DISGRACELAND - Ike and Tina Turner: The Inventor and Queen of Rock ‘N’ Roll

Episode Date: April 2, 2019

Ike Turner very well may have invented rock ‘n’ roll; Tina Turner is one of the most electrifying entertainers to ever take the stage. Together, the pair ascended to icon status through the music they made together. But the couple’s road to the top was anything but smooth. It was rough and violent. Ike Turner, for all of his talent as a musician, was abusive and heavily addicted to cocaine, and in the end did everything he could to bring his wife down with him. This is the story of the couple's rise, Ike’s ultimate demise, and Tina’s triumph. For a full list of contributors, see the show notes at disgracelandpod.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about rock and roll pioneer, Ike Turner, are insane. As are the stories about his volatile relationship with his wife, Tina Turner. I claim to have been married more than a dozen times and to have spent more than $11 million on cocaine over the course of his life. He once fired Jimmy Hendricks from his band,

and he discovered Tina Turner, who among her many other accomplishments taught McJagher to dance. During their marriage, Ike Turner grew heavily addicted to Coke, and as a result, his natural rough and tumble demeanor intensified. He beat his wife and musical partner Tina mercilessly. Tina Turner was a raw talent whose singing style fit naturally into Ike's patented rough take on rhythm and blues, a style that befit as demons.

Together they were, as Tina would later proclaim, nice and rough. But with or without Tina, Ike Turner was mean and dangerous, the epitome of the bad, bad man. While married to Tina, he built a sexual layer over his studio for his groupies and hangers-on, kept a gun on him almost always, and grew accustomed to making his own drug runs in the Hollywood Hills and his Rolls Royce by himself. Ike and Tina Turner had one of the most violent and volatile relationships in rock and roll history, but they made great music.

That music you heard at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Melo Sax Bossa BK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to kiss and say goodbye by the Manhattans. Why would I play you that specific slice of deep-throated slow-jam cheese, could I afford it?

Because that was the number one song in America on July 27, 1976, and that was the day Tina finally split from Ike, severing one of rock and roll's most talented couples forever and took her first triumphant steps towards cementing her own legacy as one of pop music's greatest icons. On this episode, mellow saxes, deep-throated cheese, and the rough music and relationship of Ike and Tina Turner.

I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. The show that night was at Caesar's Palace, but the cocaine was at the International Hotel. Las Vegas gigs started early, and so they then ended early. which meant Ike Turner, world-class night owl, needed to find a way to occupy himself for the rest of the night. And that meant sex. And if he was going to take advantage of all that Vegas had to offer,

then cocaine was necessary for stamina. Not that Ike Turner needed motivation for sex, but Coke got him high and had the added benefit of not derailing him sexually like most other drugs. When his show business workloads started to pick up back in the 50s, Ike was so anti-drug that he fired members of his band the Kings of Rhythm if they were even suspected of using. Ike had seen dope, heroin creep into the scene and start to cause real problems. Heroin was originally a jazz man's drug.

Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis were all known users. But as various styles of American roots music filtered into one potent mix to become rock and roll, various drugs of choice from various musicians affiliated with those styles came along for ride. Ray Charles was hooked on heroin by the late 1940s, and rock and roll was still a decade away. So dope wasn't going to cut it for Ike Turner. He had too much to do. Dealing with his band members was a full-time headache, and there was always a record label calling and harassing him for the latest overdue single or album. Ike worked hard. His schedule like him was rough. When not writing, recording, or blowing off steam, there were the live shows. During the first part of his career,

six to seven nights a week of hard work. Some of those early Chitlin circuit gigs literally went all night long. Ike and Tina began to find success with their first singles think it's going to work out fine and I idolize you in the early 60s. But now due in part to Tina's growing domesticity, Ike cut the touring schedule back to three to five shores a week. Still, the schedule was relentless, just as Ike liked it. So heroin wasn't going to cut it. Something else was needed, something strong, where the desired effect was mania, not oblivion. That was sort of the pitch King Curtis made to Ike some years ago backstage after a gig. Ike, man, you're right not to mess with that brown stuff.

