Tina Turner once turned to Cher for advice on how to escape her abusive marriage to Ike Turner, the "Believe" icon spills in her memoir.
via: Daily Mail
Believe icon Cher, 78, had a nearly five decade long friendship with Turner, who died aged 83 in 2023, and wrote in new tome Cher: The Memoir, Part One how Turner had begged for her help to leave Ike after another beating.
The Best hitmaker Turner had asked Cher for help covering up a bruise, with Cher writing: '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 then asked Cher how she left her first husband Sonny Bono, whom she married in 1969 and divorced in 1975.
Cher wrote: 'I looked at her and told her, "I just walked out and kept on going."
The singer recalled how Turner's plea reminded her of when she asked Lucille Ball how to leave Bono.
She wrote: 'I called Lucille Ball to ask for her advice. I told her, "Lucy, I want to leave Sonny and you’re the only one I know that’s ever been in this same situation. What should I do?”
'Lucy and her husband had also become famous working together as stars on TV. And he was a huge womanizer too. Then Lucy had left him.
Turner and Cher first met on on the Sonny and Cher show in 1972 - with the pair memorably duetting on a performance of Shirley & Company's Shame Shame Shame on The Cher Show in 1975.
Turner would divorce Ike in 1978.
In October 2023 Cher described her final visit to the Queen of Rock before her death in May of that year at age 83 as one filled with laughter.
The Oscar winner had traveled to Switzerland where Tina had lived since 1995.
'I got to see her. She was lying on the chaise and said, "I’m tired,"' she told People.
'Then for two hours we were running around the house, and she was laughing hysterically,' she recalled.
'She just needed to talk and yell,' she said of the Proud Mary singer who had been battling a series of health problems, including a stroke, intestinal cancer and kidney failure.
'That’s the Tina that I loved. We had the best time and talked about the old times.'
Cher and Tina came up in the music business about the same time. Both were married to older men, whom they later divorced.
Turner and Ike became known in the 60s and 70s for The Ike and Tina Revue - but behind closed doors Ike was inflicting sickening violence on Tina.
A brief romance in Knoxville with sax player, Raymond Hill produced her first son Craig - before musician and singer Ike Turner invited her to join his band and then his bed.
Later came well known years of domestic violence. 'Busted lips, black eyes, dislocated joints, broken bones and psychological torment became a part of everyday life,' she writes.
'I tried to keep myself sane while managing his insanity,'Turner said.
But her depression and despondency from Ike's abusiveness and infidelities led Tina to attempt suicide in 1968 by downing 50 sleeping pills backstage before a concert.
It would take time but Tina found greater success than she had ever experienced in her youth with the release of her 1984 album Private Dancer when she was aged 45.
Grammys, sold-out tours and even love quickly followed for Turner, who in 1986 began a relationship with German record executive Erwin Bach who she was married to from 2013 until her death.
In a 2008 interview with Oprah Winfrey, the two pals looked back at their first meeting.
'The first time Tina and I worked together, she came into the studio and I was expecting, you know, Tina Turner,' the former variety show host explained.
'But she comes in wearing a little silk shirt and trousers and high heels. ... Then we started talking, and I have a sailor's mouth, and Tina is so genteel—she talks like such a lady.'
'She just kept looking at me, like, "Whoa, where did you come from?" Cher noted of their personality differences.
When thinking about their upcoming performance, the If I Could Turn Back Time artist said, 'I remember I thought, "I'm going to have to dance with Tina Turner."'
'Do you know what that feels like?' she asked.
'It's like dancing with a hurricane.'
The two collaborated again on Proud Mary in 1999 with Elton John on VH1's Divas Live, and reunited backstage in 2008 at the Grammy Awards. Cher introduced Beyonce with whom Tina performed a medley that included Proud Mary.
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