Tina Turner Read online

  Then a friend introduced her to something that gave her inner strength and encouraged her to stand up for herself: Buddhism. Awakened to the spirituality and life-force within her, she was able to chant and to look within her own soul to surmount the courage to leave Ike.

  When she finally made up her mind to leave Ike in 1976, there was no turning back. It wasn’t an easy fight. At first it was a physical battle, then a legal battle. She soon learned that she was not alone, that she did have friends to help her. Cher encouraged her by telling her how she had reclaimed her own life by leaving her then-husband, Sonny Bono. Ann-Margret—her co-star in the film Tommy—helped her mount her own post-Ike solo act. And through Olivia Newton-John, she met the manager who would help her break through to superstardom and realize her own career dreams.

  Her road to resurrection was not an easy one, but she relished the climb and the freedom. After a brief incarnation as a glitzy Las Vegas creation, she gravitated toward the music that she truly loved: rock & roll. In 1984, when she released her incredible watershed album and the head-turning hit “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” audiences around the world delighted to the sassy self-confidence Tina’s voice exuded. Every song on her Private Dancer album seemed to reshape her image. “I Might Have Been Queen” glorified her strong beliefs about faith, destiny, and reincarnation. “Show Some Respect” and “Better Be Good to Me,” were musical testimonies to her strength and determination. And, her version of David Bowie’s “1984” staked her claim to that very year. It was that year that she was acknowledged as the rock world’s reigning diva.

  At the height of Tina’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It” comeback, she looked twenty years in the future and said in her forties, “There is no way a sixty-year-old woman can look the way I look.” (2) Now, in her sixties, she looks exactly the same as she did in her forties. On stage and in person, she is still equally as sexy and as energetic as she was back in the 1960s when she wowed audiences on TV shows like American Bandstand, Top of the Pops, and Shindig. In 2000, when she headlined a global rock concert tour at the age of sixty, it was ranked as the top-grossing concert attraction of the entire year, taking in more than $80 million!

  Once her solo star rose, Tina sang only songs of strength and empowerment. And what songs she has chosen to bring to life—“Break Every Rule,” “The Best,” “Steamy Windows,” “Look Me in the Heart,” “We Don’t Need Another Hero,” “Whatever You Need,” and “Absolutely Nothing’s Changed,” to name a few.

  In the mid-1980s, fans still didn’t grasp why she left Ike. Tired of being asked to talk about him in interviews, she penned her 1986 autobiography, I, Tina, just to set the record straight. In 1993 the book became the basis of an Academy Award-nominated hit film, What’s Love Got to Do With It?

  Although her revealing book and the film about her life took Tina’s fascinating story up to her 1984 comeback, so much has happened in Tina’s life since then. She elevated herself from a nightclub attraction to an incredible stadium-filling international superstar. She swept the Grammy Awards in 1985 and has gone on to release several hit solo singles and albums. She has continued to pursue her acting career, was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, has sold millions of records, found true love, moved to Europe, and she now lives a truly glamorous and harmonious life in the south of France with the man of her dreams. Even though she billed her Twenty Four Seven concert tour as her final stadium style show, her adoring public realizes that there is still much more to come.

  With all that the general public knows about Tina’s fascinating life—through her music, her book, and the film about her life—her real story is really so much deeper and more complicated than a two-hour movie could possibly depict.

  Looking back it is hard to believe that she grew up feeling like she never truly belonged anywhere. Few people realize that her life is much more complex than just being trapped in a dysfunctional marriage, finding freedom, and suddenly becoming a rock legend.

  A strong believer in psychics and astrology, she was once told that she was destined to become amongst the biggest stars in show business, while Ike’s career would wither and fall. At the height of her newfound fame, Ike was arrested and put in prison. After serving time behind bars, in 1999 Ike Turner attempted to clear his reputation in his own autobiography, Takin’ Back My Name. The plan backfired. Not only did he not deny that he relentlessly beat Tina, he tried to make it sound like it was her fault for driving him to it.

