Ike can see clearly now

He helped to invent rock and roll and is still working today with cutting-edge acts like The Gorillaz. Ike Turner looks back on an amazing and controversial career that includes not just Tina Turner but also Howlin’ Wolf, Hendrix, The Stones and Scorsese. Interview by ROB HUGHES.

Funny how things change. A little over a decade ago, Ike Turner was rock’n’roll’s terminal pariah. Damned by 1993’s What’s Love Got To Do With It?, Hollywood’s take on his life with ex-wife Tina, he had become stigmatised as rock’s most notorious wife-beater. Railing against what he saw as the film’s fanciful way with the truth, he’d sunk as low as he could imagine. Years spent snorting coke had left him with a prison stretch, nostrils you could jam a pencil through and a reputation that seemed set to flush him down the rock crapper forever.

In attempting to tell his side of things, his confessional autobiography Takin’ Back My Name, published in 1999, sold a mere fraction of the units that Tina’s own bestselling biography shifted in 1986. Turner decided the only way out was to go back to basics. Then came tentative comeback LP Here And Now, reviving R&B stalwarts The Kings Of Rhythm, the soundtrack of Kill Bill and Martin Scorsese.

In 2001, Scorsese had filmed Turner live in Chicago for a strand of his mammoth blues documentary, The Blues: Godfathers & Sons, in which he reunited with childhood mentor Pinetop Perkins. Two years later, Scorcese captured Turner and early collaborator Sam Phillips on another section, The …

by Rob Hughes
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