Tell Me :
Talk
OK.
A lot of people (like George Harrison)thought "River Deep, Mountain High" was Phil's greatest wall of sound record, but I actually like "Be My Baby" or "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" --just to cite a few--a lot better.
The thing is, "River Deep" isn't much of an Ike and Tina Turner record. You listen to their early singles [www.youtube.com] there's your walk of sound--or rather a strut--that has it's own lean groove and energy.
Phil throws everything but the kitchen sink at building this Wagnerian epic, but I think he could have used another vocalist (Darlene Love? Lorraine Ellison?) and the results would have been pretty much the same. Tina is another brick in the wall.
As a Phil Spector record, it's great. But I don't hear any Ike.
I like Ike.
Phil could be a sympathetic producer who could hold back his signature style when called upon ("Instant Karma" and the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine albums) but that was when he was working with an artistic/commercial equal.
"River Deep, Mountain High" could be cited as a good reason why the Lovin' Spoonful didn't sign with Phil when he offered them a contract in '65. A new artist working with Phil Spector would make a Phil Spector record. They were smart to go their own way and make their own sound.
Aha bravo!
This is an amazing song 'funkier than mosquitoes tweeter'
everybody should check this bit of bad ass funk out its a beauty!
[www.chicagotribune.com]
[www.chicagotribune.com]
----------------
MARKING TIME
Stan Becker
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
September 30, 1990
He`s a cool blue flame, Ike Turner. Like a pilot light in a blast furnace. He walks into the room in prison blues and aviator sunglasses, his face tight and immobile.
''You`ve seen one of these before, right?'' I ask him, nodding toward my tape recorder on the table. There`s the barest flicker of lip as he acknowledges my little joke. I ask him to test the microphone, and he peels his shades off slowly as he leans over the machine.
Unexpectedly, Turner`s cold prison mask melts into a grin of amused resignation. He taps the mike tentatively and begins, ''Due to circumstances beyond my control. . . .''
Turner, 58, is the man of a million midnight rumors. It`s hard to find an Angeleno without a Turner tale of punches, punishment and power gone terribly astray. Is he, as some suggest, a Svengali or another shadowy rock `n` roll animal trying to outmaneuver a hostile legal system and the insatiable media? Turner`s current residence is the Men`s Colony state prison in San Luis Obispo, a pastoral community of rolling hillsides and open fields 200 miles north of Los Angeles. Notwithstanding its dormitory living and open ambiance, the Men`s Colony is very much a serious lockup, complete with armed watch towers and miles of high double fencing.
Turner is serving 18 months of a reduced 4-year sentence for an under-the-influence probation violation. This on the heels of 11 arrests in recent years on a variety of charges involving weapons and controlled substances, including the transporting and possession of cocaine. Given that the vast majority of the charges ended in dismissals or acquittals, one suspects that the magistrate considered Turner`s cumulative arrest record in sending him packing.
Ike Turner is the inventor of rock `n` roll. Little Richard claims his place in history as the architect of rock, and Chuck Berry is rock`s undisputed father. Elvis, of course, will always be the once and future King. But as surely as this poor kid from the blues-rich Mississippi Delta once sewed together stray pieces of rag to make threadbare quilts, Turner was responsible for weaving a mixture of boogie-woogie stomp, traditional blues and white hillbilly music into a conscious and cohesive new order.
Years before he created Tina, in name, look and vocal style, and years before anybody thought in terms of a rock `n` roll record, there was ''Rocket 88,'' a No. 1 single in 1951. It featured Turner on piano, leading his own Kings of Rhythm behind front man Jackie Brenston. Sam Phillips, founder of Sun Records and the man who discovered Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, considers ''88'' to be the first rock record. Little Richard admits to basing his piano style on Turner`s performance on that disc.
Introduction to cocaine
While the rest of his peers are sitting in comfortable immortality in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the man who cut classic sides with Howlin` Wolf and Junior Parker, the man who refused to play in segregated jump joints a full decade before the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, the man who created the most intense and energetic live rhythm revue in entertainment history (rivaled only by James Brown and the Fabulous Flames), and the man who shared venues with Elvis and the Rolling Stones in their primes, is languishing in state prison teetering between obscurity and infamy.
''I think I was on a 15-year party,'' Turner says. ''Everybody who goes through cocaine wants to quit, but stopping is harder than you think.'' Turner spent almost $25,000 on drug-rehab programs but contends: ''None of this stuff don`t really do no good, man. First of all, you have to make up your mind to quit. I never did drugs till I was 44 years old. I used to fire people if I caught them with even a roach, and now I got a hole in my nose that you could put your ink pen in.''
