My Love Story

by Tina Turner

  Right after our meeting, Ike tried another tactic. He packed up all four boys and sent them to me, with enough money for the first month’s rent on a house—that was it. I saw his gesture as a dare, as if he was saying, “Go ahead, try to make it out there on your own. I’ll see you soon enough, begging for your old life.” I reminded myself that I was the girl who liked to take risks. This was a big one, but after I’d stepped out of Ike’s world, and had a taste of independence, there was no way I was getting back under his thumb. I just needed a plan.

  I called Rhonda, knowing that she could fix anything . . . a broken speaker, a car, a life. We always came through for each other, despite Ike’s attempts to divide us. The petty jealousies of the past seemed unimportant. We shared a lot of history, some painful, but it was time to think about the future. I asked her to be my manager.

  I explained that the wolf was literally at the door. Rhonda was well aware of my legal situation. When I left the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, all of our upcoming concert dates had to be canceled. Since I was the one who dropped out (Ike was willing and able to perform, but there couldn’t be a show without me), I was the one getting subpoenaed by the scorched venues for lost revenue. But there was no money. Period. I had to find a way to pay the creditors and support my family, while Ike watched from the comfort of our house and former lifestyle, hoping I would fail.

  In her typical no-nonsense, get-the-job-done style, Rhonda swung into action. At the beginning, she found that nobody wanted to take a chance on Tina without Ike. “That’s only half of the show,” they told her. “It’s not going to draw people.” We had a very hard time. Since we didn’t have any prospects (or a band, or backup singers, or costumes, for that matter), the easiest job to look for was an appearance on a television show. Calling herself “Shannon” so that Ike wouldn’t know what she was up to, Rhonda reached out to popular shows like Hollywood Squares, The Brady Bunch, and Donnie and Marie, to offer my services. She’d call and say that I’d love to do the show (whatever show it was, I loved it if I could get a booking), and that I was available on such and such a date.

  Happily, she was able to schedule an appearance on Cher’s top-rated solo variety show. Ike and I had been on it back in 1975, right after she and Sonny divorced, and I think Cher and I surprised each other the first time we met. Expecting the sexy “Tina” she’d seen onstage, the wild woman who was all legs, fringe, and shimmy, she was unprepared to see that Tina Turner was actually a lady, a polished woman who wore a silk shirt, trousers, and high heels, and who never used salty language. Meanwhile, meeting Cher was an eye-opening experience for me because I could see how happy she was on her own. Without Sonny, Cher was free. She controlled her career and her private life—her music, her friends, how she spent her time—and that’s what I desperately wanted for myself: a world without Ike.

  Looking back, I see that there were many similarities in our situations. We were both very young when we met our husbands. Cher was only sixteen when she got together with Sonny. We didn’t know how to do the simplest things because we never had to take care of ourselves. Here we were, famous headliners pulling in a lot of money, yet neither one of us knew how to write a check. Many women in the 1960s and 1970s relied on their husbands to take care of the business of life, but we were in the funny position of making all the money without having any control over our income.

  Not surprisingly, after we ended our marriages, we both found ourselves embroiled in ugly financial situations that did not work to our advantage. After Cher pulled out of their joint contracts, she owed Sonny two million dollars to make up for lost revenue. My situation was a little different—I got bombarded with lawsuits because of the Ike and Tina cancellations. But Cher and I each determined to do whatever was necessary to win financial independence. Cher says she took on her first gig at Caesars Palace to pay off her debt to Sonny, while I took whatever jobs I could get—no matter how small—until I paid my way out of the whole thing. As long as I was healthy and happy, money wasn’t as important to me as my freedom.

  Working with Cher was so much fun. We had a wonderful rapport onstage. Whenever I was scheduled for the show, she used to joke about having to get ready for “Hurricane Tina.” Cher’d say, “Oh no, I have to exercise because Tina’s coming.” She knew that I never pitty-patted around when dancing was involved. I always gave my all, and I made her work extra hard to keep up with me, but in a fun way. I think the audience could tell that we enjoyed each other: the affection between us was real.

