Tina Turner Page 14

  A couple of months went by. Tina was able to get in contact with her son Craig, and she had his girlfriend sneak into the Turner house and take some of Tina’s clothes out of the closet. Finally, she was able to have some of her own things to wear. Tina also had her bring her .38 pistol, just in case she had to defend herself against “pistol-whipping Ike Turner”—as he had been known in East St. Louis.

  Meanwhile, Ike secluded himself at Bolic Sound. According to his son, Ike Turner Jr., Ike did so much cocaine that he stayed up for fourteen consecutive days. Ike Jr. tried to be loyal to his father. That is until one night when Ike bashed his son over the head with a loaded .45 pistol. As Ike Jr. was being stitched up at the hospital, he knew that he too would have to escape.

  After Tina left Ike, all of the scheduled tour dates had to be canceled. No one was going to buy concert tickets to see Ike without Tina. Pretty soon, the concert promoters started filing lawsuits. Furthermore, the recording contract with Liberty/United Artists Records was due to lapse. While he was alone in the studio, Ike kept writing and recording songs of hurt and revenge. They were songs that no one was even remotely interested in hearing.

  One day Anna Maria and Tina decided to go out to the store. Tina wore her head wrap and dark glasses. However, when a car pulled up beside them and gave them a good hard look, they knew that they were being followed. That night, while chanting, suddenly Anna Maria announced that she was going to turn the lawn sprinklers on—full blast. In case anyone wanted to come up to the house, they were going to get soaking wet.

  Sure enough, a knocking came at the door. It was Robbie Montgomery, one of the former Ikettes. Anna Maria did her best impersonation of a Portuguese maid, and told Robbie that no one was at home but her. As Tina looked out the window, she could see Ike, his Rolls Royce, and five or six cars full of people, all dressed like extras for a Shaft or Superfly film. There was Ike in his boots and a jumpsuit—hoping to drag Tina back by force.

  Tina and Anna Maria called the police. When the police arrived, Tina announced to them who she was and informed them that the man in the jumpsuit was Ike Turner and that she had no intention of going back to him. The police made him leave the premises upon the insistence of the property’s owner.

  Although they all left that night, now Ike knew where Tina was. Ike phoned Maria Booker and asked her to line up a meeting between he and Tina. Tina was feeling very strong and self-confident at this point, so she agreed. She was tired of living this fugitive lifestyle.

  Ike arrived at Anna Maria’s in a car with a driver. She got in the car with him for their talk. According to Tina, Ike nervously fumbled with his hat while he spoke to her. She knew that he didn’t dare lay a hand on her this time. In that meeting, she let him know that she was never going to go back to him—end of topic. He drove her back to Anna Maria’s.

  Two days after their meeting, Ike sent all four of their sons to go live with Tina. They arrived with their clothes and pets. Then he sent over $1,000—enough money to rent a house—and pay for one month’s rent. Tina knew that he was just setting her up. There was an added complication in Tina’s life too. Since it was she who legally had walked away from the tour dates, the lawsuits now were arriving in her mail. It was she who was legally liable for the missing dates she had failed to fulfill.

  She got in touch with Rhonda Gramm and asked if she would help her piece things back together. With Rhonda now playing booking agent, she began to book television appearances for Tina, shows that she could appear on without requiring a band or an act. She supported herself by appearing on TV game shows like Hollywood Squares and a series of variety programs—including the Cher show. Since Cher had left Sonny, she felt a special kinship with Tina. She was also seen on the Donnie and Marie Osmond show, The Brady Bunch Variety Show, and even a Laugh-In revival. Tina Turner was starting her career all over again, this time as a solo star.

  After years of feeling trapped and isolated, Tina began to realize that she had several friends who were very supportive of her. One of her closest allies turned out to be Ann-Margret.

  Recalls Ann-Margret of this era, “We spent more time together. She and her assistant Rhonda came to our house many times for dinner. Roger and I went to hers. She once admired a dress Bob Mackie had made for one of my specials, and I gave it to her. Roger and I truly believed in Tina as a person and a performer, and we wanted to do anything to help restore her self-confidence and self-esteem. We’ve remained friends ever since” (24).

