Tina Turner Read online

  Tina recalls the first time she laid eyes on Mick Jagger backstage at one of the shows, “I saw this very white-faced boy in the corner with big lips, and I had never seen a white person with lips that big anyway, so I didn’t know who he was or what race he was,” she laughs (5).

  She was surprised to find that he was among her biggest fans. “Mick Jagger told me that he was standing in the wings watching the show,” says Tina. “He said that basically after that was when he started dancing and moving around. I think he was inspired by the performance because of the energy and the movement the girls and I were putting out. Mick also liked Ike’s sound and style because English acts do like blues music” (10).

  Tina Turner is the ultimate “soul survivor.” Her initial stardom in the 1960s and 1970s was eclipsed by the ascension to rock & roll superstardom in the 1980s and 1990s.

  (Photo: Peter Lindburgh for Virgin Records / MJB Photo Archives)

  In the 1960s, Tina and Ike Turner experienced their first wave of success with hits like “A Fool in Love” and “I Think It’s Gonna Work out Fine.”

  (Photo: Harry Goodwin / Star File)

  Ike & Tina backstage with Mick Jagger during the 1969 concert tour that exposed the duo to a rock & roll audience and changed the musical focus of their careers.

  (Photo: Joe Sia / Star File)

  The Ike & Tina Turner Review in New York City, 1971. With the famed (and ever-changing) Ikettes behind her, Tina commanded the stage wherever she performed.

  (Photo: Dagmar / Star File)

  Thanks to hits like “Nutbush City Limits” and “Proud Mary,” Ike & Tina Turner reached new heights in the 1970s. In terms of sheer energy, no one in the business could top Tina.

  (Photo: Bob Gruen / Star File)

  Tina and Ike in 1975, the year of her triumphant role in the rock opera Tommy. The public had no idea of the torment of her personal life with the physically abusive Ike.

  (Photo: Jill Furmanovsky / Star File)

  In 1975, Ann-Margret and Tina were two of the stars of the hit film Tommy. When Tina finally left Ike the following year, Ann-Margret was one of the close friends who helped Tina get back on her feet.

  (Photo: Chuck Pulin / Star File)

  Ike and Tina in March 1976. Four months later, she fled for her life and never looked back. She had finally reached the end of her rope with Ike’s beatings and his drug-induced rages.

  (Photo: Bob Gruen / Star File)

  Free of Ike, and testing her wings as a solo act, Tina performed at dance clubs like The Saint in New York City in the early 1980s.

  (Photos: Charles R. Moniz)

  Tina’s big breakthrough happened in Manhattan at a rock & roll club called The Ritz.

  (Photos: Charles R. Moniz)

  Tina was responsible for raising she and Ike’s cumulative family of four boys. The “queen of rock & roll” and her sons in 1982.

  (Photo: Bob Gruen / Star File)

  Tina realized very quickly of Jagger, “he liked black women, liked to play around with them” (5).

  Keith Richards has similarly fond memories of first meeting Tina on this tour. “The first time you see Tina is mind-boggling,” he claims. “She’s so gutsy and dynamic! . . . Tina was great-looking, plus she could move and she had that voice. Usually you can have a voice but you can’t move, or you’re good-looking but you can’t sing. How can anybody have that much? With Tina, there it all is—it’s all there” (5).

  Richards was surprised to see how exciting Ike & Tina’s show was. According to him, it was “kind of like school for us. . . . We were one little blues band. Mick’s stage center was a twelve-inch square.” Enter Ike and Tina and all of the leggy Ikettes, and there were Richards and Jagger and crew, surrounded by “all these beautiful black chicks in sequins running around backstage, and these fantastic musicians to learn from. We’d do our little bit [on stage], and then we’d watch Ike and Tina and the Ikettes, and we said, ‘Wow, this is show business!’ They made us realize you got to do more than just stand there and play guitar” (5).

