by Ike's treatment of her that she warned her son that he was "going to be like his father".
Afida also added that Ronnie did show signs of concerning behaviour at the start of their relationship but soon turned things around.
"(Tina) sometimes told me, 'You don't want to stay with him. He is going to be like his father,'" she told the Daily Mail.
"At first, he was kind of like his father, but after that, he was going very well," she added. "He made a very big effort to keep me. In the beginning, it was very hard because I was not willing to stay with him."
She added that while Ronnie was a "heavy drinker" when they first met, she soon made him "stop drinking and go to the gym".
Ronnie passed away at 62 following complications from colon cancer just months before his mother's passing.
After breaking free from her marriage to Ike, Tina opened up about the trauma she suffered throughout their relationship. In her 2018 memoir, My Love Story, she compared sex with the late musician to a "kind of rape."
"He used my nose as a punching bag so many times that I could taste blood running down my throat when I sang," she wrote.
After escaping abuse, she went on to rebuild her career and become one of the biggest stars in the industry.
She starred in The Who's 1975 rock opera Tommy as the Acid Queen and subsequently in the 1985 film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
Tina's death was announced on her official Instagram page. The post said: "With her music and her boundless passion for life, she enchanted millions of fans around the world and inspired the stars of tomorrow.
"Today we say goodbye to a dear friend who leaves us all her greatest work: her music."
Turner won eight Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 2021 as a solo artist after first being inducted alongside Ike Turner in 1991.
