Rock Chicks

by Alison Stieven-Taylor

  The Revue toured Britain in 1966 supporting the Rolling Stones, playing to predominantly white audiences who were fascinated by American black music. On stage, Tina transformed from subservient wife into a screaming, shaking, kicking, fast-moving powerhouse of limbs, lips, wild hair (she wore a variety of wigs), micro mini-skirts and nosebleed heels. The way she moved on stage was breathtaking, keeping the audience constantly in her grip. Comparisons with Mick Jagger were obvious.

  in Dallas in 1976 Ike lost his temper with Tina for the last time. She walked, despite the fact they were in the middle of a tour

  Touring with the Stones, Tina’s ‘rock’ spirit was awakened. She knew the kind of music she really wanted to perform and it wasn’t R&B. Jagger and Richards became close friends and often dropped into her dressing room after the show. Ike was close at hand of course, watching over his wife and the Ikettes. He didn’t like those boys sniffing around his women.

  After two years without a song in the charts, Ike and Tina Turner came up trumps once again in 1968 with ‘I’ve Been Loving You Too Long’, a classic by Otis Redding. The album Outta Season was released at the same time, featuring songs by BB King and Elmore James. Tina was co-producer of the record with Bob Krasnow, best known for his work with James Brown.

  When the Rolling Stones toured the US in 1969, Ike and Tina Turner were on the bill along with BB King. The tour introduced the Turners to white America en masse and the audience went wild for Tina. That year saw the release of another album, The Hunter, again produced by Krasnow.

  The Turners signed to United Artists on its new Minit Records label in 1970. Their version of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ‘Proud Mary’ hit the airwaves in 1971 and became their biggest success, reaching the top five of the pop charts and giving them their first Grammy award, for best R&B vocal performance by a duo.

  The gruelling work pace finally began to take its toll on Tina, who had not had a break in more than a decade. She ended up in hospital with tuberculosis. It would take her the best part of the 1970s to recover. Despite the lingering malady, she continued to adhere to Ike’s relentless touring schedule.

  The money was flowing freely and with it came cocaine, which fuelled Ike’s already skewed perspective on reality and gave him an even greater sense of his own import and power. And as the hits began to dwindle, the beatings grew more violent. He didn’t just slap Tina or punch her, he used twisted wire coat hangers for maximum impact. Twice she tried to leave and both times he found her and beat the living daylights out of her and then went back to business as usual. Tina patched herself up and took to the stage, the audiences oblivious to the horror she was living.

  make-up covered the bruises and Tina learned to perform with cracked ribs and bloodied mouth. Everyone around them knew what was going on

  After a couple of slow years on the charts, the Turners had a surprise hit in 1973 with ‘Nutbush City Limits’, a disco-dance song written by Tina, which reached the American top thirty and number two on the British charts. Nutbush was a small Southern town where Tina and her sister had lived for a short time as children and the lyrics captured the essence of life in that part of the country in the 1950s.

  The following year Tina was offered a role in the Who’s rock-opera Tommy, a film featuring Elton John, Eric Clapton, Roger Daltrey, Keith Moon, Pete Townshend, and actors Oliver Reed, Jack Nicholson and Ann-Margret, who had befriended Tina when they were both performing in Vegas. Tina played the Acid Queen.

  Tina was enjoying the projects she was undertaking without Ike. When the shoot for Tommy wrapped, she stayed on in London to appear on Ann-Margret’s TV special. The pair sang a number of duets, including ‘Proud Mary’ and the Stone’s ‘Honky Tonk Woman’. She made an odd decision to record a solo country album, Tina Turns the Country On, which didn’t sell well. The following year there was another solo album, Acid Queen, a more rock-oriented effort, but it didn’t have the cut-through Tina was looking for.

  In Dallas in 1976 Ike lost his temper with Tina for the last time. She walked, despite the fact they were in the middle of a tour.

