Tina Turner Read online

  In February 1992 the song “Love Thing” peaked on the U.K. chart at No. 29. That same month, on February 23, BBC1-TV aired a special called The Girl from Nutbush. It was a career-retrospective documentary. On April 11, Tina took part in the opening of the Euro Disney amusement park outside of Paris. In June, her single “I Want You Near Me” reached No. 22 in the United Kingdom.

  When her U.S. recording contract with Capitol Records lapsed in July 1992, Tina signed a new deal with Virgin Records in America. This was to begin a whole new era in her recording career.

  Meanwhile, in September 1991, Ike Turner was released from the California prison in which he had been residing for the previous eighteen months. Finally, after over two decades of drug abuse, jail dried out Ike. He was finally cocaine-free. For this fact alone, he was later to state, “It was the best thing that ever happened to me” (5).

  Once a free man again, he decided to go back to work on the only thing that ever really meant anything to him: music. While maintaining her distance from his life, Tina was to supportively state, “What do I think of Ike? Once he was out of jail, I was happy that he was able to go back to work, because he loved to play music. I’ve no—I don’t have a vengeance. It would be wonderful for [him]—if Ike could get a hit record and really realize his dream on his own. That’s my view. I didn’t feel sad for him when he was in jail because I think he needed correcting. I think he needed something very strong to actually show him what he was doing with his life” (12).

  Meanwhile, Tina had permanently moved to Europe. According to her, “I have left America because my success was in another country and my boyfriend was in another country and yeah, Private Dancer was the beginning of my success in England, and basically Europe has been very supportive of my music. . . . I went to England for a couple of years, and then I met a man. And I lived three years with him in his country, in Germany” (16). Residing with Erwin in Cologne, she was having her own foreign affair, and Tina had never been happier.

  According to her, Europe was “the start of everything for me. I had never known my real home until I came to Europe” (1).

  She continued to chant and rely upon the spiritual strength that Buddhism gave her. “There are a lot of spiritual aspects of really getting in tune with yourself. You’ve got to have quiet. You can’t get up to blasting music every day and running to a lot of parties every night,” she claimed (9).

  In January 1993, Tina donated $50,000 to assist in opening the Exchange Club/Tina Turner Child Abuse Center in Ripley, Tennessee. Having lived through years of debt, she was thrilled to be in a position where she was able to give back some of her success to those in need. On March 2 she was one of the stars of the huge Save the Rain Forest benefit concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Tina appeared on stage along with Sting, Bryan Adams, George Michael, Herb Alpert, Tom Jones, James Taylor, and Dustin Hoffman. On April 30 she was one of eight honorees at the Sixth Annual Essence Awards, held at The Paramount Theater in New York City and hosted by Essence magazine. That night she was a guest on Late Night with David Letterman.

  In her personal appearances, Tina always looked so classy and composed. How did her stage preparations in the 1990s compare with those in the 1960s? Explaining her pre-show routine, Tina explained, “I start my relaxed mental state as I do my makeup. I arrive at work, get rid of whatever meetings in terms of corrections for the musicians and all. When I start makeup, it brings me right down to the place where I’m relaxed. I’m in control of that. The more time I have to just play with myself and putz around, the better. I’ve always done my own makeup for live shows. I don’t like it too professional onstage; sometimes it’s really not you. It might work for video or something, but it’s not for real life. Yes, there is something calming about putting myself together to face people on a stage. We love makeup. It’s just girls playing” (7).

  While all of this was going on, Tina was involved with work for her next high-profile project. Hollywood had again called upon her for the movies. However, this time they weren’t tapping her to star in the movie, they wanted her to be the subject of it. Tina Turner was again to feel the lure of the cinema world.

  16

  WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?

  In the early 1990s there was suddenly a new focus on the public’s interest in the old days of Tina’s career—particularly the Ike & Tina Turner era of her life. Now that Tina had established herself as one of the most popular, respected, and in-demand rock stars on the planet, people wanted to know more about her past and how it all came together.

