The Call of the Weird (8 page)

JJ offered to show me the movies he directed.

“Are you sure it won’t be weird for Viktoriya?”

“She doesn’t mind.”

Viktoriya was watching a documentary about Jennifer Lopez on the E! Channel. She went into the bathroom and spoke in Russian on the phone to a friend in Boston.

We watched
Pornworld
first, fast-forwarding through the sex. The plot was hard to follow. It had something to do with a magic crystal that could transport its holder to a realm where his every sexual fantasy was fulfilled. For some reason—maybe, as JJ claimed, because the sound recordist was on cocaine—you could hear the pssshht! of the smoke machine with perfect clarity but none of the words. “
Hustler
gave it a four out of five,” JJ said.

In Search of Awesome Pussy
was a James Bond spoof starring JJ as Jimmy Bone, a secret agent who bonked his way across the Czech Republic. Most of the Czech women couldn’t speak English, so JJ had to teach them their lines phonetically. “You thowt you could fule us, Mr. Bone” was one of the few lines I could make out.

Viktoriya wandered back in and sat down on the sofa. JJ kept fast-forwarding through the sex, then rewinding to the end of the sex scene, so we wouldn’t miss any of the dialogue. As a result, we got to see virtually all his pop shots. I was trying to read Vik-toriya’s expression—whether it was strange for her to be watching her husband have anal sex with Czech porn stars in fast-forward.

“You don’t like us making fun of accents; I know what you’re thinking,” JJ said.

“No, you don’t,” Viktoriya said.

“It’s an industry of lonely people in a crowd,” Bill Margold was saying. “They’re scared to get close to each other. You’re far better off having someone to sleep next to than having someone to sleep with, because you have to trust someone you sleep next to. I don’t think these people can maintain relationships. They don’t want to let their guards down long enough to get to know the people they’re having sex with, so they keep avoiding getting to know them by fucking them.”

It was late afternoon, a few months later, and his room was dark.

I thought about JJ. For most of us, sex brings with it some kind of intimacy, a kind of mutual ownership that we share as couples. If you have sex for a living on camera, that intimacy is lost. The glue that binds person to person dissolves. This was something almost everyone I’d spoken to in porn agreed on, that it was impossible to have a long-term relationship and be a performer. For some performers—the most sturdy, the most driven, the most detached— that loss of intimacy was worth it, for the fame or the money it brought. But not for most.

JJ had no regrets about his porn career. His only ruefulness seemed to be that it had ended, and that now he had to face the normal suburban challenges of keeping down a boring job and making a relationship work. His most difficult adjustment was anonymity. And I suspected that it was because he felt so positive about porn that my own journalistic relationship with him was so uncomplicated. He was happy about the documentary I made, happy to update it for the book, too—both of them were testaments to the modest celebrity he had once enjoyed.

I was running out of questions for Margold, and so, for old time’s sake, I asked to see his penis. He stood up, pulled down his trousers and boxer shorts, and out it came, like a pork sausage. Hanging several inches lower than the end of his penis were two of the biggest, dangliest balls I’d ever seen.

We stayed like that for a moment, me looking at his genitals in the darkened room. Then I said: “Okay, you can put them away now.”

O
ne Friday night, not long after my encounter with Bill Margold’s penis, while I was still in Los Angeles, I drove up to the ritzy clifftop town of Malibu, to a club called the Malibu Inn.

For weeks—since before I’d left Britain, in fact—I’d been calling and sending letters to the famous and famously temperamental bandleader Ike Turner. In 2000, I’d spent ten days with Ike, filming a documentary that was never completed. I’d hoped the Reunion Tour would be a chance to see him again and sift through the wreckage of the project. But I’d heard nothing back, and so,
having read that he was playing not far away, I had decided—in the nicest possible way—to ambush him at the gig.

Unlike his ex-wife, Tina, who went on to multi-platinum success, Ike spiraled downward after their split in 1976, settling into a debilitating regimen of cocaine and “orgying,” as he calls it. At his lowest ebb, according to legend, he would travel Los Angeles dressed as a policeman so he could confiscate drugs from crack dealers for his personal use. But he cleaned up during a stretch in prison in 1989, and these days he makes his living gigging with his seven-piece band, the Kings of Rhythm, playing a mix of barnstorming blues and boogie-woogie, along with some of the old hits.

I arrived at the Malibu Inn early and ordered a large glass of red wine. The truth is, I had a feeling of trepidation about seeing Ike again. Though he’s mellowed with age, I had witnessed his “artistic temperament” firsthand when we were filming together, and I was worried he might be annoyed with me for never finishing the documentary.

The Malibu Inn was a roadhouse-type joint. It had a raised stage on one side, a place for the audience to stand, a bar at the other side. It looked like it could comfortably take two hundred people, but because of heavy rains only eighty or so were there—older, white, affluent husbands and wives who had grown up with Ike and Tina’s music.

