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Is Ike Turner ready for his comeback? | ike_l
PHOTO REALISM Turner would like for people to get past his past
Ike Turner: Anton Corbijn
By Ty Burr
Ty Burr
Ty Burr
Ty Burr is a writer at large for EW and is no relation to Raymond or Aaron

The following is an excerpt from a feature in EW's June 1, 2001, issue.

Why should you even care about Ike Turner in 2001? Didn't Tina Turner literally write the book (''I, Tina,'' with Kurt Loder, HarperCollins, 1986) on her sorry existence with the husband who created her star persona only to beat her bloody before she fled his clutches in 1976? Don't we know the dirt from the 1993 film version of that book, ''What's Love Got to Do With It,'' and from Laurence Fishburne's portrayal of Ike as a soulless soul Mephistopheles? Isn't it enough that when Turner entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991, he was inducted in absentia because he was serving time for transporting cocaine?

Of those three items on the docket, Ike disputes only the filmic indictment, which he feels distorts some events and invents others. ''They took what she said and totally exaggerated it,'' he scoffs. ''People don't even stop to say when something was based on a true story, it had to be fictionalized.'' (While Tina is, according to her management, ''taking a year off'' and was not available for comment, she has indicated in past interviews that she does not disagree with that assessment.) He doesn't argue over chapter and verse details of ''I, Tina,'' in part because he can't, and in part because he feels it's none of your damn business. As for his prison stay, he insists that the years from 1989 to 1991 were the best thing that happened to him. ''If I hadn't gone to jail, I'd probably be dead now,'' he says, and there is no reason to doubt him.

No, the reason you should care about Ike Turner is that he is one of the secret fathers of rock & roll. Sam Phillips, for one, is convinced that Ike cut the very first rock & roll record: In 1951, three years before he discovered Elvis Presley, Phillips captured Turner's Kings of Rhythm in a raw, gutbucket squall called ''Rocket 88,'' which would become a No. 1 R&B hit for Chess Records. Saxophonist Jackie Brenston took the vocals -- and credit on the record label -- after Phillips decided Ike couldn't sing well enough, but the future Sun Records guru recognized the real king of the Kings. ''Ike's always been a person I thought had an unusual talent for making people sound like they really belonged to each other,'' says Phillips. ''Ike was just excellent at putting people together.''

When his band temporarily split in the early '50s, Turner hooked up with the Bihari brothers of L.A.'s Modern Records, becoming their talent scout and field producer in the Deep South. In so doing, he helped discover -- and produced, arranged, and played on the records of -- such major postwar blues gods as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, B.B. King, and Elmore James. He re-formed the Kings in 1956, moved to St. Louis, and created a streamlined R&B stage revue featuring a tremolo heavy guitar style that some pop historians feel was the first to challenge the singer as the emotional center of early rock.

And he still had yet to meet Tina. That happened in 1958; their first hit as Ike and Tina Turner was 1960's ''A Fool in Love,'' created by accident when singer Art Lassiter didn't show up for a recording date and Anna Mae took a shot at the lead. Ike created her stage name after the fact and modeled her persona on the kind of brazen wild woman he had had a thing for ever since watching movie serials about Nyoka the Jungle Woman as a kid in Clarksdale, Miss. ''Ike and Tina was one of the definitive rhythm & blues soul acts,'' says blues historian Jim O'Neal. ''The whole showmanship of it was spectacular, and Ike was able to orchestrate all that: the music, the arrangements, the songwriting, the musicians. I think he's one of the great musical masterminds of the modern era.''

Today, Ike Turner is a member of his neighborhood watch (''Best rated in the north county!'' he crows). He has been clean for 12 years -- no drugs, no booze, no cigarettes -- and his stocky frame doesn't begin to suggest the lean, tensile switchblade of the past. He has a new album out, too, ''Here and Now,'' and it's good -- a throwback to the blistering R&B with which he started his career and a showcase for the barrelhouse piano playing he always kept under wraps. He hit the stage at Austin's South by Southwest music festival last March and converted a roomful of rubberneckers into a cheering squad. He's lined up to play ''Conan.'' And he has a girlfriend, Audrey Madison, a comely singer who looks a bit too much like a certain ex wife for some people's comfort.

At 69 years old, Ike is as ready for his comeback as he'll ever be. But are we ready to modify our image of him as the demon husband of rock & roll -- the man whose name still serves as pop culture shorthand for ''wife beater''? Especially since he shows no interest in repenting the way we like our villains to repent: on TV, in close up, with plenty of tears?

Read the rest of this story in EW's June 1, 2001, issue


Posted May 29, 2001 | Order Article Reprints