  Soothsayers also told her something that she had suspected all of her life—that she was born unwanted by her mother. Confronting her mother, Zelma Bullock, toward the end of Zelma’s life confirmed that fact to Tina once and for all. What she lacked in receiving maternal love, she has made up for both in her personal and professional life. Today, in the twenty-first century, she is one of the most beloved women in show business.

  Tina’s life continues to be an amazing saga of strength and survival. She laughs at her own legacy, “Nobody had a life like mine—not even Joan Collins!” (1)

  With all that she has lived through and all that she has triumphantly survived, there are still several illusions about her. One of the main ones is that she is a tall and imposing woman. In reality, she stands only five feet, four inches tall, and weighs 125 pounds. And, what a remarkable body it is—acknowledged as belonging to one of the most beautiful and admired women on the planet.

  With all of the Platinum records, sold-out shows, and accolades, Tina Turner still looks at herself as a work-in-progress. “People all over the world keep asking me when I’m going to slow down, but I’m just getting started!” (1)

  What makes Tina Turner tick? How has she escaped from a life that would have consumed most people? What role did Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Keith Richards, and Rod Stewart play in her triumphant resurrection? How often did Ike Turner actually physically beat her, and what is their relationship like to this day? And, in her life, what does love—or the lack of it—really have to do with it? These are all questions that her public longs to hear. When Tina sings in the song that she “never, ever” does anything “nice and easy,” she means it. She took the hard road and, in the end, went from “victim” to “victor.”

  Hers is a life in which she broke every rule—and ultimately carved out a spot in the world that is uniquely all her own. She is the one and the only Tina Turner. To fully understand this legend, one has to go way back. Back to a tiny town of Nut-bush, Tennessee. That’s where the legend all began.

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  NUTBUSH CITY LIMITS

  About fifty miles northeast of Memphis, Tennessee, and about twenty miles from the Mississippi River, on the Arkansas border, is a small town on Highway 1-19. It’s located in the middle of the cotton fields. There’s a little dry goods store there called Gause’s, which has a gasoline pump out front to attract motorists—and not much else. As Tina Turner was later to immortalize the tiny town in her song “Nutbush City Limits,” there wasn’t much more there than a church house, a gin house, a schoolhouse, and an outhouse. It was the land of cotton gins and whiskey stills. It hardly seems like the worthy birthplace of a rock & roll legend, but it is where Tina Turner came from. To say she put Nutbush on the map is a bit of a stretch, since you practically have to take a magnifying glass to find it on a roadmap.

  Humble as it is, that’s where Tina grew up. Her debut to the world took place on November 26, 1939, in the basement of Haywood Hospital—ten miles away from Nutbush—in the nearby town of Brownsville.

  Her father, Floyd Richard Bullock, whom everyone called “Richard,” was a deacon at the Woodlawn Baptist Church. He lived with his wife and their three-year-old daughter Alline, in a four room wooden “shotgun” house. Also in the household was four-year-old Evelyn, his wife Zelma’s other daughter, by a former boyfriend. Richard worked as an “overseer” on the Poindexter farm, upon whose land their little house sat. He would supervise the workers for the white owners of the farm.

  Tina’s moth
er, Zelma Bullock, was part black and part Native American. Zelma’s father was three-quarters Navajo, although that particular area of Tennessee was predominantly Cherokee land. Zelma’s mother was three-quarters Cherokee. They were both only one-quarter black.

  By all reports, Zelma was less than excited when she discovered she was expecting another child. She was a frustrated young woman who was not at all happy at the prospect of having another mouth to feed.

  The baby, who would grow up to be known the world over as “Tina Turner,” was born Anna Mae Bullock. Anna Mae grew up in a world with lots of other children and family members around her. Nearby were her grandparents on her mother’s side, Josephus and Georgiana, from whom she got her unmistakable American Indian features.

  Richard’s parents, Alex and Roxanna Bullock, lived off of Highway 19 with Anna’s uncle, Gill. He was the only one of the Bullock’s seven children who still remained at home. Also in the household were two of their grandchildren, Margaret and Joe Melvin Currie. Their father, Richard’s brother, Joe Sam, was recently widowed and could not raise them on his own. Margaret was to become Anna’s favorite cousin, as well as a cherished friend.

