by Tina Turner
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“THERE’S ALWAYS BEEN AN EMOTION IN MY VOICE BECAUSE IT REACHED BACK TO THE LIFE I WAS LIVING. WHEN THERE WERE TEARS ONSTAGE, IT WASN’T HOLLYWOOD, IT WAS REAL.”
PROLOGUE
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BETWEEN YOU AND ME
When I was a little girl, I loved taking chances. I’d swing over a creek in the backwoods of Nutbush, Tennessee, the place where I grew up, never thinking for a second what might happen if I fell into that swampy water. I tussled with animals—horses, mules, even snakes. I’m afraid of them now, but I wasn’t when I was a child. I wasn’t afraid of anything. One day, when I was playing in the woods, I found a little green snake and I thought, Where did that one come from? I was sure the baby had gotten separated from its mother. So I picked it up with a stick and went looking for the nest. Sure enough, when I found it, there was a big, ugly snake, ready to strike to protect its young. Immediately, instinct took over, not fear but self-preservation. I jumped up and ran as fast as I could, my braids coming undone and the sash of my dress falling off, until I was somewhere safe. The point is, I knew when to run away from snakes.
Throughout my life, there have been lots of times you might have asked me, “How did you get out of that one?” I did dangerous things, and dangerous things were done to me, but in the eleventh hour, something always told me when to run, how to survive. No matter what happened to me, I came through it every time. I decided, well, maybe I’m supposed to live. Maybe I’m here for a reason. And maybe the reason is to share my story with you.
You might be thinking, “Tina, we know your story. We know all about you and Ike, and the hell you lived through with him. We know you escaped from that terrible relationship, and that you endured.” But, here’s something that might surprise you. At this point in my life, I’ve spent far more time without Ike than with him. Forty-two years, to be exact. That’s a whole second life, one with adventures, accomplishments, and love beyond my wildest dreams. But there’s also been a dark side. During the past few years, I’ve faced life-and-death challenges I never, ever, expected. Let me tell you my story.
1
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“THE BEST”
“Give me a lifetime of promises and a world of dreams
Speak the language of love like you know what it means”
“Tina, will you marry with me?” This was my first proposal from Erwin Bach, the love-at-first-sight love of my life, the man who made me feel dizzy the first time I saw him. His phrasing was a bit quaint—he’s German, so English is not his first language—but I liked it. He was probably a little surprised when I said, “I don’t have an answer.” All I knew was that it wasn’t yes and it wasn’t no. This was in 1989, after we had been together for three years. I was turning fifty, and Erwin, who was thirty-three, thought I needed a commitment from him. He was gracious to offer, but I loved our relationship just the way it was. Plus, I wasn’t certain how I felt about marriage. Marriage can change things and, in my experience, not always for the better.
Twenty-three years later (so much for not having a commitment), Erwin proposed again. This time, his timing was perfect. We were with a dozen close friends, cruising the Mediterranean on our friend Sergio’s yacht, the Lady Marina. Looking back, I should have known something significant was about to happen. We were somewhere very pretty, but it wasn’t romantic enough for Erwin. I found out later that he consulted Sergio, who suggested we sail to the Greek island of Skorpios. “Erwin, this is the best place I know for a most romantic moment,” Sergio promised him.
That night, as the yacht changed direction and began speeding through the water to a new destination, I asked, “Where are we going, darling?” Erwin was vague and pretended not to know, which should have been a dead giveaway because Erwin always knows everything. The following morning, I awakened to the sight of beautiful Skorpios, the former Onassis retreat, with Jackie’s famous blue-doored bathhouse silhouetted on the shore.
We spent a lazy day on the boat—I always found a shady spot to protect my skin while everyone else was basking in the sun—then separated to get ready for dinner. When we gathered with our friends for cocktails, all the men were wearing white. “That’s nice,” I thought. “They look really handsome in their white jeans and white shirts.” And the ladies were equally well turned out in their summer finery. I was wearing a black linen dress, cool and elegant. We were having a wonderful time—great company, soft breezes, a moonlit evening. Then, after dinner, the atmosphere changed: suddenly, I could feel there was a sense of anticipation, even excitement, in the air. What was going on? I wondered.
