picture it. 1989....

[comment on a You Tube video] ------------------- I am from India.  It was in the year 1989 when one of my uncles travelled to the US for his higher studies.  A month later I spoke to him on the phone and he was excitedly talking about his life in the US.  

Among the various things he mentioned was this sitcom Golden Girls.  

        He said he is watching a show on American TV named Golden Girls and it's one of the best comedies he'd ever seen.  As a 15 year old, I was so curious to watch it but unfortunately I had no way to.   It was before the Internet era and I did not have any way to find out more about this show.

Cut to 13 years later.  2002.  I was posted to Ohio for an assignment from my company.  By then the 29 year old me had forgotten all about the golden girls and what my uncle had said.  But to my luck, the show was aired on TV (a re run) and all the memories of my uncle talking about this show came back to me.  

Oh! How excited I was.  I absolutely loved it.  These ladies are lovely.  I am sure all 4 of them are entertaining the Gods above in heaven with their humour.

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origins of inspiration

 Toward the end of the book, Tina has left Ike and is in the process of rebuilding a career on her own, with her manager Roger Davies.

------------- [excerpts] --------------

        Roger Davies:  They said, "Hello, we need to get some names on your guest list - there'll be sixty-three people from Capitol coming down to the show tonight."... They asked David Bowie what he was doing that night, and he told them, "I'm going to see my favorite female singer."  They said, "Who's that?"  He said, "Tina Turner."... 

It was perfect for us.  David brought Susan Sarandon, who had starred with him in The Hunger, and he brought Keith Richards and John McEnroe - it was the weirdest combination of people.  And the show that night was fantastic - Tina had the place standing on its head.  Incredible.  It was a real event, exactly what we needed.

        Tina:  David and Keith and I posed for all kinds of pictures, and David asked when I'd be doing a new record.  We started talking about material, and after a while he said, "Let's go back to Keith's and listen to some songs."  

So around three in the morning we all headed over to Keith Richards' apartment in the Plaza Hotel.  He had this great big tape machine set up there, and you could see that he used it constantly.  

We had some champagne, and Keith cranked up his machine and started playing all this old music, and suddenly it dawned on me:  This was what these guys did.  They would go back to all this old music that they loved - blues and R and B - and they would change it around and make something of their own out of it.  

        Because the feeling that was in that old music was something they felt, too.  But they made it new again, and that was what had always attracted me to the Rolling Stones' songs.  I had never actually realized it before.  That was a magical evening.

Keith Richards at the piano, in the early days

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carrying on as usual

[excerpts from I, Tina - written by Tina Turner and Kurt Loder.  William Morrow; Harper Collins; Copyright 1986 and 2010, Tina Turner.] -------------------------

Ike's marathon stints in the studio were fine with Tina, however, as long as she didn't have to participate.  By now it was his presence at home that she dreaded.

        Tina:  It was real hard by then.  Ike got worse and worse.  You never knew what you were getting hit for; only Ike knew.  He'd just say you were "messing" with him.  He'd lock the door, and then you knew you were gonna get it.

        Bob Gruen:  Ike said that Tina was leaving him.  I said Nadja was leaving me, so we sort of had that in common, and we were discussing it.  

He said he didn't understand why.  I said, well, women today don't want to be a shadow to a man - they want to be their own individual person and pursue their own destiny.  And if you're not up to making those life-style changes . . . I mean, instead of being home with my wife and kid, I was always out somewhere drinking with some band.  

And so we were splitting.  

But I understood that Nadja wanted to live a more stable life, one that had more feeling and more meaning than a rock 'n' roll-show biz kind of scene.  I knew how happy John [Lennon] was about coming back to Yoko and stopping the drinking and the drugging, and those were things I was starting to learn, too - although it took me five years, and in the meantime I lost my wife.  But at least I knew why.  

        And I was trying to explain this to Ike - about this new feminist movement, that you can't just boss a woman around and expect to be considered a powerful man.  That you have to respect a woman, and really believe that she is an equal partner in life.  

This was something that he had never heard before, and it didn't make much sense to him.  Particularly since he was so successful in using women as sex objects, and having many of them enjoy it.  

