Big Lips, Hot Legs, Explosive Tempers, and Going Solo: A Comparison of The Ike and Tina Turner Revue and The Rolling Stones
Chapter 4: Living and Working with the Volatile Ike Turner
"Ike & Tina Turner 231172_Dia14" by Heinrich Klaffs is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 
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When she first encountered Ike Turner, Tina Turner heard rumors about Ike’s violent temper, and his nickname Pistol Whippin’ Ike Turner.
She didn’t see that side of Ike until he became dependent on her for his success. Before they became romantically involved, Ike would ask Tina to promise to be loyal to him. He implored her not to leave him if a song made her big. As previously mentioned, Ike changed Anna Mae’s name to Tina in 1960. They were an item at this time with Tina pregnant, carrying their first child, but they were not married. The name change gave Ike control over Tina. Ike had been ripped off by others during his early music career, with money from Rocket 88
going to those who, according to him, didn’t create the song. As a result, he firmly controlled anything he felt he created, including Tina Turner. When he told Anna about her name change, she questioned it, which offended Ike Turner. He began his barrage by verbally assaulting Tina, then beat her with a wooden shoe stretcher. Ike’s preference during his tirades according to Tina Turner was to use an object, instead of his guitar-playing hand, to hit Tina in the head. Once the initial beating ended, he then forced her to have sex with him while her head throbbed. As soon as their relationship and music careers blossomed, so did the real, explosive side of Ike Turner.
Ike Turner controlled the Ike and Tina Turner Revue with an iron fist. Ike acted as the band leader, director, and business manager. The Revue toured 11 months out of the year. Ike strictly enforced band rules, fining Ikettes for torn stockings, or musicians for being late. The taskmaster would add what he called the Turner tax, a tax on a fine that sometimes could be four times higher than the original amount. He frugally managed the band so that everyone had to do things themselves. No roadies to move equipment, nor makeup artists for Tina and the Ikettes. Band members were on their own. Yet the rules were different for Ike. He used Tina as his personal slave, In the morning, she did his hair and nails. Ike also controlled the way Tina sang. Tina Turner wrote that most of the fights they had related to her questioning his orders regarding their performances. Questioning him about her singing style or his demand that she rub her body against a microphone stand infuriated the dictator who did not like to be questioned. Ike claimed that their fights usually were related to his womanizing, writing in his autobiography that he could sense that Tina was upset about the issue but always told him that nothing was wrong, which infuriated him, and resulted in him slapping her. Ike Turner may have ditched the Kings of Rhythm name, but he continued to reign over the Revue as its supreme, authoritative king.
Tina Turner reported in her book My Love Story that Ike’s childhood sparked his life of fiery rage. Kids regarded Ike, whose formal name is Izear Luster Turner, as an ugly duckling. They picked on him throughout his childhood and adolescence. Ike also witnessed a group of white men severely pound Ike Turner’s father, angry that he had a fling with a white woman who supposedly was a girlfriend of Bird-Doggin’, the leader of the angry mob. His father died a slow death as a result of his injuries. An angry, alcoholic stepfather came into Ike’s childhood, which surely affected his upbringing. Ike stated non-family members would discipline children by beating them, which happened to Ike. In his autobiography, he claimed he was molested by numerous neighborhood women, but he viewed them as sex lessons, leading him to try to have sex with girls his own age. This exposure to sex at an early age led to his womanizing in his later life. Rhonda Graam, one of The Revue’s female road managers, became intimate with Ike and regretted it. As with Tina, Ike beat Rhonda when he got frustrated, one time beating her with a phone receiver while she was on a phone call. The beating left a scar on her head. Graam held the opinion that Ike Turner’s upbringing in the South exposed him to domestic violence, which severely influenced his treatment of others. Ike Turner had a buildup of hatred and resentment that carried over into his adult life.
Ike and Tina Turner supposedly married in 1962. According to the bride, it was a no-thrills ceremony in Tijuana, Mexico where they didn’t even have a ceremony with a justice of the peace. They both signed a piece of paper stating they were married in a dusty office with a sign out front that read Marriage.
According to the groom, at the time he still had a marriage with another woman that wasn’t legally dissolved until 1974. Ike recalled the Tijuana ceremony mentioned above as just the two of them having a picture taken together holding up a sign that read married.