  Appearing on Hollywood Squares was another story. It was a popular quiz show with a tic-tac-toe format that featured celebrities sitting in boxes. The celebrities would answer questions, and the contestants had to decide if their answers were right or wrong. The routine was that the producers came into the dressing room beforehand to preview the topics, and I remember being proud of myself for being knowledgeable. I felt pretty comfortable, until the show started and host Peter Marshall said to me, “Tina . . . where’s Ike?”—which was the last thing I wanted to hear. I found it a bit unnerving. Then the questions, which I was hearing for the first time, started. I discovered that when we were on the air, the topics were a little different from what we’d discussed, so it was unlikely you’d answer correctly. I got a few right, but I did stumble, and that bothered me even though I knew it was part of the game. Well, when my episode of Squares came on, my boys couldn’t stop making fun of me. “Mother’s on a television show, making an ass of herself,” they joked when they thought I couldn’t hear them. I tried to defend myself, but they wouldn’t listen.

  No matter. I had to swallow my pride and do a lot of things to keep us afloat. I always tried to maintain my sense of humor. I called those days “Tina’s Operation Oops,” because there were so many “oops” when I was first figuring out how to be on my own. At a certain point, I released myself from the burden of getting everything right. I realized that I didn’t have to be intimidated by not knowing, or hide my inexperience. I could simply say, “No, I don’t know that,” and promise myself that I would learn from my mistakes and do better next time. My only goal was to survive.

  I found us a little house on Sunset Crest in Laurel Canyon and rented everything, from furniture to dishes, to make a proper home for my boys. I still didn’t allow slang in the house, and I still cared a lot about their manners. But I had more pressing concerns. I didn’t want the boys to be spoiled brats, so this was the moment to teach them to be more independent. It was a hard battle because they were used to having maids and nannies—there was always someone to pick up after them, especially when we were on the road. Now they resented the fact that their circumstances had changed, especially when they saw Ike enjoying the same self-indulgent lifestyle as before. But I think it was a good lesson for them to learn.

  I wasn’t depressed by our reduced circumstances. It’s my nature to be optimistic. Anytime there’s a separation or divorce, there’s a change, with possibilities for a whole new life, in whatever direction you take it. When you have nothing, you’re starting fresh, I told myself, and I liked that. Rhonda and I got really good at turning a dime into a dollar. I’d make a little money for doing an appearance, then Rhonda and I would go over the basic expenses that had to be paid—rent, gas, food (I actually signed up for food stamps to help with the groceries), and lawsuits. By the time we finished paying the bills, there’d be about ten dollars left, and we’d split it! We were the original “Two Broke Girls,” and we weren’t above using Blue Chip Stamps (the California version of Green Stamps) to get the household items we needed. Luckily, Rhonda had a few credit cards for emergencies, and believe me, we put them to good use, more often than we should have.

  I filed for divorce pretty quickly because I wanted to settle things with Ike once and for all. But he took every opportunity to stall. He was in denial, still believing that Ike and Tina would get back together, at least as performers. I set him straight at a meeting with Mike Stewart. Mike was the head of United Artists
, our most recent record label. Speaking for Ike, he asked if I would be willing to go back. Ike would give me everything he knew I wanted, Mike promised.

  I told him, “No, Mike. I know how that is. I can’t go back to that environment because it’s dangerous. Ike will forget all about this meeting as soon as he’s in the studio doing cocaine.” At that point, I thought Ike might jump over the table to fight with me. I didn’t know what I would do next, or how I would support myself, but I refused to be intimidated. There would be no new record contract and no collaboration of any kind, professional or personal, with Ike Turner. We were finished.