He first took cocaine while playing the lounge at the International Hotel in Las Vegas with Redd Foxx in the casino and Elvis headlining the main room. ''Two very famous people came backstage; one of them is dead now,'' he remembers. ''These two guys gave me some coke in a dollar. I went home, and after Tina and all the kids went to sleep, I sat down at the piano and put some in my nose.
''I didn`t feel nothing. I didn`t think I ever got high. I was just sitting there writing and the next thing I know it`s 11 o`clock in the morning and I`m still writing. I thought, `This is cool, man, I`m not even tired!` So I just went on to liking it. I had it sitting out in big bowls. I used to give away $50,000 of that stuff every six weeks.''
Turner claims almost a year of abstinence and, though he has an intense energy, he looks to be straight and in good health. His face is virtually unlined, and only little touches of gray on the edges of his mustache and hairline betray his age. Though far from overweight, Turner is heavier than he was in his painfully-thin performance prime, and looks better for it. Yet there is something enigmatic about his demeanor, rather like a nocturnal predator that has been captured, bagged and brought out blinking into the light.
''Before you even start drugs, you`re already on a certain high,'' he says animatedly. ''Then you do the stuff, and it raises you up a little and puts a kind of film over you. Then when you come down you have to keep doing it just to try to stay where you normally are,'' he says, describing the classic symptoms of chemical dependency. ''I have no taste for it at all now. I mean none. You can get anything you want in jail, but I have no desire. I finally made it.''
After four months in the Men`s Colony, Turner seems to have settled into a conflicted acceptance of his incarceration. ''I did drugs to me. I was not doing drugs to anybody else, and I think because I`m Ike and stuck with the media thing that they use that to set an example,'' he complains. ''I`m in for drunk driving and under the influence and I don`t even drink.
''There`s nothing I can do except make the best of a bad situation,'' he says, shrugging. ''I`m trying to use the time in here constructively. I`m glad I came in a sense. I have a chance to make my want to do and how to to it. I already got my material. I know my way straight to No. 1.''
Turner`s belief in his potential is more than bravado; he has the tough resolve of a survivor. That said, he`ll need a miracle or two to get back on top, or even survive. Representatives from Cocaine Anonymous say that long-term recovery without an ongoing program is statistically improbable, yet Turner feels cured on his own.
Also, the ''media thing'' that he refers to, aside from his past fame and recent notoriety, is largely Tina Turner`s autobiography, which portrays their 15-year marriage as a nightmare of violence and abuse. Although he once owned his own studio and a half-block of prime real estate in the La Brea area of Los Angeles, not to mention homes and luxury automobiles, Turner has had to go begging, often to no avail, for legal expenses and bail bonds. Many a bridge has been burned.
''There are people I have given $250,000 homes to,'' he says. ''I have given a Rolls-Royce and all kinds of cars away. Now I can`t get a dollar from these people if they think I need it. It used to hurt me to my soul, man, but I feel sorry for them,'' he says with a laugh. ''They`ll be back.''
But ''they'' certainly are not around now. After a recent arrest, Turner had to spend three days in the county jail for lack of a $100 bail bond.
Tina`s side
Although it has been 14 years since the breakup of his marriage to Tina, the memories are fresh, and a bond, however convoluted and strained, is apparent. ''I love Tina, but I don`t like her today,'' Turner says. ''She is not what you think, man. She`s got more nerve than anybody. She says she was brainwashed.'' He shakes his head. ''I don`t know where this (expletive) comes from, man. Before me, Tina was a nurse`s aide,'' he says pointedly. ''She`s said this (expletive) so much she`s begun to believe it herself.''
Tina Turner reports in her 1986 autobiography, ''I, Tina'': ''It was like when he got angry, he became anger itself. One night in the studio, he threw boiling hot coffee in my face. . . . I grabbed at my neck where most of it had hit, and the skin just peeled right off. I had third degree burns on my face. . . . And you know what he did? He started beating me. . . . That was his whole life: He`d beat you and have sex with you and argue and fight, and then go play his music.''
The book is filled with countless horrific accounts of Turner`s violent and sexual rages and its effects: ''The left side of my face was swollen out past my ear and blood was everywhere-running out of my mouth, splattered all over my suit . . . one eye swollen almost shut.''
Tina recalls Ike beating their secretaries and pulling out whole handfuls of their hair. She even remembers being punched out while she slept. ''He was an evil, possessed person. It was like living in hell`s domain.''
''I ain`t nothing like you read about,'' Ike Turner says. ''They`ve exaggerated everything I`ve ever done. They say I broke her jawbone, well, I did do that, man. If a woman stands up there close to me, screaming at me,''
he complains excitedly, then drops off suddenly. He adds quietly: ''It didn`t feel like I hurt her. It ain`t like I walk around trying to hurt people. I don`t feel that I`m to be condemned.