  In 1991, while Ike was still behind bars, Ike & Tina Turner were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, along with LaVern Baker, The Byrds, John Lee Hooker, The Impressions, Wilson Pickett, and Jimmy Reed. Ike Turner seemed to be quite unimpressed by the honor. According to him, “I don’t know. A lot of people say, ‘How does it feel to be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?’ I don’t feel nothing. I was just doing something I like doing. And the next thing about it was the worst thing I’ve done in my life. I don’t know, I am human just like everybody else, so I don’t go around remembering this or that” (13).

  The next major retrospective event that took place was that Disney Corporation’s Touchstone Films division had purchased the rights to make a film based on Tina Turner’s autobiography, I, Tina. Since the majority of the book dealt with her life with Ike Turner, the producers knew that one of the biggest issues was to make sure that they were legally in the clear to depict Ike in the fashion in which Tina had portrayed him in her book. In order to do this, they paid Ike a sizeable sum of money for the rights to depict him in the film and to keep him from suing the company if he was unhappy with what transpired on screen. He certainly knew how he treated Tina in reality. And, he must certainly have known that he was depicted as a physically abusive habitual drug user in her book. To say that he was an unsympathetic character in the book was a vast understatement.

  As Ike was later to defensively explain it, “See, what happened, back during my ‘druggie days,’ I signed a contract with Walt Disney, giving them permission. This lawyer lied to me. I thought I was giving them permission for somebody to play me in the movie, and that I wouldn’t sue them for somebody else being Ike Turner in the movie. I didn’t care. If Tina didn’t want to do it with me, that’s okay. I didn’t find out until I got sober and clean, coming out of jail, when I was trying to find out how I was going to start back with my career. Only then did I find out that I had signed away my rights to sue them, and they could portray me any way that they wanted to” (13).

  As the deal took shape, Tina was brought in as a creative consultant, as well as a major contributor to the film. The decision was made that whomever it was who was to play her on screen would have to lip-sync to Tina’s singing. Furthermore, in the very last scene of the movie, the real Tina—the soul survivor herself—was to be shown as herself on the screen. According to her, the scriptwriters took some liberties with the material. A decision was made that the bulk of the film should be centered on Tina’s meeting, singing with, marrying, fighting with, and ultimately escaping from Ike Turner. To fit all of the events of her life into a two-hour movie, things had to be truncated somewhat. Every twist and turn in her life couldn’t make it into the script. To simplify things, actual events were used to bring the story to life, but many of the facts had to be scripted differently to fit into the film.

  Said Tina, “I felt like they took the idea of my life and sort of wrote around it. I’ve got to say that the script that I read was far—quite far—from reality” (8). However, the essence of her story was there, and the larger facts were in place. A decision was also made to entitle the film What’s Love Got to Do With It?, to capitalize on the biggest international hit of her career.

  One of the most crucial aspects of the pre-production process was finding the perfect actress to portray Tina on screen. The final list of possible actresses included Robin Givens and Angela Bassett. As Tina explains, “There was
a lot of talk that she should look like me, have great legs, a body. I said, ‘Hey, we’re talking about acting.’ That’s why I had a lot to do with the decision between Robin Givens and Angela Bassett” (8). Ultimately, it was decided that Laurence Fishburne would play Ike. Laurence wasn’t skinny and trim like the real-life Ike, but he was a great choice for showing both the suave side and the volatile side of Ike’s personality.

  During the filming of What’s Love Got to Do With It?, Ike Turner found out where they were shooting it, and showed up one day in a chauffeured white Lincoln Continental. From his car he distributed autographed photos of himself. The producers were so frightened by his presence that bodyguards were assigned to escort Angela from the set to her makeup trailer. They wouldn’t let him anywhere near her, for fear he would do or say something to upset her. “By the time I figured out how to sneak out, he’d gone,” remarked Bassett (5).

  However, Laurence Fishburne did meet Ike on the set that day. Fishburne asked Ike what name he called Tina in real life. Said Ike, “I called her Ann” (5).