  Keith recalls being blown away by the whole “show business” presentation of Ike and Tina’s act. It was not only exciting music-wise, but it was also strongly visual and filled with an exciting energy. However, he insists that Tina was the reason that the act was special to begin with. According to Richards, “To me it was all Tina Turner. Ike didn’t see it that way. To him he was a Svengali who wrote the songs; he was the producer and Tina was his ticket. He saw himself as Phil Spector, as the driving force behind the star. I saw him as the driving force behind a lot of things. It was the first time I saw a guy pistol-whip another guy in his own band. Ike acted like a goddamned pimp” (5).

  Tina remembers how Mick asked her to give them dance lessons backstage, so that they could enliven their act with more energy. “He says, ‘I like how you girls dance. How are you doing that stuff?’ We would all get up with Mick, and we would do things, and we would laugh, because his rhythm and his hips and how he was doing it was totally off. It wasn’t teaching him; it wasn’t dance classes. This is what we did backstage—we played around, because onstage he was just doing the tambourine. He wasn’t even dancing. This was 1966. Afterwards, Mick came to America doing The Pony. And all of us thought we had done it backstage. Well, I didn’t tell people I taught him. I said we would just sit around during intermissions having a good time” (5). Tina showed Jagger how to do The Pony and some other dances, and since that time, she has been accredited as the woman who taught Jagger to dance.

  Richards was also impressed by what a warm person Tina always was when he was around her. “Guys would talk about her image sexually, just as a woman,” he explains, “But the Tina I knew was different. Tina was somebody to take care of you. Out on the road somebody would always be sick, and she would say, ‘Take care of yourself, you have a cold, here’s the VapoRub, keep your scarf on, do your coat up.’ I saw her like a favorite aunt or a fairy godmother. I always had other visions of Tina—of a mother-earth thing” (5).

  This European trip was one of the best and strongest moves that had occurred in their long career. Based on the British success of “River Deep-Mountain High,” one of their previously recorded singles on Warner Brothers Records, “Tell Her I’m Not Home,” made it to No. 48 on the U.K. Pop chart that year.

  While they were in London, Ike & Tina appeared on the British TV show Ready, Steady, Go! One of the producers of the show was a woman named Vicki Wickham. Vicki was always a warm and creative woman, and she was very involved in the careers of Dusty Springfield and Patti LaBelle & The Bluebelles (Sarah Dash, Cindy Birdsong, and Nona Hendryx). Tina was always so protected and watched by Ike that she was never allowed to make friends on her own. In London, Ike was kept busy on his own, so Tina became friendly with Vicki and they got to spend some time together. Tina confessed to her how unhappy her life was.

  It was Vicki Wickham who took Tina to a fortune teller in London. The woman she took her to was a card reader. In that reading, Tina’s eyes were opened to a world that she had only envisioned. The fortune teller claimed that Tina was destined to be among the biggest stars in the galaxy, and that her partner was going to fall away like a dead leaf falling from a tree.

  After they were finished with the British concert dates, Ike and Tina flew to Germany and France to make some television appearances and meet the press. Tina’s eyes were opened up to the fact that there was a whole world out there beyond the United States. She was especially impressed with France, and she felt very at-home while there.

  Based on their new-found European success, in November of 1966, Tina’s version of “A Love Like Yours” climbed up the U.K. charts to become a No. 16 hit. According to Tina, “We were breaking the chains that were holding us back from a mass audience” (1).

  Tina also claims that this was the period in her life where she realized that she was no longer in love with Ike Turner. Yet, she continued to stay with him. She kept thinking that if they would just have a mass
ive hit record, she would be able to leave him for good. “So for seven years—the first seven years with Ike, I was just realizing what my life was and thinking how bad it was, and I was very loyal to Ike because he had been very good to me in the early days,” she explained (12).

  Rhonda Graam, who was working as Ike and Tina’s road manager, recalls, “She was scared to death of him—everybody around him was, in his own little cult. It was like he had a hold on people” (5).

  While Tina and Ike were in Paris, Ike was eager to have some time to himself, so he gave her money to go shopping. Walking through the streets of Paris, Tina began to feel alive again. According to her, shopping became her only escape from what she called “Ike and his awful world” (4).

