Not Fade Away: A Backstage Pass to 20 Years of Rock & Roll

by Ben Fong-Torres

  "They changed minds; they said, `Well, why?' and everybody else said, `Yeah, why?' And that's who accepted us. They felt like `Why dress up, for the acts?' `Why is it that a woman can't wear short dresses or whatever?' You understand what I'm saying? And here I was that they could say, `Here is Tina Turner, here is the Supremes. Why is it that Tina Turner isn't as good as the Supremes? Because you're of this-would it be-'culture'? No-you would say that the Supremes could play for a more sophisticated audience, but Tina Turner couldn't. And the hippies would say, 'Why?' So everybody got into the `why' bag and I sit right down in the middle.... And sayin' that this girl and their act is just as good as these other people; it's class. Really, they just got polished down, and for the other set of people.

  "I never did like James Brown. I always did like Ray Charles. He was my only influence, because I always liked to sing more or less like men sing, and sound like they sound. Like he and Sam Cooke were my influences."

  What Tina likes, and what she aims for when she choreographs the Ikettes-is action. "I let an Ikette wear an Afro once," she says-"Esther, the little short one, because it fit her personality and she wanted to. But I've found that long hair adds to the action of our show. Esther was on television with a natural, and she said, `Why is this, I don't look like I'm doing anything.' The difference was the difference in the action. We went onstage once, and I wore a fur dress and the Ikettes wore leopard furry dresses-but you gotta work harder, because there's no swing. Every time I wear a chiffon dress, everyone says, `What's wrong with you tonight, Tina? You weren't moving.' The chiffon hides the action."

  Before any given date, Tina will run the Ikettes through rehearsal, "all day and all night and they eat at the house. If I'm training a new girl, we rehearse every day from 2 to 6 for two weeks, like a constant grind, because there's a lot for her to learn and she's still going to forget when she gets onstage, because once the music hits you and the audience and the stage and the lights, a different thing comes over you. But now with an old set of girls, I don't have to call a rehearsal, I'll say in the dressing room, `Hey, let's put this step in or change this routine.' It's a matter of like driving somewhere, someone gives you directions-you go so many blocks and turn left-that's how I get it over to them."

  Friday night at the Circle Star, the Ikettes were by themselves, each packaged in silver micro-minis, combing out their hair and laughing insults at each other, like dormitory girls.

  The Kings of Rhythm were into the first of their usual two-number set, and the Ikettes, right on time, were adjusting their sequin chokers and ready to put on their medium-heels. As one, they laughed about the bad old days.

  Various ex-Ikettes had said how difficult Ike and Tina were, how selfish they were, how stingy (one ex said Ikettes got $30 a night if they were within 50 miles of L.A.; an extra $5 outside-this in '68 and '69-"and we paid our own rent; they just paid transportation"). Another girl spoke about a fine system-$10 for a run in an Ikette's stockings; $25 for "laughing too loud"-even if it happened offstage, in a hotel room. She also spoke of Ike putting down their singing and hiring local session singers for his albums.

  And the turnover. "They give excuses like, `Lots of girls have to get married.' But most of them just can't take their baloney. Of course when you leave you have a bad attitude. I was so naive-Ike'd holler on stage, and it was hard to concentrate on what you were doing." But, she admitted, it was good training-not unlike boot camp. And there've been plenty who've served-including Bonnie Bramlett, in 1965-and another soulful white singer, Kathy MacDonald. Ike found her at the Fillmore West and wanted to sign her as a solo artist, and she sang on "Come Together," but she stayed with her job in the chorus behind Joe Cocker.

  "It was very common to get approached by Ike," said one former Ikette. "He'll just approach anything in a skirt. He'd be shrewd about it, buy you things and make you think twice about it. Tina may know all this, but she tries to act like she doesn't. They're not as happy as they put out front."

  The current Ikettes, a minute before curtain call, put on happy faces. "The last time there was a fine was almost two years ago," says Edna, and she proceeds to knock on wood. Esther "Bills" Jones and Jean Brown Burks join her, slamming their knuckles on their vanity table in unison and laughing. "Tell the girls you talked to that things have changed," said Esther, who's been an Ikette for three years. Edna dropped out for a year-she had TB-and rejoined, a year ago. Jean dropped out for two years after working two years. She's been back six months.

