[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.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment