Ugh, Ike Turner has died. Compare and contrast the ratios of lauding talent to bemoaning violent misogyny in his obituaries to the recent ones of Norman Mailer. It’s an interesting twist of history that Ike Turner—who is, to be honest, just one of many, many, many men of genius in history who was also a violent, wife-beating nightmare of a person—will be one of the few remembered more for the evil in him than the beauty. A combination of racism, a disdain for the greatness of rock music, and the power of cinema has made this much certain. (Read BFP’s powerfully moving post on the image of Tina Turner that she coincidentally wrote just a few days ago.)
I want to be happy that Ike Turner was exposed as the monster he was. And I am, but it comes with caveats. One is that the simplistic view that far too many people take of the world will make it hard to reconcile “abuser” and “genius”, and face up to the fact that the monster we fear is us. He beat his wife, severely for years. He also played what’s well-acknowledged as the first rock song.
The other caveat is that the demonization of this particular wife-beater and not of others, we’ve managed to minimize the problem of domestic violence while exposing it, a neat hat trick of the patriarchy. He wore the foul reputation that belongs to many, many more who didn’t. And that’s a real shame.
32 Responses to “Unique for the all too common part of him”
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I think I wrote this in a comment at Shakes, but he was a colossal asshole and a musical genius, and these two traits are far too often combined (Miles Davis?). I put up a couple audio files last night. The second one is him in both the asshole and genius mode simultaneously.
“…he was a colossal asshole and a musical genius, and these two traits are far too often combined (Miles Davis?).”
Agree, and wouldn’t limit it to musicians either. Most real “geniuses” seem to be incomplete people, in general. Their personal lives tend to be pretty marginal…
The New York Post is, as always, a class act.
Yeah, I saw that NY Post headline and immediately thought someone needed to be fired. It was far worse than the unrelated headline I saw at Sportsline about the Mitchell report, which would have won the award for offensive headline of the day most days: Getting Mitch Slapped. Classy, guys.
I want to throw up. Assholes.
Stay classy, NYP!
My take.
You know you’re approaching old geezerhood when…
you remember when New York City had 7* daily newspapers, and the New York Post was, by far, the most liberal of them.
(Yup, 7 papers in the early 1960s: the Times, the Post, the Daily News, the World-Telegram, the Mirror, the Herald-Tribune and the Journal-American).
““…he was a colossal asshole and a musical genius, and these two traits are far too often combined (Miles Davis?).”
Agree, and wouldn’t limit it to musicians either. Most real “geniuses” seem to be incomplete people, in general. Their personal lives tend to be pretty marginal… ”
Yes, I remember hearing from a number of people who’d met Bill Watterson (or at least claimed to…we grew up near him) that he was less likable than you’d think for being the author of Calvin & Hobbes. I can’t comment although it sounds like he wanted to be left alone more than anything, which is understandable (and is the way he’s lived his 12 years since writing the comic strip.)
It’s the NYP; are you really surprised?
The definitive word on Ike belongs to Tina. She more than anyone knows the good and the bad of him, and the balance of the two.
Funny that the other who jumps to mind immediately - OJ Simpson - is also black. My next thought was Eric Gill, but that may just be a personal bias; could be most of the people who use Gill Sans font, or who pass his sculptures every day in London, don’t immediately think about the child rape/dog rape.
I appreciated that all Tina had to say was that she knew he had died and that they hadn’t spoken in 35 years.
Really, that’s all the commentary that’s required.
I interviewed Ike Turner a few years back. It was something of a comeback record sort of thing, and I was told, fairly insistently, that he’d rather the interview stick with current topics and not dwell too much on his past music and/or activities. One got the idea they weren’t refering to his time spent as a scout for Sun Records.
I wish I could say something more colorful, but it was a fairly ranch-standard Old Fifties Rock/Blues/Soul Dude-type interview. We talked about the state of the blues and why it seemed like the only people who actually listened to the blues were white people. Been trying all day to remember if he said anything too interesting, but I keep coming up blank. I do remember thinking how much he reminded me of some of the mean, and I talking mean old rednecks I grew up around. Not dangerous right then and there, but you just knew he used to be hell on someone.
It wasn’t fear or even lingering menace. Jerry Lee Lewis frightened the shit out of me, however.
My view on the artists/asshole discussion:
Artist talent is not connected to progressive values or morality. Artists are people, not super humans, and have all the flaws and moral issues everyone else does. That doesn’t make good work made by morally questionable artists any less good. To start judging the quality of the work based on artist’s lives is a slippery slope towards demanding specific content for art. When we go there we are entering the territory of the far right and the far totalitarian “left”.
I think Amanda did the right thing. She pointed out that Ike as a person was morally underdeveloped but that the work still has value despite his own personal flaws.