  Now she was breadwinner, homemaker and sole parent of four teenagers (Michael and Ike Junior, the sons Ike and Lorraine had together, also lived with her). For a time Tina and her sons lived in a rented house in LA and got by on food stamps and the generosity of friends. Debt weighed her down as promoters looked to her to compensate for the cancelled tour dates.

  The battle to separate herself from Ike on many levels—financial, professional, emotional—was the greatest fight of her life. But she’d lived through the nightmare of Ike’s bashings, through a failed suicide attempt (for which he beat her almost to the point of killing her) and the humiliation of his other women. She would come through this stronger than before. Tina had embraced Buddhism in 1974. In the years following her separation, she would turn to chanting to get her through the most torrid times.

  on stage, Tina became a screaming, shaking, kicking, fast-moving powerhouse of limbs, lips, wild hair, micro mini skirts and nosebleed heels

  She took any work she could get, making guest appearances on various TV shows, including The Osmonds, Cher and Laugh-In, but the debts continued to mount. She left Ike the money and property accumulated over the years they had been together. Her not wanting anything drove Ike insane. He went through five lawyers during the divorce, but Tina wouldn’t step into the fray. At last she was in control. She wanted her freedom, her dignity, her sanity. Ike could keep the possessions—they didn’t mean anything to her.

  Ike waged a terror campaign and many who helped Tina felt his wrath. Cars were blasted with gunshots, houses burned and people threatened. Tina carried a gun and at one point had to hire bodyguards. Her eldest son Craig stuck with his mother, but eventually the madness drove him away and he joined the Navy. Tina’s second son Ronnie got caught up with drugs and then later Scientology. Michael and Ike Junior went to live with their father after the divorce.

  Less than eighteen months after her break from Ike, Tina mounted a cabaret-style show, The Tina Turner Show, mixing R&B tunes with disco and rock’n’roll. Fashion designer Bob Mackie helped her with costumes and the stage show glittered with the pomp and pizzazz of a true Las Vegas spectacle. The high-energy theatrics and smouldering sexuality of the show, complete with male and female dancers, drew the crowds. She took her new show out for a run in Canada before bringing it to the States, where she played hotel ballrooms like the Fairmont in San Francisco.

  In 1978 she released her first album without Ike, Rough. It was aptly named. The album bombed as did 1979’s follow-up Love Explosion, a disco-oriented record that missed the disco boom. Suddenly Tina was without a recording contract in America, although United Artists, through their British label EMI, kept the faith across the Atlantic.

  An invitation from Olivia Newton-John to appear on her TV special Hollywood Nights in 1979 led Tina to Roger Davies, an Australian who would become her manager and orchestrate one of the greatest comebacks in showbiz. Davies was working for Lee Kramer, Newton-John’s lover and manager at the time. He caught Tina’s show in San Francisco and was blown away. She had the audience eating out of her hand. Davies was convinced Tina should be singing mainstream rock. That meant throwing out the cabaret-style performances and starting again. Tina put her trust in Davies and the pair began to work on bringing out the rock chick within. To make ends meet Tina took her Vegas cabaret-style show on the road, touring to South Africa, Australia and Asia.

  The major turning point of Tina’s career came in the summer of 1981. Davies booked her into the Ritz in New York. Word was out that Tina Turner was on the comeback trail, and everyone who was anyone wanted to be there, including her old buddy Mick Jagger. The new show featured Tina on stage with a band only, a first for her. The show went off and Tina, exhilarated by the experience and the genuine adoration of the crowd, was buoyed with a new confidence.
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  After New York came a quick succession of opportunities: a duet with Rod Stewart on Saturday Night Live and an invitation to join the Stones US tour. During the tour she and Jagger performed a spirited rendition of ‘Honky Tonk Woman’, much to the audience’s delight. Tina Turner was on her way.

  Part of Davies’ strategy was to get out a single as quickly as possible. When Tina’s cover of the Al Green song ‘Let’s Stay Together’ was released in 1983, it rose to number five in the British charts. But in the States, Capitol Records refused to pick it up until imported copies of the single made their way into the dance clubs. ‘Let’s Stay Together’ was officially released in the USA in early 1984 and made it into the Billboard top thirty. To support its release, Tina hit the road as the opening act for Lionel Ritchie. Then she landed the starring role of Aunty Entity in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome with Mel Gibson and sang two songs for the film’s soundtrack—‘We Don’t Need Another Hero’ (another top five hit) and ‘One of the Living’.

