Entertainment
TINA TURNER, SHOWSTOPPING POP-MUSIC SENSATION, DIES AT 83
Her personal saga of struggle and revival was defiantly expressed in her 1984 hit song ‘What’s Love Got to Do With It’
She may have had second billing in her own group, but everyone knew who the star of the Ike and Tina Turner Revue was.
It was Tina Turner the world came to see when she and her husband, Ike, toured with the Rolling Stones in the 1960s and scored a Grammy-winning hit with “Proud Mary” in 1971.
It was Tina Turner who ignited the stage with her raw voice and her frenzied, sweat-soaked dancing, as she became one of the most dynamic and influential performers in popular music.
And it was Tina Turner who, after walking away from the spotlight and her volatile, abusive husband, remade herself as a solo artist, selling more than 100 million records, winning eight Grammy Awards and becoming a brighter star in her 40s and 50s than she had been in her youth. Her overtly sexual costumes, dance moves and persona were imitated by performers across generations, from Mick Jagger to Beyoncé to Cardi B.
Tina Turner, the queen of rock ‘n’ roll, known for songs including “What’s Love Got to Do With It” and “Proud Mary,” died May 24. She was 83. (Video: Reuters)
Ms. Turner, whose saga of struggle and revival was defiantly expressed in her 1984 hit song “What’s Love Got to Do With It” and a best-selling autobiography, “I, Tina,” died May 24 at her home in Küsnacht, Switzerland, near Zurich. She was 83 and, in recent years, she had a stroke, kidney disease and other ailments. Bernard Doherty, her longtime publicist, confirmed the death but did not provide an immediate cause.
Ms. Turner, who grew up as Anna Mae Bullock in rural Nutbush, Tenn., was living in St. Louis in the late 1950s, when her older sister arranged an introduction to Ike Turner, who was performing at a local club.
He was already an established musician at 26 and had co-written a 1951 rhythm-and-blues hit, “Rocket 88,” featuring his hard-driving piano, that is sometimes called the first rock-and-roll record. At first, Ms. Turner, then 18, was put off by Ike’s gaunt, unsmiling appearance.
“I remember thinking that I had never seen anyone that skinny,” she told Rolling Stone magazine in 1986. “But when he walked out, he did have a great presence . . . boy, could he play that music. The place just started rocking. I wanted to get up there and sing sooooo bad.”
During an intermission, the band’s drummer — her sister’s boyfriend — set up a microphone, and Ms. Turner sang a song by B.B. King.
“Well, when Ike heard me,” she told Rolling Stone, “he rushed over to me and said, ‘Girl, I didn’t know you could sing!’ The band came back, and I kept singing.”
She began to work with Ike’s band, the Kings of Rhythm, but was not spotlighted until 1960, when a male singer didn’t show up for a studio recording session. Ms. Turner stepped up to the microphone to sing “A Fool in Love,” a song written by Ike.
It was meant to be just a demo recording, but Ms. Turner’s impassioned performance was released on a small label and credited to “Ike & Tina Turner” — a stage name bestowed by Ike. He chose the name because Tina rhymed with “Sheena, Queen of the Jungle,” a scantily clad, vine-swinging character in comic books and a 1950s TV series.
“A Fool in Love” sold 800,000 copies, became a No. 2 R&B hit and reached No. 27 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart. The group had a few other minor R&B hits but never quite reached nationwide fame.
Offstage, Ms. Turner was raising four boys — two of her own, and two of Ike’s sons from another relationship. Her older son was from a relationship with Raymond Hill, a saxophonist in Ike Turner’s band; Ike was the father of her second son, born in 1960. She and Ike were married in 1962.
Working on the club circuit, Tina and the Ikettes — three women who were backup singers and dancers — developed a high-energy, dynamically choreographed stage act that made other groups look like statues.
Yet, behind the joyous dancing and music, Ms. Turner wrote in her 1986 memoir, “I, Tina,” Ike Turner controlled the group like “a sadistic little cult.” He carried a gun and allowed Ms. Turner no financial independence.
As the group’s profile began to rise with an appearance in a 1966 concert film “The Big T.N.T. Show,” Tina Turner caught the attention of music producer Phil Spector, who saw her as a potential star.
A major hitmaker of the early 1960s, Spector was known for his studio wizardry and “wall of sound” musical style. He co-wrote a song with Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, “River Deep, Mountain High,” that he asked Ms. Turner to record. Insisting on total artistic control, Spector agreed to credit the recording to “Ike and Tina Turner” if Ike stayed out of the studio.
At the long, nighttime recording sessions, Ms. Turner took off her sweat-drenched blouse and was wearing only her bra as she sang countless takes of the vocal track.
“River Deep” begins on a plaintive, introspective note — “When I was a little girl, I had a rag doll” — before building to a frenzied climax: “Do I love you, my oh my? Oh baby, river deep, mountain high!”
Rolling Stone later ranked “River Deep” No. 33 on the magazine’s list of the 500 greatest songs of the rock era. It became a hit in Europe but never caught on in the United States, reaching only No. 88 on the Billboard pop chart.
“It was too black for the pop stations, and too pop for the black stations,” Ms. Turner noted in her autobiography.
Still, it marked a turning point for Ms. Turner: She realized she didn’t need Ike Turner to make an important record — and that she was a singer with a voice of her own.
“You know why I will always love that song?” she told the Chicago Tribune. “People used to call me a dancer, not a singer. So when I got with Phil, I started charging ahead and he was like, ‘No, no, I just want you to sing.’ ”
In 1966, the Rolling Stones invited the Ike & Tina Turner Revue to join them for the first of several tours, introducing them to a wider audience.
Jagger came into the dressing room Ms. Turner shared with the Ikettes, she wrote in a 2018 memoir, “My Love Story,” “and said in his unmistakable voice: ‘I like how you girls dance.’
