Tina Turner Read online

  As planned, Sammy walked her out of the hotel and presented her with the white XJ6 four-door luxury sports car. Tina was knocked out by his kindness. She absolutely loved that car and was deeply touched by Sammy’s generosity. Even if Ike placed no value on her, it was bolstering to find that she really did have friends in show business who genuinely did care about her.

  One of the most prized liaisons that Tina made in Las Vegas during this time was her friendship with Ann-Margret. A huge movie star in the 1960s, Ann-Margret found a warm reception from casino audiences when she brought her Hollywood glitz to Vegas showrooms.

  After the “Ike & Tina” show one night, Tina and Rhonda Gramm went to the Tropicana Hotel to catch the last few minutes of Ann-Margret’s show. Afterward, they went backstage to meet her and were delighted to find that Tina was one of Ann-Margret’s favorite singers. In fact, she had a stack of Tina’s recordings there in her dressing room. It was to be the beginning of a long friendship between Tina and Ann-Margret.

  In late 1970, Ike and Tina were in Florida when they booked some studio time and recorded the song “Proud Mary.” A Cajun-flavored rock song by Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Proud Mary” was to get a very unique treatment from Tina, and it would become one of her signature songs.

  The whole elongated and ad-libbed rap that Tina has at the beginning of their recording of “Proud Mary” is absolutely priceless. The way she announces that she “never ever” does anything “nice” and “easy,” because she does it “nice” and “rough,” is a trademark monologue for her. In the song itself, she is able to show for the first time how she can sound melodic when she wants to, but then she shifts gears and demonstrates how she likes to get rough and raucous as well.

  Released as a single in the early part of 1971, “Proud Mary” became Ike & Tina’s first Top 10 single on the Pop charts. Peaking at No. 4 and becoming their first million-selling single, it finally put them over the top. According to the writer of the song, John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Tina Turner doing ‘Proud Mary’ is one of the most electrifying images in rock & roll. Thank you, beautiful Tina, for shooting my song into the stratosphere” (21). It became the second biggest single song of their entire career together.

  Ike & Tina’s new album, Workin’ Together, which featured “Proud Mary,” likewise became the biggest selling album of their entire career, reaching No. 25 in Billboard magazine in the United States. The album also included the amusing Ike composition, “Funkier than a Mosquita’s Tweeter,” as well as Tina’s great interpretations of The Beatles’ hits “Get Back” and “Let It Be,” and their version of Jessie Hill’s “Ooh Poo Pah Doo.”

  On May 6, 1971, “Proud Mary” was certified by the RIAA (Record Industry Association of America) as their first “Gold” single. The following month, their next single, “Ooh Poo Pah Doo” peaked at No. 60 in the United States.

  That same year, The Ike & Tina Turner Revue returned to Europe in hopes of replicating the same recording success they had finally achieved in the United States. The tour was a smash, but somehow the record failed to have the same success in the United Kingdom.

  In September, their next album—a live set entitled Live at Carnegie Hall: What You Hear Is What You Get—was released by United Artists Records, reached No. 25 in Billboard, and was certified Gold for selling 500,000 copies in the United States. The show, which was recorded in New York City’s most famous venue, found the duo introduced on stage by famous DJ Frankie Crocker. This particular live album was perfect to demonstrate Tina’s new rock & roll vocal stance on songs like “Honky Tonk Women,” “A Love Like Yours (Don’t Come Knockin’ Every Day),” “Proud Mary,” “I Want to Take You Higher,” and “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.” Finally they were finished recording live versions of Ike’s series of “Fool” songs. To borrow a phrase from The Who, at least now Tina wasn’t about to be fooled again.

  Oddly enough, Liberty Records—a subsidiary of United Artists Records—released still another concert album on Ike & Tina that same year: the single disk Live in Paris. Somehow the live releases just kept rolling and rolling.

  What Ike Turner was really rolling in at this point was money—and by rights—Tina should have been too. However, he still never actually paid her a cent. He was in charge of all the cash, and she was just expected to accept the few things that he gave her. “Proud Mary,” their recording successes, and the money from their concert appearances, had filled Ike’s pockets with lots of cold, hard cash.