  For some reason, Ike was surprised. To him, my refusal was like pouring gasoline on a fire—he saw red. Once he understood that I was gone, he struck back the only way he knew how, with violence. He wanted to punish me, and Rhonda, too, once he found out about her disloyalty. The scary thing was he had foot soldiers who were willing to do whatever he asked. Ike always surrounded himself with goons who liked to think of themselves as outlaws. Preying on two single women and four teenagers was about as cowardly as a “gangster” could get, but that’s exactly what they did.

  One night we were at home and we heard this loud bang, bang, bang coming from outside. When we looked, we saw that the back window of Rhonda’s car had been blown out with bullets. Another night, they actually shot into the house. We were so scared that Rhonda slept on the floor of the boys’ room and I slept in my closet because the room had a skylight and I was afraid there might be more shooting. Later, a friend of Rhonda’s heard that Ike’s goons were bragging about what they did. Then there was the time someone started a fire around Craig’s girlfriend’s car, which was parked in front of the house. We had to run for water and blankets to put it out.

  It was important for me to think clearly during this terrifying time. I started chanting four hours a day—two hours in the morning and two in the evening—to help me focus. I also took some, shall we say, “practical” steps to protect myself after I heard from a reliable source that Ike was talking to someone about solving his Tina problem. He tried to arrange for a hit man to “take me to the ballpark,” or the “football field,” or whatever the expression is. That was enough to convince me to ask a friend to help me get a gun, and once I had it, I kept it close at all times. Ike made a point of sending people I didn’t know to do his dirty work, so I was always wary of strangers, paranoid that they were following me.

  One day, while I was out driving, I was stopped by the police. They saw something in my car that made them want to ask me a few questions. At their request, I got out of the car and stepped over to the curb. When they asked where I was going, I explained that I was on my way to a chanting meeting, which was absolutely true. The officer looked a little puzzled and said, “Then why do you have a gun?” That’s why they’d pulled me over—because they saw the gun, in plain sight, sticking out of my purse. The gun that was supposed to save me from Ike. I hadn’t realized it was so visible, or the dangers of driving around with it on display in a Jaguar.

  Buddhism and a firearm must have seemed like a really strange combination. Trying to defend myself, I started talking about my husband, Ike Turner, and how I didn’t feel safe because he was going to take me to the “ballpark.” They knew all about Ike at the station—it seems that everyone knew about Ike —but they warned me that having a husband who wants to kill you is no excuse to carry a loaded weapon in a vehicle, which was against the law in California. Lesson learned.

  There were times when I felt so alone. Muh sided with Ike, if you can believe it. In her mind, he was always right because he had the big house, the Cadillac, the money. And, if you asked her, she definitely thought that he had all the talent. “You need him,” she told me repeatedly, refusing to see that I had my own talent. I tried to explain to her that she didn’t understand what it was like living with Ike—that I would never go back. No matter what I said, Muh favored Ike and stayed close to him, almost as if she was his mother. That hurt, but it wasn’t a surprise after so many years of being invisible to her.

  But I didn’t have time to lick old wounds. I had to work, and fortunately, I was able to convince Mike Stewart to give me an advance to underwrite a proper act. Rhonda booked us in cabaret settings at hotels and casinos, venues that skewed a little older and tamer than I was used to, but I was thrilled to be back onstage with musicians and dancers, selecting my own material, my own costumes (courtesy of famed designer Bob Mackie, whom I met when I worked with Cher), and my own schedule. I was independent for the very first time.

  I tried to hold on to that feeling, the excitement and optimism that propelled me every time I walked out onstage. And the truth is, it didn’t matter if five people came, or five hundred, I always believed that the audience was entitled to the same wonderful show, with me at my absolute best. I didn’t care that there were wardrobe malfunctions (we didn’t call them that then, but there was the night when I went one way and my “Big Spender” costume went the other!), or that I was sued at every job—the process servers showed up with their hands out as soon as they heard Tina Turner was performing.