The stage itself was barely big enough for Ike’s band. The three members of the brass section stood in front of the second key-boardist, and they had to shuffle to one side during his solos so the audience could see. But the music was raucous and soulful, and the crowd was happy, no one more so than Ike himself. He was seventy-three at the time, and his voice, deep and bluesy, still carries the stamp of his native Mississippi. Dressed in a long shiny gold jacket with an upright collar, eyes shining with pleasure, he sang raspgold jacket with an upright collar, eyes shining with pleasure, he sang raspily, played his piano with unselfconscious virtuosity, and told lewd jokes—even, during one song, miming cunnilingus and making slurping noises.

Halfway through, Ike’s lead singer Audrey Madison took the stage, picking her way past the other musicians like someone trying to cross a crowded pub. I’d met her while filming the documentary— a full-figured black woman, forty or so, she is also the lady in Ike’s life. She wears a shaggy brown wig that makes her look more than a touch Tina Turnerish. “You know Ike Turner sure know how to pick singers,” Ike said. “Men, get your hands out of your pockets. I know some of you got holes in there.”

Afterwards, I found Ike backstage. He looked delighted when I said hello, hugging me and saying, “Louis, Louis!” Then he seemed to say “The madman!” but, with my face in the lapel of his gold coat I may have misheard.

“How are you doing?” I said.

“Yeah! Gettin’ older! You livin’ out here, now? Give me a call!”

I called the next day and set up a lunch date near his home in Southern California.

Though he’s a musical pioneer, an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and credited with writing the first ever rock and roll single (“Rocket 88” in 1951), it’s for his stormy relationship with his ex-wife Tina that Ike is nowadays chiefly known. Her memoir,
I, Tina,
and the hit Hollywood film it inspired,
What’s Love Got To Do With It?,
have turned Ike into an international byword for spousal abuse. His image as a Svengali-like figure is so well-established that in some anti-cult literature he is cited as an exemplar of a certain kind of psychological manipulation.

Partly it was this notoriety that had attracted me to the idea of doing a documentary in 2001—how Ike handled his strange status as a media bogeyman. But I was also curious about his personality: what had driven him to mistreat Tina and, at the same time, how he had kept her loyalty all those years. I had an idea that spending time with him might help me understand the self-destructive lifestyles pursued by some of the more obviously “weird” people I’ve interviewed.

It had seemed a good time for the project. Ike was releasing his first solo album in twenty years,
Here and Now,
the title itself an announcement of Ike’s intention to turn his back on the past and remind the world that he is a soulful performer and musical pioneer, and not just Tina’s volatile ex-husband. The music was blues of the type that Ike was playing before he met Tina, and for the first time in his career, Ike was singing lead—coming out front and center and making his voice heard.

We had begun filming at his house a few days before the album was due out—the idea was for me to spend a little time getting to know him, then ride along with Ike and his band on a cross-country tour. His son answered the door, and Ike came out from his bedroom— slight and dark-skinned, with his trademark Van Dyke beard and moustache. Like millions of others, I’d seen the movie when it came out, and I’d been expecting someone a little like the suave, self-assured character played by Laurence Fishburne. But Ike was quite different, the opposite of suave—highspirited and playful and slightly silly.

He took me on a tour of his house, which was decorated with awards and mementoes from his fifty-year music career. Ike spoke of how scared he was about the upcoming tour. I tried to reassure him, and later thought how odd it was, my attempting to soothe the performance anxieties of a rock legend whom I had met just an hour or two before.

For most of that first day Ike and I seemed to be hitting it off. He was warm and friendly, and so it came as a shock every now and again when I sensed that something I’d said had offended him—mentioning Tina, or spending too long looking at one of the many photos of Tina on the walls, or even, at one point, using the word “anabolic,” which Ike mistook for Tina’s real name, Anna Bullock.

At the end of the afternoon, heading out to a karaoke club near his house, he gave me a stack of publicity photos to carry. One of Ike’s foibles is that he likes to hand out smiling headshots of himself wherever he goes, almost as though, having been typecast in the mind of the public as Diabolical Husband, he is now engaged in an ongoing audition for the new role of Loveable Aging Rocker. At the bottom of the photos was printed the contact information for Ike’s fan club, which was called “I Still Like Ike!”

Seeing an opening for a run at the Tina question, I asked, “Why do they say ‘I Still Like Ike’? It sounds a little defensive.” Ike grumbled that it was a reference to “all the bullshit.” Then with faint irritation he added, of the slogan, “I didn’t do that.”

Inside the club, the clientele was a mix of well-scrubbed suburban families in shorts and open-neck shirts and older couples drinking cocktails. Ike looked a little incongruous in reflecting sunglasses with gold chains round his neck, but he seemed to be known as a local figure and several times he was approached for his autograph. Afterward, I said, “You signed a lot of photos.” And then added lightly, “Are people always friendly?”

“Yeah, why would they be otherwise?” Ike said.

I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I said, “I dunno.” Then, remembering Ike’s remark about “all the bullshit,” I said, “Maybe that thing you were referring to earlier.”

We went back to watching the karaoke, waiting for Audrey’s turn to sing Tina’s hit, “River Deep Mountain High,” and I thought about Ike’s remark—“Why would they be otherwise?”— reflecting that it was going to be hard to get to the subject of Tina and the movie if Ike didn’t even care to acknowledge that a negative perception exists. Still, I thought, at least I had approached the subject delicately. Then, with a chill, I heard Ike say to Audrey, “If he asks one more question like that I’m outta here.”