  For a long time, Ike Turner had wanted to be the owner of his own recording studio. That way he could not only save the money that he spent booking studio time, but he could also indulge his every musical whim. With that, he began to make plans for what was to become Bolic Sound Studios. Located at 1310 La Brea Avenue, about five minutes from the Turner house, the one-story building he purchased was totally renovated for his needs. There were two complete sound studios built into the structure. There was a larger studio, which Ike intended to rent out to other recording artists, and a smaller studio, which was for him alone.

  Bolic Sound became Ike’s own private playground. Now the all-night parties and the cocaine orgies could go on night and day, under the guise of being a business venture.

  According to Tina, “When he built it, I thought, ‘Wonderful—I’ll be rid of him.’ But then the phone calls started at three o’clock in the morning. ‘Tina, Ike wants you.’ ” (1). She could be sound asleep in the middle of the night, and Ike would telephone her, demanding that she come to the studio immediately to sing her lead vocal on some opus he had just composed.

  In order to protect his domain of drugs, women, and million-dollar sound equipment, Ike had his own arsenal of guns to protect the premises. Furthermore, every square inch of the place was under the surveillance of twenty-four-hour security cameras. The Olympiad house they lived in had a similar system of security devices.

  In October 1971, a cover story in Rolling Stone magazine blew away any misconception about Ike being just an everyday self-made successful musician. It painted a picture of him as a pistol-packing, drug-crazed lunatic. An “associate” quoted in the story said of Turner, “Ike would storm into the office with a troop of people, six-foot chicks, a bag of cocaine. Really, really crazy. He’d carry around $25,000 in cash in his pocket—with a gun. He’d drive around town, man, sometimes to Watts, sometimes Laurel Canyon, in his new Rolls Royce to pick up coke” (23).

  Tina remembers going into the studio for those late-night sessions. There would be an assortment of strange characters draped across furniture, their eyes glazed over and staring into space. There would be Ike in the middle of it, high as a kite on coke, and without the benefit of sleep in days, and would start screaming and yelling at Tina about how she wasn’t singing his songs correctly.

  At this point, Ann Thomas came back into the scene. Since having Ike’s baby, Mia, she drifted back into his life. He put her up in an apartment behind Bolic Sound Studio, so she could be Ike’s on-call mistress whenever he needed her attention.

  Ann remembers having to hide Ike’s walking canes, which he seemed to fancy. Not only did he use them for walking, he used them to beat Ann and the secretaries down at the recording studio. Like Tina, Ann Thomas never quite knew when Ike was going to go off on her physically.

  According to Ike and Tina’s four children, they, likewise, never knew when their father would suddenly explode into a rage directed toward them. They finally learned to gauge Ike’s mood by tracking how many days it had been since he last came back to the house to sleep. If he had only been up one or two days, he could be reasonable. But those times when he had been awake for three or four days, he was a walking time bomb.

  In 1972, when it came time to hand out Grammy Awards for the previous year’s releases, Ike & Tina Turner’s version of “Proud Mary” was one of the nominees that night. Both Ike and Tina were thrilled when it won the trophy as the Best Rhythm & Blues Performance by a Duo or a Group.


  The group’s next album, ’Nuff Said, on United Artists Records, strayed away from the winning formula of Workin’ Together. Instead of giving their fresh interpretations of rock songs, Ike chose to return to his old sound. With that, ‘Nuff Said only made it to No. 108 on the charts. The album contained an Ike Turner–produced version of “River Deep-Mountain High.” It was a standard version of the song, but it was nowhere near as dynamic as Phil Spector’s majestic recording. ’Nuff said indeed!

  It was quickly followed up by the album Feel Good (United Artists Records/1972). The album featured a dated but fun-sounding dance number, “If You Can Hully Gully (I Can Hully Gully Too),” a rare jazz number for Tina, “Black Coffee,” and the Turners’ version of The Beatles’ “She Came in through the Bathroom Window.” The disc made it to No. 160 in Billboard. That same year, one single, “Up In Heah,” made it up to No. 83 on the Pop singles chart in the United States.