  Being on the road was hard, but coming home was difficult, too. When I traveled, I always made arrangements for the boys to have some kind of help from a housekeeper or my mother and Alline, who would deliver meals to them. I say “boys” by habit: Craig, Ike Jr., Michael, and Ronnie were young men. One time I came home when they weren’t expecting me and walked into a cartoon version of a bachelor pad. An unimaginable mess! I could barely get up the stairs, there was so much stuff all over the place. “Uh-oh, here’s Mother,” they complained to each other when I surprised them. They were big enough to know better and I let them have it.

  Another time, I came home from a tour to an empty house. It was Christmas. I don’t remember where the boys were, but I was all alone. I lit the fireplace (I’ve loved fireplaces since I was a child), sat in the living room, and that was my holiday. There was one lone gift under the tree, a vase from my law firm (I still have it). I remember thinking it held the prettiest flowers I had ever seen, probably because it was my only Christmas present. But it was okay. Every time I found myself in this kind of situation, I always accepted it. Instead of being depressed, I reminded myself that I was home and could take this opportunity to enjoy the quiet. It was my nature to be happy.

  The longer I was away from Ike, the less patience I had for the dark clouds in his troubled world. He was still stalking me and often surfaced when I least expected him. One night, he and two of his goons came to the airport when I was flying out for a show. Ike tried to act tough with my musicians and the young man I had hired to be our guard—I traveled with security because I never knew what might happen. The musicians looked at Ike as if to say, “Don’t even think about causing trouble.” They wanted to get on that flight and go to work, and it made me feel good that they were supportive.

  Then Ike stared at the security guard, who didn’t know him, and said, “Who the fuck are you?” I never spoke that way, and I felt terrible for the guard. The poor guy thought his job was to deal with overly enthusiastic fans, not a crazy, foulmouthed husband. Ike added insult to injury by calling him a “sausage ass.” The guard was a little portly, but he’d never heard that insult before. What Ike didn’t realize was that the “sausage ass” was connected to the Los Angeles mafia. I didn’t even know there was such a thing, but the next day, I got a call from a nice older man who said he knew all about what happened at the airport and asked if I needed “help” handling Ike. I guess they were offering to take him to the “ballpark.” I was so flustered that I made some appreciative noises and handed the phone to Rhonda.

  It sounds a little bit like a comedy, but these incidents were frightening at the time because they really were life-threatening. You never knew if Ike and his thugs were carrying guns or knives, and we really didn’t know what they were capable of doing. I think that’s when I truly realized our situation was not normal. Marriages dissolve all t
he time without the help of weapons and hit men. It was time to accelerate the divorce.

  There was so much haggling over assets that the process was taking forever. The day that we went to the judge’s chamber to finalize the terms of the divorce, Ike was giving me threatening looks. I wanted to say, “You’re such an idiot. Do you think your vibes can even reach me now? You have no power over me.” The judge said to me, “Young lady, what do you want?” When I mentioned that I’d left some jewelry at the studio, Ike snapped, “There’s no jewelry.”

  I saw where this was going. Ike planned on using the divorce to keep us tied to each other. It would have been constant war, with more and more arguing, and there was only one way to end it. I told the judge, “Forget the jewelry. Forget everything. It’s only blood money. I want nothing.” He asked if I was sure. I said I was very sure although I did have one request. I wanted to continue using the name “Tina Turner,” which Ike owned because of the trademark he had obtained when we first started performing as the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. The judge ruled in my favor, and I walked out of that courtroom with the name Tina Turner and my two Jaguars, the one from Sammy Davis Jr. and the one from Ike, and that’s it.

  It seems so funny now—no money for food, rent, or other necessities, no idea of how to pay the bills, but two Jaguars! I knew what Ike was thinking. That woman’s too old. She’s not going to do anything. Denial, denial, denial. Considering my age, thirty-nine, my gender, my color, and the times we lived in, everything was strong winds against me. And you know what I say to people who ask, “What do you do when all the odds are against you?” I say, “You keep going. You just don’t stop. No matter, if there’s one slap to the face, turn the other cheek. And the hurt you’re feeling? You can’t think about what’s being done to you now, or what has been done to you in the past. You just have to keep going.”