It'll make you soft. This stuff, it'll make you go, go, go, all night long. Ike was impressed. King Curtis blew hard, just like Ike's idol, Louis Jordan. And the cocaine, the way it looked, it was almost pretty, white, pure-looking, packaged up like a little pillow in size. of King Curtis's saxophone case. $3,000 worth.

That was a lot of money or a lot of cocaine. Ike was flushed, so what the hell? It was an investment, he thought. He'd share it with the band to get him going for real, cooking. Ike pulled out a stack of hundreds and peeled off 3K for Curtis. He grabbed the massive bag of Coke and stuffed it into his own bag and hit the street in search of his hotel. 45 minutes later, he was sprinting out of that same hotel

and back toward the venue to lay an ass-working on King Curtis. the likes of which he'd never seen. The Coke wasn't Coke. It was Drano or baking soda or flour or some impure combination of the three. He'd been had by the Saxman, who by now was nowhere in sight, long gone, in the wind. Ike learned a lesson that night.

Never trust no one, especially not a dealer. From then on, Ike made it as many deals as he could by himself, no matter how famous he got, and he always, always sampled the product before purchasing it. So, he was super high when he exited room 3009 on the 30th floor of the International Hotel that night in 1971. The dealer had set him up right. Ike paid more than 3 grand and ended up with less Coke than Curtis tried selling him back in the day. But Ike, despite the inflation, was happy, if not satisfied.

Satisfaction would come later in his suite back at Caesars, while Tina slept in her suite quietly. On another floor of the hotel, Ike and a few select male members of his band would party their way into the morning through a mountain of cocaine and a Rhythm King's harem of Vegas showgirls. But at the moment, Ike was moving quick down the hall, sex on his brain as usual. He heard the familiar ding of the elevator and then loud gaggle of slow-moving southern voices surrounding the entourage exited through the elevator doors. The group of men moved toward him, all dark shades bril-cream in, pinky rings, the smell of cheap cologne and bad barbecue making its way out in front of them

and down the hall toward Ike. In the middle of the gaggle, Ike recognized a distinct laugh, deep, resonant, raspy, infectious. As Ike approached the entourage split, revealing in its center the one and only king of rock and roll, Elvis Presley. Ike Turner, not one to be easily impressed, was for a split second anyways, shocked, not by Elvis's celebrity. but by a size. Ike hadn't seen the king since the 68 comeback special on NBC a couple years prior, where Elvis presented a more svel, if not more seasoned version of himself in an effort to reclaim his crown from the hippies who'd stolen the throne while turning on and tuning out.

But here now was Vegas Elvis, and to Ike, he was one fat-looking motherfucker, who looked like he'd seen better days. He certainly didn't look like no king. King of rock and roll. Shit. Rock and roll was a genre Ike Turner had every right to claim he invented. So-called experts debated the subject,

but the fact was that there was no rock and roll before Rocket 88. And it was Ike Turner's mind that launched Rocket 88. That song had that boogie-wogie rock and roll vibe before any of that hip-shaking hillbilly shit Elvis put out that brought him to the attention of Colonel Parker, who eventually brought Elvis to RCA into Hollywood and thus rock and roll to the world over, making teenagers piss their pants and screams so loud

that they drowned out the reverberations of Rocket 88, and Ike Turner's claim to any sort of throne. But to Ike Turner, a man who knew a thing or two about a thing or two, number one being rock, number two being roll, Elvis Presley was as much a king as King Curtis was a Coke dealer. Despite whatever coked up look of shock, Ike Turner had on his face there in the hallway of the 30th floor of the International Hotel, there was no mistaking who he was.

Ike motherfucking Turner, and Elvis was happier than a pig and shit to see him. A big smile broke over his fat face. Oh man, Ike Turner. Can you believe it? Boys. Elvis went straight at Ike. Ike stiffened his backbone, clenched his fist, and steeled himself. He was about to lay a hard right on the king when Elvis offered his hand to shake Ikes.

