Tina Turner to Retire From Touring

L O N D O N, July 1 -- It’s official. Tina Turner willbe giving her famous raspy voice and high-energy stage show apermanent rest when she retires at the end of her current tour.

Turner, 60, announced her plans to a 75,000-strong crowd inZurich as she kicked off the European leg of her “24-7” touron Friday night, her London-based publicist Bernard Doherty toldReuters today.

“I’ve done enough,” Turner said. “I’ve been performingfor 44 years. I really should hang up my dancing shoes.”

Turner, a grandmother, said she couldn’t possibly singwithout “jumping around,” and acknowledged her performanceswere getting harder and harder to do.

“I can’t keep up with Janet Jackson. I’m not a diva likeDiana Ross,” she said. “I’m rock and roll, but I’m happy I cando it one more time so people can remember me at my best.”

Doherty told Reuters on Friday that Turner wanted to makethe announcement in Zurich, where she lives with her partner of15 years, record boss Erwin Bach.

Turning to the Silver Screen?

He said the American singer would still perform live butonly at special concerts for charity or old friends.

“Tina said she wants ‘simply a rest’,” Doherty toldReuters on Friday, echoing the title of her hit “Simply theBest.”

“She wants to go out on top, while she is at her best. Shedoesn’t want to become a faded caricature of herself,” he said.

Turner was looking at film scripts but would play onlystrong, determined women, Doherty said.

“She says she has lived the role of a victim and playingone doesn’t interest her,” he said. “She would have loved tobe in ‘Gladiator’.”

Born Annie Mae Bullock in Tennessee, Turner found fame as asinger in the 1960s with her husband Ike.

The relationship was notoriously stormy, with Ike reputedlyabusive and controlling. Turner walked out on Ike in 1975,incurring the wrath of music bosses who initially snubbed herattempts to forge a solo career.