'I'm sensing that he's in a good place.'
Tina Turner is addressing her son's death.
The 79-year-old singer sat down with Gayle King for an interview on CBS Sunday Morning and opened up about her son Craig Raymond Turner's death at age 59 last July. Following Craig's death, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Coroner's office told ET, "The call was reported as a suicide, gunshot wound."
"I think Craig was lonely, that's what I think really got him more than anything else," Tina said. "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, the My Love Story author also spoke about her tumultuous relationship with Ike Turner, to whom she was married from 1962 to 1978. Tina shared Craig with Raymond Hill, but Ike adopted Craig after he and Tina tied the knot.
Tina, who was born Anna Mae Bullock, said that Ike was "very good" to her in the beginning, but it all changed when a song they recorded together got the attention of a record executive.
"He just came home from the record company. He said, 'Here's the record.' And I said, 'Who's Tina?' He said, 'You're Tina!' And I said, "Tina? Tina Turner?' It was really hard to say in the beginning," she said. "That is when he took over the money, the name, the whole control."
"He was cruel because he depended on me," Tina added of Ike's alleged abuse. "He didn't like that he had to depend on me. And I didn't want to start a fight because it was always a black eye, a broken nose, a busted lip, a rib."
In a 1985 interview with Spin, Ike spoke out about Tina's allegations of abuse.
"Yeah, I hit her, but I didn’t hit her more than the average guy beats his wife," he said at the time. "The truth is, our life was no different from the guy next door’s. It’s been exaggerated. People buy bad news, dirty news. If she says I abused her, maybe I did."
Despite the many challenges in her life -- which also include a stroke, intestinal cancer and kidney failure -- Tina said she's "a happy person," thanks in large part to her husband, Erwin Bach, whom she wed in 2013.
"[That was] the first time that I got married, as far as I was concerned," she said of Bach. "When Ike asked me to marry him, I knew it was for a reason. 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."
"... I have everything," Tina added of her life now. "When I sit at Lake Zurich in the house that I have, I am so serene. No problems. I had a very hard life. But I didn't put blame on anything or anyone. I got through it, I lived through it with no blame. And I'm a happy person."
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