We don't do greatest hits, we're not a juke box, we don't take
the stage and play the same song over and over. A number of e-mails
have come in over the last few years insisting that we missed this or
that book that a woman rocker/popper/whatever wrote.
Yes,
we did a phase where we were attempting to amplify books by women in
music. A phase. We never said it would continue forever. We also
never said that we'd review every book that came out.
The phase ended sometime ago.
Ty
reported that e-mails had started back up now that SOUL SURVIVOR: THE
AUTOBIOGRAPHY has been released. We actually had already decided we'd
review P.P. Arnold's biography.. (Disclosure: One of us, C.I., knows
P.P. and has for years.) Ike Turner raped P.P. and we watched as an
event that happened and was known in the 60s was turned into 'allegedly'
in the US.
In the book,
P.P. notes that she told her sister and a few friends about it when it
happened and over the years. Yes, and some of the friends P.P. spoke
with were speaking to others. This crime was not a secret.
The
book starts with P.P. getting a call from a friend who needs her to go
to an audition with her -- to audition to be a new Ikette -- part of The
Ike and Tina Turner Revue. She wants to go, she wants to sing, but
she's got two children and a husband who beats her. She lies to David
that she's picking up a check for some session vocal work and she
auditions. Tina and Ike want the three women to be part of the act and
want them to go to a club that night to see the revue. P.P. notes that
David will beat her up. Ike's convinced he can sweet talk her husband.
Finally, she figures in for a penny, in for a pound and goes.
It's
her first time in a nightclub. She really likes the Ikettes on stage.
They've had success outside of Ike and are leaving. She's blown away
by the band and she's amazed at what a star Tina is onstage.
She's rightly wary of Ike.
P.P.
shifts, from chapter to chapter, to a chapter explaining her progress
in music, to a chapter detailing her ancestors and how they finally end
up in California -- after her parents and grandparents many years in
Smith County, Texas (cities such as Tyler, Rusk, Henderson, etc). She
manages to make both storylines interesting. It also gets to the
survivor in the title of her book because she is a survivor from a long
line of survivors.
Sadly,
that includes survivors of domestic abuse. She saw her mother beaten
and she herself is beaten. When she wants to join the Revue, she's told
(by her mother) that her father will have to decide. He's not for it
at first. Then she begs and pleads and he appears to feel some guilt
for forcing her to marry David. He'll tell David that some of the
beatings have gone too far -- as P.P. notes, this implies that other
beatings were just fine.
She's
on the road after four days of rehearsals and she and the other two do a
great job. But, a few nights later, they displease Ike and he orders
them out of the limo he travels in and onto the badly torn up bus with
the band. That's the first inkling that Ike's not going to be a kind
father figure. From there, Ike's true nature just keeps popping up. He
shows up, for example, at her hotel room and rapes her. Afterwards, he
then tries to pay her for it. She refuses payment. A little while
later, he corners her again and tries again but she's saved when a
backup singer shows up.
In
the brief one year period that she's an Ikette, she manages to appear in
the concert film THE BIG T.N.T. SHOW and to go into the studio to
record backing vocals for the Phil Spector produced "River Deep,
Mountain High."
It's
no wonder that, once in the UK where the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger
tells her she should be pursuing a solo career, that she immediately is
on board.
What was to go
back to in the US? Her husband had been getting $175 of her $250 a week
and was not saving it for a house (as he had said they would) or
sending a portion to her mother who was looking after the two kids.
Performing music there meant violence on the road -- she recounts being
refused service at a cafe and a bathroom station at a gas station for
"coloreds" that was inhumane. In the UK, she didn't encounter the same
sort of overt racism.
So
she begins her solo recording career. "As Time Goes By" has been done
by many since Mick and Keith Richards wrote it for their band The
Rolling Stones but few have ever invested it with all that P.P. does.
She
sings "Tin Soldier" with Small Faces backing her and in 1967 became the
first artist to record Cat Stevens' "The First Cut Is The Deepest."
It's
a strong story and a remarkable one. She got a chance and she ran with
it. She made a better life for herself and she thrived -- not just
survived, thrived. We strongly recommend this book.