“We’d seen him strutting with his tambourine onstage, and he was a little awkward back then,” she continued. “We pulled him into our group and taught him how to do the Pony. Mick caught on fast. . . . Not that he ever gave me and the girls credit for his fancy new footwork. To this day, Mick likes to say, ‘My mother taught me how to dance.’ And I say, ‘Okay, that’s fine.’ But I know better.”
‘Nice . . . and rough’
During the late 1960s and early ’70s, Ike and Tina Turner began to record versions of songs by other artists, including the Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women,” Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” and most memorably “Proud Mary,” written by John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival.
In the original recording and in every performance for the next three decades, Ms. Turner opened the song with a signature introduction that her audiences recited in unison with her: “We never, ever, do nothin’ nice . . . and easy. So we’re gonna do it nice . . . and rough!”
“Proud Mary” reached No. 4 on the pop charts in 1971, sold more than 1 million copies and won a Grammy Award for best R&B performance. The group had a minor hit in 1973 with “Nutbush City Limits,” a tune written by Ms. Turner about her Tennessee roots, and she released a pair of poorly received solo albums.
But her life in the 1970s was increasingly scarred by her worsening relationship with Ike Turner. He had a drug problem, flaunted his affairs with other women and sometimes beat Tina, leaving her with swollen eyes and, one time, a broken jaw. He used his fists, a folded wire hanger and a wooden shoe tree, or stretcher.
“I was trapped,” she told Rolling Stone. “The success and the fear came almost hand in hand. When I finally went to tell him that I didn’t want to go on . . . that’s when he got the shoe stretcher.”
In 1976, Ms. Turner slipped out of her hotel room and down an alley in Dallas, where the band was on tour. She had 36 cents, a gas station credit card and the clothes on her back. She found refuge with friends, in exchange for cleaning their houses, and lived on food stamps. She began to practice Buddhism, which she said gave a newfound inner peace.
After their divorce in 1978, Tina never saw Ike Turner again. Her financial settlement was not nearly enough to pay off hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes and broken concert contracts.
“It’s very difficult to explain to people why I stayed,” she later told The Washington Post. “I’d left Tennessee as a little country girl and stepped into a man’s life who was a producer and had money and was a star in his own right. And at one time, Ike Turner had been very nice to me. It was in the later years that he changed to become a horrible person.”
She began to appear on TV game shows and in Las Vegas lounges. In 1979, Ms. Turner found a new manager, Australian Roger Davies, who had helped guide Olivia Newton-John’s career. With Ms. Turner, he became the architect of one of the most remarkable comeback stories in show business.
Davies arranged for Ms. Turner to open for the Rolling Stones in 1981, and her cover version of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” became a hit in England and in U.S. dance clubs. Yet, as late as 1983, she still didn’t have a recording contract with a major label.
That year, David Bowie told executives of Capitol Records that he had to skip a Manhattan party in his honor because his favorite performer was appearing at a nightclub.
“So they all came along and voilà’ — there I was onstage,” Ms. Turner told The Post. “They signed me simply because of David.”
Released to modest expectations in 1984, her album “Private Dancer” sold tens of millions of copies. Ms. Turner won three Grammy Awards, including Record of the Year, for the album’s top single, “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” which was her only No. 1 hit as a solo artist.
At first, she was reluctant to sing the tune, by two British songwriters, until she found the right vocal treatment, pitched somewhere between a snarl and leering come-on:
What’s love got to do, got to do with it
What’s love but a secondhand emotion
What’s love got to do, got to do with it
Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?
Then in her mid-40s, Ms. Turner became an international superstar, acclaimed for the next 25 years for her breathtaking performances, in which she wore elaborate wigs and skimpy miniskirts that showed off her well-toned legs.
“Everything I’ve done for my act has really been so practical,” she told Rolling Stone in 1986. “The short dresses work for me onstage because I’ve got a short torso and because there’s a lot of dancing and sweating. . . . I never advertise myself for men. I always work to the women, because if you’ve got the girls on your side, you’ve got the guys.”
Ms. Turner’s 1986 memoir (written with Kurt Loder) formed the basis of an Oscar-nominated 1993 film, “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” with Angela Bassett portraying Ms. Turner and Lawrence Fishburne as Ike Turner. Her life also inspired a hit jukebox musical, “Tina,” that opened on Broadway in 2019.
Ms. Turner collaborated with U2’s Bono on the theme song for the 1995 James Bond movie “GoldenEye” and appeared at the 2000 Super Bowl. She retired from performing in 2009, the year she turned 70.
‘I lived that story’
Anna Mae Bullock was born Nov. 26, 1939, in Brownsville, Tenn., and spent her childhood in nearby Nutbush. Her father was a farm overseer, and her mother was a beautician, among other jobs.
Her parents had a tempestuous relationship and often lived away from the family, leaving young Anna Mae with grandparents and other relatives on farms in western Tennessee. “I wasn’t sad about it,” she told Rolling Stone in 1986. “It was just a fact that my parents didn’t care that much for me.”
In the 1950s, Ms. Turner was reunited with her mother, who was working as a maid in St. Louis. After finishing high school, she worked in a hospital before launching her music career.
Ms. Turner had several acting roles in films, first playing the Acid Queen in Ken Russell’s 1975 production of the Who’s rock opera, “Tommy.” A decade later, she appeared opposite Mel Gibson in the dystopian film “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome,” which featured her hit song “We Don’t Need Another Hero.”
She turned down a role in Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film “The Color Purple,” which featured abusive men in the rural South, saying “I lived that story. I don’t need to act it.”
Ms. Turner was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, along with Ike Turner, in 1991. (Ike was in prison at the time on drug charges. He died in 2007.) She received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2005 and was named to the hall a second time, as a solo performer, in 2021.
In 1986, Ms. Turner met German music executive Erwin Bach, who was 16 years younger. They lived together for years before marrying in 2013. Ms. Turner had several serious health problems, including a stroke and needing kidney dialysis, in her 70s. Bach donated one of his kidneys to Ms. Turner in 2017.
