Soul Singer P.P. Arnold Said Ike Turner Raped Her In The '60s

Arnold told The Telegraph that the assault occurred in the mid-1960s. She said Turner trapped her in a room and raped her. After the assault, the now 75-year-old said she struggles with her anger toward Turner, who died in 2007 at 76.

“What can I say?” she said, according to The Telegraph. “It was awful. I despised Ike on that level, but I didn’t know how to express myself.”

Arnold was later told that frontwoman Tina Turner wanted her fired.

“I was told Tina wanted to get rid of me because Ike was after me,” she said.

At the time, the “What’s Love Got to Do With It” singer was married to Ike.

Arnold said the potential firing terrified her.

“If I had run to Tina or called my parents, it would have meant I would have [had] to come home,” she said.

Arnold told The Telegraph that after an attempted abortion with a coat hanger didn’t work, she had no choice but to marry her husband David. Arnold continued with the pregnancy and gave birth to her first child, Kevin, when she was 15 years old. Two years later, she gave birth to her daughter Debbie.

Her husband’s abuse, like that of Ike’s, was a source of “deep anger” for the singer. But she said that she “dealt with it.”

Arnold also alleged that her father hit her while she was growing up.

“Sadly it was the way it was back then. I think it’s a lot to do with slavery and how that affected the black man’s psyche,” the 75-year-old said.

Arnold eventually left the Ike & Tina Turner Revenue after Mick Jagger encouraged her to seek other opportunities. In Soul Survivor, the singer wrote that she partook in a relationship with the Rolling Stones frontman and his then-girlfriend Marianne Faithfull.

“Mick was in heaven but Marianne was more interested in me,” she wrote in her memoir. “I had always been a good kisser and so was she. I tried to let myself go but I was also uncomfortable … ultimately it was Mick that I was infatuated with, not her. There was a plantation feel about it, like I was a plaything.”

Soul Survivor looks at her relationships with Rod Stewart and Jim Morris, too.

 

Arnold also opens up to readers about the death of her daughter, Debbie, who was killed in a car accident when she was 13 years old.

“She was a very special spirit. I haven’t had a serious relationship at all since my daughter died. It’s very difficult to find a good man just in normal situations. But, you know, it ain’t over till it’s over,” she said.

Though Soul Survivor explores a lot of Arnold’s painful memories, the singer ends the memoir with an inspiring message.

“What’s important is where I am right now,” she wrote. “How can I take all of these years of experience and just do something really great?”