The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [109]
Not quite. But it was pointed out to me while I was in hospital that I had a drink problem, and I think that was the first time anyone had ever said something like that to me. But I was still happy drinking and actually quite terrified of not drinking. I had to go further down that road to complete insanity before I stopped. It wasn’t until it finally hit me in the head that I was killing other people around me, as well as killing myself and going insane, that I decided to stop.
What is the lure there, the attraction, of addictive behavior, whether it’s using dope or booze?
It’s obsessive. Part of my character is made up of an obsession to push something to the limit. It can be of great use if my obsession is channeled into constructive thought or creativity, but it can also be mentally or physically or spiritually destructive. I think what happens to an artist is, when he feels the mood swings that we all suffer from if we’re creative, instead of facing the reality that this is an opportunity to create, he will turn to something that will stop that mood, stop that irritant. And that would be drink or heroin or whatever. He won’t want to face that creative urge, because he knows the self-exploration that must be undertaken, the pain that must be faced. This happens most, or very painfully, to artists. Unless they realize what it is that is doing that to them, they’ll always be dabbling in something or other to kill it.
TINA TURNER
by Nancy Collins
October 23, 1986
You’ve come a long way in life, Tina. You must feel very satisfied in how you’ve pulled yourself together in the last ten years since leaving Ike.
I don’t have one debt at the moment. I have a home now. I always wanted a home, but I didn’t have one because my parents broke up. I was determined to have that foundation. So I bought my mother a house, and now we all go there—my sons, my sister, her daughter. I’m reliving something I wanted when I was a child. The principal’s daughters had homes, and now I have a home. I’ve made that dream a reality.
I’m self-made. I always wanted to make myself a better person, because I was not educated. But that was my dream—to have class. My role model was always Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Now, you’re talking about high stuff, right? [Laughs] My taste was high. So when it came to role models, I looked at presidents’ wives. Of course, you’re talking about a farm girl who stood in the fields, dreaming, years ago, wishing she was that kind of person. But if I had been that kind of person, do you think I could sing with the emotions I do? You sing with those emotions because you’ve had pain in your heart. The bloodline of my family didn’t come from that kind of royalty. Why I relate to it, I don’t know. That’s the class I wanted to be.
Basically, your family were sharecroppers. Do you feel you were middle-class?
We were well-to-do farmers—that’s as close as I can get to explaining it. To me, it seemed as if we lived well. My sister and I had our own room. Each season we’d get new clothes, and I was always fresh and neat, especially compared to a lot of other people around me. We were never hungry. Of course, we knew the difference between our family and, say, the daughters of schoolteachers—those people were educated. My parents weren’t, per se, but they had a lot of common sense and spoke well. We weren’t low-class people. In fact, my parents were church people; my father was a deacon in the church.
Both of your parents deserted you at different points in your childhood. Didn’t they have a tumultuous marriage?
My mother and father didn’t love each other, so they were always fighting.
Your mother left when you were ten. Did you have any idea that she was going to leave?
No, but when she was gone, I knew she was gone. She’d left before, but then she’d always taken us with her, because she would go to her mother’s. Daddy would come and talk her into coming back home.