by Tina Turner
We had a lively audience at the Apollo and we were in great company. A young Flip Wilson was the comic that night. Ike was uneasy during the show because I was moving around so much and I was in an advanced state of pregnancy. He tried to rein me in, saying, “You’d better stop doing this or doing that,” but I twisted and did the Pony right up until I gave birth in October. My dresses were designed to hide the baby, which was not easy to do because I was carrying a boy and my belly was pointed (just like the old wives used to say at the time). I wore a tight, straight underdress that held everything in, with a loose chiffon layer on top to camouflage the “bump.” I was so young that I had boundless energy and stamina. I felt wonderful the whole time I was pregnant.
I don’t know what came over me, whether it was the thrill of being in that theater, or the excitement of all the attention, but at one point during our Apollo performance, when the music was moving really fast, I jumped off the stage and into the pit. Thanks to my clever costuming, I didn’t look like I was in my eighth month, which was a good thing. I think people would have been really nervous about that! But the baby was never in danger. Honestly, it wasn’t that big a drop and I was a good athlete. I knew that I could handle it.
On our return trip cross-country, we passed through St. Louis to check on Craig, who was still living with a sitter at Ike’s house. It broke my heart to see him. He was so little that he barely knew how to talk. All my son wanted was to sit in my lap and be held, but Ike wouldn’t let him. He thought that was being a sissy or something. Later, I found Craig in his bed, in a puddle of water from crying. I took him in my arms and tried to console him. The next day, after we left, he was running around, calling “Ann, Ann,” looking for me. He remembered the love of his mother. Every time she left him, he always missed her. He missed Ann. I missed Ann, too, the girl I used to be before Ike made life so complicated.
4
* * *
“I DON’T WANNA FIGHT”
“We must stop pretending
I can’t live this lie”
Our crazy touring routine left no time for family life. I almost gave birth to our son, Ronnie, while we were still on that first tour. Luckily, Ike noticed that I was about to deliver and rerouted us to a hospital in Los Angeles, where we were booked at some clubs. He expected me to have the baby and bounce right back. Two days after becoming a mother, I was onstage, singing and dancing as if nothing had happened. The reality was, if I didn’t sing, there was no show, and no show meant no money.
Whenever I think of this, I’m completely puzzled. Why, I wonder, didn’t Ike treat me better? That sounds just like one of Ike’s songs, but it was true. He couldn’t have been thinking rationally. If he had been kind to me, if he’d been caring and respectful, I would have wanted to stay. Wouldn’t that have made sense? I could have loved him. I did at first. And if we had collaborated in a more professional way, we might have had the success that was so important to him, like Mickey & Sylvia, a popular duo at the time. But Ike was always his own worst enemy. He destroyed anything that was good. He just couldn’t help himself.
I see now that our life together was a mockery of a “normal” relationship: defined by abuse and fear, not love, or even affection. We went through the motions of doing all the things happy couples did. We had a child together. Ike moved us to Los Angeles and rented a house, where we lived with our two families in a Brady Bunch way, with Ike Jr. and Michael, Ike’s sons by Lorraine, growing up alongside Craig and Ronnie. I was “Mother” to the four boys—ranging in age from two to four, when I was only twenty-three. Then, in 1962, we got married in that depressing civil ceremony in Tijuana.
In L.A., we were living in a beautiful place, with perfect weather, blues skies, and palm trees. But there was no peace in Ike’s world. He insisted on putting a recording studio in the living room, and on the rare occasion when we were in town, he worked all hours of the night. I couldn’t stay up like that. Gosh, they would have taken me to the hospital. Sometimes he’d look at me coldly and say in all seriousness, “Tell me, what do you do for me?” I wanted to answer, “Everything—singing, cooking, cleaning, and anything else around here that I have to do”—but I kept quiet, all the while thinking, How will I survive this?
Home was often unpleasant, but being on the road presented problems, too. We were away from the house more than we were there, which was never good for the children, and I did suffer about that. Ike kept us so busy after our first tour that we had bookings in between our bookings. Usually, the musicians rode on our bus, while we (Ike, me, and probably a mistress) followed in Ike’s Cadillac Brougham, which was outfitted with a safe in the trunk.
Traveling was wonderful when it took me to exotic places I’d never imagined seeing, like New York and London. When I was growing up, the only time we left home was to visit relatives, and most of my family lived nearby, so it was never much of a trip. Our circle was so small that when my mother ran away, my father was able to figure out where she was hiding on the basis of who she knew, narrowing it down to relatives in Chicago, Detroit, or St. Louis, where he ultimately found her. With the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, however, I had the amazing opportunity to see the world. I never had time to be a tourist, to go sightseeing or to visit museums, because Ike worked us too hard to do anything like that. But I watched people and saw how they lived, and I learned from them.
There was one part of the world I would have been happy to skip. During the 1960s, it was very hard for us to travel in the Deep South because we were likely to run into dangerous racial situations. I can’t tell you how many times I witnessed this conversation: We’d be driving through Mississippi, let’s say, when a white police officer would see our black faces and signal the car to pull over. “Hey, boy,” he’d say provocatively to Jimmy Thomas, one of our singers who doubled as a driver. “Doing a little speeding here, weren’t you?” Jimmy would answer, “No, sir, I was doing the speed limit,” as politely as possible. Then, the game of cat and mouse would begin.
