by Tina Turner
When I came up with the talking part, I was proud of myself like a rooster for making those lines up. Once Ike started playing the fast version, because dancing is in my genes, I just did something, anything, to give the audience something to look at. I don’t even know what I did that first time. After the show, one of the Ikettes said, “Rolling on a river. Let’s do what happens when you roll on a river,” and we choreographed the movements to match the words.
“Proud Mary” climbed to number 4 on the pop charts and won the Grammy for Best R&B Vocal Performance by a Group. It was exactly the kind of mainstream success Ike had longed for, but it came with a price. The money from “Proud Mary” enabled Ike to fulfill his long-held dream of building his own sound studio, which was only a five-minute drive from the house. Acknowledging that I was the reason he finally got his studio, he named it after me—“Bolic,” which was a nod to my maiden name, Bullock. It was an unusual gesture on his part. Most of the time, his brain didn’t accept the fact that anything came from me.
Bolic Sound turned out to be Ike’s downfall. He designed the studio to be a fortress, with locks on all the doors and security cameras that enabled him to watch what was going on in every room. There was rarely anything good going on there, especially late at night, when Ike and his friends gathered to party. Ike would disappear into the studio and stay up for five nights at a time, maybe stopping to eat every now and then. Sometimes he just collapsed, and his mistress of the moment (one Ann or another) would help me roll his chair to the staircase, drag him up the steps, and put him to bed. He was just out. He’d sleep for about three days, until he gradually came back to life. His recovery routine never varied. He’d shower, shave, have his hair and nails done (probably by me), eat, and listen to the top radio station to see what music was out there, which would make him envious and drive him right back into the studio to work futilely on his own hit. Then the cycle would start again.
Sometimes, after these binges, I’d see a trace of the Ike I’d known when we first met. He’d say, “I’m sorry, Ann.” But you know, so much damage had been done that all I could say was “Okay,” and let it be. I knew he wouldn’t be sorry for very long.
It got worse after Ike started doing cocaine. Someone told him the drug would give him more stamina for sex—as if Ike Turner needed to spend another minute on his sex life. Having sex was practically his full-time job. An interviewer once asked me how I felt about sex with Ike (which was actually a pretty forward question, now that I think of it). Was it all that? she wanted to know. I answered candidly. I really didn’t like Ike’s body, but I acknowledged that he was “blessed,” so to speak, when it came to being endowed. Did that make him a good lover? “What can you do except go up and down, or sideways, or whatever it is that you do with sex?” I told her. I wanted affection. I wanted romance. I would have settled for common decency and respect. Sex with Ike had become an expression of hostility—a kind of rape—especially when it began or ended with a beating.
To this day, I question what really happened to Ike. Is that what drugs do? I wondered. I can’t answer that question because I never, ever did drugs. I’ve certainly never been tempted to put anything up my nose. I watched Ike and his friends get crazy from the cocaine. His habit cost thousands of dollars a week to support and ended up burning a hole through his nostril, leaving him in constant pain that required even more cocaine to numb it. It was a vicious circle of substance abuse. On top of that, he was hooked on peach brandy. The combination was lethal. What had been ugly and hateful between us before he started using drugs became worse with every snort.
He threw hot coffee in my face, giving me third-degree burns. He used my nose as a punching bag so many times that I could taste blood running down my throat when I sang. He broke my jaw. And I couldn’t remember what it was like not to have a black eye. He thought he was demonstrating his power over me. But the harder he tried to humiliate me and break my spirit, the more important it was for me to be stoic, to pretend that I was unaffected by his abuse, to behave as if I were above it. The people closest to us saw what was happening, but they couldn’t stop him. Friends like Rhonda (who also suffered pain and humiliation at his hands, when he did things like pull her hair) knew him well enough to understand that any attempt to help me would make him more violent. Ike was spiraling out of control with alarming speed.
