Tina Turner: Ike Changed My Name Without Asking

'I said, 'Who's Tina?''
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 1, 2019 2:48 PM CDT

Tina Turner sat down with Gayle King for a wide-ranging interview on CBS Sunday Morning during which she revealed that her second wedding was really "the first time that I got married, as far as I was concerned. When Ike asked me to marry him, I knew it was for a reason. But I had to say yes … or it was gonna be a fight. And so then, when we drove to marry, that wasn't my idea of my wedding." That second wedding was to Erwin Bach, whom she met in 1986, when she was 46 and he was 30. She told King about a time when she said to him, "'When you get to California, I want you to make love to me.' Because I did! ... You say it if you feel it! Now, you're not gonna get it otherwise. But that's what I wanted!" The two finally wed in 2013.

As for Ike, Turner told King she gets "emotional with certain conversations. I get emotional because in the beginning, Ike was very good to me." But Turner, who was born Anna Mae Bullock, says the red flags were there early on: After meeting Ike, who was a nightclub singer, and recording a song with him that a label executive liked, Ike "just came home from the record company. He said, 'Here's the record.' And I said, 'Who's Tina?' He said, 'You're Tina!' And I said, "Tina? Tina Turner?' It was really hard to say in the beginning. That is when he took over the money, the name, the whole control." She says Ike, whom she divorced in 1976, abused her "because he depended on me. He didn't like that he had had to depend on me." Turner also spoke to King about the memoir she released last year, her iconic career, and losing her son to suicide. (Last year, she said she was still baffled by her son's decision.)

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