  In 1973 came the album Let Me Touch Your Mind from United Artists Records. It ended up going nowhere. It featured Tina’s version of the songs “Up on the Roof,” “Born Free,” and Stevie Wonder’s “Heaven Help Us All.” One of the most interesting cuts is a song called “Annie Had a Baby.” When he wrote this song, was Ike thinking of Anna Mae Bullock, Ann Cain, or Ann Thomas? Surely the song applied to all three of them, because they all had given birth to his babies!

  That same year also saw two separate “greatest hits” albums—one from United Artists and one from Blue Thumb, and still another live concert album from Ike & Tina Turner, titled Live in the World of Ike and Tina Turner. It opens with the “Theme from Shaft.” With all of his guns and his cocaine, did Ike Turner suddenly fancy himself an inner city crime fighter? Can you dig it?

  However, the real prize was the 1973 album Nutbush City Limits, with the incredibly catchy title cut—composed by Tina Turner herself! Finally, she had tested her hand at songwriting. In fact, she wrote five of the ten songs included on this album. She figured that if she and Ike could log enough hit records, she would be able to one day afford to escape from him. Knowing how badly he wanted a hit record, she dug back into her own beginnings, and wrote a song about the place she came from. The song “Nutbush City Limits” made it to No. 22 in the United States, but made it all the way up to No. 4 in the United Kingdom.

  Tina wrote another song, which appears on this album with a musical track identical to “Nutbush City Limits.” Entitled “Club Manhattan,” it tells the story of the place where Tina first met The Kings of Rhythm. She also wrote a song called “Daily Bread,” a story-song called “Fancy Annie,” and “That’s My Purpose.” The song that seems the most tailor-made for Tina was one that Ike wrote called “Get It Out of Your Mind.” In the context of the song, Tina basically sings “you can have all your women and your drugs, but leave me alone.” It doesn’t get any more blatant than that. The Nutbush City Limits album itself only made it to No. 163 in Billboard, but the hit record of the same name gave Tina still another trademark song for her repertoire.

  During this period, Tina was slowly gaining back her strength and her determination. She was writing down her thoughts and she was open to new ideas. She had an idea in the back of her mind that she was working up to the day when she would walk out on Ike Turner. Her day of liberation was coming. She knew that she just had to choose her moment, and she was going to be free.

  9

  I’VE BEEN LOVING YOU TOO LONG

  Tina recalled a conversation that she had with Ike during this era, where he got exasperated with her for something. While arguing with her, he asked her what she ever did for him? She looked at him blankly and told him that he must be blind. She gave him manicures and pedicures; she dyed his hair when it started to go gray; she raised their kids; she looked the other way while he had sex with every available woman who crossed his path; and she was the star of his entire entertainment enterprise! Furthermore, she took his abuses, both physical and mental. But Ike didn’t see it that way. She started talking back to him, but he was so used to ignoring her that he barely heard what she was saying.

  “I kept saying things, but he didn’t listen,” she remembers. “Then he listened and he didn’t like what he heard, and he tried to stop me saying it” (1).

  Whatever home life Tina and her four sons had was torturous at best. The boys would scatter as soon as they saw Ike coming back to the house. They didn’t want to be anywhere near him. When Christmas time rolled around, Ike forbade Tina from buying any “motherfuckin’ presents” (4).

  At the time, Ike had a new circle of people hanging around him. The drugs and money drew a certain element of odd characters to Ike. He was hanging out with a lot of hippies, and he was interested in the occult and voodoo. Tina was leery about even going down to the studio because the atmosphere was so drug-laced and uncomfortable to be around.

  Through this part of the middle 1970s, Tina claims that the only thing that got her through all of Ike’s abuses and nonsense were the fortune tellers she was seeing. Ike would come home and pass out, and he had so much cash in his pants pockets that he wouldn’t miss a couple of dollars she carefully removed.

  Because Ike was capable of watching her every move in the house through the monitor cameras he had at the house, Tina had to sneak out to see her “readers.” She would tell Ike that she was going out shopping, and she would make a beeline for another of her soothsayers. Some of them would read tea leaves. Some would read tarot cards. But the messages all seemed to be the same. They all agreed that a bigger, more fulfilling life was awaiting her in the future.