Man, it's good to see you. Do you recognize me? Ike gave him a puzzled look, stared, said nothing but thought, Recognize you. Motherfucker, I have eyes, don't I? they're Elvis Presley. Elvis kept at it. Hey, do you remember me?

Ike's expression softened a touch. Elvis is getting more excited. From back in Memphis, man, the juke joint on 11th. You used to let me in the back door. Ike remembered now. It was distant, but in Elvis's fat mug, I could see back 20 years to another time. A time when only one of the two men had made a name for himself.

And it wasn't the white man with the entourage looking at him funny. It was Ike Turner, who back in 1951 was enjoying the success of Rocket 88, knocking him dead alongside Little Junior Parker and Willie Nix and whatever bucket of blood could afford him that night. Ike was on piano back then at those West Memphis gigs. At the gig on 11th, the piano was set up at the back of the stage right next to the exit door, which led to the alley out back,

where on most nights, a good-looking kid with a bad complexion and silly-looking sideburns would double park his work truck can do his best to sneak into the all-black club through the back. He had a friendly enough demeanor and for whatever reason didn't rub Ike the wrong way. So Ike would let him in to watch the show from behind his piano, where Ike would mess around, playing while standing up, googly-eyeing the crowd, dancing like a fool, purposefully knocking his knees together and shaking his hips,

all abandoned, all R&B, the teenage truck driver studying it all behind the piano. None other than the pubescent would-be king of rock and roll-and-rollum's himself, Elvis Presley. It all came back to Ike now. He had no idea back then, no idea that the young kid who would blanket airways with blue suede shoes and melt teenage hearts on the big screen in blue Hawaii was the same kid who Ike gave incidental rock and roll lessons to back in West Memphis at 51. Yeah, I recognize you, Ike said flatly. Now if you'd excuse me, I'm late for my date. And with that, Ike paraded past

Elvis's entourage and down the corridor with all the entitlement of a Peavity Hotel Duck into the elevator, down into the lobby, and off into the night. As the elevator descended, I couldn't help but think about those days back in Memphis, but his mind took him further back, past Memphis, to Clarksdale, Mississippi, where he grew up. In a modest house on Washington Avenue, a house that back in the late 1930s was nothing more than a house of horror for the young boy, Ike Turner. The first thing he heard were the truck screeching up out front. There wasn't a lot of traffic in Ike's childhood neighborhood, especially not at night.

Then the voice is angry, excited, and unmistakably white. Then the door busted open, broken, clean off its lock, and loudly puncturing the wall with the backside of the doorknop. The men entered the Turner home with bats, loudly forcing themselves in through everything in their way. Ike rose up out of his bed and ran to his doorway to see what was happening. That's when he saw his father being dragged, kicking and screaming down the hall by a small mob of white men. They were gone almost as quickly as they came, stealing away his father in the dead of night, leaving behind his mother hysterical, screaming, crying, horrified. Ike was petrified, unable to move, unable to cry, scared into stillness, hardened in that one moment,

like a rock, a stone resolved to make sure nobody ever came into his house again like that, not without a fight. An hour or so later there was the sound of familiar tires rumbling down the dirt road and squealing to a stop in front of their house. Voices, a loud thud, the acceleration of the truck once again and then nothing. Ike, with his mom and tow, ran out to the front yard and there, lying on the grass was what remained of the man of the house, Ike's dad. A mangled mess of broken bones, blood and bruises.

Unconscious, but breathing, barely. Dead quiet. Serious medical treatment for African Americans in segregated 1930s Clarksdale, Mississippi was poor at best. Extended hospital stays even for the near dead were not allowed. So the Board of Health built a tent, a tent in the Turner's backyard for Ike's dad to convales. There he remained for several years, immobile in a near vegetative state, in a tent in the backyard. The beating it was later learned was because Ike's dad had supposedly been, in sleeping with a white woman.