The officer would respond, “That’s not what I read on my meter. I think I have to take you in.”
This would be Jimmy’s cue to say, “Sir, you know, we’re singers and we’re a little bit late. Can we take care of this with you?”
Inevitably, money changed hands. The police officer drove away a little richer. And we were free to drive to our next job . . . until the next time we got pulled over. There was one instance when Jimmy, a master negotiator who could outtalk anyone, had me and Ike get out of the car to sing so we could convince the police that we really were entertainers on our way to a show.
When Rhonda started working for us in 1964, we had to be extra careful on Southern roads because the sight of a white woman traveling with a black band was guaranteed to attract attention and hostility. If we had a white bus driver, or guitar player, as we sometimes did, he and Rhonda would sit together. Once, when we needed gas in a particularly unwelcoming place, Rhonda had to get down on the floor of the car and we tossed coats and blankets over her so no one could see her when we pulled up to the pump.
Driving was tense, but eating in a restaurant, unless it was located on the black side of town, was like walking through a minefield. There was always the possibility that a simple meal could turn into a dangerous confrontation. I remember one time when we were in a diner, we sat down and ordered, but the waitress called the police just because our group was black. Then she started yelling, calling me a “black bitch.” I jumped up; Ike was trying to hold me back, and I said very clearly, “But I’m a pretty black bitch,” which made me feel better. A lot of times, after finishing a late show, we sidestepped the problem by eating at a Greyhound bus terminal, where we wouldn’t attract attention. It was safer, but the food wasn’t very appetizing.
If we weren’t doing a gig on the fly, which meant there was no time to sleep between venues, we booked rooms at hotel and motel chains, and we always had telegrams confirming our reservations. In the old days, when you pulled up to a Hol
iday Inn, the empty rooms had windows with open curtains and a lamp in the center, so you could actually see how busy it was. But some nights, we walked into a hotel that looked empty, reservations in hand, only to be told that the place was suddenly “full” and we were turned away. The truth was, they didn’t want blacks, especially black musicians, checking in.
Rhonda, who was a feisty young woman, refused to take no for an answer. Sometimes she would walk into the hotel alone to check in, then the rest of us would follow. Eventually, she called someone at the head office to explain what was going on—that we were experiencing discrimination at some of their locations. Moving forward, our reservations were honored, or, thanks to Rhonda, the hotel manager would find himself in serious trouble with the boss.
There were a few times when our schedule was so crazy that there was nowhere to stop, so we’d stay in the car or on the bus. In the summer, it was wonderful to sleep outside on the grass. We did all that kind of stuff—anything to get by and make it to the next show. Traveling became a way of life.
Whether we were on the road or back in L.A.—by this time Ike had bought a house on Olympiad Drive in the suburb of View Park—Ike’s strategy was to keep me close to him, to make me feel small. If he forced me to stay in the “Ike and Tina” bubble, surrounded by his narrow circle of his people—I wouldn’t know the outside world, or my place in it. In 1966, the opportunity to record “River Deep—Mountain High” came into my life when I needed it the most. I can’t describe how special I felt when Phil Spector, the legendary record producer, contacted Ike about wanting to work with me. I didn’t know much about him, but the fact that someone other than Ike believed in me made me feel wonderful. Of course, Ike’s attitude at first was “No way,” until he realized this was another opportunity to use me to make money. He was always like that when it came to me—just like a pimp. Not the kind who worked on the streets, but a pimp nonetheless. Ike said something like “Pay me first” to Phil, and got twenty thousand dollars for a loan-out. But Phil was smart. He wanted no part of Ike or the trouble that came with him. Just Tina. Phil insisted that I come alone to his house in Hollywood so we could start working on the song together.
I was excited about trying new music and maybe a different style of singing. I rarely had a chance to go anywhere alone in those days, and I was determined to make the most of my freedom. I dressed carefully for the occasion. I think I always had an instinct for picking out clothes, and this was a good moment for me. The miniskirts and bell bottoms that were so popular at the time were perfect for my skinny frame. I wore a white jacket with matching pants and I had long, straight hair courtesy of one of my terrific Tina wigs.
Phil’s mansion was tucked away on La Collina Drive, off Sunset. A little nervous because I didn’t know what to expect, I followed a private road that led into a courtyard with a large fountain. I knocked at the door, but no one answered. I pushed it open and walked into a really big room decorated in the style of old Hollywood, with a winding staircase and old-fashioned, oversized European furniture. Wow, this is weird, I thought to myself, because I was still all alone. I was startled by a voice—not a person, it turned out, but a talking mynah bird, who kept shrieking, “Someone’s here!” It was a down-the-rabbit-hole moment right out of Alice in Wonderland, and I was Alice.