  Driving from her house to the studios, Tina talks about interviews. Her least favorite question is about the different Ikettes. "Lord knows how many there've been," she says, evading another question by adding, "They leave for one reason or another." Bonnie Bramlett, she says, "would have lasted, but we went to the South, and we had trouble down in Louisiana, guess she looked too white. We put a scarf on her and we felt she'd pass as `a yellow nigger,' but they just sort of knew, and they blocked us and everything.... But whenever I run into anyone like with a good voice that could be an asset to the group-if they can dance-I hire. I don't worry about color.

  "Yeah, I work with the Ikettes on their records because a lot of times they can't always do Ike's ideas-control the voice and all. Sometimes we have to use other outside voices for certain sounds..."

  As for Ike & Tina and whether they're a woosome twosome-it's difficult to tell. Ike makes himself unavailable-by his pace-and lets Tina do the talking. When they do an interview together, invariably they disagree and chide each other. Posing for a photo, Ike is asked to embrace Tina; he does, and warns, "Better catch this quick; I don't do this often." In the dressing room, while Tina talked, Ike slept. In the hallway, while Ike chatted, Tina was in seclusion.

  Ike Turner spends most nights in his private apartment-"the Whorehouse"-a mile away at his new studio, Bolic Sound, but Tina says she stays there whenever she can. And yet she's upset now because Ike was talking to the telephone man the other day about cable lines, so he can hook up another remote camera from his office and watch what's going on at home.

  -October 14, 1971

  Rolling Stone

  Soon after this story ran, Ralph J. Gleason, the longtime jazz and pop critic of the San Francisco Chronicle who'd helped Jann Wenner start Rolling Stone, and who contributed a regular (and influential) column called "Perspectives," sent a note to Jann. He didn't like the article. Specifically, he thought the opening descriptions of the Turner household smacked of racism.

  I thought the details added color and shadings to the portrait I was trying to draw of the Turners. Although Ike had made himself largely unavailable, his control of the look of the house-and of the studios-spoke volumes. All I really did was write down what I saw, and, for whatever reason, Tina, by being tardy for our visit, had seen to it that I saw plenty.

  Gleason's remarks gave me pause. In the end, I reasoned that, as long as I gave equally unsparing attention to, say, Grace Slick and Paul Kantner's hippie beach pad or the showy gold records in a music executive's offices, I was on defensible ground.

  Things did feel a little shakier a year or so later, when Jodi Powell, an assistant to Wenner, dropped by my office and asked the strangest question. "Have you had an arm or a leg broken in the last year?" she asked. People around us stopped and stared. I'd set up a miniature basketball hoop on my door and played with fellow editors now and then. (So that's why I was so lame.)

  I told her I couldn't recall any recent bad breaks. It turned out that the San Francisco police had arrested a man who was trying to lighten his load by peddling them a story about how he was once hired by Ike Turner to come to town, find Jann Wenner and me, and break a limb each. We never learned whether the reputed hit man had simply woven a story out of whole cloth-possibly discounted from Woolworth's. I'd like to think that Mr. Turner was a better man than that.

  Whatever his response to the story, I soon took a leave of absence. I'd had a tumultuous few months at the magazine, writing three or four stories an iss
ue, including lengthy features on Jim Morrison, the Airplane, and Ike & Tina, commuting to Los Angeles for more articles, assigning and editing pieces in the music section, and gathering and writing the Random Notes that kicked off every issue.

  And there were a few other distractions. There was KSAN, where I now had a regular shift on weekends, and got occasional calls from announcers who needed me to substitute for them. There was Chinatown, where I had been helping out at the weekly East-West, until one day in June 1970, when I was attacked and beaten on a Chinatown street by several young Chinese men. I learned later that I had unwittingly broken a code of silence by running a story that mentioned the rise of youth gangs in Chinatown.

  I drowned myself in work, radio, and women. At and through Rolling Stone, I met wonderful, beautiful, talented women. I discovered that, for all my many shortcomings, my title and work at the magazine gave me stature, made me somehow attractive-enough, at least, that I found myself juggling several women at a time.

  It was terrible.

