Tina Turner's last concert: Sheffield Arena, May 5, 2009

About the artist

Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock in Brownsville, Tennessee, on November 26, 1939. In 1957 she joined Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm as "Little Ann," and in 1960 she began recording as Tina Turner with "A Fool In Love"; she and Ike married in 1962.^[1] "River Deep – Mountain High," released on Phil Spector's label in 1966, was a hit around the world though not in the U.S., and won the duo the opening slot on the Rolling Stones' British tour that fall. "Proud Mary" reached No. 4 in 1971, the pair's biggest hit, and in 1975 she played the Acid Queen in the film Tommy.^[1]

Her roughly 20-year relationship with Ike was abusive.^[2] She left him in 1976^[1][3] and told the story herself, notably in her 1986 autobiography, I, Tina, the basis for a 1993 biopic.^[1][4]

Solo stardom came in her forties.^[2] Private Dancer (1984) became her best-selling album, and "What's Love Got To Do With It" gave her her first and only No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won Record of the Year at the 1985 Grammys.^[1] The Break Every Rule tour ran from March 1987 to March 1988, playing 218 shows to four million people; on January 16, 1988, 180,000 came to see her at the Maracanã in Rio de Janeiro, still the record for a ticketed concert by a female artist, according to Guinness World Records.^[5] In 1991 she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with Ike.^[1]

Why this was the last show

Turner had said goodbye to touring once before. Her Twenty Four Seven tour in 2000 was announced as her last trip around the stadiums and arenas. "I've done enough," she told Rolling Stone, adding that after 44 years of performing it was time to hang up her dancing shoes.^[6] The tour grossed $80.2 million in North America, the most of any act that year by Pollstar's count.^[6] Rolling Stone later wrote that it truly seemed like the end of her live career.^[4]

For nearly eight years she stayed off the road.^[7][8] The turning point was the 50th Grammy Awards in February 2008, where she sang "Proud Mary" with Beyoncé.^[9] "After performing with Beyonce at the Grammy Awards, the response was overwhelming," she said; everywhere she went, people asked when she would tour again, and after a lot of thought and planning she had her answer.^[10] According to The New World, she called her manager and told him it was time.^[9] She announced the tour on The Oprah Winfrey Show on April 26, having been talked into it, Pollstar reported, by Sophia Loren.^[8]

The North American dates, released on May 8, ran from Kansas City on October 1 to Montreal on December 8, 17 cities in all.^[7][10] European dates followed at the end of May, from Antwerp in January 2009 to Manchester at the end of March, with Barrie Marshall, who had run her European tours for at least three decades, in charge.^[8] Pollstar called it her first tour in eight years; none of the announcements described it as a farewell.^[7][10][8] According to The Circle, Universal Music's online magazine, it was first called Tina!: Live In Concert and later renamed the Tina!: 50th Anniversary Tour, marking half a century since she first took the stage with Ike's band in 1958.^[11] A new 18-track hits collection, Tina!, with two new songs and four live tracks from earlier tours, came out in the U.S. on September 30 to coincide with the tour.^[12][13]

The tour opened on October 1, 2008, at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, before a sold-out crowd of 18,000 — her first full concert in eight years.^[14][15] The Kansas City Star's Timothy Finn called it "mind-boggling in many ways" and noted that, for an opening night, it ran without a bump.^[14] The production was the work of lighting and production designer Baz Halpin, set designer Mark Fisher, choreographer Toni Basil and costume designer Bob Mackie, among others.^[16]

In 2009 the tour crossed to Europe. In March, her concerts at the GelreDome in Arnhem, the Netherlands, were filmed for a video release in front of about 70,000 people.^[17][18] On March 10, she came down with respiratory flu and postponed the last two British dates, the O2 Arena in London on March 11 and Sheffield Arena on March 12. They were moved to May 3 and May 5, and the European tour was to resume in Paris on March 16.^[19] The Star in Sheffield reported that doctors had ordered six days of rest.^[20] That is how a make-up date in Sheffield became the final night of the tour.^[20]

She never toured again; after the 50th Anniversary Tour she retired from the stage.^[1][21] There was no announcement beforehand, and she explained her reasons only later. On Graham Norton's BBC Radio 2 show in 2018, she said she had grown tired of singing and dancing and wanted "to be at home and be normal."^[22] In her memoir My Love Story, published the same year, she wrote that after years of hard work she was ready to stop, and that she would rather be remembered at her best than have people see her in some future show and think she used to be good. She summed it up with an old saying: leave the party before it's over.^[23][9] Because the show was not announced as her last, this site files it under "Final in retrospect."