I found a seat and waited, crossing and uncrossing my legs, while the chatty mynah bird continued its conversation with itself. I hadn’t had any contact with Phil—Ike had made all the arrangements—but when he came bounding down the staircase, I realized that I had seen this leprechaun-like man hanging out at the clubs where we performed. He was always tucked away in a corner, wearing a funny cap. There was no cap that day—just an untamed corona of crinkly hair, which stuck out in all directions and reminded me of the mad scientists in the horror movies I loved to watch. He was dressed boyishly in a T-shirt and jeans, and his bare feet struck me as being very, very white. He introduced himself politely, “Hello, Tina, I’m Phil Spector,” and he sounded intelligent.
We walked over to the grand piano in the living room, where he sat down to play “River Deep—Mountain High,” the song he had in mind for me. When he signaled that I should sing, I immediately started screaming the lyrics à la Ike—“When I was a little girl I had a rag doll”—thinking this was what he wanted to hear. I gave him full-on Tina, loud and lusty, but Phil interrupted me right away and said, “No, no, not like that—just the melody.” Just the melody? I thought, Oh, oh, this is really wonderful! I feel it even now, how exhilarating it was to be given permission to use my voice in a new way. I wanted to run and jump in the air and shout “Woo hoo!”
Working with Phil was a musical education. Every time I went there to rehearse, he’d say the same thing, carefully stripping away all traces of Ike from my performance. Phil had a sound in his head. He was very strict about sticking to the melody and told me to sing it exactly the way he imagined—no improvising, not a note.
That sound was so haunting, but the funny thing was that as soon as I left Phil, I couldn’t remember a single bar of the song. I knew Ike wouldn’t like it—and I was afraid he might punish me with a beating, the way he usually did when something made him unhappy—so I probably pushed it out of my brain. The melody was so different from anything I’d done before that I just couldn’t hold it in my head . . . until one weekend when Ike and I were driving back from a club date. Suddenly, the lyrics came to me in a rush and I started singing: “And I’ll love you just the way I loved that rag doll,” Phil’s way, melodically. Ike was listening impassively. Just as I thought, what he heard was not his style at all.
“So that’s it, huh,” he said, dismissing it. Even as he spoke, I knew he was thinking of how he could change the vocals to be more “Ike and Tina,” which would have destroyed it. But he was stuck. This was a Phil Spector production, start to finish. Ike had been paid all that money and there was nothing he could do.
The more time I spent with Phil, the more I realized that he was unusual, to say the least. He did a few things that struck me as being downright strange . . . like the time he picked up an apple from a dirty ashtray and ate it. I couldn’t understand why he did that, you know, it was covered with ashes. I dismissed it thinking, Oh, he’s so busy at the studio. We were all a little crazy from exhaustion, working long hours trying to get that song right. What I didn’t get at the time was that Phil was always a little nuts.
Day after day, we met at the Gold Star Studio, where Phil was spending more money on one song than most producers spent on an entire album. I sang the opening line a thousand times before we moved on to “And it gets stronger every day,” working so hard to satisfy Phil. I honestly couldn’t tell the difference between when I did it wrong and when I did it right. You know, sometimes I’m a bit naïve. I was hot, covered with sweat, and all I could think of was that I needed to be more comfortable. “Do you mind if I take my top off?” I asked. In the middle of the take, without missing a beat, I ripped off my blouse and kept singing. Well, I had a bra on, but the reaction in the studio was bigger than Ben-Hur. Tina took off her blouse! I thought, you know, whatever it takes to sing that song. I still don’t know what he wanted. I still don’t know if I pleased him. But I never stopped trying.
The other thing I was naïve about was the “Wall of Sound.” I didn’t know a thing about Phil Spector’s “wall.” Ike never discussed music with me. I went into the studio one day and I was surprised to find a whole orchestra and a choir, yes, a choir, of backup singers. I was just a girl from Tennessee who got caught up with Ike and became a singer. Never, ever had I seen anything like this, except in a movie. Phil said, “Okay, Tina?” I tried not to look nervous. I went into the booth and started singing, and there I was at the center of the Wall of Sound—the strings, the horns, the snare drums. My voice was one of the instruments.
“River Deep—Mountain High” is a particularly difficult song to sing, and according to Phil, no one else had been able to get it right—not Dar
lene Love or the Ronettes, despite their terrific voices. I think he chose me because most singers have to go into falsetto when they hit high notes. But I can sing octaves higher—and stand up to an orchestra—in my natural speaking voice. Phil had watched me night after night at the club. He knew what my voice could do, and he decided I would be the one to bring his song to life. Before that, I was singing Ike’s way, because that’s how I started and that’s how I was produced. But I always knew I had another talent. I knew it was there and I wanted to explore it. This song opened my eyes to possibilities. I felt liberated, excited, ready to challenge myself vocally with other kinds of songs. To this day, I have never done a live show without singing it. The audience wouldn’t stand for that.
“River Deep—Mountain High” was supposed to be a hit for us, but, surprisingly, America rejected it. The deejays were puzzled about how to play it: if pressed, they said it wasn’t “black” enough to be rhythm and blues, or “white” enough to be pop. England was another story. There, the song was a sensation. It went straight to the top of the charts, and an exciting new group, the Rolling Stones, decided that they wanted the Ike and Tina Turner Revue to be the opening act on their upcoming tour in the UK.