  To make sure that the music used in the movie had a uniform sound, and to remove any musical contribution from Ike Turner, the songs from Tina’s early career had to be rerecorded for the soundtrack album. According to Tina, “When Disney company bought the film rights to my autobiography, I, Tina, seven years ago, I never really believed it would make it to the screen. Then when filming finally started late last year [1992] I soon realized I would be asked to rerecord some of the old Ike & Tina hits to suit modern sound systems. To be honest, the thought did not thrill me. I hadn’t sung some of these songs for a couple of decades and that was fine by me. But my band had fun working on the arrangements, and from the very first day of rehearsals their enthusiasm rubbed off on me. It was surprising to hear how well most of those songs have withstood the test of time. We also recorded three wonderful new songs for the soundtrack. I am grateful to Sade Adu for finding ‘I Don’t Wanna Fight,’ a song which I feel perfectly summarizes a large part of my life it seemed like the ideal theme for the film” (36). Indeed, “Smooth Operator” Sade had discovered the perfect tune for Tina to sing! “I Don’t Wanna Fight” was a song cowritten by pop star Lulu and her writing partners Steve DuBerry and Billy Lawrey.

  “A Fool in Love” and “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine” were two of the Ike & Tina songs that she had refused to sing since she left Ike in 1976. To put it in the context of this film, Fishburne vocalized the spoken part that Ike had in the original “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine.”

  In the spring of 1993, Tina began to publicly preview some of the new songs from the upcoming film of her life, What’s Love Got to Do With It? On May 12, she was in Monaco where she was honored at the World Music Awards with a trophy for Outstanding Contribution to the Music Industry. At the awards ceremony, held at the Sporting Club in Monte Carlo, she sang her first single for Virgin Records, the movie’s theme song, “I Don’t Wanna Fight.”

  Suddenly Tina was all over the media again. On May 14 she was a guest on The Tonight Show in America. On May 27 she was back in London to sing “I Don’t Wanna Fight” on BBC1-TV’s hot music show Top of the Pops.

  On June 6, 1993, Tina kicked off her first North American concert tour in six years in Reno, Nevada. Her opening act was Fleetwood Mac star Lindsey Buckingham. On the second leg of the tour, her show was opened by Chris Isaak.

  What’s Love Got to Do With It? debuted as a huge box-office success. Ultimately, both Angela Bassett and Laurence Fish-burne were nominated for Academy Awards the following year for their strong and very believable roles as Tina and Ike Turner.

  Said Angela Bassett of Tina, “Portraying her life as an artist was the most gratifying creative experience. What a source of inspiration her survival has been and can be to others” (21).

  It was another triumphant time for Tina Turner. The film’s success and across-the-board appeal with movie audiences once again put the spotlight on her past and her present life. Making the rounds of talk shows, everyone of course wanted her to talk about her life with Ike, since that era was 90 percent of the plot of the film What’s Love Got to Do With It?

  While promoting the film, Tina proclaimed, “You know, I wonder when the day will come that I don’t have to talk about Ike Turner anymore. I wonder. Will that day come? A totally Ike-less future. ‘Lord, what decade?’ ” (8). Well, the bad news was that while the whole movie media blitz was on, she would have to do a lot more talking about Ike Turner. But the good news was that after she was done publicizing the film, she could finally put the subject of Ike to rest—once and for all.

  Tina certainly had some criticisms with how she was portrayed in What’s Love Got to Do With It? In her opinion, the script had a few too many tears in it. And she wasn’t happy with the fact that her home life was glazed over a bit. According to her, “There was a mother there. To Ike, to the children. Not this sniveling, crying, little weak woman. They had me crying in the film script, and I said, ‘I never cried that much in my life.’ Maybe from anger, sometimes” (8).