Regarding the difference in the coverage of Ike Turner’s death vs. the death of Norman Mailer: I think a huge part of why Ike’s abuse of his former wife remains in the the forefront is because his ex-wife is Tina Turner, a woman as/ if not more famous than he was. Her fame certainly lasted in a way his didn’t - I’m 24 and practically all I knew about Ike Turner before today was that he was Tina Turner’s ex-husband and he was abusive (and I’ve never even seen the movie about it). The fact that the movie was made certainly contributes to the way he is remembered, but that movie would never have been made if they hadn’t been famous for being Ike and Tina Turner. I remember reading somewhere that Norman Mailer’s ex-wife (the one he stabbed) wrote a book at some point. But she is still far less well known than he was. If Ike had married, abused and divorced a woman that wasn’t also a huge star, the abuse would barely be a footnote in his obituary.
Although, as you and BFP point out, racism plays a role as well, so the abuse would probably have been discussed more than it is for abusive famous white guys even minus the fame of the woman he abused. But I still think it would be a much less prominent part of the way he is remembered if his victim hadn’t been famous in her own right
Ike Turner presents a particular problem for sensitive and knowing people because his music seems so inseparable (isn’t it always?) from his life of pain, and giving pain. Surely he was abused before abusing.
Without his pain, turned to art, could we enjoy his art, which ameliorates our pain? Do we need comfort so badly that we need to tolerate his sort of violence?
No his life is NOT his art.
Tina didn’t deserve what she got. And we benefited. I’m guilty. I’ve supported him.
But the personal is not political. His life is one thing. If his art didn’t transcend that, it wouldn’t be good art. I love his art, not his abuse.
His life, despicable.
His art, sublime.
Not “To understand all is to forgive all” as the French say, but Nietzsche’s improvement “To understand all, is to know there is no need for forgiveness.”
Yet, an apology would have been nice.
“I know regardless of what I’ve done, good and bad, it took it all to make me what I am today,”
ace:
Aren’t we all?
The last quote in my first post was Ike’s challenge to us.
“I know regardless of what I’ve done, good and bad, it took it all to make me what I am today,”
If we could have it done over again, would we have Ike, his music and his abuse, never born?
A combination of racism, a disdain for the greatness of rock music, and the power of cinema has made this much certain.
All good points, but as Blair said above, the most important factor is that Ike Turner was best known in relation to his more-famous wife, and in that capacity best known for abusing her. That would be true if both were white, or if Tina was an opera star — though in the latter case, there probably wouldn’t have been a movie about them.
Yeah. This is true. But then again what’s-his-nuts from Motley Crue (*looks this up on wikipedia* - Tommy Lee) is an abusive ass and beat Pamela Anderson while they were married but that’s not the first thing that pops to mind when most people think of that guy. And she’s much more famous than he is.
There’s no doubt race plays a part in his reputation. All the other people that spring to mind when I think of dudes getting arrested for beating up women are black. (James Brown and Rick James come to mind.) There’s a strong meme of black men being violent and abusive so any instance of a black man really being violent and abusive sticks more than with white men. And it’s not even like there aren’t lots of stories floating around about various rock stars abusing groupies while on tour or anything and yet that’s just Rock Star ™ behavior.
On the radio they played “River Deep Mountain High” after the announcement of his death. That’s the track with the famous “Wall of Sound” production from Phil Spector. It’s a truly sublime track, IMO, Tina’s vocal, the producton building and building to this amazing crescendo………. but all I could think of was - wow, what awesome people Tina Turner was surrounded by back then. Both acknowledged geniuses, both deeply flawed human beings, to put it mildly.
The music still rocks my world, though.
Racism? How about the sexism here? You seem to be comparing the constant and severe beating of a woman over many years with writing a few rock and roll songs and you are having a hard time choosing which is more important.
Let me give you a clue. The woman is a human being. The music is entertainment.
Does that help?
Crikey, your disregard for the importance of music to actual human beings is sad. Did you know that the human being he tortured also made that mere entertainment? Would you tell her that her life’s work was not of any real value to her face? I realize some people are dualistic thinkers, but my point was part of being an intelligent, grown-up thinker is being able to hold two thoughts at once.
If you actually refuse to listen to any music, read any books, watch any TV, etc. unless the artists pass a morality test, you’re either in deep denial or have very little art or beauty in your life. I’m guessing the latter with your assumption that art is such a minor part of life. It’s not to a lot of people, including musicians like Tina Turner you just insulted.
When I first heard the announcement, I didn’t hear the first name. I was glad to realize that Tina Turner is still alive.
I’ll add that your attitude is actually part of the victim-blaming culture. “Why doesn’t she leave?!” is the clarion call for victim blamers, and as long as people consider wife-beaters subhuman monsters with no good in them, it’s a good question. Why doesn’t she leave? Crikey thinks it’s so incredibly obvious that Ike Turner was a monster with no good in him, so why didn’t Tina leave right away? Was she too stupid to see it? Crikey sees it.
