Tina Turner says her late ex-husband Ike Turner did not give her the ideal wedding night. In fact, she said it left her emotionally scarred.
The R&B legend forced her to go to a brothel with him a few hours after they were married in Mexico in 1962. “Guess where we went?” Turner, 78, said in an interview with the Daily Mail. “To a whorehouse! On my wedding night!”
The episode took place in Tijuana when Turner was 22. Once inside, she was forced to watch a live sex show, she said.
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“The experience was so disturbing that I suppressed it, scratched it out, and created a different scenario, a fantasy of romantic elopement,” said Turner, who now lives in Switzerland with her current husband, music producer Erwin Bach.
The tales of Turner’s abuse at the hands of her late husband, who died in 2007, are legendary and were detailed in the 1984 movie “What’s Love Got to Do with It.” Turner gave the interview to the Daily Mail as fans await the Oct. 16 release of her autobiography, “Tina Turner: My Love Story.” The book details Turner’s battles with stroke and cancer, and reveals that her husband donated a kidney to her last year. The new honeymoon revelations are the most recent in details of Turner’s ups and downs. Earlier this year, Turner’s oldest son, Craig Raymond Turner, fatally shot himself.
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Turner, born Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tenn., says she and Ike, born Izear Luster Turner Jr. in Clarksdale, Miss., drove from California to Mexico to get a quickie wedding. Once over the border, they drove down a dusty road and found a “Mexican version of a justice of the peace,” Turner said. By that point, she’d seen Turner’s violent side but was afraid to say no to him, she said.
“People can’t imagine the kind of man he was – a man who takes his brand new wife to a live pornographic sex show right after their marriage ceremony,” Turner told the Daily Mail. “There I sat, in this filthy place, watching Ike out of the corner of my eye, wondering, ‘Does he really like this? How could he?’ “
Turner said the performance was “ugly.”
“The male performer was unattractive and seemingly impotent, and the girl … well let’s just say that what was on display was more gynecological than erotic,” Turner said. “I was miserable the whole time, on the verge of tears, but there was no escape. We couldn’t leave until Ike was ready, and he was having a fine time.”