It just didn't make sense for him when all of a sudden his own wife says, "You can't treat me like that."  He was saying that she had never acted like she was feeling bad before, and that this was the way guys were.  He just didn't get it.

        Ike attempted to carry on as usual. 

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they wanted the blues and we'd give it to them

The book I, Tina is arranged in a way where you have different people "talking."  You're reading it on the page, but you can almost "hear" them, the story-telling is so evocative.  

It will say, starting an indented paragraph, Tina: - the print is bigger than the rest of the text, and it's bold.  And after her name, it will be her telling you something.

When it's Ike telling it, you see a paragraph, indented, starting with Ike: ... etc.  In my opinion, it's very effective.

        And there are places where there are words to read, but no name is put in front of that section, then you know it's the background narrator - rock journalist Kurt Loder, who produced the book with Tina, in 1986.

Here are some excerpts from the book, starting with Harry Taylor, Tina's high school boyfriend.

        Harry Taylor:  I had to keep that thing going between Alline and John, because if he didn't go along, I couldn't get there.  I lived in Brownsville, and Anna Mae lived on this farm out around Nut Bush, down a gravel road, with no telephone.  John had a 1937 Plymouth - it was in great shape - and so after school we would get in his car and drive out to see them, following their school bus home.

        ...Sometimes Anna Mae's Uncle Gill would go out to some all-night joint out there, and Ann and I would stay at the house and sit on the porch and swing.  Or we'd just sit in the living room, you know.  Nothing like what happens today, I guess.

        Tina:  ...Well, on weeknights after work Alline had the dates.  But on weekends, she and her girlfriends would get together and they would go to see Ike Turner, first at the Club D'Lisa, and then, after hours, from about two A.M. on, at the Club Manhattan, across the river in East St. Louis.  

        None of the doctors and things that Alline was dating would go to places like that - they'd go to the high-class restaurants and cocktail bars, you know?  So Alline would go with the girlfriends.  

Because Ike Turner and the Kings of Rhythm were what was happening - in St. Louis, they were as big as the Beatles would be later on.  But they had a pretty rough reputation, too....

        Clayton Love:  We'd play pop music at the Club Imperial, anything they wanted.  Then we'd go to outlyin' areas, like Boonville, Missouri, and we knew what they wanted out there - they wanted the blues, and we'd give it to them.  

And some clubs, they'd just be fascinated by the moves we made.  Ike and Junior would turn a flip with their guitars onstage and never miss a beat - never.  Boy, it was something.

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"Jazz Goes to College"

One of the boldest things about Ike and Tina Turner's "Playboy After Dark" performance is them covering a Beatles song, and a Rolling Stones song - as well as the other two covers, from CCR, and Sly and the Family Stone.

        An aspect of the event that makes it kind of unique is the format of that show - it's like a party in someone's living room at home, a different vibe from how it would be if they were playing in an arena, or nightclub. 

        (Can any of us imagine having the Rolling Stones, for example, performing in our living room?)

Hugh Hefner's first television program, "Playboy's Penthouse" (1959-1961, produced in black-and-white) had the same set-up ... Sammy Davis Junior, or the Dave Brubeck Quartet, etc. - playing or singing / dancing right next to you in the 'living room.'

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oh yes, I'm touched by this show of emotion

 The dress Tina Turner wore in the "Playboy After Dark" appearance in 1969 was short and gold-colored, with rows of dangling, sparkling, identical embellishments that dance and sway and shake as Tina herself dances, and sways and shakes....

        I want to describe the dress, but I can't, really.  I wish I had a fashion writer to say it properly and tell us who the designer is, or did she just buy it off the rack...?

Movement was the key element in a design like that.

Watching the Playboy After Dark performance, one wonders if, when Tina took the dress off afterwards, in the dressing room, if maybe the dress just kept going, on its own....

1969

1997

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next, we talk about The Dress

 The Ike and Tina Turner Revue's performance on the "Playboy After Dark" television show astounds, partly because of the precision.  The dance moves and onstage emoting are fast and furious, and powerful, so an audience senses spontaneity, and wild fun - but it's practice makes something like that.

practice  -  practice  -  practice...

        Hugh Hefner is amazed by it, in real time - he calls it "the most exciting performance," and refers to "the way you all work together."

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