The photographer of the picture asked them if they wanted to get married for $2.00. They gave him the money and he pronounced them man and wife. To Ike, it wasn’t a legit marriage. Ike wrote that Tina wanted to turn him into the perfect husband, but he wanted to live a non-monogamous life.
Throughout the 1960s, Ike violently abused Tina, beating and choking her. While he demanded Tina’s loyalty, he ran around with other women. The 1960s were a time in which victims of domestic violence did not have the law, nor public opinion on their side. Like Tina Turner, many victims, past and present, depended on their spouse for financial support. They didn’t have cash or property that they could use to support themselves if they left. They were isolated and dependent on their abusers.
Tina Turner actually attempted to leave Ike one time during the 1960s, but Ike tracked down the bus she had taken. Instead of reassuring her that things would change, he beat her with wire hangers. Unfortunately, Tina Turner felt the only escape was death. Feeling suicide was the answer, Tina digested fifty maximum-strength prescribed sleeping pills. She took them before a show, hoping to die onstage. The reason for taking them before the performance: it was so that Ike didn’t have to return money to the venue for a canceled show. If she made it onstage, Ike would get paid. Tina Turner knew Ike would be angry because he’d have to pays the musicians no matter what, so she wanted to be generous to the man she wanted to leave via suicide. Her suicide attempt didn’t go as planned. People noticed she wasn’t acting right, so Ike and others brought her to a hospital. En route to the hospital, she lost consciousness. At the hospital, doctors pumped her stomach but they couldn’t get a pulse. It was reported that Ike came into the room and softly threatened her not to die because he was going to kill her. Ike confessed in his book Takin’ Back My Name that he wasn’t kind to Tina during her near-death experience, calling her a coward, angry that she was going to leave him with the hospital bills. Whatever was said by Ike by her bedside, Tina’s pulse started. Tina Turner realized that suicide wasn’t the answer. She needed to survive and leave on her own.
Technology aided Ike Turner in controlling his wife. He had a closed-circuit TV system installed in their home. Yet Tina kept working with the volatile monster. His cocaine addiction in the 1970s made things horrendously worse than they were in the 1960s.
Despite their inner turmoil, both Ike and Tina acted like they had a solid relationship while on stage. Touring with the Stones opened door for them. Their reputation as a high-energy, raunchy, sexy act attracted audiences. One reporter said their Central Park concert nearly melted a nearby ice rink due to the hot, steamy, sexy atmosphere. The Ike and Tina Turner Revue began to cover popular tunes, such as the Beatles Come Together,
and The Rolling Stones’s Honky Tonk Women,
energizing these songs in their own dynamic way. As a result, the hippie crowd became fans. The Turners 1971 Grammy award-winning remake of Credence Clearwater Revival’s Proud Mary
orbited them into pop stardom. A work written by Tina Turner, titled Nutbush City Limits,
became popular in 1974. Tina Turner’s appearance in The Who’s movie version of Tommy kept her in the spotlight. Tina gave what some critics felt was the movie’s most memorable scene as The Acid Queen prostitute. Ike played no part in that scene. It was all Tina.
The Ike and Tina Turner Revue’s success didn’t last long. Whereas Tina tried to continue their success with Nutbush City Limits
and Tommy, Ike retreated into his home studio in an attempt to record material. However he wasted his studio time. Ike Turner either recorded stuff that sounded like the usual Ike Tuner R&B material, or used the studio to get high on cocaine and party while Tina and their children tried to sleep. One Florida music critic wrote in 1976 that The Ike and Tina Turner Revue were an overexposed group with a predictable performance, criticized Tina Turner’s voice, and warned that changes needed to be made before the Revue become a parody of themselves.
A major change did loom for the Ike and Tina Turner Revue.
Tired of Ike, Tina Turner escaped her abusive, controlling husband, having to literally run across a Dallas freeway for her freedom, which took place during American’s 200th anniversary of separating from British rule. She stayed with friends while she decided on the next phase of her life, leaving her kids with relatives and friends. Ike Turner used money and violent threats to get back Tina. The intimidation and bribery efforts didn’t work. She stayed strong and got a divorce. She left Ike, receiving a settlement of two Jaguars and the rights to her name, the latter being a very important victory. Tina Turner kept her working name and sought to make it her own.
Tina Turner visited Mick Jagger shortly after she left Ike Turner. She popped in to his dressing room after a Stone’s concert. Jagger told her he didn’t want any liberated women
in the room. Turner felt it was his dry way of acknowledging the change in her life.