Whatever the reason the state he was in in his presence in the backyard was a constant reminder of the brutally racist and rough reality Ike Turner lived in. Mercifully, Ike's father, after a few years, finally succumbed to his wounds and died. Ike's mom remarried, and from there,

things somehow got worse for Ike. His stepfather, drunk most of the time, violent all of the time, beat young Ike regularly, and by age six, Ike was sleeping with an adult neighbor who would invite the boy into her yard to feed her chickens and proceeded to take advantage of him. He was also raped repeatedly by two other local adult women, a charge that in adulthood, Ike didn't seem to mind and used to burnish his manly image.

But his childhood was a nightmare, until he found music over at Clarksdale's local radio station, WROX, where Ike Turner, by the time he was eight years old, would spend most of his days. At first, running errands for the local DJs and eventually suburb. for them when they needed time off. It was during this time that Ike met piano player Pinetop Perkins and convinced his mother to pay for piano lessons. Ike graduated, from Pinetop anyway. Having learned piano, he moved on to teaching himself guitar.

It moved into the Riverside Hotel in Clarksdale, the local establishment that hosted most of the day's prominent touring musicians, Duke Ellington and Sunnyboy Williamson, among them. The Riverside, along with downtown Clarksdale, was Ike Turner's campus. His education was in full swing, his professors, some of the greatest blues and jazz men of all time.

Ike took his education and formed the Ike Turner Kings of Rhythm. His master's thesis, Rocket 88, a single that sold close to half a million copies but only made Ike a measly $20 due to the fact that Ike was accredited on the original recording. But the song did make Ike Turner one of the most happening musicians in Memphis at the time. And that was something money couldn't buy.

But Ike quickly outgrew Memphis. New gigs were needed and new digs desired, so Ike Turner and his kings of rhythm, headed north about 300 miles to St. Louis, where he would discover the raw talents of 17-year-old Anna Mae Bullock, who Ike would soon make known to the world over as Tina Turner. Tina Turner grew up as Anna Mae Bullock in a one-horse town in Tennessee called Nutbush,

with a population of 259 and exactly one road running through it. The town had a church, a post office, and a schoolhouse with a single room where Anna Mae studied until the ninth grade. Nutbush was deep cotton country, a place where African American sharecroppers tended fields that were once worked by their slave ancestors. Floyd and Zemma Bullock, Anna May's parents were sharecroppers, and while Tina would later say she never felt poor, there was always food on the table and sometimes even new clothes. But life in the Bollock household was far from happy. Anna May and her sister were routinely shuttled among the homes of grandparents and cousins in and around Hayward County. But even still, that was a lot better than being around when their parents were fighting.

Oftentimes, the spats turned physical. Divorce was inevitable. When her mother's Elma had had enough of being a wife and mother, enough of nutbush and it's one horse, she packed up and lit out of town, on her own, without her 11-year-old daughter Anna Mae, without even saying goodbye. For Anna May, this was a hurt that was never going to go away. And for the next few years, she was raised by her grandmother in a tidy house with a large garden. She loved her grandmother, and her grandmother loved her, and life was as good as it could be for

her parentless child until suddenly her beloved grandmother died. And Anna Mae Bollock, who was still in high school, was suddenly on her own. So she moved to St. Louis to live with her unloving mother. A lot of things about Tina's years with Ike Turner make more sense if you remember this. When she met him, she was 17 years old. With her big sister Aileen, she hit the Manhattan Club in East St. Louis, where Ike and his band played. When Tina got her chance on stage, it turned out to the delight of the Manhattan Club that Aileen's little sister could sing. And Little Anne, as she was then known, loved singing and dancing and connecting with the crowd. As for Aike, he did a double. Able take. He liked what he heard because what he heard was the sound of money. So he did what Ike usually

did threw his money around like a fool. He bought anime clothes, jewelry, a fur coat. Before long, she was driving a Cadillac to school. And Little Anne admired the man's music and charisma and liked the idea of a career he could give her. She just had to change her name. Little Anne wasn't powerful enough for her voice. So at the age of 20, convinced by Ike that it was the right thing to do, she took the professional name Tina Turner. Now that sounded more powerful. She went along with it. The man had good show biz sense, she thought.