''In our whole life we only had six or seven fights. I`m not violent,''
he says, defensive and unrepentant. ''I had a temper'' is his only concession to Tina`s memories of the beatings. Several times during the interview, however, he mentions how the ''old Ike'' would have handled this or that.
''In the last 12 years, I think before I respond,'' he says.
Four kids and a family
What, he is asked, would he say to Tina if she were in the room right now? He pauses for a long time. ''Don`t forget where you came from,'' he says softly. ''For her to forget . . . things like this hurt me. She said that when Phil Spector produced her (on the ''River Deep, Mountain High'' session) she felt it was the first time she was recorded right. That hurt my feelings because it made me feel like I did nothing. I gave from the heart,'' he says proudly.
''I didn`t know like I know now, but it supported us. There was nothing that Tina ever wanted that I wouldn`t give her. We raised four kids together. They were my life. When we broke up, I was very insecure and afraid of rejection. It took me all this time to not be afraid.''
The children Turner refers to, four boys now all in their early 30s, are the product of three relationships. Ike Jr. and Michael are the children of Turner`s former girlfriend Lorraine Taylor. Craig is Tina`s first child, born when she was barely 18 and still in high school, the result of her relationship with Raymond Hill, a former sax man in Ike`s band. The youngest child, Ronnie, is Ike and Tina`s. All four kids were raised together as a family.
Ike Turner`s childhood memories are far from idyllic. While still a toddler, he watched as his father was kicked and beaten for an alleged sexual liaison with a white woman. The edler Turner was refused admittance to the white hospital and later died of his injuries.
To what extent these incidents triggered Turner`s aggression and obsessive sexuality is for the psychologists to determine, but Turner does claim to have had keys to 35 women`s apartments in the St. Louis area alone.
''Tina acted like it didn`t bother her about me and some chick unless I continued to be with the chick,'' he says. ''Well it made some sense, and that`s what I wanted to hear, so I just worked with it, you know? I was doing what I wanted to do. . . . I`m older now and I know better. Some of those girls out there loved me for me, not for Ike Turner.''
Amid all the trauma and tragedy, it`s important to remember how absolutely outrageous the Ike and Tina Turner Revue was. It hit the stage with a furious blast of visceral energy, Ike`s crisp horn arrangements framing the exploding rhythm section as his childhood obsession with Naioka the Jungle Woman (a `50s group) came to life in the form of Tina and the Ikettes. The women would run out shaking wildly, whipping their hip-length hair, sweat shimmering on muscular thighs in heretofore unseen mini-dresses as short as loincloths.
''I`m a very dominant type,'' Turner says. ''When you`ve got 26 people, you`ve got a lot of opinions. You go talk to anybody that`s a leader. They
(leaders) say what they want and they`re not asking. People don`t respect that but they respect what it accomplishes.''
''They allow you a Walkman in here, and I sit in bed at night and listen. I believe I`m going to change the trend a little bit when I get out of here. You`ve got to hear what`s in my head,'' he says excitedly.
Illustrating an arcane point about the universal tempo of all rock songs, Turner starts beating on the table and singing, ''I`m picking up good vibrations,'' pointing at his interviewer to get in on the chorus. Suddenly, he`s transformed into the enthusiastic bandleader of yore.
''God put me here for a purpose,'' Turner says later. ''I have a lot in me to give.'' He is working as a library clerk and trying to get paroled to a halfway house in Vallejo or get out on a work release. He plans to marry his 28-year-old girlfriend, who also will be his singer.
''We all make mistakes, and Ike certainly made some,'' says Little Richard, who toured with Turner in the late 1960s and early `70s. ''The record system didn`t care that much for him. And when they don`t like you, they knock you to your knees, make you holler please. He wouldn`t let them control him. He stood up like a man. And he has been misused. He`s one of the greatest producers that ever lived. He made Tina what she is today. She couldn`t sing. He taught her phrasing, singing, how to be a performer. He even gave her her name! It used to be Anne Bullock.
''Ike is a great, great songwriter. He can take a person who don`t have talent and make them have it. And he can make a person who does have talent even better. What else can be said?''
''They made me the beast that I`m not,'' says Izear Luster Turner. ''I`m not being apologetic, because I did nothing that I regret. It took all that to make me what I am today, and I think that this place is serving a purpose in my life . . . but I`m tired and I want to get back to work.''
