Ike Turner once revealed why he beat ex-wife Tina Turner in marriage 'defined by abuse and fear'

KUSNACHT, SWITZERLAND: , whose various soul classics made her a legend, died at the age of 83 at her home in Kusnacht near Zurich, Switzerland, on Wednesday, May 24, 2023. Turner rose to fame alongside her husband in the 1960s. She divorced him to get out of the abusive marriage in 1978. After Turner's death, an old interview where Ike opened up about beating her has recently resurfaced.

Turner first met Ike when she was just 17. She joined his band 'Kings of Rhythm' and soon fell in love with him. However, their relationship was unhappy because of Ike's greed. "My relationship with Ike was doomed the day he figured out I was going to be his money-maker," Turner wrote in her memoir 'My Love Story'. Ike and Turner married in Tijuana in 1962. She said that the marriage was "defined by abuse and fear, not love, or even affection."

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'I didn’t hit her more than the average guy beats his wife'

“That woman will say whatever she thinks you want to hear. I don’t care what she says about me, I’ll always be her friend. If the devil was real, it was real…When I saw Tina do ‘What’s Love Got to Do With It?’ I picked up the phone and called her. ‘Hey, Bo [short for Bullock, her maiden name], that’s a cute song. I really like it.’ Well, that was it. I ain’t saw nothing else she did that I like," Ike said in the past. 

“One time I got pissed off about something I read. I wrote her a letter. ‘Why don’t you talk about you and stop talking about me and the kids.’ I told her she was hurting the kids and embarrassing them. The boys had nothing to do with us," he said, adding, "But it’s years ago that I had a temper. I don’t regret nothing I’ve ever done, absolutely nothing, man, because it took all of that to make me what I am today—and I love me today, I really do."

He continued, “Yeah, I hit her, but I didn’t hit her more than the average guy beats his wife. The truth is, our life was no different from the guy next door’s. It’s been exaggerated. People buy bad news, dirty news. If she says I abused her, maybe I did.”

Turner was still wearing a bloodstained suit when she fled, as well as sunglasses to hide her wounds. She began running, just managed to avoid being run over by a truck, and rushed into Ramada Inn. “I’ve had a fight with my husband. Will you give me a room?” she told the desk clerk. The clerk agreed, as per .

'I wasn’t out to hurt her'

Turner fled Ike with no money to her name in 1976 and crossed I-30 on foot. She waited until Ike fell asleep at the Statler Hilton Hotel on Commerce Street in Dallas. Ike had allegedly beaten her until she bled on the way from the airport into Dallas, from where they were supposed to kick off a tour. Ike had been binging on cocaine for five consecutive days.

There were reports that Ike had fired bullets inside Turner's home. Responding to these claims, Ike said, "That’s a f**king lie," Ike said to in response to these claims. "I’ll tell you one thing. If I was the n-word people think I am, I’d go up to her house and blow it up. If I shot at her house, I’d have come into the house and shot!” he continued.

"I could have a lot of dislike in me for Tina, but I don’t. Sure, I was with other women, but she never knew I was in the studio with them. I wasn’t going to embarrass her. I saw her in the bed with a guy. I’ve seen her get up out of the bed and let the guy she was in love with go to bed with another woman. She’d go downstairs while he balled her," he added. 

“I wasn’t out to hurt her; we was tight. I was happy to organize things, man, to get us out on the road, play my guitar in the background," he went on, giving his perspective of what happened. "She could be the star. I never thought that anything would come between us—it was trust. Man, I have nothing in my heart against her at all. I never thought she would betray my confidence. I had no contract between Ike and Tina. I could’ve put money aside for Ike, but I never took anything. I only wanted to do for her and the kids. My bills were running me $35,000 to $75,000 a month—I was up 24 hours a day, not because I really wanted to," he said. 

'I’d do it all over again'

“But you know, man, I’d do it all over again. I don’t care if Tina was the star. My whole thing isn’t stardom, I just care about getting people off," he said. Getting worked up again, he began raising his voice, "Damn the dollar! S**t, you have to have money. I’ve been hungry. But my thing was seeing people come into clubs and saying, ‘Make me happy, do what you want with me. I’m yours.'"

He continued, “And Tina being the sex symbol, that’s what happened. People think that came from the visual part of an Ike and Tina show, but man, that’s not it. I styled her that way—l made it happen. I gave the drummer the signal, and it sounded like a gunshot."

Giving himself credit for making her famous, he added, "The lights came down on her, there was no spotlight on me. She’d stroke that mike and s**t like that—I was the one who told her to do that. Anything you ever saw her or the Ikettes do on stage came from me. But do I get the credit? S**t! I’m always the bad guy."

Ramada, where Turner first took shelter after fleeing, is now the Lorenzo Hotel. Al DeBerry, managing director of the Lorenzo, now said he does not remember the man who checked Turner in. “We’ve lost his name to history, unfortunately,” he said. “This was her cultural, iconic moment to escape from a life of abuse and torment, under Ike Turner’s hand,” he added.

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