Even though when she first laid eyes on him on stage that night, she said she couldn't help thinking, God, he's ugly. At that point, Tina didn't know just how ugly it would get. Ugly and rough go hand in hand, and life with Ike was rough. The way Ike chose to live, he had a way of sapping the joy out of everything.

Case in point, Ike and Tina's wedding. It was transactional, no heart, and pulled off on the fly over the border in Tijuana, Mexico. For Tina, the wedding was a straight-up humiliation. In the heat and the filth of the office of the very first Justice of Peace that they found, Tina batted away the flies and signed on the dotted line. There was no bridal dress, no, you may now kiss the bride, no wedding cake, just sweat, grime, and a very horny, Ike. Horny for what Tina didn't know, but she could tell Ike had his thoughts on more than just her. Once the transaction was complete, Ike decided it was time to celebrate. So naturally, he took his newlywed bride to a live Tijuana sex show. Superman was his name, and he was part Carney's side show and part Central American legend.

A freak show and a main attraction. Twelve inches below the belt, flaccid, unbelievable to the naked eye. The rumor was that he took his name from the original Superman, not the George Reeves character from the popular American television series, but from the Cuban sex worker who worked two, sometimes three live sex shows a night in a musty old Havana theater and went by the name Superman. Tijuana's Superman, original or not, was about to horrify the newly minted Mrs. Ike Turner.

The audience, drunk and giddy with anticipation, shifted anxiously on their beer-stained wooden chairs. Dank smoke hung low throughout the club. Ike sipped his drink, expressionless, a cold, flat stare fixed upon his wife who sat quietly, in fear of protesting, knowing that any complaint would invite Ike's fist to rain down upon her. As much as she didn't want to bear witness to a live sex show hours after getting married,

or at all for that matter, she sure as hell did not want a black eye on her wedding night. So she sat, quiet, uncomfortable, scared. The music hit, and the audience turned their attention to the tiny stage. The curtain was drawn back. At center stage, there was a loosely bound female sex worker, wearing next to nothing. Her binds tended to by two scantily clad women in veils made it look like traditional belly dancers. Then, from stage left, Superman appeared.

Wearing a dark red velvet cape, his black hair and oil slick combed straight back over his head to the nape of his neck. His skin, caramel-colored with beads of sweat, obvious to those in the first few rows. He was tall, homely, menacing. He slowly walked the stage, circling the women before stopping and turning to the audience. He dropped his cape and robe and revealed his superpower to the crowd. Short gasp and applause spread and burst throughout the room. The few women who were in the audience looked horrified. Most of the men smiled in disbelief.

and a few did their best to secretly suppress their arousal. Superman turned toward his partner in this unholy union. What came next was rough. Tina Turner covered her eyes and her husband, Ike Turner, held back a devilish smile, and sipped his drink slowly, somehow, with more menace. Back before Tijuana, Superman, Mr. and Mrs. Ike Turner had a different kind of relationship. Ike was betting on Tina's talent, and in the beginning it was a risk, born more out of necessity and circumstance than foresight and faith.

Art was late for the recording session. Ike was pissed. It was a power move. Ike knew it. Art wanted more money, but fuck that. Ike was the band leader, even if he didn't sing lead. Art was only fronting the Kings of Rhythm because Ike Turner led him front the Kings of Rhythm. If Art wanted more bread, he could go out and get it.

himself just like Ike had done. This was, after all, still America. Ike would be damned if he was going to let some glorified backup singer leverage him into increasing his salary, especially when said singer had no real leverage. So fuck him. When Art didn't show for the session, Ike simply called up one of his female backup singers into the vocal booth. Little Anne could handle the tune, I thought.

He'd just switched the lyrics around so it could be sung from a female's perspective. And the result, a rhythm and blues explosion. A Fool in Love written and recorded by Ike Turner sung by Anna Mae Bullock, aka Tina Turner, and released in July 1960 on the Sioux Records label, jumped off of the vinyl and stirred listeners at their core. Tina's sultry gospel vocal intro quickly gives way to an R&B rave up that is nothing short of exhilarating. The song, Cooks, and it quickly ascended the charts.