  Initially, Tina filed for divorce from Ike only weeks after the Dallas fight. Nat Tabor had filed the initial divorce petition on July 27, citing “irreconcilable differences.” Once Ike had threatened Tabor’s life, he was off the case. It was Ann-Margret’s husband, Roger Smith, who put her in touch with Arthur Leeds of the law firm of Gottlieb, Locke and Leeds.

  The papers that they filed startled everyone. Although she was entitled by California law to “community property” which had been acquired during her marriage, she did not seek or want 50 percent of everything that Ike owned—like she could have legally taken it from him. She only wanted two things—her freedom and her stage name of “Tina Turner.” Leeds did petition for $4,000 a month in alimony and an additional $1,000 a month in child support. Although, Tina never expected Ike to agree to that, at this point she didn’t really care about the money at all.

  Then Tina got a phone call from Mike Stewart at United Artists Records. He wanted to set up a meeting between himself, Tina, and Ike. She agreed. In the context of that meeting, she informed them both that she had no intention of ever singing with Ike again, in a recording studio or on a stage—ever. Ike’s plan to lure her back to him with record company money had backfired, and now he was really pissed off.

  Furthermore, Ike had it in for anyone who helped or sheltered Tina. The first one to receive damages at the hand of Ike was Rhonda Gramm. It seemed that twice her house in Reseda was set on fire. Rhonda came to live with Tina for a few days, then she went back home. When her windows were blown out by gunfire, she moved back with Tina again.

  Tina very quickly learned how to become resourceful once she had her own place. The first house that she lived in she had furnished using grocery store trading stamps.

  She had no income of her own. In fact, at one point she had to rely on government food stamps to keep food on the table. “I’m not ashamed of it,” says proud Tina. “It was like playing house” (2).

  The hill in back of the house that Tina was renting on Sunset Crest Drive was covered with vines, which made it easy to scale up. So, Tina’s son Craig rigged Coke bottles together with strings to form an alarm against anyone who tried to sneak up.

  One night they were in the house when the sound of gunfire in the front yard startled them. Someone had blown the windows out of Rhonda’s car. Another night, a police officer came to the door to warn Tina that Ike had hired someone to kill her, and that she should be aware of the threat. Arthur Leeds also received threats on his life during this period of time.

  Tina took to having her pistol with her at all times for protection. Driving in West Hollywood one day, she ran a red light. While the police officer was writing up the ticket they spotted the gun in her purse. She was taken in to the police station to be booked. However, when she got there and they found out who she was, they simply confiscated the gun and let her go free. They too knew all about Ike Turner, and they knew all of the illegal things in which he was involved. One of the ideas that came out of her meeting with Mike Stewart was Ike’s suggestion that Stewart could start managing her career for her. Although Tina knew that Mike was still too close to the Ike camp, she didn’t have any other offers.

  She got ahold of Mike and started working with him. Stewart lent money to Tina while she mounted a stage act and reinvented her singing career as a soloist. Mike recalls that Tina never complained about this new position in which she now found herself. One night, Stewart took Tina to a movie premiere, and according to him, “You would have though
t I was with Madonna today. The paparazzi swarmed. She was a celebrity” (5). The public still revered Tina as a big star apart from Ike.

  With assistance, money, and help from Mike Stewart, Tina mounted a stage act of her own. She was all finished singing Ike Turner songs like “A Fool in Love” and “I Idolize You.” Another song she would never, ever sing again was “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” which brought back awful memories of that demeaning microphone fellatio routine.

  She wanted to have a completely new act and a fresh, contemporary look. According to her, “I had been tired of this singing and this whole image of how I looked. I hated how I looked. . . . The hair and the makeup and all the sweat—I hated all of it” (5).

  It was now 1977, the year when disco was sweeping the country. Several of the ’60s acts, like Aretha Franklin and Dionne Warwick, were having trouble keeping up with the new wave of disco divas like Gloria Gaynor, Donna Summer, and Sister Sledge. So Tina reinvented herself.