Survivors include her husband. Her oldest son, Craig Turner (originally Craig Hill), died by suicide in 2018. “I still don’t know what took him to the edge,” Ms. Turner told the BBC. Another son, Ronnie Turner, died in 2022.
Despite her sensuous stage persona, Ms. Turner said the person she admired most was the soft-spoken, well-coiffed former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
“My taste was high,” she told Rolling Stone. “So when it came to role models, I looked at presidents’ wives. Of course, you’re talking about a farm girl who stood in the fields, dreaming, years ago, wishing she was that kind of person. But if I had been that kind of person, do you think I could sing with the emotions I do? You sing with those emotions because you’ve had pain in your heart.”
The Washington Post
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Perhaps Michael Jackson’s most significant achievement came with videos.
Michael Jackson may be the greatest music video artiste. Like magazine covers, Grammys, and radio, Michael Jackson’s plan to overcome colour barriers was, simply, to do something so good that MTV couldn’t resist it. When he saw the canal and the nascent art there for the first time, he was fascinated but felt it wasn’t close to the potential it had.
“At that time,” he later wrote, “I looked at what people were doing with video and I didn’t understand why so many seemed primitive and weak. I saw children watching boring videos and accepting them because they had no alternatives.”
In fact, most music videos at that time were simply presented as promos or commercials. They typically featured some kind of montage of images or live performances. Jackson envisioned something different: he wanted to tell a story.
Michael’s first opportunity to realize this vision came with Billie Jean. With a then exorbitant budget of $75,000 paid by CBS, Jackson and director Steve Barron created a small masterpiece. There were the dance steps, of course: spins and twirls. However, it was the total transformation of cinematography and the mystery of the narrative that really impacted
MTV initially refused to air the video, citing its policy of only airing rock music. However, the president of CBS, Walter Yetnikoff, who had released a huge amount of money for the video, in addition to the interest of promoting the Thriller album, did not accept the refusal of his biggest artist. “I told MTV, ‘I’m pulling all our artists,’” Yetnikoff recalls. “’I won’t give you one more video. And I’m going to go out to the audience and tell them about the fact that you don’t want to play a black guy’s music. ‘”
MTV relented and would quickly put Billie Jean into heavy rotation due to audience demand. With that decision, the walls crumbled.
After the success of the Billie Jean video, Jackson upped the ante with Beat It. For this song, he had a specific concept in mind. He wanted the anti-violence message to be taken literally, but he didn’t want to be soft or didactic. To execute his vision he hired talented commercial director Bob Giraldi and brilliant choreographer Michael Peters. He also insisted on filming the videos on the streets of Los Angeles rather than in a studio. When CBS refused to pay for the budget, Jackson provided the money, his own.
The result was the most revolutionary and influential music video that MTV had broadcast up to that point. Inspired, in part, by the Broadway musical West Side Story, Beat It showcased both grace and courage. The group choreography, with Jackson leading in his iconic red jacket, became the blueprint for countless music videos to come.
Beat It was approached with a level of realism and ambition that made it completely different from other music videos of the era. The final product was original, provocative and innovative. MTV played the video even more than Billie Jean, as ratings continued to climb. The short film would go on to win numerous awards and honours, including Best Music Video of All Time, from Rolling Stones readers and critics. It, too, put the final nail in the coffin of MTV’s reluctance to play black artists.
And then came the video for “Thriller.” From the beginning it was treated more like a feature film, with an unprecedented budget of $500,000 (a number that would balloon to almost 1 million). Jackson attracted comedy director John Landis (known then for An American Werewolf in London) to direct the video. At the time, Landis didn’t know much about Michael Jackson, but decided the project sounded intriguing enough for him to embark on. Once work began, however, he soon realized he was part of a phenomenon.
“It was wonderful working with Michael Jackson at that time,” Landis recalls, “because it was the height of it — it was like working with the Beatles at the height of Beatlemania or something, it was extraordinary to be with him, because he was absurdly famous.”
The fourteen-minute video is now almost universally recognized as the most successful, influential and culturally significant music video of all time. Countless publications and research have recognized Thriller as the best music video ever made.
Michael Jackson definitively proved that music has no borders or colour.
Nations of Magic
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Plagued by demons––she reported hearing voices––Marilyn Monroe’s life was a catalog of trauma, sexual abuse, and intergenerational mental illness, which led to her many doomed love affairs, toxic relationships, and scandals. But before we celebrate Marilyn’s incredible and scandalous life, let’s take a look at her deeply troubled childhood to really get to know her…
Mommy Dearest
Marilyn’s mother, Gladys Mortenson, profoundly impacted her life. Gladys was born to a poor Midwestern family who had migrated to California at the turn of the twentieth century. When Gladys was 15 years old, she married the abusive John Newton Baker, and they had two children: Robert and Berniece. Gladys ultimately divorced Baker, but he kidnapped the children and stole them away back to his native Kentucky.
Gladys then worked as a film negative cutter in Hollywood. In 1924, she married Martin Edward Mortensen, but they soon split up. Two years later, on June 1st, 1926, Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson, not Norma Jean Baker. Her father was Charles Stanley Gifford, who had a brief affair with Gladys. When he found out Gladys was pregnant, he rejected her. Marilyn’s mother kept her father’s identity from her for years.
It Runs in the Family
Gladys had severe mental health issues. Within a week of giving birth to Marilyn, she tried to stab a friend in a delusional episode. As such, she struggled to care for an illegitimate newborn, so she placed Marilyn in foster care. The young girl spent her early childhood years with an evangelical Christian couple, Albert and Ida Bolender, in Hawthorne, Los Angeles. At first, Gladys lived with them, but when she had to find work, she moved out and visited her daughter at weekends.
By the time Marilyn was seven years old, Gladys was back on her feet and tried her best to look after her daughter. She bought a small house in Hollywood with a loan, which they shared with actors George and Maude Atkinson and their daughter, Nellie. But lodging with the Atkinsons turned out to be the worst environment imaginable.