What is known about the day

May 5, 2009, was a Tuesday.^[11] The Star described a packed house at Sheffield Arena, now Utilita Arena Sheffield.^[20] It was a city she knew well: she had played Sheffield City Hall in February 1984 and Don Valley Stadium in 1996 and 2000, and, as one half of Ike & Tina Turner, the King Mojo Club back in October 1966.^[20] The 90th show of the tour was not staged as a special event. There were no guests and no special set list.^[11]

For one member of the company it was a homecoming. Dance captain Clare Turton came from nearby Eckington, which, Turner wrote, made the night all the more special.^[23][24] Turner gave her tickets for family and friends, and in the audience was Turton's old teacher, Sue Jones of a dance school in Chesterfield.^[24]

According to the fan-edited setlist.fm, the show began with a recording of the Beatles' "Get Back" before Turner opened with "Steamy Windows."^[25] On this tour she made her entrance from a giant iris left over from her GoldenEye era, rebuilt with a pantograph staircase and a telescoping "diving board." Live Design described a show of about two hours in five sections, the first five songs played under spare, monochrome lighting.^[16]

Two songs by the Who came next, "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "The Acid Queen," the number from Tommy, where she had played the part.^[25][1] The lighting in this stretch turned saturated and psychedelic, and the first half closed with a full production of "We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)," the Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome theme, with a cage for the number stored up in the roof.^[16][3] After the intermission came an unplugged section in the middle of the show.^[16]

Fans cited by The Circle said Turner smiled all evening. One of her backing singers did a playful little striptease, and Turner introduced Clare Turton to the crowd and paid tribute to her.^[11] Turton remembered that Turner "was excited to introduce me to the crowd," and said she hoped her teacher had felt proud of her in that moment in Sheffield.^[24] Out in the arena, hundreds of small "Thank you" signs went up.^[11]

The main set ended with "The Best" and "Proud Mary."^[25] A fan's video of that last "Proud Mary" survives, and Rolling Stone has shared it.^[26] On this tour, the finale used the steel claw from her 2000 tour, which carried her some 60 feet out over the audience.^[16]

The encore opened with "Nutbush City Limits," from the Ike & Tina years.^[25] Then came the last song: "Be Tender With Me Baby," from the album Foreign Affair. Rolling Stone called it "relatively obscure" and shared a fan's video of the moment she finished the night with it.^[4] On the tour, the song was played under followspots.^[16]

"We really had fun that night," Turner wrote in her memoir; she had wanted every person in the audience to have the best possible time.^[23] In 2018 she told BBC Radio 2 it had been "really wonderful": "We had the greatest show."^[22] Back at the hotel afterward, she was very quiet, knowing it was the end.^[23] The next day she boarded a plane with her husband, Erwin Bach, and her cook, and told them: "This is it, I'm not going back for anything."^[22][23]

What the show left behind

The tour ended at 90 shows.^[4][17] The Star put its gross at $130 million,^[23] and JamBase counts it among the decade's top-grossing tours.^[1] Rolling Stone wrote that the show "would have exhausted someone half her age," yet Turner "amazed every single night."^[4]

Tina Live, filmed at the March shows in Arnhem, came out in the U.S. on October 20, 2009: more than two hours of HD video directed by David Mallet, with a companion live CD.^[18][17] Its video running order ends, like the Sheffield show, with "Be Tender With Me Baby."^[18] Turner called the run "a tour to remember," a celebration of her 50 years in the business.^[18] No official video or audio of the Sheffield concert itself has been found.

Off the stage, she settled into a quiet life in Switzerland. She had moved there in the mid-1990s, lived in a lakeside villa in Küsnacht on Lake Zurich, and in 2013 took Swiss citizenship and gave up her U.S. passport.^[27] Küsnacht's mayor told the AP that one of the reasons she came was "to have a completely normal life." She lit the town's Christmas tree each year and inaugurated a municipal rescue boat named "Tina."^[27]

She never went back on stage, but her story did. In spring 2018 the musical Tina opened at the Aldwych Theatre in London, starring Adrienne Warren and directed by Phyllida Lloyd.^[22][28] Its finale, Variety reported, recreates her concert before "180,000 people in Brazil," with the lighting turning the theater into a rock stadium.^[28] Turner backed the production but told Radio 2 that it "is different, because I'm not doing it." The Star judged a comeback in Sheffield, or anywhere else, "highly unlikely."^[22] In My Love Story that October, she went back over the last night in Sheffield.^[23]

In March 2021, HBO released the documentary TINA, directed by Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin, who had been approached by Erwin Bach to make it.^[21] Turner presented the film, together with the musical, as her farewell to public life. Lindsay said her first words when they sat down were "I don't want to do this," meaning she was done with the press.^[21] In the film, NPR noted, she wonders aloud how one can "bow out slowly," and Bach says of the documentary and the musical: "this is it. It's a closure."^[29]

Later that year she entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame a second time, as a solo artist, 30 years after her induction with Ike.^[1] Angela Bassett inducted her, and H.E.R., Keith Urban, Mickey Guyton and Christina Aguilera performed a tribute.^[3]

Tina Turner died at her home in Küsnacht on May 24, 2023. She was 83.^[20][1] The news came in a statement from her representatives, also posted on her official social media accounts.^[30][31]

In the days that followed, NME and Far Out shared footage of the final concert, and Far Out called it one of her finest performances.^[32][33] The Star in Sheffield looked back on the last live show its city had hosted.^[20] On setlist.fm, the entry for the night now carries a note: her final concert before retiring from performing live.^[25] Writing in The New World in 2026, John Osborne put it plainly: after that night in Sheffield, she never performed a full concert again.^[9]