Ike Turner experience one was at a sushi buffet place in the local mall. One of those buffets where you pay $20 for all you can eat. Sure, the sushi’s not that great, but you’re getting sushi for pretty cheap. Come to think of it, there are good sushi places that charge $20. Ok, so infamous music legends apparently eat here too.
I am sitting there with my at the time girlfriend, who is now my wife. There was this guy a table over who looked very familiar to me, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. At first I thought I was Laurence Fishburne, but it wasn’t.
So this guy is talking loudly and looking around like he wants to be seen and heard, and recognized. Basically, stealing my moves. Then he comes out with “So I said to myself, I said to myself, IKE! Don’t you want to get on that bus!?”
I leaned over the table and said to my girlfriend, “That’s Ike Turner over there.” I knew he looked familiar.
My girlfriend didn’t believe me. I informed her he looked familiar, had just called himself, “Ike,” and that I knew Ike Turner lived in the area. Plus I knew he was broke, so the sushi buffet wouldn’t be a stretch.
I knew Ike lived in the area because a guy I worked with rented a house to him. This guys whips it out in conversation one day, “I rent a house to Ike Turner.” And of course I asked him if he beat Ike with a shoe if the rent was late. He didn’t get the joke. Must not have seen the movie.
The Second Ike Turner experience was at the local Albertson’s. It was a couple of months later; I’m shopping along, trying to find stuff. There’s Ike Turner at the meat counter, waving his arms around like Tina Turner doing “Proud Mary.” Once again, he’s talking loudly, seeking that validation. “Don’t you know who I am!? I’m Ike Turner!” I don’t think the butcher knew who he was, but cut his meat thin anyway, “just for you Mr. Turner.”
Ike’s landlord told me Ike carried a bunch of signed photos in the trunk of his car, in hopes of giving them out if a fan recognizes him. Or if anyone recognizes him.
My girlfriend has firsthand knowledge of this. She was sitting at a stoplight near the aforementioned Albertson’s. She got home and said “some brother dressed like a pimp banged on my window at a stoplight and tried to get me to roll down the window.” She told him no, and he tried to slip a signed photo in the small open part of her window. She refused it and shooed him off. I would’ve taken it. When she got home and told me the story, the first thing I asked was if it was Ike. She said, “That’s why he looked familiar!”
Ike had this kind of aura about him, something that a lot of celebrities or musicians have. It’s a kind of confidence in many of them, and “I know you know who I am” kind of thing. With Ike, it was slightly different. More needy, like “I HOPE you know who I am.”
Ike denied Tina’s abuse claims till his death, of a heart attack in that house he rented from the guy I used to work with. He was always planning some kind of comeback, but those allegations, and Tina’s success always dogged him. Despite, he remained at lease a relatively respected musician, in the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame, co-wrote “Rocket 88” which some attribute the first rock n roll song, and of course, helped launch the career of Tina Turner.
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