  Actually, it was all very intoxicating, but, combined with the pressures of meeting multiple deadlines every issue, the result was inevitable.

  I was flat burned out. Jann agreed to give me a break. It lasted only a couple of months, and, workaholic that I am, I went to San Antonio and profiled Cheech & Chong during my socalled vacation.

  I think I know what Ike Turner thought of my article. What did Tina think? I never heard, back then. But fifteen years later, in 1986, I was in London to conduct interviews for a visiting San Francisco station, KFOG. Tina was in town to tape a concert for television. By then, she'd long been liberated from Ike and established herself as a solo star, scoring hits and sweeping the Grammys with songs like "What's Love Got to Do With It," "Better Be Good to Me," and "We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)." In the book, 1, Tina, she'd finally told the full story of her life-warts, bruises, and all.

  KFOG got some tickets for her London taping, but, with the next morning's show to study up for, I declined. That next morning, the producer and the host raved about the concert. They'd met Tina, they said, and told her I was part of the crew in London. Tina, they said, sounding somewhat amazed, expressed deep disappointment that I wasn't there. She sent her love.

  I was disappointed, too. But at least I knew, finally, how she'd felt about that story.

  ifiaruill Gage:

  HONOR THY BROTHER-IN-LAW

  n the summer of 1970, I did my first "Rolling Stone Interview," with David Crosby. In presenting these transcribed conversations,lann Wenner had more magazine models in mind: Playboy, which set a tone with its serious treatment of well-known personalities and artists, and the Paris Review, which examined-in depth, detail, and the theories of the craft itself-styles of working habits and processes.

  And, as I wrote in my introduction to The Rolling Stone Interviews 1967-1980: "Without saying so, the Rolling Stone Interviews showed a side of rock & roll musicians that many never expected to find-the intelligent, articulate, bright side.... To commit to a life in rock & roll-to open oneself up to the vagaries and hazards as well as the potential riches and other highs of the music business and lifestyle; to allow oneself to become, or to seek to be a celebrity-is to be extraordinary. It's not a matter of traveling to the beat of a different drum. It's being that different drummer."

  Crosby, like Jerry Garcia, Pete Townshend, John Lennon, and so many of the rock artists of the day, was a gifted "rapper," as we called conversationalists long before hip-hop, and his interview was a successful blend of personal revelations and political insights-not to mention a large dose of polemics.

  For my second Rolling Stone Interview, I returned to my Top 40 musical roots in Motown, with a visit to Detroit, and to Marvin Gaye. However, by the time of our interview, Gaye had left his "Hitch Hike" and "I'll Be Doggone" days far behind. He was one of the first of the first-line Motown artists to break from the label's rigid structure, in which singers sang whatever Berry Gordy, Jr., and his team of producers and writers decreed.

  Marvin and Anna Gordy Gaye

  In Detroit-where, for the sake of economy and efficiency, I was also interviewing veteran pop songwriter Barry Mann and the radical rock band MC5 for separate features-I had no idea how Gaye would work for the RS Interview format. In fact, he didn't. That is, he was almost too good, too vivid, too active, for a straight, transcribed conversation. He was hyperactive; and so we moved from place to place, in and around his home outside Detroit. As the scenes shifted, I felt it important to describe them. I mean, when Marvin Gaye suddenly stands up and performs a song over a tape of backup music (years before anyone had ever heard of "karaoke"), you don't simply copy down the words he sings. You soak it up, and you write it down, as best you can, to share it.

  In the first collection of Rolling Stone Interviews, Jann Wenner referred to the process as that of "the unloading of heads." With Marvin, that's exactly what it was.

  THIS USED TO BE BERRY G O R D Y' S HOUSE, the Motown man says, sitting on the main couch in the sunken parlor. Then Berry solidified his R&B kingdom, found his own castles, and sold the place to his brother-in-law, Marvin Gaye. We sit in an area of town near the Wayne County line, to the north of downtown Detroit. Driving out here, the Motown man had taken his right hand off the steering wheel to indicate the divi- sion..."the rich white folks over on that side.. .the rich black folks on this side of the street." We turn this way, to the ranch-level home.

