The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 301

An Unalienated Interlude With Ike, Tina Turner BY GEOFFREY CANNON -ox fey fci'Mteis T'. i T. I 1 1, 'J PARIS I believed that there was more to Ike and Tina Turner than their records. More, even, than "River Deep, Mountain High," which, as every rock 'n' roll freak knows, was a smash in Britain, and rides at No. 8 in my all-time great top 20 chart.

I believed, because I'd seen pictures of Tina at work, and I was eager to see her get to work, at 1 in the morning, here at the Olympia. There's nothing yet to look at but a screen saying in blownup scrawl Par ordre de la Prefecture, il est interdite de FUMER merci. Behind the screen, sounds of brass rehearsing. A James Brown-style figure, several horns in chorus. Then a single trumpet tries the phrase, thoughtfully.

Behind, writers from the London pop press, just out from Ike and Tina's conference, natter about their legend. "But no record company has ever properly exploited them. Ike, jou know, is very demanding" "They've been on the road for 12 years. That's a long time" The show is late, the audience slow-handclaps. The claps augment the hidden horns.

The screen rises. Cheers. The usual Paris yells of missis as people stand up. A piano plays the horns' theme, behind the curtain, contemplatively, as if in the corner of an empty saloon. Then the theme has a guitar added.

Ike. The show is going to be a monster, provided the creep in front of me sits down. Assis! The curtains open. Ike and Tina's eight-man band, the Kings of Rhythm (trombone, trumpet, two saxes, two guitars, drums, organ), play through cheers and a fight in the stalls. "Let the music take your mind." After two numbers, Ike lopes on, in a red suit and a fat studded leather belt, and slicked-down black wig, and makes nine, with his guitar.

One of the band acts as compere: "How about a great number. The Ikettes do another number, dancing with undulating arms. The wannup for the star of the show. "I don't know what he's got, but it's getting to me. Makes my cold nights hot." The Ikettes' songs are of invitation.

The audience is being made softer, more volatile and pliable. Ike has been learning these sexy show business techniques for 20 years. The Ikettes clap their hands fast, just two times, and already the audience is joining in. Then they do "Shake a Tail Feather" at each other, teasing themselves and us. The lights go out.

The compere: "She's known as the hardest working lady in show business today. Ladies and gentlemen, MISS TIXA TURNER!" Tina's in black and silver. Leading the Ikettes, her movements are as professional as theirs, but entirely more urgent. Even with her odd brown hairpiece, she's no shellac lady. She sweats and lets you see it.

She sings Sly Stone's number, "Dance to the Music." Ike's one of those old-style band lead- v.rv.rWiWV.A-.'V.Wrv.T.. Their style assumed that no black man has made it out of the ghetto ers who reads the papers and draws his conclusions from the news rather than from his own head. He adapts his show in terms of what he assesses is on other people's minds. Just as long as Tina comes across, that's all. He allows into the band those players who reflect the style of the black fans who were waiting (out of line) to see the show at the Olympia: Chambers or Sly Stone -style; all colors of clothes; soft-focus versions of Hen-drix, spaced-out, bopping.

They'll wear big horn-rim shades, inside and outside, whether or not their eyes see well. Plus, a couple of members of the band wear an altogether harder style. When they play, they don't move. They just seem to think Panther thoughts as they wait for the show to end and the banknotes over the table. They're for the hard-line audience.

(Question. Does Ike dress them up like that? Or has he been forced to relent to their demands? "We wear our thang." Who can say? (They and he wouldn't.) But, still, Tina and the Ikettes play to a world unchanged these last 10 years. Their style assumed that no black man had made it out of the ghetto. That, after all, is what Gospel is all about: testifying to a just world found only after death. Tina, of course, looks to give her audience kicks within life.

But her act assures that, after the show, it's back to alienation. She uses the gravel in her voice as a sexual indicator. Hoarseness equals the effects of living recklessly. The idea is that, beside her, the Ikettes appear puppets, making her all the more real. Ike constructs the show as a machine to make Tina live.

She sings the Stones' song, "Honky Tonk Woman," singing "Because I'm a Ilonky Tonk then John Lennon's "Come Together," squeezing and grinding the song. Annie Mae Bullock, mother of four, born in Brownsville, who says, "I Ike and Tina Turner are apt io burs! into song of any time hero in dressing room. Photo Ity Jill KremrnU "1 don't know what he's got but it's getting to me" big round of applause for the Ikettes. THE IKETTES, ladies and gentlemen!" Three light-skinned chicks shimmy on, in long hairpieces, flame-colored very short dresses, with long, slim arms, working in a tight torch-dancer routine, orchestrated in the style groups made famous; before LeRoi Jones and the Panthers frowned at ensemble song-and-dance routines as yet another example of the vision of the black man being perverted into an as-if version of white men's dreams. It's going to be a little time before Ike takes the decision to have Afro Ikettes.

The Ikettes' lead singer swing3 into "Piece of My Heart." The lights and the pace go low. Behind, the pin-glow of the six amplifiers' red lights gives a red-light district impression. The lights change, blue, white, red, and flash, as in pantomime. Ike faces the band, playing quietly, looking around a lot, conducting as Frank Zappa does by using the neck of his guitar as a baton as he plays, bringing it down twice, decidedly, to end a guess I've always been a sort of tomboy all my life," becomes Tina Turner, all-woman. Tina introduced "Proud Mary" with the routine she uses on their new album, "Workin' Together." "We never do nothin' nice and easy.

We always do it nice and rough." Ike talks the words behind Tina's singing, in his invented variation of Gospel call-and-re-sponse. Delaney and Bonnie got their stage act from Ike and Tina Bonnie was a (white!) lkctte once. Ike has learned from James Brown, Sly, the Chambers the Stones, Janis Joplin, Zappa, Chuck Berry (that insinuating speedy guitar), Ilendrix, Otis Redding, and some of them have learned plenty from him, too. Every year Ike puts out a show adjusted, refined, more exactly paced. Technique! "Soul is like grease in the kitchen when you're cooking," says Tina.

Her little interpolations are as rehearsed as her singing. She sings Otis Redding's "Respect" and "I've Been Loving You Too Long (I Won't Stop Now)." Then she bears down on the audience sexually. I think too much: She seems to become Ike's object, and loses her perso na. Great audience reaction, Ike waits for a silence, and from behind Tina, whispers into his microphone "I Got Mine, I Hope You Got Yours." Then Sly Stone's "I Want to Take You Higher," faster and faster, Tina dancing with every inch of herself; her, the Ikettes, Ike, the band, taking the audience up with them. The lights go out.

A hard fast strobe punctuates the darkness front stage, syncopated with Tina's dancing, so her gigantic shadow flickers on the wall behind her, all her energy focused to violently exciting intensity. Bang, bang, darkness. Finish. The lights go up on an empty stage. An encore, of course.

"With a Little Help From My Friends," and the concert comes full circle. The phrases being rehearsed before the start were for this, and fit like jigsaw puzzle pieces when you see the picture. Tina gets the audience to join in and, as soon as she has them committed, falls back and dances in the line of Ikettes. Precision timing. The audience claps to respond to the number as the strobe works its magic again.

And suddenly the clapping is for the whole show, breaking its rhythm into a tumult of appreciation. TEN.