I didn’t know quite what to say or do. I flatter myself I can usually tell when people are upset, but Ike had given nothing away. Shaken, I went out to the men’s room. Later, back at my motel, I became gloomy, thinking I would have to spend the next week with someone whose emotions were at once so raw and yet so difficult to read.

Perhaps I should have pulled the plug on the documentary then, but I didn’t. I decided to persevere, hoping, against the evidence, that with time Ike might relax and be happy to discuss his past and how he felt about his behavior.

For a while it seemed as though that might happen. I stopped trying to ask questions about Tina, figuring he’d broach the subject himself when he was ready. I learned how to be around him, how to maintain eye contact, and be encouraging and supportive; which subjects to avoid. In truth, I began feeling a little like Tina, which may be the fate of everyone who spends time with Ike. I came to appreciate that a great part of Ike’s control of people comes from his excessive sensitivity: that the vulnerability I’d noticed on the first day was also the source of his power, because those around him can feel his sensitivity and they feel protective. I felt it too and wondered if I was falling under his spell.

Ike’s spirits rallied as we left Ike’s hometown of San Marcos for the first few dates of the tour. Laid over in St. Louis, he reminisced about his tomcatting days in the fifties, when he had the keys to thirty-two women’s apartments. I asked him for the secret of his success. “Stay handsome and hard to get,” he said. “Keep’em wonderin’ all the time what you gonna do and wonderin’ how you feel about’em. Do you love’em?’Cause once they are sure that you do, you got a problem.” This struck me as an interesting piece of wisdom, and probably quite true.

But as his first gig drew near his nerves kicked in. The pressure of performing up front, and having to do interviews to promote the album, and organize the band—all of it piled up. He felt ill; his voice went and he literally turned a dark shade of green; he fired his drummer, then became so exasperated with the replacement, a man named Bugsy, that after one unsatisfactory show, seeing Bugsy in the parking lot, Ike shouted at his driver, “That’s the nigger right there! Run him over!” Oddly, though, Ike never lost his temper to Bugsy’s face. The following day, when he was honored with a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame, Ike broke down in tears and had to leave the stage. “I’m too emotional for this stuff, man,” he said.

My access shriveled by slow degrees, a protracted diminuendo in the key of Ike. I could film with him but ask no questions; I could travel with him but not film; and then one day in New York word came that he’d had enough.

And yet Ike’s rawness and his anxiety were so palpable, I found it hard to blame him for no longer wanting to do the documentary. It wasn’t arrogance on his part—he was just too sensitive. He was a walking spider’s web of nerves.

Back in London, a few weeks later, I got a plaintive stammering call of apology. “I don’t want you to never feel I mistreated you,” he said. “I want you to please forgive me, man. If you can find it in your heart. I wouldn’t abuse our relationship for anything in the world. I value it too much. I just had too much pressure, you know? And I just couldn’t take no mo’.” He’d finished the tour, and was now back in San Marcos. The call seemed in part a tacit plea for me to continue filming, to pick up where we left off.

The following year I heard that
Here and Now
had been nominated for a Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album. He also did some sellout dates at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in London. I was pleased to feel that even if the documentary hadn’t worked out, Ike had made his comeback.

In the days before I was due to see him again, I reread both Tina’s memoir and the book Ike wrote as a rebuttal to her version,
Taking
Back My Name.
I also watched the movie. This was a strange experience, as I was rocked back and forth by contradictory blasts of indignation. One moment I was shocked at the liberties the filmmakers had taken with Ike’s life; the next I was shocked at what Tina suffered at Ike’s hands.

At times harrowing, at times ludicrous, the film’s depiction of the brutality of the Ike character seems to rise in proportion to the strangeness of his wardrobe. He becomes most savage around the time he begins wearing a little pudding-bowl wig, almost as though the hairstyle itself is exerting a malign influence. At one point, he crams a slice of cake into Tina’s face in a restaurant, then beats up one of Tina’s girlfriends, before tucking into the cake himself and saying, “Damn, this frosting tastes good!” According to Ike, at least two of the most shocking episodes never happened, and it’s true that they are nowhere mentioned in Tina’s book: the notorious scene in which, upset over the way she’s singing “Nut-bush City Limits,” Ike beats and then rapes Tina; and their last encounter, where Ike turns up at one of Tina’s shows after she’s left him and threatens her with a gun. Indeed, there are some suggestions that Tina herself may regard the movie as exaggerated.

And yet there are whuppings aplenty in Tina’s written account— whuppings of Tina, of Ike’s other lovers, of his son, Ike Jr., whom Ike once pistol-whipped so badly he needed more than thirty stitches. According to Tina’s book, Ike would use whatever household object was at hand—phones, shoes, twisted-up coat hangers—breaking her jaw on one occasion. In his version, Ike takes a semantic approach to his defense: “Sure, I’ve slapped Tina. We had fights and there have been times when I punched her without thinking. But I never beat her.”