  Thanks to Ann-Margret, Tina started working with designer Bob Mackie, who also worked a lot with Cher. Wearing tuxedos on stage and glittering gowns from Bob Mackie, Tina fashioned a whole new image for herself that had absolutely nothing to do with Ike. She added songs to her act like The Trammps’ “Disco Inferno.” Naturally, she had to retain some of her signature hits like “River Deep-Mountain High,” “Proud Mary,” and “Honky Tonk Women.”

  Since she was starting over again, cabarets and casino lounges were the only venues that she was able to perform in for awhile. She was just happy to be working. She hired dancers, and she sang ballads for the first time in her career. She had been so used to screaming her lyrics—as per Ike’s insistence—that it was refreshing to sing whatever songs she wanted to sing.

  The act debuted at a small club in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was far enough away from the Los Angeles and New York City critics to test the waters of her new act and her new persona. The act was not without its glitches. At one point in the show, Tina was to make her entrance in a man’s suit, in a sort of “Big Spender” production number. Velcro held the black suit, shirt, and hot pink necktie together at the seams. At one point during the number, the dancers were to breakaway the suit to reveal Tina in a form-fitting short shirt and nylons. On opening night the Velcro didn’t release, the stockings were falling down, and it was a potential mess. Undaunted, Tina kept on singing and nudged one of the dancers to fix the situation, making it look like it was just part of the act.

  Onstage mishaps aside, she finally had her own band and her own dancers, and she was feeling like a million bucks. To top it off, when she came to her grand finale number, the crowd stood up and gave her a standing ovation. Miraculously, it was the first one she had ever had in her career. It felt wonderful.

  One of Tina’s most famous Bob Mackie outfits from this era was a gold one that had wings attached to it. After years with Ike, it felt wonderful to have some fun with the glamour and glitz of it. “The wings and Las Vegas style. I mean, you look for glitter,” she recalls. “It was the first time I had a chance to dress in such costumes. I enjoyed it” (16).

  Booked on the nightclub cabaret circuit—in places like Reno and Lake Tahoe—Tina was putting herself and her career back together. She took an advance on song royalties she had written (like “Nutbush City Limits”), and moved herself into a new home in Sherman Oaks. She kept it a secret from Ike, but it wasn’t long before he found out her whereabouts.

  She was inside her house late one night, with her son Craig and his girlfriend, Bernadette, when they heard gunfire. When they looked outside, they found that someone had encircled Bernadette’s car with gasoline and set it aflame. Ike was obviously up to his old tricks. Since his own career was in the dumpster, he had nothing better to do than to devise these threatening pranks.

  To have some sort of income, and to fuel his hope that one day Tina would come back to him, Ike started salvaging some of the tracks he had in his studio with Tina’s lead vocal on them. In 1977, United Artists Records released an Ike & Tina album called Delilah’s Power. It included several cover tunes like Three Dog Night’s “Never Been to Spain,” Lena Horne’s “Stormy Weather (Keeps Rainin’ All the Time),” and The Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar.” Neither the album nor the single “Delilah’s Power” made it onto the charts.

  Tina’s interest in visiting psychics continued in this era. In 1977 she went to see a woman named Carol Dryer. It was Carol who read Tina’s soul aura and announced to her that she had once lived in ancient Egypt. This further underscored her interest in reincarnation, Egypt, and the mystical powers of the universe. Dryer claimed that Tina was now working out, in this lifetime, some of the mishaps that had occurred in her former life in the land of the Pharaohs. Tina was fascinated by these theories and continued to delve into reincarnation and Buddhism.

  She was beginning to have problems with the four boys as well. She was doing the best she could to raise them. She would not let them speak improper English or speak in slang words or phrases. But now that she was the breadwinner in the family, she had much too much to concentrate on without having to watch out for them and keep them out of trouble. She hired the woman who was once her nemesis—Ann Cain—to move into her house and take care of the boys for her.

  Finally, the arrangements for Ike and Tina’s divorce were approaching. It seemed that Ike had his hands on all sorts of holdings, from jewelry and real estate to a lot of money in songwriting royalties. Tired of fighting with Ike Turner’s camp, Tina instructed Arthur Leeds to forfeit all of the money, walk away from the assets, and just end the whole mess. She was to receive her two Jaguar automobiles and all of the songwriting royalties from the songs she had composed. As far as she was concerned, Ike could keep everything else.