I noticed that everyone had their eyes on Erwin, who walked up to me and knelt down on one knee. He was holding a small box in his outstretched hand—a timeless gesture. “I asked you before. Now I’ll ask you again. Tina, will you marry me?” He said it in perfect English this time. The men were wiping their eyes—I couldn’t get over that they were crying—and the women yelled “Whooohoo” as I answered him with an emphatic “Yes!” In that moment, I was saying yes to Erwin, and yes to love, a commitment that didn’t come easily to me. I mean, here I was at the age of seventy-three and I was about to be a bride for the first time. That’s right, for the first time. My name is Tina Turner, and I was married to Ike Turner, but I never was a bride.
Let me tell you about my wedding to Ike, if I can even call it a wedding. I wasn’t the kind of girl who fantasized about growing up and having a big wedding. Sure, I imagined I would get married someday, but we didn’t know about fancy weddings back in Nutbush—at least, not the kind where the bride wore white and a veil and all the trimmings. I don’t remember any ceremonies like that because my parents and all my aunts and uncles had already gotten married by the time I came along (or they never married).
When Ike proposed to me, there was nothing romantic about it at all. He was trying to negotiate his way out of a tricky situation with one of his former wives who’d heard that we had a successful record and wanted to extract some money from him. Ike had been married so many times, I lost track—and all those wives were in addition to the countless girlfriends who came and went with dizzying speed. Ike slept with—or tried to sleep with—every woman in our orbit, married, single, and everything in between. I don’t remember why marrying me was the solution to this particular financial problem, but in Ike’s mind it was the right maneuver. Out of the blue, he said, “You want to marry me?” Just like that—gruff, terse, no niceties. That was Ike’s way.
I didn’t want to do it, and looking back, I now know how much I really didn’t want to do it. By this time, I had seen and experienced Ike at his worst. But our lives were so complicated—together, we had a family of four children to raise (Ronnie, the son we had together; Craig, my son from a previous relationship; and Ike Jr. and Michael, the boys Ike had with his most recent wife, Lorraine), and we shared a career—so I didn’t have much choice.
I figured if we were going to get married, I should at least look the part. I put on my best dress and a stylish brown hat with a wide brim. Why a hat? I just felt it was the proper thing to do. I didn’t want to look sexy, the way I did onstage or at a club, and I thought a hat would make me seem more serious and wedding-like. I tell you, when it came to social matters (and manners) there was no one around to guid
e me. I had to rely on my own instincts. I didn’t have any friends because of Ike, so wherever we went, I was always watching people—in airports, in new cities, especially when we performed in Europe—watching and learning. I also read fashion magazines like Vogue, Bazaar, and Women’s Wear Daily, constantly working to improve myself. That’s where I learned how to dress, how to wear makeup, and how to develop a personal sense of style.
On the wedding day that didn’t feel like a wedding day, I finished getting dressed and got into the backseat of the car with Ike. Duke, who was normally our bus driver, sat behind the wheel, ready to drive us over the border to Mexico. Duke and his wife, Birdie, who took care of our boys when we were on the road, were part of my extended family, so it was nice to have him along for the ride.
Ike always had an angle. He must have figured out that Tijuana was the best place for a quickie ceremony, that he could find someone to do it without a license or a blood test. It probably wasn’t even legal. But there was no point in questioning his motives. It would just make him mad, and that might lead to a beating. I definitely didn’t want a black eye on my wedding day.
Tijuana was seedy and honky-tonk in those days. Once we crossed over the border, we drove down a dusty road—God was it dusty—and found the Mexican version of a justice of the peace. In a small, dirty office, a man pushed some papers across a desk for me to sign, and that was it. I may not have had much experience with weddings, but I knew the occasion was supposed to be emotional and happy. There was none of that at this wedding. Nobody said, “You may kiss the bride.” No toasts. No congratulations. No mention of living “happily ever after.”