------------------------
A variation on this piece was translated into Dutch and presented in Niew Revue Magazine and was also syndicated elsewhere with different 'Edits" and pictorial layouts; and also links to some incredible live shows; some not easily available some dozen years after Ike's passing.
There's a whole lot more of Ike on the interview tapes I was privileged to record during our long talk; more to do with what the general public would consider arcane or too esoteric; and also at more length than the newspaper or Magazine outlets that used it, would provide space for....seems the writer had a tendency to go on and on....even behind locked doors alone in a small room with Mr. Tunrner with two prison guards outside the door. Reportedly there was some singing and beating on the table involved as Mr. Turner offered philosophical, but practical points about the Universal nature of all rhythms and tempos. He'd tap out a beat on your KNEE, then sing the first line of a Beach Boys tune, stopping at the end at pointing fiercely at the writer to continue with the 2nd line and so on...which, reportedly, and I checked on this, the reporter finally shut up and sang the line as directed.
It was "She's picking up good vibrations..."
This was in prison by the way.
------------------
[www.youtube.com]
-------------
Ike And Tina Turner Australian Interview (1993 - What's Love Got To Do With It Movie Promotion)
[www.youtube.com]
"...if that's what it took to make her what she is today then I have no regrets; There's no scars on Tina, you can take a real close look at her..."
"...the only time I ever punched her..."
---------------------------------------------------
Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 2019-05-24 04:34 by hopkins.
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OT: Ike & Tina Turner
Posted by:
noughties
()
Date: May 23, 2019 16:13
What`s it`s aal about:
Ike & Tina Turner + The Ikettes - River Deep, Mountain High (1966);
[www.youtube.com]
Ike & Tina Turner + The Ikettes - River Deep, Mountain High (1966);
[www.youtube.com]
Re: OT: Ike & Tina Turner
Posted by:
DaveG
()
Date: May 23, 2019 16:34
Lyrics aside, it is probably my favorite Phil Spector-produced song. The energy, Tina singing with complete abandon, the crescendo toward the end, it all worked for me.
Re: OT: Ike & Tina Turner
Posted by:
NICOS
()
Date: May 23, 2019 16:37
The walk of sound the greatest of it all
__________________________
__________________________
Re: OT: Ike & Tina Turner
Posted by:
loog droog
()
Date: May 23, 2019 17:54
Quote
NICOS
The walk of sound the greatest of it all
OK.
A lot of people (like George Harrison)thought "River Deep, Mountain High" was Phil's greatest wall of sound record, but I actually like "Be My Baby" or "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" --just to cite a few--a lot better.
The thing is, "River Deep" isn't much of an Ike and Tina Turner record. You listen to their early singles [www.youtube.com] there's your walk of sound--or rather a strut--that has it's own lean groove and energy.
Phil throws everything but the kitchen sink at building this Wagnerian epic, but I think he could have used another vocalist (Darlene Love? Lorraine Ellison?) and the results would have been pretty much the same. Tina is another brick in the wall.
As a Phil Spector record, it's great. But I don't hear any Ike.
I like Ike.
Phil could be a sympathetic producer who could hold back his signature style when called upon ("Instant Karma" and the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine albums) but that was when he was working with an artistic/commercial equal.
"River Deep, Mountain High" could be cited as a good reason why the Lovin' Spoonful didn't sign with Phil when he offered them a contract in '65. A new artist working with Phil Spector would make a Phil Spector record. They were smart to go their own way and make their own sound.
Re: OT: Ike & Tina Turner
Posted by:
dmay
()
Date: May 23, 2019 19:01
I could never get into this song, just as I never found what was so fascinating about Ike and Tina's cover of "Proud Mary". Some of their r&b stuff is very good. Ike Turner put out some great albums under his own name. If I was new to their music I'd explore the r&b and blues stuff first. River Deep is pure Spector and, as someone has noted, any other vocalist could have sung the song and Spector would still have gotten the same result.
Re: OT: Ike & Tina Turner
Posted by:
Big Al
()
Date: May 23, 2019 19:42
Let’s not forget that River Deep, Mountain High is, really, Tina-solo. Was it not Ike who insisted that it be an Ike and Tina Turner release? I’m sure this wasn’t Phil Spector’s intention.
Re: OT: Ike & Tina Turner
Posted by:
CindyC
()
Date: May 23, 2019 20:45
I love Ike & Tina.
Fool in Love, Work Out Fine. she really belts it out.
Please these lyrics are amazing...
You know you’re funkier than a mosquito’s tweeter
You got a mouth like a herd of boll weevils
Fool in Love, Work Out Fine. she really belts it out.
Please these lyrics are amazing...