This was in the early 1970s, when domestic abuse was not the issue it is today. I was a frequent visitor to the emergency room, although most of the time I just pulled myself together after a beating and showed up at the next performance, bruises and all. I found that makeup, a big smile, and some flashy dance moves distracted the audience from my wounds. If the doctors thought it was unusual that I came in so often, and had so many “accidents,” they didn’t say anything. They probably thought that was just the way black people were, fighting like that, especially husbands and wives.
Ike actually sent me to a therapist once. Oh, Ike was a trip. Now that I’m old and I think about it, sometimes I laugh. He sent me to a therapist. I didn’t hold back. I told the therapist about our problems; the singing, our home life, the difficulties of being a single mother, how Ike wasn’t a good father. At the end of the session, the therapist said, “I think your husband is the one I need to see.” I went back to the studio and told Ike he should make an appointment. That never happened.
I wished he would stay away from me, that he would find someone else, that one of his mistresses would take my place, so I could get out of there. But, behind my back, Ike referred to me as “my million dollars.” I didn’t fully understand what that meant until later. He was depending on me to bring in the money that paid the bills, so he was never going to let me go.
We were one of those families that got all mixed up partly because of the type of marriage it was, built around the musician’s life. We’d spend three months on the road, then the next three months working six or seven days a week in places within driving distance of L.A., and Ike considered San Francisco, which was almost four hundred miles away (and parts of Arizona, for that matter), to be within driving distance! After three months at home, we’d go back on the road and the cycle would begin again. There was always a housekeeper to take care of the boys while we were away—Duke’s wife, Birdie; Ann Cain, who was one of the “Anns” who became Ike’s mistresses; and others. My sister Alline lived nearby and she was a loving aunt who always kept watch on her nephews.
It wasn’t a normal household. I tried not to think about how Ike’s behavior was affecting our children. I had to be both mother and father to them because Ike was not the kind of man to care about being a good father. “I have neither chicken nor child; when I eat a hamburger, my family is full,” he used to say, which was his odd way of expressing that he was not a family man. He was always locked up in the studio, and whenever he did make an appearance at home, he was quick to punish the kids.
I learned how to be a mother by watching the Hendersons, the family I’d worked for back in Tennessee. They showed me how to care for a child, and how important it was to teach them proper behavior. Whenever I was home with the boys, I made sure that we ate our meals together and talked about what was going on in their lives. We did their homework, and I went to see their games. I was happy when Rhonda came into our lives because she was a big help with the kids. She’d pile us into the car and we’d take them on excursions to carnivals and other places where they could have fun.
My boys, who now ranged in age from eleven to thirteen, were growing up, and as they got older, there were moments when my Tina Turner image was a problem for them. They wished their mother could be like the other mothers, and here I was, an R&B, rock ’n’ roll singer and dancer, known for being a little raunchy onstage. I tried to make up for that by being very strict and proper at home. I insisted that the boys had to be respectful at all times, and I never allowed them to curse or use slang.
Rules and best intentions aside, children get into trouble: that’s what mak
es them children. But Ike had no patience for that. If one of the boys did something wrong, they all ran to their rooms to hide because they knew he would punish everybody, not just the guilty party. That was his mentality. When the boys got older, I was worried that they would be disturbed by Ike’s drug abuse, his infidelities, and the way he treated me. Or that they would find his dangerous, bad boy ways seductive, as any teenager might. They saw the entourage, the parties, the flashy clothes and cars, the ever-present bankroll. I prayed they wouldn’t follow Ike’s example by using drugs, breaking the law, or acting violent and domineering. But the odds were definitely against them.
In fact, I think Ike was a little bit envious of Craig, who was his stepson. Unlike Ike Jr., Michael, and Ronnie, Craig was diligent in school—did well, graduated—and his behavior was always correct. While Ike would never admit it, he was jealous of the brief relationship I’d had with Craig’s father, Raymond.