Daddy Dearest
When Marilyn was eight years old, Gladys showed her a photograph of her father for the first time. “Norma Jeane was enthralled by the handsome man staring from the photo with piercing eyes and a thin mustache,” wrote Charles Casillo in his 2018 book Marilyn Monroe: The Private Life of a Public Icon.
The photo became a meaningful symbol. She would spend the rest of her life desperately seeking fatherly love from almost every man she met. “Norma Jeane would spend a lifetime looking for this man in others, wanting to know him, loving him, passionately wanting him to love her back,” wrote Casillo. Around the same time, when Marilyn was aged eight, she was sexually abused for the first time in a boarding house.
Abuse
When Gladys learned her son Robert Kermit Baker died at 15 in 1933, she took her anger out on Marilyn. ‘Why did Robert have to die, not Norma Jeane?’ She lamented. More bad news came when Gladys’s grandfather hanged himself. By 1934, Gladys had lost her job and her grip on reality and was institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital, where she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
Marilyn kept living with the Atkinsons, who sexually abused her. She became withdrawn, developed a severe stutter, and her grades began to slip. Then, in 1935, she briefly stayed with Grace and her husband Erwin “Doc” Goddard––family friends who had taken over Gladys’s affairs after Marilyn became a ward of the state––and two other families. Eventually, in September ’35, Grace placed Marilyn in the Los Angeles Orphans Home.
Orphanage
The orphanage staff believed Marilyn would be happier living with a family, so, in 1936, Grace Goddard became her legal guardian but she did not take Marilyn out of the orphanage until the summer of 1937. Unfortunately, Marilyn’s second stay with the Goddards in Van Nuys lasted only a few months as Grace’s husband Doc also molested her.
Throughout her adolescence, Marilyn was passed around foster homes like a puppet. In one house, a foster parent abused her behind a barn. In another home, she was attacked by her foster sister’s boyfriend. Luckily, she found a semi-permanent home in 1938 with Grace’s aunt, Ana Lower, in Sawtelle. But when elderly Ana got sick, Marilyn returned to the Goddards in 1941. The next year, Doc Goddard’s work relocated him to West Virginia, but Californian child protection laws prevented them from taking a foster child out of state. Marilyn faced the prospect of returning to the orphanage.
Teenage Bride
Eventually, Marilyn decided she’d had enough of being passed from pillar to post and being abused, so she decided her only way out was to drop out of Van Nuys High School to become a teenage bride and housewife. And so, on June 19th, 1942, just after her 16th birthday, she married her neighbor’s son James Dougherty so she didn’t have to go back to the orphanage.
In 1943, Dougherty enlisted in the Merchant Navy and was stationed to Santa Catalina Island. Marilyn moved with him but soon found herself “dying of boredom”, so she took up weightlifting and surfing. Then, in 1944, James was shipped out to the Pacific to fight in WWII for almost two years. Monroe moved in with her in-laws and began working at the Radioplane Company, a munitions factory in Van Nuys.
Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang!
In 1944, the stars aligned, and a date with destiny came-a-calling. To support the war effort, the U.S. Army sent photographer David Conover to the factory to shoot morale-boosting pictures of young attractive female workers. The auburn-haired beauty immediately caught the photographer’s eye. Although none of her photographs were used, Marilyn quit the factory to model for Conover. Then, defying her overseas-deployed husband, she signed a contract with the Blue Book Model Agency in August 1945.
Modeling had lit a fire within Marilyn’s soul. No longer could she spend her days tolling in a factory married to a dullard, who was away at war. The only logical next step was to kick off a modeling career. Blue Book thought she was more suitable for pin-up than high fashion. Marilyn started modeling, but little did she know that her demons were about to reappear…
Pin-Up Girl
By 1946, Marilyn had modeled for Pageant, Salute, U.S. Camera, Laff, and Peek, usually using the pseudonym Jean Norman. But her new life was turned upside down when her unhinged mother showed up at her door. Gladys was released from the psychiatric ward and brought her many troubles with her. Though unemployed, Gladys dressed as a nurse and treated her daughter cruelly. Then, almost as quickly as she arrived, Gladys suddenly abandoned her daughter yet again while she swanned off to marry an already-married man in Idaho.
According to Blue Book’s owner, Emmeline Snively, Marilyn soon became one of its most ambitious, hard-working models. It was around this time that Marilyn became obsessed with her appearance. She exercised to lose more weight to make herself more employable.
Her Plastic Surgery X-Rays Were Sold For Thousands
In 2013, records and x-rays were found that prove Marilyn had gotten surgery. Later that year, those x-rays and other personal records were sold for a whopping $62,500. These included a chin implant to correct what she called a “chin deformity,” as well as a “tip rhinoplasty” on her nose. Sadly, the records also detail Monroe’s painful recovery after experiencing an ectopic pregnancy.
The Hollywood Auction sold Marilyn’s private medical history from 1950-1962, her 1952 Redbook Award for Best Young Box Office Personality, and photos of her visiting American soldiers during the Korean War. It’s clear that Marilyn continues to be such an alluring figure decades after her death—the most private information about her life is heavily sought after. Yet, we wonder, how would Marilyn herself feel about this type of attention?
Hollywood Calling
In June 1946, Emmeline Snively introduced Marilyn to an acting agency. After an unsuccessful interview at Paramount, she screen-tested at 20th Century-Fox and won a six-month contract. Legend says she only won the contract because Darryl F. Zanuck wanted to stop rival studio RKO Pictures from signing her!
In August 1946, she and Fox exec Ben Lyon selected the stage name “Marilyn Monroe”. Lyon chose the first name as it reminded him of Broadway star Marilyn Miller, while the surname was Monroe’s mother’s maiden name. The following month, she divorced James and Marilyn Monroe was finally free! She spent her first six months on Fox studio’s lot, learning to act, sing, dance, and observing the film-making process.