You know you’re funkier than a mosquito’s tweeter
You got a mouth like a herd of boll weevils
Re: OT: Ike & Tina Turner
Posted by:
flairville
()
Date: May 23, 2019 23:31
Although it's listed as Ike and Tina, Ike wasn't allowed in the studio. He didn't hear it until it had been recorded. As a single, it's probably as close to perfect as anyone can get.
Re: OT: Ike & Tina Turner
Posted by:
Rockman
()
Date: May 24, 2019 00:22
Truly Amazing song … Phil considered
it his finest work but was devastated
when it wasn't a massive hit on release in the US …..
ROCKMAN
it his finest work but was devastated
when it wasn't a massive hit on release in the US …..
ROCKMAN
Re: OT: Ike & Tina Turner
Posted by:
Captainchaos
()
Date: May 24, 2019 01:02
Quote
CindyC
I love Ike & Tina.
Fool in Love, Work Out Fine. she really belts it out.
Please these lyrics are amazing...
You know you’re funkier than a mosquito’s tweeter
You got a mouth like a herd of boll weevils
Aha bravo!
This is an amazing song 'funkier than mosquitoes tweeter'
everybody should check this bit of bad ass funk out its a beauty!
Re: OT: Ike & Tina Turner
Posted by:
NICOS
()
Date: May 24, 2019 01:18
Quote
CindyC
I love Ike & Tina.
Fool in Love, Work Out Fine. she really belts it out.
Please these lyrics are amazing...
You know you’re funkier than a mosquito’s tweeter
You got a mouth like a herd of boll weevils[/qote]
This one I need to translate........
__________________________
Re: OT: Ike & Tina Turner
Posted by:
CindyC
()
Date: May 24, 2019 02:12
Quote
NICOSQuote
CindyC
You know you’re funkier than a mosquito’s tweeter
You got a mouth like a herd of boll weevils[/qote]
This one I need to translate........
NICOS, if you figure out what it means, please let me know.
Wasn't looking too good, but I was feeling real well.
Re: OT: Ike & Tina Turner
Posted by:
hopkins
()
Date: May 24, 2019 03:58
Quote
loog droogQuote
NICOS
The walk of sound the greatest of it all
OK.
A lot of people (like George Harrison)thought "River Deep, Mountain High" was Phil's greatest wall of sound record, but I actually like "Be My Baby" or "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" --just to cite a few--a lot better.
The thing is, "River Deep" isn't much of an Ike and Tina Turner record. You listen to their early singles [www.youtube.com] there's your walk of sound--or rather a strut--that has it's own lean groove and energy.
Phil throws everything but the kitchen sink at building this Wagnerian epic, but I think he could have used another vocalist (Darlene Love? Lorraine Ellison?) and the results would have been pretty much the same. Tina is another brick in the wall.
As a Phil Spector record, it's great. But I don't hear any Ike.
I like Ike.
Phil could be a sympathetic producer who could hold back his signature style when called upon ("Instant Karma" and the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine albums) but that was when he was working with an artistic/commercial equal.
"River Deep, Mountain High" could be cited as a good reason why the Lovin' Spoonful didn't sign with Phil when he offered them a contract in '65. A new artist working with Phil Spector would make a Phil Spector record. They were smart to go their own way and make their own sound.
[www.chicagotribune.com]
[www.chicagotribune.com]
----------------
MARKING TIME
Stan Becker
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
September 30, 1990
He`s a cool blue flame, Ike Turner. Like a pilot light in a blast furnace. He walks into the room in prison blues and aviator sunglasses, his face tight and immobile.
''You`ve seen one of these before, right?'' I ask him, nodding toward my tape recorder on the table. There`s the barest flicker of lip as he acknowledges my little joke. I ask him to test the microphone, and he peels his shades off slowly as he leans over the machine.
Unexpectedly, Turner`s cold prison mask melts into a grin of amused resignation. He taps the mike tentatively and begins, ''Due to circumstances beyond my control. . . .''
Turner, 58, is the man of a million midnight rumors. It`s hard to find an Angeleno without a Turner tale of punches, punishment and power gone terribly astray. Is he, as some suggest, a Svengali or another shadowy rock `n` roll animal trying to outmaneuver a hostile legal system and the insatiable media? Turner`s current residence is the Men`s Colony state prison in San Luis Obispo, a pastoral community of rolling hillsides and open fields 200 miles north of Los Angeles. Notwithstanding its dormitory living and open ambiance, the Men`s Colony is very much a serious lockup, complete with armed watch towers and miles of high double fencing.
Turner is serving 18 months of a reduced 4-year sentence for an under-the-influence probation violation. This on the heels of 11 arrests in recent years on a variety of charges involving weapons and controlled substances, including the transporting and possession of cocaine. Given that the vast majority of the charges ended in dismissals or acquittals, one suspects that the magistrate considered Turner`s cumulative arrest record in sending him packing.