I never doubted that Ike was suffering. He very seldom had a happy moment, and when he did, we were all so happy that he was happy that we almost cheered it, and he would laugh. The rest of the time, he kept trouble around him, like a cloud. He was miserable, no matter how great things were. He had fame, success, a beautiful family, and the possessions he treasured—a fur coat, a diamond watch, the best clothes—the best of the best. But he was just in the dark and never came out of the dark.
And I wasn’t the only one he treated badly. To Ike, everyone was the enemy. Even at the airport, he would climb across the counter and threaten to hit the woman selling tickets because she might have said something he didn’t like. He was totally out of control, ruled by demons he just couldn’t handle or begin to understand.
Forget about whether I was happy, or if the kids were happy, or even if Ike was happy. The big loser in this situation was his music. Ike was a hard worker and he had real musical talent, but he didn’t advance. He didn’t move on. He got stuck in one style of music, one type of singing delivery, the same songs over and over again, sung the same way. He stayed in a groove for days on end, sometimes obsessing so long on a song that it turned into nonsense. He’d play it three or four different ways, with the same melody and pattern. No one in his entourage had the nerve to tell him to stop. They all were too high on cocaine to know better. That’s why Ike didn’t get on the charts, or get many hit records. In this business, you have to evolve to succeed, and Ike didn’t know how.
I, on the other hand, was quietly trying to do just that . . . evolve. After my suicide attempt, there were two Tinas. There was Ike’s Tina, who said and did all the right things. I worked hard onstage. I jumped out of bed in the middle of the night when Ike insisted I race to that hellhole of a studio to record a track that had to be done that minute, or else. I fed him soup, massaged his feet, listened to his irrational rants, and took his blows. What was more hurtful than his physical abuse was watching him spend our money on women, drugs, and any other indulgences that crossed his mind.
The other Tina had gotten really good at hiding her innermost thoughts. Whatever was happening with Ike, I tried to stay calm, collected, and a little remote. It may sound unlikely, but my role model during these difficult times—and the woman I admired most for her ability to project grace and control in any situation—was Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
I admired both Kennedys, the President and the First Lady, when I first became aware of them in the 1960s. They were the reason I started paying attention to politics. I watched Jackie so closely, studying her every move, and was so impressed by the way she spoke and dressed that I thought, I want to be like her. Not exactly like her, but my own version. I remember even wearing pearls. I went out and bought a strand, and everyone was saying, “Oh, Tina Turner is wearing pearls.” I don’t know if they were making fun of me. But why shouldn’t I wear pearls? I put my own twist on the look by pairing them with my funky clothes, and I loved the way it looked.
My appreciation of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis went beyond loving her incredible sense of style. Beneath her composed façade, she was insecure, uncertain, vulnerable. I read that she was self-conscious about her large hands. She worried about money. She struggled to have a second life after enduring terrible tragedy. I could relate to all of this, and her ability to carry on was a source of hope and inspiration to me.
I met her once, and the moment is still so vivid in my mind that it could have happened yesterday. The Ike and Tina Turner Revue had just performed somewhere, probably in the Boston area, and Ethel Kennedy invited us to come to Hyannis Port to meet her children. We went to the Kennedy compound, where we all danced and had a wonderful time.
Not long after that, Ike and I were checking into a hotel in New York and I saw Jackie and an older woman walking into the lobby from the restaurant. Immediately, I went into a kind of shock. Before I knew what was happening, I dropped my bags and ran straight over to her. Normally, you didn’t do that when you were with Ike. You stayed put, like a good dog, right by his side. But this time I couldn’t contain myself.
I said, “Uh . . . uh . . . Mrs. Kennedy, I mean Mrs. Onassis, I’m Tina Turner and I just want to say hello.”
She looked at me and with that distinctive little voice and said, “Oh, hello.” And then she made a tiny gesture with her hand, and of course I caught it and I quickly extended my hand.
“You were just in Hyannis Port with Ethel,” she said. I was delighted to hear her say that because it meant Ethel had told her about our time together and she already knew a little bit about me.