  Davies was amassing a range of songs that became the playlist for the pinnacle of her career, Private Dancer. The album was recorded in Britain with a number of different producers, among them percussionist Ndugu Chancler and Englishman Rupert Hine. The first single from the album, ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’, written for Tina by the Australians Terry Britten and Graham Lyle, became a number one smash hit, topping the Billboard chart in September 1984. Tina was ecstatic. Not long after she made the cover of Rolling Stone. She was forty-five and her star status was confirmed. Another massive hit from the album was ‘Better Be Good to Me’, which made it into the top five. The title song, which was later released as a single, was written by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits and featured Jeff Beck on guitar. The album reached number two on the Billboard top 100 for 1984, going multi-platinum.

  Private Dancer earned Tina three Grammys, two American Music Awards and the MTV award for best female video for ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’. To promote the record, Tina spent twenty-one months on the road playing over 170 shows—her first world tour as a solo artist. Private Dancer sold in excess of twenty million albums. As a grand finale to the year, Tina was one of forty-five artists in the USA for Africa’s ‘We are the World’ single, sang a duet with Mick Jagger for the Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium—and was given a star on the Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame.

  In 1986 Break Every Rule was released. Once again Tina worked with an impressive line up of producers, including Rupert Hine, Bryan Adams, Mark Knopfler and Bob Clearmountain. Terry Britten, who also co-produced, contributed five tracks, including ‘Typical Male’, another number one hit, and ‘What You Get is What You See’, which reached the top twenty—both cowritten with Graham Lyle. The album sold millions of copies around the world and Tina picked up another Grammy.

  Tina made the cover of Rolling Stone. She was forty-five and her star status was confirmed

  While promoting Break Every Rule, Tina met Erwin Bach, an executive with EMI Europe. Tina enjoyed the company of the young German—he is eighteen years her junior—and the two became an item. She had dated infrequently in the decade since she’d left Ike and this was her first serious relationship.

  a wealth of musicians were keen to work with her—Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, David Bowie, Rod Stewart

  In the late 1980s she moved to Europe to live. The decision behind the move wasn’t only to be closer to Bach. She’d captured the hearts of fans on the Continent way back in the 1960s. And it wasn’t only fans who were eager to see her. A wealth of musicians and producers were keen to work with her—the likes of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, David Bowie and Rod Stewart. Tina set up home in Notting Hill, London, moving into a six-floor townhouse, quite a change from her sprawling San Fernando Valley house in LA.

  Tina was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with Ike in 1991. There followed more awards and other milestones, including the release in 1993 of the movie What’s Love Got to Do with It, an epic about her life starring Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne. Bassett was nominated for an Oscar for her performance. Tina shot back into the Billboard top forty with the single from the film’s sound track, ‘I Don’t Wanna Fight’.

  In 1999 Tina was awarded the lifetime achievement award at the Black Music Awards in Britain. The album Twenty Four Seven, released that year, featured Bryan Adams on ‘Without You’ and the single ‘When the Heartache is Over’, which was the album’s only top forty hit. Even at sixty, Tina’s voice easily managed the different styles on the album, from rock to ballads. That same year her mother Zelma died. Her mother had never supported or given her comfort in the years she suffered at Ike’s hands. Ike turned up at the funeral and played the dutiful son-in-law, weeping openly. Tina did not attend. She preferred to say a very private goodbye to the woman who dealt her the cruellest blow—the withholding of a mother’s love.

  The new millennium saw Tina relaxing and enjoying the spoils of her success. She officially retired from the road after a tour of Europe and the States, made a guest appearance on the Ally McBeal television show and sang ‘Great Spirits’ for the soundtrack of the Disney animation film Brother Bear. In 2004 a double compilation CD All the Best, which included hits from her days with Ike, as well as duets with David Bowie, Bryan Adams and Italian star Eros Ramazzotti, made the US top five and British top ten.

