This article was originally published by The Epoch Times: Keep Rockin’ Forever, Tina Turner!
I can’t keep in mind the precise date after I first noticed Tina Turner.
It will need to have been within the very early ’70s, and it was at a lodge on the Las Vegas Strip.
I used to be on my technique to attempt to get tickets for some present that I, as common, had blended feeling about—however, hey, I used to be in Vegas—after I heard one thing superb coming from one of many neighboring lounges.
Drawn irresistibly, I walked over. It was the Ike and Tina Turner Revue.
Inside seconds, my mouth had dropped open. This was rock and roll plus rhythm and blues the likes of which I had by no means heard, and I heard rather a lot in these days. It was what you probably did. I shortly forgot wherever it was I used to be presupposed to go.
The lead singer, somebody I took to be Tina Turner, was essentially the most “out of sight,” as we used to say then, rocker this facet of Mick Jagger—for whom she quickly turned a gap act.
It shouldn’t be all that stunning that after I heard that Tina Turner died at 83, tears got here to my eyes.
Extra got here out after I fumbled with YouTube till I discovered a black and white clip from these days of the Ike and Tina Revue. It was every part I remembered: “I Wanna Take You Larger,” the electrical “Idiot for Love,” and different terrific numbers that don’t age (you could find them here).
These got here earlier than the extra well-known hits, reminiscent of “River Deep—Mountain Excessive” (with its orchestrations by the loopy genius Phil Spector), the long-lasting model of “Proud Mary,” and, after all, “What’s Love Obtained to Do With It.”
Nice as they’re, I favor the outdated Ike and Tina songs. Perhaps I’m a roadhouse form of man.
Most of us of a sure age know the darkish story of Ike and Tina, how their relationship that dated from the late Fifties, when Ike was 25 and Tina simply 17, turned bodily abusive. They have been married in 1962 and Tina held on for 16 years, till 1978.
It’s not a protection within the slightest, but it surely’s simple to see how all this occurred psychologically—Ike, the older man, was actually proficient however ended up with a youthful lady who was proficient and charismatic past something he or anybody else might even have imagined. He didn’t know the right way to cope with it, although Tina adopted Ike’s two kids from a earlier marriage and had two of her personal with him.
None of this sturm und drang was new to Tina, who, in her youth as Anna Mae Bullock, bought a shock from her first teenage boyfriend who, she found after a yr, was married to a different lady who was already anticipating a toddler.
It was a good distance from that childhood in Brownsville, Tennessee, to being the worldwide superstar she turned, assembly with the Dalai Lama and in the end marrying German music govt Erwin Bach and dwelling with him in Switzerland, the place she turned a citizen.
Tina had super musical versatility and is the one feminine artist to have received Grammys in pop, rock, and R&B. The listing of her accolades goes on and on.
However the poignant half is that Rolling Stone journal named Ike & Tina Turner No. 2 on their listing of the 20 Biggest Duos of All Time. Simon & Garfunkel have been No. 1. (They, too, suffered an estrangement, although much less extreme.)
Usually, we are saying R.I.P. (relaxation in peace) to those that die, however who needs to think about Tina resting within the afterlife? We wish to see her rocking.
I’ll take that additional. I want to see her rocking once more with Izear Luster “Ike” Turner Jr., who died on Dec. 12, 2007.
However to do this, Ike must apologize with all his coronary heart and soul for what he did.
Are you able to do this … up there?
And perhaps he’s not even … up there.
Roger L. Simon’s 14th guide, “American Refugees,” shall be revealed by Encounter in September.
Featured picture by way of Tina Turner Instagram.
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