Ghost’s Tobias Forge pays tribute to Tina Turner: “I always thought she was a fantastic artist”

Ghost and Tina Turner — (Image credit: Press/Denize Alain/Sygma via Getty Images)

Ghost frontman Tobias Forge has paid tribute to Tina Turner, the rock’n’roll/R&B trailblazer who died this week at the age of 83.

Forge, whose band covered Turner’s 1985 hit We Don’t Need Another Hero on their new Phantomime EP, says that the US singer “deserves all the homages and credit people can pay her.”

Speaking exclusively to Metal Hammer, Forge made his admiration for the singer clear.

"I’ve always loved We Don’t Need Another Hero, and I’ve always thought Tina Turner was such a fantastic artist,” he says.

“As with several other artists, our generation got a lot more acquainted with their lives through movies. Jim Morrison was a big one when The Doors movie came out in 1991, which had a big push for the cult around The Doors.

“Tina Turner had her own share of that, and everything that had happened with Ike, which a lot of us became aware of thanks to [1993 biopic] What’s Love Got To Do With It?

He continues: “I liked her songs for so much longer than that movie has been out, but that movie really made us aware of what an extraordinary uphill battle she’s fought. Also, for lack of a better word, how well deserved her enormous career in the 80s was.

“Being a huge fan of the Rolling Stones, I’d been aware that she’d been around since the 60s and had a lot of bangers before they worked together, but in the 80s her radio and cinematic presence was that of a huge star. A chart dominating star, too. For her, at her age and with everything she’d gone through, it wasn’t a given and must have felt like a last hurrah.”

Forge also addressed the singer’s tough upbringing, and her relationship with her abusive ex-husband and bandmate, Ike Turner, who she was married to from 1962 to 1978, and who died in 2007.

“I understand she was a sad person, which feels like such a sad thing, considering her talent and everything she accomplished,” Tobias says. “But obviously, that motherfucker Ike… Rest in shame, Ike Turner.”

Ghost’s Phantomime EP, featuring their cover of We Don’t Need Another Hero, is out now.

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Rich Hobson