Better Than All The Rest

In time for the opening of her highly anticipated musical next Wednesday, legendary singer Tina Turner is gracing the cover of the cultural pages of British newspaper ‘The Sunday Times’. In this new candid interview, Tina talks about the upcoming musical, Buddhism and Ike Turner. Nothing really new for us fans but a great coverage for the Queen of Rock.

TINA on her outfit:

“I want this kind of wardrobe for openings and stuff, because I don’t want to move too far away from how people remember me on stage — and if I start being really elegant, it wouldn’t work. Did you see Beyoncé at the Grammys? She looked beautiful, but if I went on stage looking like that, they’d say, ‘Oh, she’s in another world now.’”

TINA on TINA The Musical

She has had a lot of pain in her heart recently, because she has been helping to create a new musical for the Aldwych about her life, based on her songs and directed by Phyllida “Mamma Mia!” Lloyd, with a book by Katori Hall. Tina the Musical stars Adrienne Warren, in her West End debut, and is a project Turner has been giving a lot of time to. It means she has been having to trawl through some terrible memories, “stuff you don’t like to think of sometimes and, once you start remembering, it’s like throwing up. More and more is coming up now. How do you stop it?”

TINA on Ike

There was violence, because he had this fear that I was going to leave him. The other women, because I didn’t love him that way… the other women weren’t so bad, but it was the constant, constant ill treatment.

TINA on Singing

She had always sung as a child. “When I grew up in high school, my musical teacher had me singing opera, believe it or not, and I was used to properly singing things. I would hear things on the radio, and I thought, ‘I could sing like that.’ But that’s not what Ike wanted as a producer.”

TINA on Keith & Mick

“When I heard Honky Tonk Women by the Rolling Stones, I thought, ‘That is country and western.’ If you ever did take a good look at what they did with the music” — she sings Keith Richards’s riff, “Dah dah, dah-dah” — “they got another feeling to the music with that style of singing.”

TINA on Life-style

I didn’t drink or smoke. At the time there was no champagne, it was just those hard liquors, and I didn’t like the taste of those. The drugs I didn’t like, because when Ike started to do drugs, I realised he had no control, and I felt I needed all the control I could get, living in that environment. And I didn’t like how it turned people into zombies. I was in reality and they were in another

TINA on leaving USA

I have to be careful what I say — I lived in America the first half of my life. It was a troublesome time. I felt Ike was a hold-back for me. There were times in America when it was really good, but I’m happy to have left. It seemed to me it was on a downhill. I’m wondering if it’s that time of change for America, if it’s going to go out to sea. I mean, look at the constant mudslides, fires. I wonder if I’m seeing something as an older person.

TINA on Harvey Weinstein

That’s always been going on. I knew about that, back in my time. They were doing it back then, but somehow they were allowed because of their position. It’s not new, it’s just been brought to attention. And what I feel about it is, you never get by, it catches you sooner or later. When you do something wrong, if you do it long enough, it eventually catches you. I said to myself, ‘Well, finally, you get what you deserve.’ Even this abuse of children, that’s another thing that’s been going on and that came out. I’m pleased that they caught them, and I hope they get more.

Read the full interview by Bryan Appleyard here!

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Photos: Michael Leckie/Sunday Times