GENEVA • The metal plaque on the gate to Tina Turner's estate says, "Vor 12.00 Uhr nicht lauten, keine Lieferungen", which I believe is German for "Do not even think about bothering Tina Turner before noon".
She became a star with Ike Turner in her 20s, escaped his abuse in her 30s, fought her way up the pop charts in her 40s, toured the world through her 60s and, now, she would like to sleep in.
So I arrived at 2pm. Mr Erwin Bach, her German husband, fetched me in his SUV and took me to the house.
Turner is 79. She has been in retirement for 10 years and is still basking in all the nothing she has to do. "I don't sing. I don't dance. I don't dress up," she said.
She may not be singing much these days, but there is a squad of Tinas performing around the world on her behalf.
Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, based on her life, has brought a Tina to London and Hamburg, Germany. On Thursday, it will bring a Tina to Broadway. The show covers four decades of her life, beginning when she was little Anna Mae Bullock in Tennessee, and charting the 1980s when she grew into the fiercest pop star on the planet.
I asked Turner if it is strange to watch these other women pretending to be her and she said she has spent her whole career watching other women pretend to be her.
She used to audition promising background singers for the Ike & Tina Turner Revue and say: "She'll make a good Tina."
The musical traces her rise as a solo artist and her romance with Mr Bach. But, first, it tears through the 16 years she spent with Ike. She met him when he was a bandleader and she was 17-year-old Anna Mae.
He gave her a break as a performer but, by the end, he almost made her hate music.
He changed her name and trademarked it. He stole her earnings. He threw hot coffee in her face. He broke her jaw. Through it all, he made her sing, even if blood was running down her throat.
When Turner finally escaped Ike in 1976, her head was so swollen from the beatings, she had to leave even her wig behind.
And she was in debt. The venues for the cancelled Ike & Tina Turner Revue shows were calling and they were not interested in launching the solo career of a 37-year-old single black woman.
By the time she was fully respected in the United States as a solo artist, Turner had already left. She wanted to put an ocean between herself and Ike. In those years, she skipped across Europe.
She recorded her 1984 comeback album, Private Dancer, in London and shot the cover for her 1990 single, Foreign Affair, literally hanging off the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
She had just flown into Cologne, Germany, when she saw the man - Mr Bach, as she found out - from her record company EMI. He handled the artists.
She loved his eyes and nose. "Didn't like his hairstyle," she told me, but she figured she could redecorate that.
She was 46 and he was 30. The press called him her "boy toy". But here they are, more than 30 years later.
Several years ago, when she was on dialysis and close to death, he gave her a kidney. "And I would do it again," he said.
The couple moved to Switzerland in 1995. After a chaotic life, Turner likes the Swiss zeal for order.
She has become a symbol of so many things - sex appeal, resilience, empowerment - that she cannot quite relate to.
She was never trying to be sexy on stage; she was sweating through her clothes to sell her songs.
And the idea of connecting her life to the feminist movement or recasting it through #MeToo feels alien to her. "I identify only with my life," she said.
While everyone was making her into a symbol, "I was busy doing it. Doing the work".
The strength of her voice and the power of her story have seemed to build an almost invincible persona, but it is just a persona.
"I don't necessarily want to be a 'strong' person. I had a terrible life. I just kept going," she added. "You just keep going and you hope that something will come."
She gestured around her.
"This came."
NYTIMES