Ike Turner is the inventor of rock `n` roll. Little Richard claims his place in history as the architect of rock, and Chuck Berry is rock`s undisputed father. Elvis, of course, will always be the once and future King. But as surely as this poor kid from the blues-rich Mississippi Delta once sewed together stray pieces of rag to make threadbare quilts, Turner was responsible for weaving a mixture of boogie-woogie stomp, traditional blues and white hillbilly music into a conscious and cohesive new order.
Years before he created Tina, in name, look and vocal style, and years before anybody thought in terms of a rock `n` roll record, there was ''Rocket 88,'' a No. 1 single in 1951. It featured Turner on piano, leading his own Kings of Rhythm behind front man Jackie Brenston. Sam Phillips, founder of Sun Records and the man who discovered Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, considers ''88'' to be the first rock record. Little Richard admits to basing his piano style on Turner`s performance on that disc.
Introduction to cocaine
While the rest of his peers are sitting in comfortable immortality in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the man who cut classic sides with Howlin` Wolf and Junior Parker, the man who refused to play in segregated jump joints a full decade before the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, the man who created the most intense and energetic live rhythm revue in entertainment history (rivaled only by James Brown and the Fabulous Flames), and the man who shared venues with Elvis and the Rolling Stones in their primes, is languishing in state prison teetering between obscurity and infamy.
''I think I was on a 15-year party,'' Turner says. ''Everybody who goes through cocaine wants to quit, but stopping is harder than you think.'' Turner spent almost $25,000 on drug-rehab programs but contends: ''None of this stuff don`t really do no good, man. First of all, you have to make up your mind to quit. I never did drugs till I was 44 years old. I used to fire people if I caught them with even a roach, and now I got a hole in my nose that you could put your ink pen in.''
He first took cocaine while playing the lounge at the International Hotel in Las Vegas with Redd Foxx in the casino and Elvis headlining the main room. ''Two very famous people came backstage; one of them is dead now,'' he remembers. ''These two guys gave me some coke in a dollar. I went home, and after Tina and all the kids went to sleep, I sat down at the piano and put some in my nose.
''I didn`t feel nothing. I didn`t think I ever got high. I was just sitting there writing and the next thing I know it`s 11 o`clock in the morning and I`m still writing. I thought, `This is cool, man, I`m not even tired!` So I just went on to liking it. I had it sitting out in big bowls. I used to give away $50,000 of that stuff every six weeks.''
Turner claims almost a year of abstinence and, though he has an intense energy, he looks to be straight and in good health. His face is virtually unlined, and only little touches of gray on the edges of his mustache and hairline betray his age. Though far from overweight, Turner is heavier than he was in his painfully-thin performance prime, and looks better for it. Yet there is something enigmatic about his demeanor, rather like a nocturnal predator that has been captured, bagged and brought out blinking into the light.
''Before you even start drugs, you`re already on a certain high,'' he says animatedly. ''Then you do the stuff, and it raises you up a little and puts a kind of film over you. Then when you come down you have to keep doing it just to try to stay where you normally are,'' he says, describing the classic symptoms of chemical dependency. ''I have no taste for it at all now. I mean none. You can get anything you want in jail, but I have no desire. I finally made it.''
After four months in the Men`s Colony, Turner seems to have settled into a conflicted acceptance of his incarceration. ''I did drugs to me. I was not doing drugs to anybody else, and I think because I`m Ike and stuck with the media thing that they use that to set an example,'' he complains. ''I`m in for drunk driving and under the influence and I don`t even drink.
''There`s nothing I can do except make the best of a bad situation,'' he says, shrugging. ''I`m trying to use the time in here constructively. I`m glad I came in a sense. I have a chance to make my want to do and how to to it. I already got my material. I know my way straight to No. 1.''
Turner`s belief in his potential is more than bravado; he has the tough resolve of a survivor. That said, he`ll need a miracle or two to get back on top, or even survive. Representatives from Cocaine Anonymous say that long-term recovery without an ongoing program is statistically improbable, yet Turner feels cured on his own.
Also, the ''media thing'' that he refers to, aside from his past fame and recent notoriety, is largely Tina Turner`s autobiography, which portrays their 15-year marriage as a nightmare of violence and abuse. Although he once owned his own studio and a half-block of prime real estate in the La Brea area of Los Angeles, not to mention homes and luxury automobiles, Turner has had to go begging, often to no avail, for legal expenses and bail bonds. Many a bridge has been burned.