  Tina made a rare appearance in February 2008 performing with Beyoncé at the fiftieth Grammy Awards. The reception was overwhelming and fanned the fire in Tina. It took little coaxing to get her to announce a tour, which she did in April on the Oprah Winfrey Show. The fifty-three date tour, spanning the USA and Europe, kicked off in Kansas City in October that year. After four frenetic months, the sold-out Tina Turner Live tour was over. It was one of the highest grossing tours of the year. In 2010 Tina was in Zurich to receive a Swiss Award. She has lived in Switzerland with Bach for nearly twenty years. And at the time of writing Tina, now in her seventies, was considering another world tour.

  1970s

  protest & punk

  Peace and love were becoming distant memories by 1970. Every night the graphic horrors of the Vietnam War were played out on television screens in the world’s living rooms. Anti-war protests were heated. At one of the most notorious, in 1970 troopers open fired on students at Kent State University in Ohio, killing four. Janis Joplin lost her life to heroin the same year. In 1971 the largest anti-war protest was held in Washington DC. Actress Jane Fonda flew to North Vietnam and Janis Joplin’s ‘Me and Bobby McGee’, released posthumously, topped the US charts. Scandalously, at a White House dinner for the Reader’s Digest founder, Carole Feraci, one of the wholesome Ray Conniff Singers, held up a sign saying ‘Stop the Killing’.

  While the slaughter of soldiers and civilians continued unabated in Southeast Asia, the world was rocked by the killing of eleven members of the Israeli team at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Each of the Beatles had songs in the British charts, as did Rod Stewart, Elton John and the Bee Gees. The musical landscape was changing once again. The glam rock bands—Gary Glitter, the Sweet and Mud—were out in force too. The Jackson Five dominated the American charts along with the Temptations, Stevie Wonder and soft-listening groups like the Carpenters.

  Watkins Glen Grand Prix Raceway in New York in 1973 was the venue for the largest rock concert to date, with 600,000 fans dancing to the Band, the Allman Brothers and the Grateful Dead. The sweet sounds of the Caribbean became hits for the joint-toting Rastafarian Bob Marley, who turned a generation on to everything Jamaican.

  Swedish band Abba won the 1974 Eurovision song contest singing sweet harmonies in shock-jock hair and skintight whites. In fantastic contrast, the punk movement was gaining momentum in England and in New York musicians like the New York Dolls, the Ramones, Patti Smith and Television were developing a new wave sound. Bruce Springsteen—‘rock and roll’s future’, as one critic called him—
had begun to make waves, and so had Billy Joel, Jackson Browne and heavier styled rock anthem bands, aka stadium bands, including Aerosmith, KISS and Heart led by the Wilson sisters.

  Then America pulled out of Vietnam, President Nixon resigned in disgrace and abortion was legalised. The first African-Americans were elected mayors in major cities such as LA and Detroit. The number of women in politics trebled—about time too—propelled by the feminist movement and inspired in part by the 1970 publication of Germaine Greer’s landmark The Female Eunuch and Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics. Gay Pride marches were held and women were ordained priests. Hippies were turning into spivs, going for moustaches, tailored denim suits, flares and platform shoes. A heavier, guitar-driven rock emerged along with a trend toward theatrical approaches. David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, Alice Cooper’s Welcome to My Nightmare and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon all pushed rock’s creative boundaries.

  Tina Turner was still with Ike and the women creeping up the charts included Joni Mitchell, Helen Reddy, Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack, Cher, Olivia Newton-John, Linda Ronstadt, Carly Simon and the super-smooth Pointer Sisters.

  But a new rock chick was emerging. Suzi Quatro carved up the British charts—but failed to make any impression on the other side of the Atlantic. Patti Smith, Debbie Harry and Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads conquered with New York’s punk-art new wave, and the Runaways were heating the blood of adolescent males.