Tina Turner used to go a year without sex after her nightmare marriage to Ike Turner.
Tina Turner used to go a year without sex after her nightmare marriage to Ike Turner
The late ‘What’s Love Got to do With It’ singer, whose death aged 83 was announced on 24 May after she spent years battling health problems including kidney problems so severe her husband Erwin Bach gave him one of his in a life-saving transplant, was beaten and subjected to sex she said felt more like rape when she was with her former music partner Ike.
She said in her autobiography My Love Story, which was published five years before her death at her $76 million Swiss retreat: "Dating was often more trouble than it was worth. I was never one of those women who had to have sex no matter what.
“There have been times when I’ve gone up to a year without it, to be honest.”
She added about the insecurities that stopped her dating: “I’d always been a little nervous about starting a relationship with a new man because I didn’t know how my wig would be received.
“I always ran the risk of meeting a man who might object: a man who would have a problem becoming romantically involved with Tina, with her bountiful hair and glamorous trimmings, but waking up with unadorned Anna Mae.
“What if he was disappointed by the real me? I was always a bit nervous about taking that chance.”
She said about Ike’s abuse: “He threw hot coffee in my face, giving me third-degree burns.
“He used my nose as a punching bag so many times that I could taste blood running down my throat when I sang.”
Tina added she lost count of the number of times Ike had been married and was unfaithful, but estimated he “probably” had up to 20 women on the side while they were together.
She added: “All those wives were in addition to the countless girlfriends who came and went with dizzying speed.
“Ike slept with – or tried to sleep with – every woman in our orbit, married, single, and everything in between. He seduced every woman in our circle… in his mind sex was power.
“When a woman became his conquest, he believed he owned her.”
After eight years of abuse, Tina tried to kill herself by taking 50 sleeping tablets – and Ike forced her into stage the day after she pulled through in hospital.
They divorced in 1978, when Tina – born Anna Mae Bullock – had only 36 cents, but after she insisted in court on being able to keep her performing name.
She found love again with music producer Erwin, 67, who she married in 2013 and who was by her side until her death.
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