''There are people I have given $250,000 homes to,'' he says. ''I have given a Rolls-Royce and all kinds of cars away. Now I can`t get a dollar from these people if they think I need it. It used to hurt me to my soul, man, but I feel sorry for them,'' he says with a laugh. ''They`ll be back.''
But ''they'' certainly are not around now. After a recent arrest, Turner had to spend three days in the county jail for lack of a $100 bail bond.
Tina`s side
Although it has been 14 years since the breakup of his marriage to Tina, the memories are fresh, and a bond, however convoluted and strained, is apparent. ''I love Tina, but I don`t like her today,'' Turner says. ''She is not what you think, man. She`s got more nerve than anybody. She says she was brainwashed.'' He shakes his head. ''I don`t know where this (expletive) comes from, man. Before me, Tina was a nurse`s aide,'' he says pointedly. ''She`s said this (expletive) so much she`s begun to believe it herself.''
Tina Turner reports in her 1986 autobiography, ''I, Tina'': ''It was like when he got angry, he became anger itself. One night in the studio, he threw boiling hot coffee in my face. . . . I grabbed at my neck where most of it had hit, and the skin just peeled right off. I had third degree burns on my face. . . . And you know what he did? He started beating me. . . . That was his whole life: He`d beat you and have sex with you and argue and fight, and then go play his music.''
The book is filled with countless horrific accounts of Turner`s violent and sexual rages and its effects: ''The left side of my face was swollen out past my ear and blood was everywhere-running out of my mouth, splattered all over my suit . . . one eye swollen almost shut.''
Tina recalls Ike beating their secretaries and pulling out whole handfuls of their hair. She even remembers being punched out while she slept. ''He was an evil, possessed person. It was like living in hell`s domain.''
''I ain`t nothing like you read about,'' Ike Turner says. ''They`ve exaggerated everything I`ve ever done. They say I broke her jawbone, well, I did do that, man. If a woman stands up there close to me, screaming at me,''
he complains excitedly, then drops off suddenly. He adds quietly: ''It didn`t feel like I hurt her. It ain`t like I walk around trying to hurt people. I don`t feel that I`m to be condemned.
''In our whole life we only had six or seven fights. I`m not violent,''
he says, defensive and unrepentant. ''I had a temper'' is his only concession to Tina`s memories of the beatings. Several times during the interview, however, he mentions how the ''old Ike'' would have handled this or that.
''In the last 12 years, I think before I respond,'' he says.
Four kids and a family
What, he is asked, would he say to Tina if she were in the room right now? He pauses for a long time. ''Don`t forget where you came from,'' he says softly. ''For her to forget . . . things like this hurt me. She said that when Phil Spector produced her (on the ''River Deep, Mountain High'' session) she felt it was the first time she was recorded right. That hurt my feelings because it made me feel like I did nothing. I gave from the heart,'' he says proudly.
''I didn`t know like I know now, but it supported us. There was nothing that Tina ever wanted that I wouldn`t give her. We raised four kids together. They were my life. When we broke up, I was very insecure and afraid of rejection. It took me all this time to not be afraid.''
The children Turner refers to, four boys now all in their early 30s, are the product of three relationships. Ike Jr. and Michael are the children of Turner`s former girlfriend Lorraine Taylor. Craig is Tina`s first child, born when she was barely 18 and still in high school, the result of her relationship with Raymond Hill, a former sax man in Ike`s band. The youngest child, Ronnie, is Ike and Tina`s. All four kids were raised together as a family.
Ike Turner`s childhood memories are far from idyllic. While still a toddler, he watched as his father was kicked and beaten for an alleged sexual liaison with a white woman. The edler Turner was refused admittance to the white hospital and later died of his injuries.
To what extent these incidents triggered Turner`s aggression and obsessive sexuality is for the psychologists to determine, but Turner does claim to have had keys to 35 women`s apartments in the St. Louis area alone.
''Tina acted like it didn`t bother her about me and some chick unless I continued to be with the chick,'' he says. ''Well it made some sense, and that`s what I wanted to hear, so I just worked with it, you know? I was doing what I wanted to do. . . . I`m older now and I know better. Some of those girls out there loved me for me, not for Ike Turner.''
Amid all the trauma and tragedy, it`s important to remember how absolutely outrageous the Ike and Tina Turner Revue was. It hit the stage with a furious blast of visceral energy, Ike`s crisp horn arrangements framing the exploding rhythm section as his childhood obsession with Naioka the Jungle Woman (a `50s group) came to life in the form of Tina and the Ikettes. The women would run out shaking wildly, whipping their hip-length hair, sweat shimmering on muscular thighs in heretofore unseen mini-dresses as short as loincloths.