A Fool in Love crossed over from the R&B charts to the pop charts and became a million seller. Ike and Tina Turner were suddenly stars. Tina, at 20 years old and with Ike at her side, made her first televised appearance on American Bandstand. She was nine months pregnant at the time. Ike wasn't going to let a little thing like his pregnant baby mama get in the way of his success. It had been a long time since his first and only hit Rocket 88,

a hit he did not benefit from financially, so there was no way he wasn't going to milk this run at success for all it was worth. Tina could holler pregnant ass up on stage and shake it, preggers or not. Tina brought it, sang her ass off. It was heavy, deep. She shook it with the power of a thousand sons and let the world know that there was more than one badass on stage that night

with the last name of Turner. A fool in love was followed by more hits, but Ike did not rest. The Ike and Tina Turner review played up to 300 shows a year, on their own and in support of megastars like the Rolling Stones. Ike made deal after deal writing and recording whenever you get the chance in order to bring in as much bread as possible. famed record producer Phil Specter came calling for Tina, not Ike.

Phil paid 20 grand to get Ike to fuck off out of the studio so that he could have Tina all to himself while the tape was rolling. The result was he impeccably produced and performed single, River Deep, Mountain High. In the heady days of all of this success after the Tijuana wedding, Ike and Tina settled into the Baldwin Hills section of Los Angeles alongside other celebrities like Tina's idol, Ray Charles. Success was sweet, but not sweet. enough to mask Ike's rough nature.

Ike was relentless, rain or shine, in sickness or in health. He worked Tina in his band like Georgia Mules. For Tina, it wasn't just the travel and schedule of the gigs that was rough or later than longer hours in the variety shows the residency in Las Vegas. Yes, all of that took energy. But Tina, herself, a perfectionist, gave her all on stage without fail. But it was more than the work. Ike wore her down in their private moments.

The man was mean, a world-class prick. When he had first bestowed the name Tina Turner upon her, she pushed back. He'd chosen Tina because it rhymed with Sheena of Sheena Queen of the Jungle, the image he had in mind for his future wife. He'd also trademarked the name. He owned it, but Tina didn't want it. Anna Mae is who I am, she said, resting her hand on her pregnant belly. Ike reacted viciously.

First, he screamed. Then, to her horror, he picked up a wooden shoe stretcher, smacked her across the head with it. He always hit her in the head, and always with something hard and blunt. Ike used to say, a guitar player needs his hands, so he never fights with his fists.

So he beat Tina about her head over and over and over until she was bloody, and then he beat her some more for crying about it. And after that, he ordered her onto the bed where he would then rape her. And that was the way I'd turn her like to end. End an argument. Peace of shit.

Ike pushed Tina hard. He had no patience for illness or weakness of any kind. It fucked with his total control. After touring with the Rolling Stones, Tina was sick. She had driven herself into the hospital where she was admitted and treated for TB, an illness that was practically a death sentence up until about 1940. Mick and Keyes sent flowers, but Ike, nothing, nada.

He never even visited. Not much later in the relationship, Ike would humiliate Tina Daly by openly sleeping with three other women who he kept at their house at their house. Tina felt powerless and visible. She began to think of ways to escape. She went to the doctor for sleeping pills. After dinner one night, she retired to the master bathroom and swallowed them all. She placed each of the 50 pills on her tongue, one at a time,

filled the paper cup with water and gulped hard. It would be over soon, thank God, she thought. She awoke in the hospital to Ike clutching her shoulders and shaking her, screaming into her face, calling her a failure. She wasn't even woman enough to kill herself to finish the job. Ike repeated to her over and over again that she should just fucking die, do him a favor. When she didn't, he told her she better have her ass out of bed on the quick because they had a gig that night. The abuse continued, physical and emotional. As Ike's use of cocaine increased, he took to beating Tina with more regularity.

and the beating seemed born just as much from Ike's short, co-caddled fuse as they were some sick sexual kink. Somehow, Tina held on for dear life, becoming a pro at excuse-making and applying makeup in just the right way to mask the darkness she was living through while it manifests about her repeatedly swollen face and head. Until 1976, anyway. En route to Dallas from L.A., Tina, in a window seat, scrunched up uncomfortably next to her husband's new pregnant girl. girlfriend, with Ike in the coveted aisle seat next to them. Unfucking believable, Tina thought. Ike had some gall, and he had zero self-awareness. Furthering the insult, Ike stretched himself out and lay his long legs across the laps of both of the women he thought belonged to him.