  Up from the parlor area, around the corner, we hear music, stopping/rewinding/restarting. Marvin is at work. Soon enough, he glides into view, picks a spot on the way, stops, and smiles. Dressed and exuding casual ...cozy ...loafy. He's been doing some things on his next album, he says. He looks happy and hungry. It's 1:30.

  "Can I offer you gentlemen something? Scotch? Grass? Gimlet?" and he slides out of view.

  He returns, sits down to wait for lunch, and immediately begins chatting. He went out the other night and saw Smokey Robinson in the local segment of the Miracles' farewell tour. "I never seen him perform quite like that before," says Marvin, who once drummed for the Miracles on the road. He pokes fun at a teenager who runs around the house acting like a second servant. "He couldn't figure out what to call me," says Marvin. "Started with `Mr. Gaye,' and I said `No'; then he called me `Sir,' and I said to never call me 'sir.' `Marvin?' Absolutely not!"'

  He talks to one of the three children who are constantly nearby (one his own, two adopted), playing and screeching at each other. "`We ain't doin' nothin'," he repeats, in his high velvet voice, eyes laughing. "That's great, the way we talk. That's our birthright. Our own ethnic thing."

  He chuckles at himself, at the coaster on the table, a miniaturized, laminated Marvin Gaye Hello Broadway album cover. He fingers his silk shirt, as if searching for something. "I never understood people who leave cleaners' tags on their clothes," he finally observes, and he breaks into another tight, light laugh, crinkling his eyes. And, of course, it stoned me.

  The Motown man had cautioned, on the way from downtown, "Don't expect him to be too open at first," and in fact our meeting was an uncertainty until the last minute. "We hope Wednesday," the beleaguered man had said from Detroit while we made flight plans. "He's kind of a moody guy." I had planned to meet Marvin Gaye early three years ago in Los Angeles; Marvin didn't show. Now, besides "Hitch Hike" and "Stubborn Kind of Fellow" and all the others in the early sixties and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" early in `69, there was personal triumph, What's Going On, to talk about. And yet he had stopped touring shortly after "Grapevine" hit the top; and he stayed silent through the death of Tammi Terrell, with whom he'd had several hit records. Motown biographed him as a quiet, conservative fellow. son of a Washington, D.C. minister, now "an avid television fan" who stayed at home with his wife Anne and their son, Marvin III. "Usually, we just lounge around listening to Tony Martin, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, or Harry Belafonte," Marvin was quoted in 1966.

  Early the next year, in another bio, a serious
-sounding Gaye defined a goal: "to realize completeness within myself," and, in performance, to seek truth, combining "sincerity, love, duty, and a positive approach to people and audiences."

  Then, the long lull, lasting until after he'd picked off a handful of honors at the end of last year-from all the trades, from Time, from the NAACP-for his finely woven What's Going On. And it was announced that he would host the first Martin Luther King Birthday Commemoration concert in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 12th. At the last minute, he backed out.

  Now, a month later, on a crisp, snowy afternoon at home, he is breaking his silence.. .but what a way to break. He is saying how a year ago he wanted to be a football star. Now, he runs several miles to begin each day, and he has regular training sessions with a boxing coach across town, in the ghetto.

  "I dream," he says, "about running a hundred yards, across that goal line, slam the ball down, hear the roar of the crowd, turn around and lick my tongue at the rest of the team..." He laughs again, easily, easing us into another bit of candid flash: "This morning I felt, I suddenly felt that women should be made to be inferior to men...you know, they'll want to be the elan next." He wanders off to check on his steak and-sur- prise!-to fetch the tape he's working on.

  The in-progress work tape is.. .strange: "...right after I smoked this terrific jay yesterday," Marvin offers quietly by way of explanation into two tracks running simulta neously, at one another, oblivious of each other's music and beat. One is Gaye, singing in a rougher tenor than usual, singing about a road he's traveling, repeating simple figures on the piano, miked from a distance. There are kids in the background, noising it up. On the second track is a man, too close to his mike, boom-booming plosives, five notes at a time, a fifties R&B basso gone looney. Then brushed drums, a melodic piano, bass, and Marvin himself, sitting in his couch, is tapping the bottom of an avocado-colored stew pot; a bit of enamelware jazzmatazz.