  The Bullock’s tiny house was not far from the brick house of their white employers, Ruby and Vollye Poindexter. The Poindexters were quite friendly with the Bullocks. Ruby loved Zelma’s egg custard pies, and they felt more like relatives than having an employer/employee relationship. Anna Mae recalls the “easy” affection that the Poindexters seemed to have toward each other. She was also mystified at the warmth and obvious love that existed between the inhabitants of both of her grandparents’ houses. It was something that was somehow missing in her home. Instead, the prevailing tone at the home of her parents was that of disharmony, arguing, and emotional coldness. At an early age, Anna Mae learned to look within herself for peace. The sense of feeling alone in one’s own home was a part of Anna’s existence for much of her early life.

  Did Zelma love her youngest daughter, Anna? According to grown-up Tina, “She didn’t. I wasn’t wanted. When she was pregnant with me, she was leaving my father. She was a very young woman who didn’t want another kid” (3).

  Were they ever close at any time in her life? “Never,” claims Tina. “Even when I was a girl I knew she didn’t love me. When I was very young, I wondered why we weren’t close, but I was always a loner, and then I became independent and didn’t care anymore” (3). Still, Anna loved her and hoped that one day Zelma would grow to love her back. “My mother wasn’t mean to me, but she wasn’t warm, she wasn’t close” (4).

  As she explains it, “My mother was not a woman who wanted children. She wasn’t a mother mother. She was a woman who bore children” (5). Still, as a child, Anna did find things in life to make herself happy. She spent much time alone and found ways to pass time by wandering through the fields of Tennessee.

  Likewise, she never felt love from her father either. She could tell that he didn’t want her around. Little Anna was a painful reminder to him that he was in a marriage that was very unhappy. She distinctly remembers her mother and father fighting with each other. There were also whispers in the community that Anna was not really Richard’s child. Prior to Anna’s birth, Richard’s sister, Martha Mae, and her husband lived with Richard and Zelma. Apparently, Martha Mae was carrying on with another man while residing there. Because of this, there were those who believed that it was actually Zelma who was having an extramarital affair, and that Anna was the by-product of it. True or not, these rumors did not help matters.

  The love she did receive within the house came from her sister Alline, whom Anna always loved. As long as Alline was around, she was happy to be in her company. However, Anna felt that Alline was “slow” and “quiet,” while Anna loved to run through the fields and play with the farm animals.

  In spite of the relatively loveless household, by local standards, the Bullock family had much to be thankful for. Tina recalls seeing the homes of some of the other local black families’ houses full of children, with dirty and worn-out mattresses to sleep on, and the smell of filth. “I knew we weren’t poor,” she was to later remember about life in her parents’ home (1).

  The Bullock’s house was clean and organized, and she grew up knowing what it was like to have your surroundings harmonious and in order. According to her, “We always had nice furniture, and our house was always nice. We had our own separate bedroom and a dining room, and we had pigs and animals. I knew the people who didn’t, so I knew the difference, and we weren’t poor” (6).

  Living on a farm, Tina fondly remembers the hearty farmer’s diet she grew up eating. Lots of pork and fresh vegetables were part of every meal. Breakfast would consist of salted pork with biscuits and syrup. The personal garden of the Bullock family yielded onions, tomatoes, turnips, sweet potatoes, cabbages, and watermelons. There were plenty of chickens for eggs, and fresh milk came from their own cows. There were also local ponds where perch were caught in the spring, summer, and fall. In the winter there wouldn’t be any fresh pork, but there were plenty of pork sausages that had been made and stored in the autumn.

  In 1942, Richard and Zelma began to get restless to leave the farm. There were jobs to be found hundreds of miles away in the big city of Knoxville, Tennessee. There were construction jobs for Richard, and Zelma could make good money cleaning people’s houses. It was decided that Anna and Alline were to go live with their grandparents. Alline got to live with Grandma Geòrgie, and Anna was assigned to live with Grandma Roxanna and Grandpa Alex, who had a major drinking problem. Anna was jealous because she too wanted to live with Grandma Geòrgie and her two cousins, Margaret and Joe Melvin.