For Tina, there was something about the way he imposed himself, draping his body across her and his girlfriend that got to her. The way Ike put his big shiny shoes on the freshly pressed slacks of her pretty white suit, The weight of him on her body, the weight of him on her life. At this moment, it was too much. Internally, Tina had reached a tipping point. But on the outside, Tina remained in her seat still, afraid to move. She didn't want another beating. The beatings were bad, but what was almost worse was the time just before the beating.

The anticipation, when you felt that dread, when you knew it was coming. Throughout all of the beatings, Tina had managed to acclimate herself for the fucked up ways of her abusive husband. The way she saw it, he was so goddamn mean that once he was around, didn't want to leave, because then he'd have to deal with the dread of knowing who's eventually going to come back.

But for Tina in this moment on the plane, something was shifting. In the limo, on the way to the hotel, Ike was feeling playful. He tried feeding Tina some chocolate. Normally she'd have gone along with it and taken what he offered, even when she didn't want it.

But she didn't. I kept insisting. and he eventually shoved the melting chocolate into Tina's face, and it dripped onto her white suit. Normally she'd have brushed this off, but not today. I said, no, Tina shouted. Predictably, Ike flew into a rage. But on that day, in that limo, somewhere in the middle of that big state of Texas,

Tina Turner did not endure the beating. She fought back. She fought rough and hard, with her teeth and her nails and her stilettos. And when the couple emerged from the car at the hotel, they were bloody. Ike's shirt was torn, and Tina's white. suit was turned red with her blood. Once in the room he raped her, then fell asleep. Tina shaken but determined, quietly dressed and gathered a few belongings and escaped. Staggering from her injuries, she split from the hotel, crossed the highway on foot, unafraid of the oncoming traffic. She'd

survived worse. At the counter of a small one-star motel, she introduced herself as if she needed any introduction. I'm Tina Turner. I need a place to stay. I have 26 cents in my pocket. But if you give me a room, I promise I will pay you back. The clerk took a moment.

Surveyed her cuts and bruises and looked through the eye and said, Welcome, Mrs. Turner. Let me show you to your room. Back before Tina split from Ike, the two were the picture of domesticity on the outside. Despite the horror show

that was their actual relationship, their home near suburban Englewood with their massive imperial oil painting portrait of the couple, state-of-the-art, high-fi, high-pile shag, elaborate fish tanks, swimming pool, revolving door of coming and going musicians and a steady flow of children being shuffled to and from sports practices seemed to say nothing to see here,

just a slightly eccentric rock and roll couple living the white picket fence life in our mildly ostentatious way. Tina ran the home, Ike ran the business, and taking care of business at home wasn't going to happen. so Ike built Bollock Sound, his studio, a private studio, where musicians were welcome and Tina could visit but never unannounced. And of course, Ike's special guests were always around. Bollock was a short ride away from the Turner Home

and operated under the guise of work, but its other purpose was his Ike's own personal clubhouse, or as Tina called it, the whorehouse. Ike had an apartment built upstairs in the studio where he spent most nights. He decorated the joint with his own flare. Lots of jungle prints, candelabras, Kamasutra murals, gold-plated tables, 10-foot-tall Romanesque statues,

a garish canopyed bed and a sofa with massive hard-ons for arms. Bollic sound had other interesting features as well, like the three-inch-thick doors that locked automatically behind each visitor and required a secret code to exit, and the elaborate security system, nothing strange for a recording studio

except for the internal eye-in-the-sky cameras like it installed throughout the control room in his second floor apartment. Ike kept himself busy, first with sex, near constant orgies, drugged out sex slaves, burned out starlets from Hollywood on the backslide, working girls from the seedy motels over by LAX,

aspiring Ike Eats, looking for the next big break singing back up behind Tina. They all took their turn in Ike's Barrow. When Ike wasn't partying, he was writing and recording, trying to keep up with the 70s. George Clinton and James Brown did not sleep. They had LSD, and PCP respectively.

