In her new memoir, Cher: The Memoir, Part One, trailblazing pop star Cher revealed her deceased friend Tina Turner once turned to her for advice on how to leave her abusive husband Ike Turner.
Cher said Tina, who was also an iconic singer, got personal with her when she and her ex-husband Ike appeared on her television show, Cher, Entertainment Weekly reported. Cher is said to have started her show after she parted ways with her ex-husband Sonny Bono.
Cher and Bono similarly had a rocky marriage, and the Believe singer in their divorce proceedings claimed that her ex-husband emotionally abused her and subjected her to involuntary servitude.
“Tina Turner came on the show twice with her then-husband, Ike,” Cher, 78, writes in her memoir. “One of the days we were shooting, she came to my room before we went on asking if I had some cover-up. She had a bruise on her arm she didn’t want showing on camera. I told her I had something that would work. She sat down while I looked for it and then quietly said, very straightforward, ‘Tell me how you left him.'”
“I looked at her and told her, ‘I just walked out and kept going,” she adds. “In retrospect, that reminds me of me going to Lucy [Lucille Ball].” Cher in her memoir stated that she similarly asked Lucille Ball for advice on how to sever ties with Bono.
As previously reported by Face2Face Africa, Tina, also known as the “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll”, met Ike when she was 16. He convinced her to join his band and their relationship later turned sexual in 1959. Tina got pregnant, and by 1962, the two were married. But the marriage soon turned violent. Fans enjoyed their music in the 1960s and ’70s without knowing of the abuse going on in the couple’s private lives.
In her memoir – I, Tina – the famed singer said Ike began abusing her from their wedding day and never stopped. According to Tina, she went through years of physical and emotional abuse from Ike, and would often have to force herself to sing and dance after being beaten. Ike, who was said to have survived deep trauma from his childhood, was into drinking, drugs and women. Tina said in an interview that he forced her to attend a live sex show the night of their wedding, saying the “experience was so disturbing.”
Tina attempted to kill herself in 1968. When she recovered, she was more determined than ever to make it. After 14 years of marriage, she left Ike in 1976. She took no other assets apart from her performance name and two cars.
Tina later signed with manager Roger Davies and joined Capitol/EMI Records, coming back bigger than ever as a solo artist with her 1984 Private Dancer album that included hits like What’s Love Got to Do With It, Let’s Stay Together, and Better Be Good to Me.
Tina eventually found love again. In 2013, she married her partner Edwin Bach, whom she had been with since 1986. Tina passed away on May 24, 2023, at the age of 83 following a long illness in her home near Zurich, Switzerland.
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