She Had An Affair
The tuition worked, and she soon won her first minor parts. Fox also enrolled her in the Actors’ Laboratory Theatre. Talking about her time in the Laboratory, she said: “it was my first taste of what real acting in a real drama could be, and I was hooked”. Despite boundless enthusiasm, her tutors believed her to be too shy and insecure to have a future in acting, so Fox canceled her contract.
Finally, in 1948, Columbia took a chance on Marilyn, and she began working with the studio’s head drama coach, Natasha Lytess. According to Charlie Chaplin’s autobiography, when Marilyn wasn’t filming bit parts, she dated his son Charlie Junior. Unfortunately, Chaplin Snr. claimed that Marilyn’s and his son’s relationship ended in tatters when Charlie Junior caught Marilyn in bed with his own brother, Sydney Chaplin!
A Secret Daughter
In 2019, a broke 72-year-old woman made a surprising deathbed confession, saying, “I am Marilyn Monroe’s secret daughter”. Nancy Maniscalco Miracle claims Monroe had her when she was 20 years old following a secret relationship with a New York lawyer who has since passed away. Reaching the end of her life, Nancy wanted to share her story. Miracle explained, “My mother was very ambitious and thought that having a baby out of wedlock would ruin her career.”
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Miracle revealed that Marilyn and her boyfriend, Vincent Bruno, gave her to a wealthy New York family who raised her as if she were their own child. “Officially, I didn’t even exist,” Miracle said from her bed. It was only after Marilyn and Bruno passed away, that Miracle’s “adoptive” mother told her the truth. Miracle explained, “I don’t want anything from my real mother,” Miracle claimed.
The Casting Couch
As an aspiring actress, Marilyn was at the mercy of sexual predators, including Joe Schenck, chairman of 20th Century Fox. The 69-year-old awarded her a contract on the condition she “serviced” him whenever he called.
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After Monroe’s six-month contract was up, she hoped her days on the casting couch would end. But to renew her contract, another studio executive, Harry Cohn, offered her the same dirty deal. When Marilyn refused, the studio promptly declined to give her another six-month contract.
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Beauty and Difficulty
Marilyn Monroe finally broke into Hollywood when she appeared in a hit musical romance, Ladies of the Chorus (1948), opposite actress Adele Jergens. Years later, Adele’s boyfriend, Milton Berle, claimed that he and Monroe had a brief affair while making the film.
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Despite her stunning beauty, Marilyn’s journey to the top was plagued with difficulty. In 1949, after years of modeling and minor movie roles, she was broke. Desperate for work and money, Marilyn posed in a series of risqué nudes for John Baumgarth calendars using the name Mona Monroe.
Plastic Surgery
A couple of years earlier, Orson Welles shockingly made his wife, Rita Hayworth, cut her long auburn hair short and made her dye it blonde for The Lady from Shanghai (1947). So when Marilyn arrived at Columbia in 1948, her hair was bleached platinum blonde. Marilyn often mentioned men holding her down to attack her at Hollywood soirees, and Orson Welles recalled one party where “Marilyn was surrounded by men, and one reached out and tore off her top, revealing her breasts … Marilyn laughed with the others at this indignity. Laughter hid her fury.”
In 1950, Marilyn had her front teeth fixed to make her appearance less goofy. She also had two painful plastic surgeries: A tip rhinoplasty to reshape the end of her nose and a chin implant. She also began to whiten her already fair skin with hormone cream, but this caused light blonde hairs to sprout all over her face. Even while sporting a fine, feathery beard, she refused to stop her skin-bleaching routine.
Breakthrough
One of Marilyn’s earliest film roles was playing Miss Caswell in All About Eve (1950), a role originally offered to Zsa Zsa Gabor. But her nerves and lack of acting experience meant she’d didn’t remember her lines and needed multiple takes just to get through a single scene. In addition, Monroe was horribly insecure and always felt she was doing a terrible job. Yep, even Marilyn Monroe had imposter syndrome!
While filming All About Eve, Monroe’s beauty, charm and vulnerability made her irresistible to her co-star, George Sanders. So much so that his wife, Zsa Zsa Gabor, kept showing up on set to make sure nothing was going on between the two. The same year, Marilyn appeared in John Huston’s film noir The Asphalt Jungle (1950).
She Heard Voices
Marilyn appeared in 16 movies in her first four years in Hollywood and all this hard work began to take a toll. Yet it seems to have taken a mental toll on her, as she confided in her acting coach that she was hearing voices. This was one of the first symptoms of the mental instability that would haunt Monroe for the rest of her life. In 1950, Monroe underwent more trauma.
For the last two years, she’d been dating her agent, Johnny Hyde. He suddenly died of a heart attack aged 55. Monroe had been his protégé, and she wrote that she lost “her greatest friend.” Devastated, she wept for days and even howled his name at the funeral. After Hyde’s death, Marilyn’s acting coach found her unconscious on her bed with thirty sleeping pills in her mouth. She hadn’t swallowed enough to kill herself, but this wouldn’t be Marilyn’s only suicide attempt.
Haunted by the Past
Amidst all this heartbreak, Marilyn worked hard filming her breakout role in Fritz Lang’s Clash By Night (1951). Appearing opposite Barbara Stanwyck, superstardom beckoned. Until, that is, journalists uncovered Monroe’s nude photos from 1949. After the leak, superstardom did arrive, but not for her acting talents.
After the photos leaked, she became an overnight sensation. While the scandal would have ruined anyone else’s career, this screen siren took her new seductress image in her stride. When reporters asked, “Marilyn, is it true that you had nothing on?” she quipped, “No, that’s not true. I had the radio on.” Her nude photos were later used as the centerfold and on the cover of the first issue of Playboy in 1953.
The Ultimate Rejection
In 1953, Marilyn finally decided to reach out to the man she believed to be her biological father: Charles Stanley Gifford. After searching for him for months, she eventually tracked him down and explained on the phone that she was his daughter with Gladys. Gifford callously shut her down by stating, “Look, I’m married, and I have a family. I don’t have anything to say to you. Call my lawyer.”