As bad as that was, what came next was even worse. As long as Ike was in down-and-dirty Tijuana, he wanted to have fun, his kind of fun. Guess where we went? To a whorehouse. On my wedding night! I’ve never, ever, told anyone this story because I was too embarrassed.
People can’t imagine the kind of man he was—a man who takes his brand-new wife to a live, pornographic sex show right after their marriage ceremony. There I sat, in this filthy place, watching Ike out of the corner of my eye, wondering, Does he really like this? How could he? It was all so ugly. The male performer was unattractive and seemingly impotent, and the girl . . . well, let’s just say that what was on display was more gynecological than erotic. I was miserable the whole time, on the verge of tears, but there was no escape. We couldn’t leave until Ike was ready, and he was having a fine time.
The experience was so disturbing that I suppressed it—just scratched it out. By the time we drove back to Los Angeles, I had created a completely different scenario—a fantasy of a romantic elopement. By the next day, I was bragging to people, “Guess what? Oh, Ike took me to Tijuana. We got married yesterday!” I convinced myself that I was happy, and I was happy for a brief time, because the idea that I was married actually held meaning for me. For Ike, it was just another transaction: nothing had changed.
Well, if that wedding was a nightmare, the day I became Mrs. Erwin Bach was going to be a dream. No, a fairy tale, complete with a princess, a prince, and a castle! Our castle—the Château Algonquin, outside of Zurich, in Switzerland, where we had lived for fifteen years. This time, I decided to organize every detail myself. No wedding planner would be able to figure out what was in my head. I may have been crazy to take on all that responsibility, but I was determined to bring my fantasy to life, my way.
I like to get things done. First, I called my friend Jeff Leatham, the renowned floral designer I’d worked with for years, and asked him to transform the grounds of the château into a bower.
The all-important wedding dress was already hanging in my closet. I decided I didn’t want to wear white, because the day wasn’t all about me. Brides in big white wedding dresses get all the attention, and no one notices the groom. I didn’t want to overpower Erwin. This was a marriage of two people. I have been wearing Giorgio Armani for decades, and I spotted this gorgeous gown, an irresistible confection of green taffeta, black silk tulle, and Swarovski crystals, at one of his runway shows in Beijing. When I tried it on, I had a real Cinderella moment. In fact, I loved it so much that I had to have it, “even if I never wear it,” I told myself. But I knew in my heart that the gown was destined to be my wedding dress. Like most women, I don’t have a perfect body—short neck and torso, prominent bosom, shall we say “mature” upper arms—but by the time the magicians at Armani finished their alterations, the dress was perfect. I added sheer black leggings and a wispy afterthought of a black veil, and Erwin pronounced it (and me) a work of art.
Does a bride have to have bridesmaids? I wondered. This was another instance where I was happy to break with tradition. Even though I have several close girlfriends, I didn’t want to be surrounded by women on my wedding day. Somehow, that very thought took me back to the past, back to Ike and all the women he always kept around, the girlfriends and the one-night stands. Then I had a flash of inspiration. Our friends’ children would be as fresh and as beautiful as Jeff Leatham’s flowers, so why not have them as our wedding party? I invited four adorable little girls and one darling boy to join us on the big day, and I arranged for them to meet me at Giorgio Armani. I wanted my little flower girls to have gowns as fanciful as mine, but in a different color. Armani designed a dress fit for a young princess, in a beautiful shade of lilac pink.
Erwin asked his brother, Jürgen Bach, to be his best man and, for my maid of honor, I turned to one of the constants in my life, Rhonda Graam. When I first met Rhonda in 1964, she was a young “Ike and Tina” fan—a California girl who was into music. She’d stayed close to me in so many roles—friend, confidante, assistant, road manager—for almost fifty years, and we’d supported each other through all kinds of situations. Rhonda was my connection to the past, while the children represented the future. Something old, something new, I thought.
