Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
From cotton picker to queen of rock ‘n’ roll
The making, breaking and resurrection of Tina Turner
FOR parents worn out chasing after their offspring all day, it will come as little surprise.
Research shows that children have the same energy levels as endurance athletes, getting no more tired than distance runners and triathletes.
They even recover from exercise faster than sportsmen who have trained for months to reach their physical peak.
The study used a cycling challenge to compare the energy levels of boys aged eight to 12 against adults and endurance athletes.
The youngsters proved better at using oxygen to fuel exercise, minimising fatigue. – Daily Mail AS SHE picked cotton in the fields surrounding the tiny town of Nutbush, Tennessee, a young Anna Mae Bullock would distract herself by fantasising about a life of glamour and fame.
It seemed a hopeless dream. Although she had a voice that could drown out the choir at her Baptist church, the little girl had been raised in a broken, violent home by parents who abandoned her.
Saddled with crashing insecurity and self-doubt, the country girl seemed destined for a life of unnoticed drudgery in the racially segregated southern state.
Instead, she became Tina Turner and triumphed not only over poverty and prejudice, but also over her truly monstrous marriage to Ike Turner. Now, Turner’s harrowing journey to become the “queen of rock ’n’ roll” and one of the world’s most successful music performers has inspired a West End musical that has the critics rhapsodising.
The star, 78, joined the cast of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical on stage in London last week and said her life story was proof “it is possible to turn poison into medicine”. She was born in 1939 into a community of sharecropper farmers. Her father, Richard, was a farm overseer. He and his wife, Zelma, spent their time fighting. Turner is convinced neither parent wanted a second child and never showed her any love.
Turner was 3 when her parents went to work at a wartime defence facility in Knoxville, leaving her to live with her strict, religious grandparents in Nutbush (which she cele- brated in the song
City Limits).
The family was reunited when the war ended, only for Zelma to walk out when Turner was 12. When Richard married again – to a woman who repeatedly stabbed him in their vicious fights – he also deserted Turner and her sister.
They were passed between various relatives until, at 16, Turner rejoined her mother, living in St Louis, Missouri.
At a nightclub, she watched a local R&B band, Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm, and “almost went into a trance”.
One night, she took the mike and started singing, astonishing everyone with her raw power. She joined the band and gave up wanting to become a nurse. She had an affair with
Nutbush the band’s saxophone player and, aged 18, had his child. Ike, a celebrity and inveterate womaniser, became her mentor. He gave her a raunchy on-stage image, insisting her singing was as raw and sexy as possible. Their first record, aptly named Fool In Love, saw her using her new name “Tina” which, of course, Ike had chosen.
The first time he beat her up was when she suggested ending their affair (even though she was pregnant by him). His response was to smash her in the head with a steel shoe tree before insisting they had sex. It was, she said, when Ike started to control her through fear.
The woman who famously sang What’s Love Got To Do With It was not in love with Ike for long. Their son, Ronnie, was born in 1960 and they married in a 10-minute ceremony in Mexico two years later. Turner was too scared to refuse.
Many have wondered why she didn’t leave him. The answer, she suggested in a 1986 autobiography, lay in her blighted childhood which left her with negligible self-esteem and fear of being abandoned.
Realising she was the real talent in their act, Ike sought to control her psychologically and physically. He rarely let her out of his sight, gave her no money and refused to let her see friends. However, it was becoming clear, she could have a career without him.
Revered record producer Phil Spector was the first to spot her potential, paying her the then huge sum of $25 000 to record his song River Deep – Mountain High. Spector paid Ike $20 000 simply to stay away from the studio. The single was a hit in Britain. The Rolling Stones invited Ike and Tina to tour with them.
After 16 years, Turner finally called time on their relationship in July 1976 when – with their record sales and live appearances dwindling – they flew to Dallas for a concert. In the limo to their hotel, Ike attacked her – taking off a boot and smashing the heel in her face. For the first time, she fought back and later slipped away while he slept.
In 1980, she got a new manager, Australian Roger Davies, and successfully toured South Africa. Davies updated her image. In came tiny black leather dresses and a grittier rock ’n’ roll style. And yet the US music industry was hesitant about giving a record deal to a 40-something African-American singer who had walked out mid-tour.
In January 1988, Turner made history in a Rio de Janeiro stadium when she sang in front of the largest paying audience (180 000) to see a solo performer. That year, she notched up the year’s highest-grossing music tour and Guinness World Records announced she had sold more concert tickets than any solo performer in music history.
Turner met Erwin Bach, a German music executive 17 years younger, in 1985. They’ve been together ever since.
“People think my life has been tough. I think it has been a wonderful journey,” she says. “The older you get, the more you realise it’s not what happens, but how you deal with it.” – Daily Mail
‘Children are as fit as athletes’