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Her father’s rejection crushed her and led her to dark places. Marilyn’s friend, Casillo, wrote, “Marilyn confessed that she longed to ‘put on a black wig, pick up her father in a bar and make love to him.’ Afterward, she would ask, ‘How do you feel now that you have a daughter that you’ve made love to?'” Fantasy aside, this rejection became the catalyst for a string of disturbing and disastrous encounters with men.
She Was In Constant Pain
Her career may have been on the up, but her personal life was heading south. First, terrible, monthly menstrual pain warranted a clause in her contract allowing her to be absent from work during her period. Then, in 1952, after years of suffering from incurable endometriosis, she had to undergo surgery.
Marilyn was always desperate to have children, so she taped a note to her stomach in a last-ditch plea to her surgeons, begging them not to remove her ovaries during the procedure.
She Hated Playing Bimbos
In 1953, she appeared in three hit movies: Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and How to Marry a Millionaire. However, she could have done with marrying a millionaire because she earned just 10% of her co-star Jane Russell’s salary on Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Studios wanted Marilyn to be their new blonde bombshell, which back then meant “dumb blonde.” She hated being typecasted as a ditz, but Marilyn knew that she’d have to play along to become a star. Unfortunately, around this time, she gained a reputation for being difficult to work with. She was still incredibly insecure and needed her overbearing acting coach with her all the time. Marilyn would demand to re-shoot the scene up to forty times if a scene didn’t win the coach’s seal of approval.
Rocky Relationships
Amidst all this turmoil, Marilyn was busy in the romance department too. In her early Hollywood days, she dated On the Waterfront (1954) director Elia Kazan, Rebel Without a Cause (1955) director, Nicholas Ray and actors Yul Brynner and Peter Lawford.
In 1952, her agent set her up with retired New York Yankees baseball player Joe DiMaggio. His ex-wife, actress Dorothy Arnold filed for divorce in 1943, citing “cruel indifference”, but Marilyn fell for him. They eloped to San Francisco in January 1954. Marilyn told a friend: “Except for Joe, I’ve sucked my last c**k.” They honeymooned in Japan, and Marilyn performed for US troops in Korea. When she arrived home, she won a new Fox contract, a $100,000 bonus, and a starring role in The Seven Year Itch (1955). Wedded life was bliss until Marilyn found out.
DiMaggio was a Controlling Monster
Joe loved to stay at home, drinking, smoking, and watching TV. He wanted a traditional, stay-at-home housewife. Conversely, Marilyn was always on a self-improvement quest: psychotherapy, devouring books, and art. Joe hated her highly sexualized roles, so he laid down rules to approve her future roles. Furthermore, she was never to appear semi-dressed and must break out of her “dumb blonde” typecasting. Within weeks of tying the knot, he felt he was losing control, so he’d give her the silent treatment for days.
While filming her era-defining The Seven Year Itch scene, DiMaggio lost the plot. A crowd of wolf-whistling onlookers assembled and DiMaggio demanded: “What the hell is going on here?” After the shoot, they returned to their hotel room and got into a “yelling battle”. When Marilyn arrived on set the next day, her arms were covered in bruises. According to Joe DiMaggio Jnr, it wasn’t the only time his father beat Marilyn.
She Only Wanted One Thing
Marilyn adored children and animals; while the crew took lunch on the set of River of No Return (1954), she’d cuddle her co-star, a raccoon named Bandit. The only thing she wanted was a child, and she was trying to conceive a baby with her husband. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be, as Monroe announced their divorce less than a month later.
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Married to a controlling man, Marilyn began drinking heavily and taking sedatives. She had an affair with her voice coach Hal Schaefer (pictured). When Joe discovered her infidelity, he called Schaefer who says he heard Marilyn screaming in the background. “Don’t come here!” she said. “He’ll kill you!” In the fall of 1954, Marilyn called time on their sham of a marriage after just nine months, citing “mental cruelty.”
Joe Stalked Her
Joe DiMaggio never wanted to split, but after the divorce, he stalked Marilyn. He’d wear a fake beard and wait in the lobby of her new home at Waldorf Astoria on Park Avenue. He had her phones tapped and would show up, hoping to catch her with other men. Beside himself, Joe turned to the one man who would understand his predicament: Frank Sinatra. Old Blue Eyes had hired a private investigator to trail his great obsession and soon-to-be-ex, Ava Gardner.
One drunken night, DiMaggio, Sinatra, and five henchmen drove to West Hollywood to dish out some mafia-style revenge to Hal Schaefer. Sinatra was alarmed by how enraged DiMaggio was but couldn’t calm him. Then, at 11:30 p.m., 50-year-old secretary Florence Katz awoke to find “her door broken down and Joe DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra hovering over her, ready to pounce.” She screamed, and the cops came, but they kept the stars out of their report. Sinatra paid Katz $7,500 hush money, but Confidential broke the “Wrong Door Raid” story. For the rest of his days, DiMaggio claimed he wasn’t there.
Miller Time!
Marilyn Monroe rebounded by getting it on with Hollywood’s hottest young actor, Marlon Brando, and playwright Arthur Miller. Her affair with Miller became more serious in October 1955, when her divorce was finalized, and Miller separated from his wife. The studio urged her to end the affair, as Miller was being investigated by the FBI and House of Un-American Activities Committee for allegations of communism. Marilyn refused, so the FBI opened a file on her!
In 1956, Marilyn married Arthur Miller in New York and converted to Judaism. Variety’s headline was: “Egghead Weds Hourglass”, but the most unlikely marriage since the Owl and the Pussycat wasn’t to last.
Curiosity Killed the Cat
The same year they married, Marilyn legally changed her name from Norma Jeane to Marilyn Monroe. When a fan asked her for an autograph, Marilyn had to ask how to spell her own name. This probably didn’t go down too well with her literary husband. Nor did her sexual history.