''I`m a very dominant type,'' Turner says. ''When you`ve got 26 people, you`ve got a lot of opinions. You go talk to anybody that`s a leader. They
(leaders) say what they want and they`re not asking. People don`t respect that but they respect what it accomplishes.''
''They allow you a Walkman in here, and I sit in bed at night and listen. I believe I`m going to change the trend a little bit when I get out of here. You`ve got to hear what`s in my head,'' he says excitedly.
Illustrating an arcane point about the universal tempo of all rock songs, Turner starts beating on the table and singing, ''I`m picking up good vibrations,'' pointing at his interviewer to get in on the chorus. Suddenly, he`s transformed into the enthusiastic bandleader of yore.
''God put me here for a purpose,'' Turner says later. ''I have a lot in me to give.'' He is working as a library clerk and trying to get paroled to a halfway house in Vallejo or get out on a work release. He plans to marry his 28-year-old girlfriend, who also will be his singer.
''We all make mistakes, and Ike certainly made some,'' says Little Richard, who toured with Turner in the late 1960s and early `70s. ''The record system didn`t care that much for him. And when they don`t like you, they knock you to your knees, make you holler please. He wouldn`t let them control him. He stood up like a man. And he has been misused. He`s one of the greatest producers that ever lived. He made Tina what she is today. She couldn`t sing. He taught her phrasing, singing, how to be a performer. He even gave her her name! It used to be Anne Bullock.
''Ike is a great, great songwriter. He can take a person who don`t have talent and make them have it. And he can make a person who does have talent even better. What else can be said?''
''They made me the beast that I`m not,'' says Izear Luster Turner. ''I`m not being apologetic, because I did nothing that I regret. It took all that to make me what I am today, and I think that this place is serving a purpose in my life . . . but I`m tired and I want to get back to work.''
------------------------
A variation on this piece was translated into Dutch and presented in Niew Revue Magazine and was also syndicated elsewhere with different 'Edits" and pictorial layouts; and also links to some incredible live shows; some not easily available some dozen years after Ike's passing.
There's a whole lot more of Ike on the interview tapes I was privileged to record during our long talk; more to do with what the general public would consider arcane or too esoteric; and also at more length than the newspaper or Magazine outlets that used it, would provide space for....seems the writer had a tendency to go on and on....even behind locked doors alone in a small room with Mr. Tunrner with two prison guards outside the door. Reportedly there was some singing and beating on the table involved as Mr. Turner offered philosophical, but practical points about the Universal nature of all rhythms and tempos. He'd tap out a beat on your KNEE, then sing the first line of a Beach Boys tune, stopping at the end at pointing fiercely at the writer to continue with the 2nd line and so on...which, reportedly, and I checked on this, the reporter finally shut up and sang the line as directed.
It was "She's picking up good vibrations..."
This was in prison by the way.
------------------
[www.youtube.com]
-------------
Ike And Tina Turner Australian Interview (1993 - What's Love Got To Do With It Movie Promotion)
[www.youtube.com]
"...if that's what it took to make her what she is today then I have no regrets; There's no scars on Tina, you can take a real close look at her..."
"...the only time I ever punched her..."
---------------------------------------------------
Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 2019-05-24 04:34 by hopkins.
Re: OT: Ike & Tina Turner
Posted by:
hopkins
()
Date: May 24, 2019 04:13
[www.thestranger.com]
Prime Mover- The Stranger - Seattle
Ike Turner: 1931–2007
[www.youtube.com]
2:30 minutes or so into this Dick Cavett Show Interview,
Tina splains Ike's process....
"Can Ike talk now? Who settles an argument..."
[www.youtube.com]
Ike Turner: "She's like the devil or something..."
"'ann what is the matter with you?'...it would go on for a day or two,
then I...."
"There were very few Ikettes that I didn't go with..."
"I don't know how all of this could have been bad, man...."
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2019-05-24 04:36 by hopkins.
Prime Mover- The Stranger - Seattle
Ike Turner: 1931–2007
[www.youtube.com]
2:30 minutes or so into this Dick Cavett Show Interview,
Tina splains Ike's process....
"Can Ike talk now? Who settles an argument..."
[www.youtube.com]
Ike Turner: "She's like the devil or something..."
"'ann what is the matter with you?'...it would go on for a day or two,
then I...."
"There were very few Ikettes that I didn't go with..."
"I don't know how all of this could have been bad, man...."
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2019-05-24 04:36 by hopkins.
Re: OT: Ike & Tina Turner
Posted by:
Paddy
()
Date: May 24, 2019 08:38
Live in Paris & what you hear is what you get are two great live albums. Killer band, killer voice.
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