Jackie was so gracious, but the woman who was with her was looking me up and down with a really negative attitude, willing me to move along. I wanted to say, “If she’s being nice to me,” meaning Jackie, “then you, whoever you are, should be nice.” Then I turned and saw Aristotle Onassis standing there, and I said excitedly, “Oh hi, hello,” as if I knew him, too. God, I was a mess. But I was truly overwhelmed to be in her company.
When Ike and I went up to our room, I was still shaking because I was so nervous. I had just met my idol—the woman I revered above all other women. I loved her for her life, her strength, her serenity. And I loved her for the kindness she showed me that day. Even though Ike knew how I felt about Jackie, and what she meant to me, guess what he said? No, I can’t tell you. It’s too crude. As you can imagine, it was sexual. That’s how it was with Ike, and that’s why I was always so happy to get away from him.
It may sound silly, but one of my favorite escapes, and a secret pleasure, was driving my Jaguar. I loved it because it was something I could do by myself, one of the few times I could be alone and free. You might be thinking, Tina, how did you afford a Jaguar? Well, the great Sammy Davis Jr. bought me my first Jaguar in 1970, after we did a show together in Las Vegas. I remember him as an incredible talent, a true visionary. The first time we worked together on his variety show in the late sixties, he introduced us with an early version of a “rap.”
So I don’t want to waste a second with idle chatter
We gonna get right down to the meat of the matter
To open up the show tonight we have a treat for you
And I warn you, you will not be able to sit in your seat
’Cause it’s Ike and Tina Turner, Ike and Tina Turner,
Ike and Tina Turner, and their revue . . . for you
We had such a good time working with Sammy that we returned to Las Vegas in 1970 to join him on an episode of the popular television show The Name of the Game.
Some entertainers express their thanks by sending flowers, but Sammy was a bighearted man who did everything in a big way. He pulled Rhonda aside and whispered that he wanted to surprise me with a car. I think he suggested a Mercedes, but Rhonda, bless her heart, told him that I was into English cars. Presto! Like magic, a gorgeous, white XJ6 Jaguar was waiting for me outside of the hotel. Ike didn’t mind because he knew that Sammy wasn’t coming on to me: he always treated me like a respected coworker.
Sammy’s gift awakened my passion for f
ast cars. In 1973, Ike decided I should also have the new Jaguar XKE V12 roadster. He sent Rhonda to buy the car and I picked it up. I’ll never forget the moment I got behind the wheel and pulled out of the dealership. My life was so controlled that whenever the least bit of light and air came through, it was a big deal. It was late and a little misty when I drove that sleek silver Jaguar on Wilshire Boulevard. As far as I was concerned, there was no one else on the road—just me, driving with the windows down, looking and feeling fabulous. I can still hear the sound of the motor, the vroom that signaled it was ready to take me anywhere I wanted to go—that is, if I’d had anywhere to go. I knew I would never drive it at top speed, but I still got the adrenaline rush that car lovers experience. I looked forward to leaving the studio at night because it was always a pleasure to slide into the Jaguar and drive myself to the house. It was only five minutes away, but it was five minutes I could call my own.
I also felt my chains lifting when I started paying attention to matters of the spirit and the soul. I’m a seeker, so I’ve always been drawn to psychics and readers. I believe there is a higher consciousness, and I strive to get to the place where I can truly understand life’s meanings and patterns. I want to see my life unfold in fast-forward, like a movie, and a really good psychic can present it that way. Not that they just predict the future (although I always enjoyed that, especially when the prediction was that I would achieve great success on my own!). I find that psychics also help me to think clearly about my choices and actions.
When life with Ike was at its worst, I turned to Buddhism to help me through the bad times. Several people, including my younger son, Ronnie, said that I might benefit from it. Chanting, they suggested, could actually help me to change things in my life. My son said, “Mother, you can get anything you want.” That’s what he’d heard from his friends. I didn’t expect that to happen. But I thought maybe this was something that could help me.