  She was also a little upset that the reviews—in sympathy for her in real life and on the screen—often used the word “victim” to describe her. Did she see herself as a helpless victim? “Never!” she claimed. “Some people want that title. It’s an excuse. I never needed it and I didn’t want it, would never use it to describe me. . . . ‘Enabler?’ What is that, anyhow? ‘Dysfunction?’ You’ll never hear that come out this mouth. Maybe it’s because I was brought up a country girl—I didn’t get into all that. . . . Someone tells me I was a victim, I become angry! I was not a victim. I want to talk about that. Because, okay, yes, if you tell my story to somebody who knows nothing about Tina Turner, they would label me as a ‘victim.’ But I was in control of everything I was doing” (8).

  She had wanted to make sure that the film had the right tone to it. “I tried to explain it to Disney,” says Tina of the way she was depicted in the film What’s Love Got To Do With It? She was worried that she would just be portrayed as a helpless victim. She didn’t want to be seen as someone with a “deep need—a woman who was a victim to a con man. How weak! How shallow! How dare you think that was what I was? I was in control every minute there. I was there because I wanted to be, because I had promised” (5).

  Was it a difficult decision for her see her life story filmed? “Yes,” she claimed. “Because I had had a lot of violence, houses burnt, cars shot into, the lowest that you can think of in terms of violence, and I didn’t know what would happen at that point because it had kind of died down and the divorce was final and my life was kind of getting back on the road, and I didn’t know what would happen. I didn’t know what kind of mess it would stir, so I—I had to really take a deep breath and make a decision. I felt somehow like getting it out—I guess it was instinct. But I felt that getting it out would be not suppressing it anymore, letting the world really know, because they were constantly talking to me about why I cannot separate. I could never tell the truth; nobody really understood, and they still don’t understand, but I think slowly now they’re beginning to” (16).

  Analyzing the demise of her real-life marriage to Ike, Tina said, “What ruined it was Ike had his way of feeling that he controlled people through sex, you know, and that wasn’t what held me there. I was very loyal and that’s why I stayed. And then, after about seven years of it, I decided that I couldn’t help the situation, that it wasn’t—it was irreparable—and that I must get on with my life and my children, etc. So, you see, I was thinking the whole time. It wasn’t as if I was just being battered, and that’s what the movie [What’s Love Got to Do With It?] didn’t show” (12).

  With all of that being said, in her opinion, did Disney do her life justice in the film? “Yes, I think in way,” says Tina. “I would have liked for them to have had more truth, but according to Disney, they said, ‘It’s impossible, the people would not have believed the truth.’ And I understand that” (16).

  Since Ike Turner is
presented as the film’s bullying villain, whenever he got the opportunity to complain about how he was portrayed, the unhappy star took full advantage of it. Consistently, he tried to downplay the physical abuse issue. He also expressed an underlying belief that Tina was to blame for everything bad that happened. According to him, “Whatever happened with Ike and Tina—if we fought every day—it’s just as much her fault as it was mine. Because she stayed there and took it for whatever reason she was taking it. Why would she stay there for eighteen years? You know, I feel like I’ve been used. . . . Didn’t nobody else grab her and put her where I put her. . . . I blame Tina as much for that as I blame myself. Because she always acted like it didn’t bother her for me being with women, unless she seen me with this woman every night, or something like this . . . and this is what be wrong with her. She’d be pissed off about some girl or something, and she would lie and say she wasn’t. . . . We had fights, but we was together twenty-four hours a day, and so, in other words, she feels more like an employee than a wife, because I would tell her what words to say, what dress to wear, how to act onstage, what songs to sing. You know, it all came from me. . . . There is no Tina in reality. It’s just like the story that she’s written. The movie’s not about her. The movie’s about me!” (5).

  His attitude was that since she had not complained about his womanizing while they were married, why complain now? “Tina was my buddy,” says Ike. “I never touched her as a woman. She was just my buddy. I would send her to go get this girl for me, go get that girl for me. And if I bought my old lady a mink coat, I would buy her one. And that’s the way we were—just hope-to-die buddies. And that’s why it was never no contract between us. Because I felt we had a bond, you understand, and I never did think that nobody, white or black, could come up and brainwash her. Like, right now I feel she’s totally brainwashed” (5).