Arthur Miller quickly regretted marrying the most beautiful, wanted woman in the world. He wrote unspeakably cruel things about her in his journal; she was disappointing, clingy, unpredictable, embarrassing… and he wanted to hurt her. Unfortunately, Marilyn found her new husband’s diary, gave in to her curiosity, and read his thoughts on their marriage. Needless to say, she was heartbroken.
Marilyn Was Falling Apart
After the success of Bus Stop, Marilyn made The Prince and the Showgirl (both 1956). Stressed out on all manner of pills, her weight fluctuated so wildly; the designer had to create her costumes in multiple sizes. Marilyn fell out with her co-star and director, Sir Laurence Olivier. The English thespian hated her constant lateness and forgetting her lines. After years of trying to shed her bimbo image, Olivier yelled at her, “Just be sexy!” In three words, he’d found her Achilles heel.
She and Miller conceived three times in 1956, 1957, and 1958. Tragically, Marilyn had two miscarriages and one ectopic pregnancy. After her third failed pregnancy, she stopped trying for a baby. For a woman who had always wanted children, the loss was devastating.
The Crew Hated Her
In 1958, she filmed perhaps her most acclaimed role in Some Like It Hot. To get a grip on her fragile emotional state and insomnia, she took a swathe of medications: It took her 60 takes to deliver one line: “It’s me, Sugar.” Marilyn’s life spiraled out of control, and she often refused to come out of her or dissolved into erratic outbursts. Her tardiness cost the production half a million dollars in over-runs.
The cast and crew hated her; when Tony Curtis had to kiss her, he stated he’d “rather be kissing Hitler,” though he later claimed the two were having an affair. Marilyn was so despised, she wasn’t invited to the wrap party, and Billy Wilder started dissing her in interviews: “Anyone can remember lines, but it takes a real artist to come on the set and not know her lines and yet give the performance she did!” So, to wreak her revenge, Marilyn called Wilder’s home and asked his wife to deliver him a message: Billy Wilder could “go f*** himself.”
Outcast
Monroe was all lined up to play Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)—but because of her behavior on Some Like it Hot, the studio refused to hire her. So, her next movie was––somewhat ironically––called Let’s Make Love (1959).
Her marriage to Arthur Miller was on its last legs. His cruel behavior made her feel alone, unloved and ashamed, so she embarked on an affair with her married co-star Yves Montand and fell pregnant with his baby. Sadly, like all her previous attempts, this pregnancy did not go full term and all this took its toll. Her next movie––The Misfits (1961)––was a complete and utter disaster. The neo-western’s three leads, Monroe, Clark Gable, and Montgomery Clift, would all be dead within years of its release.
Misfit
It’s no surprise The Misfits was a disaster. Director John Huston was an alcoholic who often showed up to work three sheets to the wind. Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift both had crippling mental health issues and needed medication just to get them through the day.
The film’s writer also happened to be Arthur Miller—meaning that the deeply miserable couple had to spend every day on set together. The plot sees a wounded young woman (Monroe) who falls in love with a much older man. Miller wrote The Misfits to give Marilyn a proper acting role in the hope they could reconcile. Instead, the experience ended their relationship forever. Miller had an affair with set photographer Inge Morath and cruelly exploited his wife’s insecurities by purposefully giving her last-minute script changes.
Terrible Pain
In terrible pain from gallstones and addiction to barbiturates, filming was halted while Monroe spent a week in a hospital detox. Yet, despite her many problems, she gave the performance of her lifetime. Director John Huston stated that when Monroe was performing, she “was not pretending to [have] an emotion. It was the real thing. She would go deep down within herself and find it and bring it up into consciousness.”
Already deeply vulnerable, filming The Misfits pushed Marilyn over the edge and into despair. During production, she told her psychiatrist she was hearing voices again. To combat her ever-deteriorating mental state, she took three times the maximum dosage of sleeping pill Nembutal. The results were catastrophic.
Father Figure
One good thing did come out of filming The Misfits, however short-lived. Marilyn finally found the father figure she always longed for in the guise of Clark Gable. While the rest of the crew treated her with contempt, Gable was kind, generous, and nurturing.
Sadly, Clark Gable had a fatal heart attack just days after The Misfits wrapped, which some attribute to the 59-year-old performing his own stunts. When he died, Marilyn wept for two days straight. By November 1960, Miller and Monroe announced that they had separated.
Suicidal Thoughts
In February 1961, Marilyn told a friend that she had thought about jumping off her apartment balcony. Soon, her psychoanalyst had her committed to a psychiatric ward. Believing she was going to a place to recuperate, the world’s most desirable woman was “forced into a padded cell and threatened with a straightjacket.” Forcibly institutionalized, Marilyn Monroe was diagnosed by two top psychiatrists as a paranoid schizophrenic just like her mother.
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Poor Marilyn’s experience at the institution was one of the darkest, most harrowing, and humiliating moments of her short life. In recently uncovered letters, Marilyn wrote of the “inhumanity” of the psych ward and being treated as sub-human. In a desperate bid to escape, she smashed a pane of glass and threatened to hurt herself unless she was released. Finally, an unlikely knight in shining armor rescued her when ex-husband Joe DiMaggio got her released.
Something’s Got To Give
She signed on for Something’s Got To Give (1962) but didn’t show up for the first two weeks of filming as her descent into drink and drugs worsened. Her makeup artist would have to apply her makeup as she lay semi-comatose in her bed, addled by barbiturates. In the end, something had to give, and the studio fired Marilyn Monroe. The film remains unfinished but was made into a short film.
Monroe still had so much star power that Fox immediately about-turned, re-opened negotiations, and gave her a new contract, including re-commencing Something’s Got to Give and a starring role in a black comedy. Sadly, she’d never get to make another movie as her demons got the best of her. The name of the film she never got to make was What a Way to Go!
Happy Birthday, Mr. President!