  When the entourage returned to the United States, it was to headline the Galaxy Club in Hollywood on Christmas week 1966. As the year came to an end, the London fortune teller’s words continued to ring in Tina’s ears—she would become one of the biggest of stars, and her partner would simply fall away. This prophecy was destined to come true. However, it was to take twenty years to blossom into full reality.

  7

  BOLD SOUL SISTER

  From 1967 to 1970 it was the golden age of Ike & Tina Turner. This was the creative height of the band. It was also the era when Tina was at her wildest. While singing on stage she would dance with unbridled abandon—often in unison with the equally leggy Ikettes. Clad in short mini-skirts, she would throw her head back and her long mane of hair would flow behind her like it was caught in a hurricane. The dance steps Tina and The Ikettes did were energetically frenetic and mesmerizing to watch. Behind high-heeled Tina and her back-up girls stood a stoic and stern-looking Ike. He was the guitar-playing leader of the red-hot band he had assembled. He would direct his musicians through their soulful paces while Tina relentlessly commanded the spotlight. To see them perform live was to understand their greatness as a band.

  Audiences had no clue about the living hell that Tina’s personal life had become. They just knew her as the bold soul sister who seemed to expel an incomparable amount of excitement and heart. She threw herself into her songs and her stage performances. Her hours on stage were the only time that she felt truly alive.

  Likewise, no one knew how screwed up some of their business arrangements were. This was largely due to Ike’s need to control everything. He was the manager, the dealmaker, the record producer, the bandleader, the booking agent, and—most of all—the decision maker. If anyone stepped out of line, they would be fined, fired, pistol-whipped, or physically beaten. He ruled his world with fear and intimidation. He was insistent that no manager or outside agent was to take a percentage of his money. Ike had been used to doing these things his entire career, and he wasn’t about to stop. With proper management, things might have been much better for The Ike & Tina Turner Revue as an act.

  In 1967, Ike was again bouncing from record label to record label, accepting quick money for singles’ deals or one-shot albums. In this way he made instant cash, but there wasn’t a concentrated strategy for career growth. The year before, Kent Records had released an album called The Soul of Ike & Tina Turner. It was a compilation of several of the group’s singles for Kent. Among them were, “(Am I) A Fool in Love,” “Chicken Shack,” and a song that Tina must have felt very sincerely—“Hurt Is All You Gave Me.”

  Their one 1967 album, called Festival of Live Performances, was also on Kent Records. It included performances of “A Fool in Love,” “He’s Mine,” “Stop the Wedding,” “My Man,” and “I Can’t Stop Loving You.” When their previously released album, The Ike & Tina Turner Show, Live, Volume 2, came out in England in February, an eight-day British promotional tour was set up for them.

  But when they got back to America, Tina was completely depressed about her life. After “River Deep-Mountain High” came and went, Tina found herself lost at sea, and stuck on a sinking ship with Ike Turner.

  She began to think of how to escape. “I had to get out of there because whatever I was doing didn’t matter anymore. I had my house, I had my children, I had my own car. I had stuff. I shopped. But I had this horrible relationship I was hiding behind” (5). At one point during this era, she had already tried packing up the four boys and getting on a Tennessee-bound bus. Unfortunately for her, Ike tracked her down and dragged her back into his car.

  “I wanted him to find a woman,” Tina claims. That way she would be rid of him once and for all. When Tina suddenly announced to him that she wanted their “marriage” to be replaced by a business relationship, Ike did not take the news well. She recalls, “He would really fight harder then, because he thought he was losing control” (5).

  Rhonda Gramm explains, “He was afraid she’d leave him. He would keep the fear going. He didn’t want her to talk to anyone else—to put thoughts in her mind” (5).

  According to Tina, “Sex had become rape as far as I was concerned. I didn’t want Ike near me. It was more than not being turned on. It was the fact he was sleeping around. That was not my style” (5).

  The sleeping around on the road, or “on the sly,” was one thing, but Tina’s life with Ike had come to an impasse. She had no life with him, and she had no life apart from him. Furthermore, during this time period Ike began getting involved in drugs. What began with a little marijuana soon progressed to cocaine. It started out slowly at first, but soon his cocaine use made him even more violent and unpredictable.