  One of the readers told her that “one day you will be among the biggest of stars and you will live across the water” (5). According to her, listening to the fortune tellers was “the beginning of my escape from Ike Turner. . . . It’s possible to push a person too far, and I was pushed beyond the limit” (1).

  In a 1993 magazine article, Tina outlined the physical abuse she had to endure as a day-to-day way of life with Ike. “This was always bruised,” Tina said as she pointed to her jawbone. Motioning to her inner lower lip, she explained, “This was always just torn apart, because it hits the teeth. So the mouth was always distorted, and the eyes were always black. If you look at some of the earlier pictures, my eyes were always dark. I couldn’t get them clear. I thought it was smoke or whatever. But Ike always banged me against the head” (5).

  It was a miracle that Tina wasn’t left with permanent damage from the beatings she received at the hands of cocaine-crazed Ike. “How could I have survived? Only once I got knocked out. Only once. And that was when I got this,” she explained, motioning to a scar outlining the outer part of her right eye. “Black eyes, busted lips—somehow I just ignored it, but people knew. I thought that they thought it was a car accident. I made something up in my head in terms of the public” (5).

  Her visits to doctors only yielded temporary relief. “In those days, believe me, a doctor asked you what happened and you say, ‘I had a fight with my husband,’ that was it. Black people fight. They [medical doctors] didn’t care about black people,” she said with resignation (5).

  The people around her were helplessly stunned by what they witnessed in the presence of Ike and Tina. Recalls Bob Krasnow, “I felt great responsibility for Tina, and I’d be there while it was going on. I was young, and I hero-worshipped Ike in a perverted way. Had I been more liberated or more experienced, I would have spoken up. I didn’t” (5).

  The cocaine only made Ike’s outrages become more dramatic and more violent. “The whole thing took this huge turn for ugliness,” says Krasnow. “Tina was the focus of a lot of this horror, but the whole world suffered. In those days there was no Oprah Winfrey, no publicity dealing with abuse, no abuse [telephone] hot lines. She was out there by herself in a man’s world—she was on the road with B. B. King and Chubby Checker. She was the only woman in this world . . . a demeaning man’s world” (5).

  Still, Tina found her own inner strength during this time. “I star
ted coming into my own those last years with Ike, because I was in charge of the girls [The Ikettes] and the basic performance. I had also gotten involved with arrangements. I don’t play, but I was able to communicate verbally with the musicians—Ike’s musicians. So by the time I got my [own post-Ike] band, I was equipped,” she explains (7).

  The worst on-stage degradation that Tina had to endure was having to mimic performing fellatio to her microphone during the song “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.” This was Ike’s idea. It got to the point where Ike would moan and groan into his microphone like he was having an orgasm, just to make the song all the more erotic. Tina now hates that song and refuses to ever sing it again. It still conjures up memories of her life being a living hell with Ike during these last stages of their marriage.

  Yet, through it all, she had her own sense of dignity, and she knew that she was mounting the courage to leave Ike Turner once and for all. “O.K., so if I was a victim—fine,” she concedes. “Maybe I was a victim for a short while. But give me credit for thinking the whole time I was there. See, I do have pride. I’ve got to get somebody else to say, ‘Yes, Tina, I do understand, and there are no ‘buts’ ” (5).

  Ike had the habit of showing up at the house with some pretty girl in tow whom he wanted to impress. He would drag them up to meet “Tina Turner.” There Tina would stand, being gracious to these women, so that Ike could dazzle them into having sex with him.

  Tina recalls, “There was all kinds of sex going on at the house, and I had caught him on the sofas, and women on their knees. I said to him, ‘You can’t do this in this house.’ I really felt this house was mine. Ike was at a stage of showing off. He built a recording studio not far from the house. He wanted to let people know he had an apartment in the back of the recording studio, that he had recording-studio living quarters and the building next door as an agency, and wanted to come up and show off the house, which was decorated like a bordello” (5).