Tina Turner: She Deserved Even More

(Spoiler alert:  This is not a bicycling-related post.)

By now, you’ve heard that Tina Turner passed away on Wednesday.

For me and, I imagine, for others, her death is not merely the loss of another famous musical performer. Rather, we feel that we have lost an inspiration and role model, even if our loves and work, and our very identities, are very different from hers.

She is that (and “all of that”) for the same reason she is, for me, part of a pantheon of musical performers that includes Aretha Franklin (whose passing I noted on this blog), Nina Simone and Billie Holiday.

What did they have in common?  They sang as if their lives depended on it.  I am not talking only about a paycheck, though there is that. Rather, their singing, and their stage presence, were all that stood between them and being subsumed by the circumstances of their lives and what is commonly called “inner turmoil” but, like language that doesn’t fit the prevailing aesthetic, has its own logic and grammar that are necessary to turn the ore of experience (which may be labeled “unusual” by those who don’t understand) to the most hard-won of truths.

What I described in that previous (and, admittedly lengthy) sentence also explains, at least in part, the “sexuality” that was attributed to her performances and her very self. It wasn’t a “come hither” gesture.  Instead, it was an assertion:  She would not be destroyed by Ike’s abuse, parental abandonment, her sister’s teenage death or anything else.

That is why her answer to Mike Wallace’s presumptuous question does not seem arrogant or conceited.

"I deserve more": In a decades-old "60 Minutes" interview, Tina Turner shows Mike Wallace around her estate in the south of France. She had lived in Europe for over a decade at that point.

Now, an exchange from the interview is going viral. https://t.co/vKBiJliqrx

— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) May 25, 2023

Even if I hadn’t known about her backstory—or heard anything besides “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” (which itself made her a compelling performer)—she deserved every damned thing she had at the end. And more.

Tony Bennett and Sinead O’Connor

 (Spoiler alert:  This post is not directly related to bicycles or bicycling.  Read at your own risk!;-)

The way things are going, I might be called upon to sing.  And trust me, you don’t want to hear that!

Two months ago, Tina Turner passed away. Last week, we lost Tony Bennett.   And, a couple of days ago, Sinead O’Connor was found dead in her London apartment.

They were as different from each other, in their singing styles and what they sang, not to mention their personal styles, as any three singers could be.  I believe, however, that what they had in common are the hallmarks of singers who I could listen to all day.

Tony Bennett with Lena Horne, 1972

They had beautiful voices, of course. (So does Mariah Carey, but I find her boring, boring.) More important though, is this: They sang from the heart because, well, they couldn’t sing any other way—and I suspect they wouldn’t have wanted to. (Tony Bennett said as much.)

And, for each of them, “the heart” was a place of pain as well as joy—and passion.  Tina Turner’s struggles during her childhood and during and after her marriage to Ike. So is Sinead’s history of abuse from her mother and subsequent mental-health issues.  And while he didn’t express it directly, it’s hard not to think that some of his energy as an artist came from the loss and pain he experienced early in his life.

Sinead O’Connor

And, as different as their stage personae, if you will, were, they channeled their sexuality in different ways. Tony Bennett has been described as a “crooner,” which I have always interpreted as someone who looks and carries himself like a Hollywood leading man but seduces with his voice. Tina Turner, on the other hand, was not shy about her sex appeal but showed how that it could empower her (or anyone) against the kind of exploitation she experienced.  And, finally, Sinead O’Connor knew how beautiful she was enough to keep the notoriously-rapacious music and entertainment industries from defining her by it.

I will miss them all. But at least we have recordings of them. Oh, and their songs sometimes play in my head while I’m cycling.  That, for me is proof enough that they have been important in my life!

When The Best-Laid Plans Lead To A Lane To Reverend Ike

Hopefully, you have all had an experience of not "getting the guy (or girl)" but ending up with The One.  


I'm not going to describe anything quite as momentous as that.  But I am going to relate a tale of things not going according to plan and turning out better than I'd planned.


I didn't work on any of my bikes yesterday.  The rain didn't materialize.  However, I did other things that took more time than I expected.  So I got to spend only half an hour on my bike.


On the other hand, today I didn't have classes due to a scheduling quirk.  And the afternoon turned into the nicest one we've had in months.  The morning fog and clouds burned away in the afternoon sun; within a couple of hours, the temperature rose from the mid-50's to near 80.  After sending off my state tax return and a birthday card for my father, I gulped down some green tea and yogurt with almonds and raisins and took Tosca out for a spin.

The route I followed today was the same as the one I took last year, when I did my first post-surgery ride of more than an hour.  It's also the route that I took for one of my last rides before surgery.  From my place, I took the RFK Bridge to Randall's Island and Manhattan, where I pedaled through upper Manhattan to the George Washington Bridge.  On the New Jersey side of the bridge, I rode atop the Palisades, along the Hudson River, to the edge of Jersey City, where I descended to the Exchange Place waterfront.   Then it was a matter of following, glancing away from, then following again, the waterfront through Jersey City and Bayonne (the hometown of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons) to the bridge bearing the latter city's name to Staten Island, where I took the Ferry.


It's an interesting combination of urban neighborhoods, cookie-cutter suburbs, blue-collar and yuppie havens, and views of the river, skyline, bridges that reflect the color of the morning mist and trestles that put the rust in Rust Belt.


Just before the GW Bridge, there's an interesting or hideous (depending on your point of view) theatre that was probably built during the 1920's.  It now serves as a pulpit for the ex of a famous singer/performer who has done some of her best-known work since splitting up with him.

Said preacher is Reverend Ike.  Yes, that Rev. Ike:  the one who was Mr. Tina Turner.  Of course, he never saw the relationship that way, though sometimes I think that, deep down, he must have known it would come to that.  Quite possibly the worst thing for the long-term prospects of a marriage is a wife who is obviously more talented than the husband.  (Somehow marriages stay together when the man is more talented.  That's a story for another post, or more precisely, another blog, or some sort of study by the NIH.)  At least Sonny Bono admitted as much about Cher; from what I understand, Rev. Ike was very abusive toward Tina.  


Hmm...Are politics and preaching the last refuges of husbands who can't make it on their own and whose wives get sick of them riding on their coattails?


I digress, again.  About half a mile south (downtown, to New Yorkers) of Rev. Ike's temple, I saw something I hadn't seen since I last rode up that way:

It's the shortest bike lane in New York.  Well, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit.  But it does serve a purpose:  It guides cyclists through one of the trickiest intersections in upper Manhattan, if not all of the city.  When St. Nicholas Avenue (on which the lane is located) crosses West 163rd Street, it also intersects with Audubon Avenue which, like St. Nicholas, is one of the main thoroughfares of that part of town.  


If the intersection were a clock and you were riding on St. Nicholas from the six o'clock position, the traffic from Audubon would be coming at you from the two and eight o'clock position, while the 163rd Street traffic would be coming from somewhere between the two and three o'clock position, and somewhere between the eight and nine o'clock positions. So, from St. Nick, you would cross 163rd and Audubon as if they were an eight-lane highway.  


The new path leads to a couple of concrete islands where there are signs, and from which the path continues to 165th Street.

After that and Rev. Ike, the rest of the ride was a piece of cake!