Erwin and I carefully put together a guest list, inviting family and our closest friends. Ever practical, he warned that with celebrities in attendance like Oprah and my old friend singer Bryan Adams, we would have to arrange for security because the wedding would attract a lot of attention. That meant I’d have to sacrifice my beloved view of Lake Zurich for the day because we had to put up a tall red screen to block our property from the water. If we could see out, then the paparazzi could see in, and we wanted privacy.
Jeff Leatham outdid himself. More than a hundred thousand roses in shades of red, pink, orange, yellow, and white came from Holland in freezer trucks. I’d never seen such beautiful flowers in my whole life, and the air was filled with the most wonderful scent. It took days to create the arrangements. Jeff had people working all over the grounds, even in the trees. Madness everywhere. There was no living in the house with all that going on. So Erwin and I moved into a suite at the Dolder Grand Hotel in Zurich, and I came back every day to check on the progress. It got to the point when I got so tired of even thinking about the wedding that I fantasized about hopping into the car and running away to Italy for an early honeymoon.
I think all brides and grooms have fights and disagreements before their wedding. Erwin and I argued about the weather. “Schatzi,” he’d say to me, using the German word for sweetheart, “what if it rains? We have to have a Plan B.” I had no interest in being practical. “No,” I said, “no Plan B. The garden is too beautiful. I’m not covering it up with a tent.” We had consulted the Farmers’ Almanac and picked a day that seemed to be good with the stars, the moon, and the universe. But, that wasn’t good enough for Erwin. During the setup, I walked into the garden and saw that someone had smuggled in tent poles to keep in reserve in case it rained. “Take them away,” I insisted. “I don’t want a tent. It’s not going to rain!”
Next hurdle: as I sat admiring the flowers and the tables—twenty antique glass columns set with china and my own collection of crystal—workers walked by with large umbrellas and began assembling them. They were positioning them to block drones, they explained. Drones? At my wedding? That�
�s definitely a twenty-first-century problem! I stood up and announced, “I’m not attending this wedding anymore. I’m leaving now.” I walked away and stayed away until the unsightly umbrellas came down. I wasn’t going to let anyone ruin my decorations. Not even drones.
Just as I predicted, there was no rain on July 21, 2013. But the weather had a wicked sense of humor and played a big joke on us because it turned out to be the hottest day of the year—a record-breaking scorcher. We laid out individual paper fans for our guests in case the heat became too oppressive. I’ve always thought that having a proper fan is a bit nicer than waving a menu, or whatever else is at hand, to create a breeze.
Erwin and I had planned on getting ready at the hotel, but at the last minute, we decided to pack up our wedding clothes and dress at our home. I’m so glad we did because it was more festive to be with the other members of the wedding party—especially the children. I helped them put the finishing touches on their hair and dresses—I was really hands-on—and gave each one a special little Cartier bracelet to commemorate the occasion. Then we sent them off to the nearby guesthouse to wait for the wedding procession to begin. The “coach” that would carry our little prince and princesses the short distance to their ceremonial entrance was a very unusual white Rolls-Royce. The front of the car was classic, but the back had been converted into a pickup truck where the children could all sit. We covered the car with garlands of flowers.
At some point, it dawned on me that I wouldn’t be able to see anything until the ceremony began. I told Erwin, “You know what, darling? I feel sad that I’m going to miss the first part of the wedding and only get to see it in the photographs afterwards.” We thought about it and figured out a solution so I didn’t have to miss a thing. I’ve been a Buddhist for over forty years, and I have a beautiful prayer room on the second floor of the house, where I go every day to chant and pray at my butsudan. It is glassed in and overlooks the front of the house. I set myself up in that perfect spot, sat quietly, and watched. Most people think of me as being in perpetual motion: dancing across a stage; strutting down a staircase; even hanging from the Eiffel Tower. But life has taught me that some of my most meaningful and memorable moments happen when I’m in repose, sitting, meditating, contemplating. Peering through my window, watching our guests arrive, gave me the opportunity to realize just how important they were to me, and how happy I was that they were with us on our special day.