  When she decided to take not a cent from Ike, the judge asked her, “Young lady, are you sure?” (8). She was dead sure. She didn’t want to be obligated to him in any way, shape, or form. She had her own life and her own future to concentrate on now.

  As she explains, “It’s not about leaving with money. You leave with knowledge. Inner strength. All the discipline I have to have now came from being with that man. . . . I knew what I was doing, and I knew why, and I got out. You don’t step out and do what I did with my life if you don’t have some control there” (8).

  The terms of the divorce were finally ironed out in November 1977, and the final decree was to be issued on March 29, 1978. Finally, she was legally free from Ike Turner. That was not to say that he still didn’t reappear from time to time to harass her, but no longer did he have a legal hold on or claim to any of the matters in her life.

  According to her, “My success and triumph was in leaving Ike” (11). Her day of independence had finally come. It had been a sixteen-year nightmare roller-coaster ride, but now Tina was finally free from Ike Turner.

  12

  TINA REBORN/PUTTIN’ ON THE RITZ

  Experiencing her newfound freedom, Tina was on the path of redefining her career as a solo artist. For the first time in her life she was getting to truly make her own decisions. And, she was no longer living in the fear that she had existed with during her sixteen years with Ike.

  “Once the divorce came—I had cut my hair,” she recalls. “I had gone shopping, even though I had no money. I got through it, though, but it was really fun. It was a freedom that—unless you’ve ever been in some form of bondage that you—it’s very hard to explain it. To have the freedom to get in your car and just ride, sometimes, because I’d never had that chance or that opportunity. I met new people, new friends. I moved from that side of California to an opposite side and I met friends, and . . . I learned how to drink a bit of champagne and wine. I learned some things. I learned about another life, and I liked it, you know?” (12).

  Part of her new life included selecting the material for her albums on her own. She was truly trying out her wings, and it felt great. In 1978 Liberty/United Artists released her third solo album, entitled Rough. It was a mi
xture of contemporary rock songs and cover versions of recent hits from other artists. Three of the most notable cuts include her interpretation of Bob Seger’s “Fire Down Below,” Dan Hill’s “Sometimes When We Touch,” and her first recorded version of Elton John’s “The Bitch Is Back.” Still trying her hands at country, she also recorded Willie Nelson’s “Funny How Time Slips Away.” There was one single released from it, titled “Root Toot Undisputable Rock & Roller.” The album was produced by Bob Monaco.

  Also in 1978 came Tina’s next appearance in a major film. She was seen in the highly publicized rock & roll motion picture Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Producer Robert Stigwood had been so successful at bringing The Who’s Tommy to the big screen that he was anxious to repeat the formula with another big rock star feature fashioned after a famous album. So, he optioned The Beatles’ 1967 masterpiece album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and set about turning it into a huge spectacle, starring The Bee Gees and Peter Frampton as the four members of the band.

  Since several of the songs contained on it suggested characters, like “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” “Lovely Rita,” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” different actors could play each of them. One of the most famous aspects of the album was the original cover, on which The Beatles were depicted standing in marching band outfits, surrounded by cardboard cutouts and photos of famous people on bleachers behind them. To replicate the album cover concept, during the last minutes of the film, The Bee Gees and Peter Frampton were likewise surrounded by a team of famous faces on bleachers behind them. The notable stars included one of the oddest lists of movie stars, rock stars, and Broadway stars billed as “Our Guest at Heartland.” Tina Turner was very prominently displayed in the front row, singing the song “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” while standing next to Chita Rivera and Carol Channing. Tina was wearing one of her scant Bob Mackie outfits. Also on the bleachers were Minnie Ripperton, Dr. John, Connie Stevens, Bonnie Raitt, Sarah Dash, Nona Hendryx, Frankie Valli, Anita Pointer, Helen Reddy, and dozens of other rock and pop stars. Unfortunately, when the film was released, it was a huge bomb at the box office. However, it reinforced the fact that Tina Turner was still a huge star in Hollywood circles.