  Tina remembers her first childhood musical exposure. Grandma Roxanna would drag her off to church every Sunday morning. Once there, she heard the music of the gospel choir. She also heard fabulous gospel singers on the radio. When asked who her first musical influences were, she replies, “Well, it was a church person in the early days, Mahalia Jackson. And Rosette Tharpe. These spiritual, very strong voices. I only knew that they were figures in the black race, recognizable and respected. But I must admit, I’ve always covered the songs of males. I haven’t followed up on women or listened to that much women’s music” (7).

  Tina recalls being brought up as “a country girl” (1). For a child who wanted to lose herself in her surroundings, life on a farm in Nutbush had its advantages. “Listen, roaming the pastures of Tennessee, it was green and beautiful. You could never find me. I was always out there. I was in the universe, you know. It was wonderful. I would sit there and eat tomatoes off the vine and burst open a watermelon and eat it. I know what things are supposed to taste like. The life wasn’t so bad. I was taken care of, but there was a hand, and eye, watching over me” (8).

  Growing up, she had a very strong negative impression of what her own body was like: tall, gangly, and awkward. According to Tina, “I hated my body. I had a short neck and torso, and all legs” (9).

  Little did she know at the time that one day this “ugly” duckling would grow up to be a beautiful and admired swan of a woman. “My body is an unusual one,” she proclaims. “It’s a very strong body. A body that I at one time didn’t like. . . . I looked like a little pony when I was a girl. These long legs—nothing worked together” (8).

  During this same era, Anna’s Uncle Gill got in trouble with the law. It seems that there was some kind of dispute over a woman, and Gill took a shotgun and killed the other man in this love triangle. He was hauled off to prison, and it was a local scandal in Nutbush.

  The second summer that Richard and Zelma were in Knoxville, Anna and Alline came to live with them. Anna was absolutely fascinated with the big city of Knoxville. The streets were paved, the houses were brick, and there was so much excitement. Occasionally, when Zelma took Anna shopping, Anna would sing songs for the sales ladies. To reward her for her singing, the ladies gave Anna pennies or nickels to show their appreciation. Little did those women know at the time,
but they were being treated to the very first Tina Turner concert performances!

  According to her, “I remember singing some of the McGuire Sisters’ songs. I had a little bank that I collected all these shiny coins in, and it was taken from me, and I was really brokenhearted. That makes me remember how long I have really been singing. But I had no voice training” (10).

  While Richard and Zelma were at work during the day, Anna and Alline were left in the care of Mrs. Blake, the woman the Bullocks boarded with in Knoxville. Anna remembers going to the Pentecostal church with Mrs. Blake and hearing for the first time the vibrantly “sanctified” services at the church, the jubilant singing, hand clapping, and dancing in the aisles that happened when people felt the word of God. One time little Anna danced so hard at church, her underpants fell down to her ankles.

  Anna wasn’t quite certain why these people were jumping around and dancing like there was no tomorrow, but she liked it. She recalls, “It was wild. I didn’t know what it was about. I just thought, they must be really happy!” (1)

  Before long, the summer came to an end, and Anna and Alline went back to Nutbush, living with their respective grandparents. Eventually, Richard and Zelma also returned to the Nutbush area because their jobs in Knoxville had been phased out, when the nation’s attention was suddenly turned toward the U.S. entry into World War II.

  Reunited, the Bullock family settled in Flagg Grove, not far from Nutbush. Anna didn’t see her cherished cousins Margaret and Joe Melvin as much as she used to when they lived closer. However, she got to see them on the weekends. That was when the Curries and the Bullocks would join their friends in nearby Ripley, in an area fondly referred to as “The Hole.” In actuality, “The Hole” was a strip of rib restaurants and taverns down a cobblestone alley off of Washington Street. Anna and Alline and her cousins would be given money to go to the movies while the adults played.