Let’s play a “victims aren’t stupid” game. Just for shits and giggles. Let’s assume that Tina Turner didn’t just say, “I’m going to find me an obvious monster to abuse me so that I can….” What exactly?
Perhaps she found someone that charmed her. Perhaps it wasn’t simple. Perhaps there was beauty and joy in their lives and their entwined careers, and that brought her in and kept her in even as it became more and more obvious that he was was a wife beater and wasn’t going to stop. Perhaps Tina Turner isn’t as simple about this as Crikey and is able to separate the good of that part of her life from the bad. Perhaps she has to the point where she’s even kept her name from that period and even still performs songs that she did then.
Crikey, I recommend reading BFP’s post on this for some more practice in complex but realistic thinking about abuse.
I think another reason this story is so enduring (in addition to the racism playing into it) is that in many ways, the relationship between Ike and Tina Turner fits into the classic “Pygmalion” myth — Ike took Anna Mae Bullock from Nutbush, Tennessee, and turned her into Tina Turner, but his controlling and abusive actions drove her away. Remember, George Bernard Shaw wanted his Eliza to walk away from the professor and never look back and was appalled that everyone who read his drafts seemed to think she should return to him.
I have always liked the proper ending of Pygmalion, because Shaw was right. Eliza would have walked away, and making the sappy, “happy” ending with the two of them together, is untrue to the person Eliza is.
I’m sorry, Amanda, but your response to Crikey is absolute bullshit. He or she isn’t saying that Tina Turner was stupid or deserved what happened to her. All I read from Crikey’s comment was that you can’t measure how beautiful his art was against the actual human suffering he caused. I tend to agree. Nowhere did he or she say that art was stupid, just that it was meaningless when compared to the actual suffering of a human being. Nowhere did he or she insult Tina Turner, and he or she did absolutely nothing to deserve you accusing them of having sad, lonely, artless lives.
He or she made a completely valid argument which just happens to disagree with yours. You’re responding to statements that were never actually made here.
All I read from Crikey’s comment was that you can’t measure how beautiful his art was against the actual human suffering he caused. I tend to agree.
I don’t agree, and I’ll explain why.
Let’s go to the ultimate example: Leni Riefenstahl. She was the director of “The Triumph of the Will” and “Olympia.” She not only helped Hitler to power, she helped glorify him once he was there. Her actions helped bring about the deaths of 12 million people in concentration and death camps, half of them Jews.
Does this mean that “Triumph” is not a film that’s beautiful to look at, or that it’s bad art because of her terrible actions? No. Pieces of art take on a life of their own after their creation, and it stands outside of what she did. You have to look at both her actions and the art, not decide that one automatically trumps the other. You can recognize that she was a terrible person who also made great art.
The fact that Ike Turner was a horrible, abusive asshole doesn’t automatically negate the fact that he was a great and groundbreaking musician. It should be taken into account — and most people do, pointing out the barely concealed rage in the music — but it can’t absolutely negate that he was able to create something outside of himself.
I actually had the pleasure of seeing an Ike & Tina show live in the 70’s. It was phenomenal.
I carried around happy memories of that concert for many years until I saw that certain movie with my girlfriend. There were scenes she could not watch and she would bury her face in my shoulder. I felt sick inside. It has tainted my memory of that concert ever since.
I knew it would be bad, but I was not prepared for that degree of ugliness.
I want my sweet memory back.
“I’m sorry, Amanda, but your response to Crikey is absolute bullshit. He or she isn’t saying that Tina Turner was stupid or deserved what happened to her. All I read from Crikey’s comment was that you can’t measure how beautiful his art was against the actual human suffering he caused. I tend to agree. Nowhere did he or she say that art was stupid, just that it was meaningless when compared to the actual suffering of a human being. Nowhere did he or she insult Tina Turner, and he or she did absolutely nothing to deserve you accusing them of having sad, lonely, artless lives.
He or she made a completely valid argument which just happens to disagree with yours. You’re responding to statements that were never actually made here. ”
I thought the same, too. That attack seemed to come out of nothing. Made me think that i missed some really subtle invisable text…but, No; it’s not there. Certainly not to that degree. That really was unwarranted.
“I carried around happy memories of that concert for many years until I saw that certain movie with my girlfriend. There were scenes she could not watch and she would bury her face in my shoulder. I felt sick inside. It has tainted my memory of that concert ever since.
I knew it would be bad, but I was not prepared for that degree of ugliness.
I want my sweet memory back. ”
Even though i think Amanda was unwarranted in her attack on crikey, i agree 100% with her : human beings are flawed. Artists, particularly very successful artists, are coddled & made excuses for excessively, & so they can be monsters. I dont think it comes from the artistic impulse & creativity –i thik they can be spoiled fucks or just jerky human beings to start with (& get jerkier with priveledge & excess). To let it ruin your appreciation of the actual art though..that’s fucked up. the art becomes an entity to itself; i dont know how you cant separate the art from the artist.