  On one particular afternoon, Ike sent Tina out to the grocery store. She had a feeling that something was up with him. She decided to hurry, and showed up back at the house earlier than Ike had expected her. There was Ike and “housekeeper” Ann Cain having sex in the middle of the living room. That was when Tina put her foot down. Ike had already gotten nonsinging Ikette Ann Thomas pregnant and was paying child support, and now he was screwing Ann Cain in their own house.

  Tina told Ike that she didn’t want that woman at their house anymore. Not long afterward, she came home to find Ann Cain was there again. Tina was so mad that she ran after Ann with a hammer, determined to hit her over the head with it. Fortunately for Ann, Tina’s shoes slipped on the slippery floor, and Ike had to break up the fight.

  Tina wasn’t the only person who was getting fed up with Ike. At one point, the entire band walked out on him because he was so impossible to get along with. It seemed that Tina was the only one who never deserted him—and if anyone had reason to leave him, it was she.

  Since Ike had to hire a whole new band, a new influx of people came into The Ike & Tina Turner Revue. One of the musicians that Ike hired was a baritone sax player by the name of Johnny Williams. Tina liked him the minute she laid eyes on him. Johnny was a well-mannered, light-skinned black man, and he read books, practiced yoga, and was into health food. Whenever Johnny was around Tina, he complimented her on her looks and made her feel good about herself. He was the exact opposite of Ike. She began feeling emotions inside her that had long been dead.

  Tina was in love with Johnny, and she began to let Ike know how much she liked the new sax player. At first Ike didn’t pay much attention to Tina’s flirtation with Johnny, but it soon started to bug him. On one occasion while on tour, Ike was out doing something, so Tina went to Johnny’s hotel room and walked right into his arms. She hugged him tightly—just once—and then left as fast as she had walked in. It was the one and only time she ever touched him, and that one thrill had to last her a long time. She knew that nothing could ever come of the flirtation, but the important thing was that it made her feel alive again. It illustrated to her how good life could be without fear—and without Ike.

  Johnny was among the topics that came up when Ike and Tina had one of their huge blowout fights one night in 1967. Ike was also pissed that Tina had the nerve to go off and do those recordings with Phil Spector—even though it was Ike who had agreed to that deal. In other words, how dare Tina have a life of her own.

  The next day Tina arrived for work severely beaten. Her eye w
as swollen nearly shut, her lip was cut, and she had obviously been used as Ike’s punching bag once again. Johnny took one look at Tina, and tears began to stream out of his eyes. He set his saxophone down and immediately left the stage. Johnny gave notice, announcing that he couldn’t work under conditions like these.

  The first time that Tina remembers actually seeing Ike snort cocaine was in San Francisco that year. He had a rolled up $100 bill up his nose as he snorted it. According to her, the escalating use of cocaine started making him “evil.”

  In spite of feeling like her life was falling apart, her live performances continued to astound fans and critics who caught her act. In a 1967 issue of Rolling Stone, the magazine’s founder, Jann S. Wenner, wrote, “Tina Turner is an incredible chick. . . . She comes in this very short miniskirt, way above her knees, with zillions of silver sequins and sparkers pasted on it. Her dancing is completely unrestrained. She and The Ikettes scream, wail, and Tina is nothing short of amazing” (22).

  Recalls Bette Midler, “I saw Tina Turner for the first time at the Fillmore East in the late ’60s. She was—and remains—the greatest performer of her time. I’ve never seen anyone like her before or since, and I’ll never forget the excitement of it all. I was in the balcony and I was sure it was going to collapse from the stomping, screaming frenzy of that crowd. My identification was, to say the least, very, very strong. Tina is, to me, utterly unique. She owns it all: great musicality, great intonation, great style, great energy, great moves, and above all, tremendous emotional power, all wrapped up in a fabulous physical package. I owe her a tremendous debt. Thank God she’s too much of a lady to collect!” (21).