Ike had to find his own funk. It was a full-time job and assistance was needed. And that's where the cocaine came in. Lots and lots and lots and lots of cocaine. Ike started free basing in 1974 and kept a massive stockpile of coke around him at all times. Once spending as much as $100,000 in a two-month period on cocaine to fuel the constant party in ongoing recording sessions at Bollick.

Later, Ike would estimate that he had spent $11 million on cocaine over a 15-year period from 1974 to 1990. During that time, he burnt a hole cleaned through his septum, and would horrify friends by sticking a pen through it from one side to the other. He was also arrested 10 times, convicted twice, and served hard time, 13 months of a four-year sentence. The security cameras of ballic sound were not apparently cop-proof. The voice on the other side of the door was clear.

Open the fuck up now, or we're coming in. Ike could see them out on the street from his massive wall of video monitors in his control room, local cops, yokels, L.A.'s mildest. It wasn't the feds, so it would take them putzing around for an hour at least to break through the steel doors and find their way to Ike through the studio's maze of corridors. Ike, standing in the middle of his control room

and nothing but a silk kimono and velvet slippers, calmly sipped his drink. This was the moment he'd waited for all of his life. to show the invasive authority figures that he would not go quietly, if at all. He'd make them work for it. This was his fortress. He patted his newest girlfriend on her ass,

nearly naked at his side, picked his 45 up off the studio console, the one with the state-of-the-art IBM Mix Memorizer, and calmly went about trying to locate the rest of the firearms and cocaine in the studio. He was able to squirrel most of the contraband away before the cops finally busted in. But what he forgot to how,

were the blue boxes. Illegal devices that allowed Ike and his boys to place free long-distance telephone calls, seemingly harmless compared to the drugs and weaponry Ike had hidden in his possession, but still very much illegal. Ike Turner was busted. It was the first of a series of arrests that would disrupt the rest of Ike Turner's career and personal life. It signaled the end for Bollock Sound, a studio that ultimately caught fire mysteriously and burnt to the ground at a time later in Ike's life when he was in the middle of extreme financial hardship. By the time Tina left, Ike had little but his name, which by then in the music industry, at least from the perspective of the people who wrote

the checks, was mud. Tina, on the other hand, had her name, Tina Turner. Ironically, a name Ike had given her, a name Ike had trademarked and a name that Ike had tried to claim was his in a divorce and thus prevent her from using it going forward in her career. A claim he lost. Tina Turner took her name and her immense talent out from under her abusive, controlling piece of shit husband and turned herself into literally the biggest pop star on the planet. A level of success that Ike Turner, despite whatever claims he had on the invention of rock and roll, would never attain, and it drove him crazy and deeper into a coke-fueled madness. Ike finished as he started on a rough road.

His descent ran parallel to Tina's rise, a nice cap to a rough career. Her 1984 single, What's Love Got to Do With It, from her solo album, Private Dancer, went to number one on the pop charts and won three Grammy Awards for Record of the Year, song of the year, and best female pop vocal performance. Throughout the 80s and 90s, Tina Turner released several multi-platinum albums, appeared in feature-length films and saw her own biopic What's Love Got to Do With It, cement her status as a musical icon. These days, at the time of this recording, Tina Turner, the queen of rock and roll, is 70,

years old, worth over a quarter of a billion dollars and chilling in her Swiss mansion reportedly planning her own funeral. An affair, she claims, will be a bigger and better send-off than that of her one-time rival, the recently departed Queen of Seoul, Arretha Franklin.

Mike Turner won't be attending. He died of a cocaine overdose at the age of 76 in 2007. Disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan and this... Disgrace land was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis.

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