Yet as Marilyn plunged into the abyss, she still had enough moxie to date Joe DiMaggio’s best friend, Frank Sinatra! Over the years, the blonde bombshell also reputedly slept with Satanist Anton LaVey, actor Jerry Lewis, filmmaker José Bolaños, Darryl F. Zanuck, Howard Hughes. But her most famous fling was with JFK, whom she met at one of his sisters, Pat Kennedy Lawford, and her husband, Peter’s sex parties.
In May 1962, she famously serenaded President John F. Kennedy at his 45th birthday party with her sexy, breathy version of “Happy Birthday”. So naturally, the press had a field day, launching rumors that the two were having an affair. Of course, those rumors were true, and it all culminated in a dramatic face-off with Jackie Kennedy.
First Lady
Christopher Andersen’s 2013 biography, In These Few Precious Days: The Final Year of Jack with Jackie, claims that Marilyn called Jackie Kennedy and told her that JFK had promised to marry her. As cool as a cucumber, the FLOTUS replied: “Marilyn, that’s great … you’ll move into the White House, and you’ll assume the responsibilities of First Lady, and you’ll have all the problems.”
But Marilyn wasn’t just sleeping with JFK; she was also bedding his younger brother Bobby Kennedy. As her mental health declined further, she found herself depending on the two brothers, but their lofty positions meant they could show her no loyalty. Believing she’d finally found two father figures to take care of her, Monroe became increasingly convinced she’d marry one of the Kennedy brothers but they both abandoned her.
Driven to Despair
Being cast aside by both Kennedy brothers pushed Marilyn over the edge. She often stayed with the Lawfords and––high on pills–– would “wander into the couple’s bedroom in the middle of the night and stand at the foot of their bed, staring down at them. ‘Why can’t I be as happy as you two?’” She would ask them. Then, mere days before she died, Monroe told a close friend, “If it weren’t for Joe, I’d probably have killed myself years ago.”
On August 3rd, 1962, an upcoming young actor named Warren Beatty was allegedly one of the last people to ever see Marilyn Monroe alive. The 25-year-old met Marilyn at a producer’s house during a party. In a 2016 interview, the lothario revealed he and Monroe spent the evening together. He played the piano for her, and the pair took a moonlit walk along the shore. Marilyn Monroe reportedly spent her last night alive with mafia boss Sam Giancana, whom she was dating.
Death
On August 5th, 1962, Marilyn Monroe’s body was discovered at her home in Brentwood, Los Angeles, by her psychologist. She was just 36 years old. She was found in her bed with her phone in her hands. Peter Lawford took a call from her that night and knew something was very wrong when, with slurred speech, she said “’Say goodbye to Pat, say goodbye to Jack (President John F. Kennedy) and say goodbye to yourself, because you’re a nice guy.” They would be the last words he heard from her. He was desperate to check in on her but was talked out of it, due to the potential political ramifications.
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With many times the lethal limit in her body, the coroner stated Marilyn Monroe had committed suicide by overdosing on barbiturates. Conspiracy theories surround her death to this day, and even her ex-lover Marlon Brando believed she was murdered. The most famous conspiracy is that the Kennedys and/or the CIA, or even the Mafia, killed her and staged a suicide. The Kennedys certainly had a motive. This is what the autopsy report had to say.
Her Body Was Abandoned
After Marilyn Monroe passed away, her body was reportedly left alone and unclaimed in the mortuary for more than 24 hours. Her ex-husband, Joe DiMaggio, eventually came to claim her body. Allan Abbott, who was in charge of the funeral service for the actress, later described how “almost unrecognizable” Marilyn looked after her death.
“When we removed the sheet covering her, it was almost impossible to believe this was the body of Marilyn Monroe,” Abbot described. “She looked like a very average, aging woman who had not been taking very good care of herself. “Obviously, the circumstances surrounding her death had greatly exacerbated her poor appearance and she was unrecognizable.”
Funeral
French artist Jean Cocteau stated Marilyn’s untimely death “should serve as a terrible lesson to all those whose chief occupation consists of spying on and tormenting film stars”. Former co-star Laurence Olivier said she was “the complete victim of ballyhoo and sensation,” and Bus Stop director Joshua Logan called Marilyn: “one of the most unappreciated people in the world.”
Her funeral was held at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, Los Angeles, and arranged by Joe DiMaggio, her half-sister Berniece and business manager Inez Melson. Inside the open casket, she wore an apple green dress and held pink roses. Sadly, because her signature platinum blonde hair had been partially shaved for the autopsy, she sported a wig. Only around 30 people saw Monroe lying in her coffin because her funeral was limited to her close friends and family.
Good Old Joe
Speaking of Joe DiMaggio, remember the night he obsessively stalked Marilyn, and he and Sinatra kicked down the door of an innocent middle-aged secretary? Well, to Joe’s credit, this dark episode scared him so much he confronted his demons, stopped drinking, and started anger management therapy. Eventually, he and Monroe became close friends, and when she died, he was heartbroken. However, Joe always believed he and his ex-wife would one day reconcile and be together again, and rumors suggest they’d rekindled their love just weeks before her demise.
For twenty years after Marilyn died, Joe DiMaggio sent roses to her crypt three times a week. Despite the fact Joe outlived his beau by 36 years, he never re-married. He never got over Marilyn Monroe, and legend says his final words were apparently, “I’ll finally get to see Marilyn.”
Legacy
In the decades since she died, many artists have paid sweet tributes to Marilyn, notably Elton John’s “Candle in The Wind” and the many homages to Marilyn’s “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend”. However, while Madonna based her entire schtick on Monroe, some other accolades are just plain creepy. For instance, did you know Playboy founder Hugh Hefner bought the crypt next to Monroe’s grave?
Other tributes were just plain rude! Her ex, Arthur Miller’s 1964 play After the Fall, is a blatant portrayal of his time with Marilyn. And it wasn’t exactly a tribute. Iconic writer and civil rights hero James Baldwin walked out of the show saying that the character, Maggie––clearly based on Monroe––was written so cruelly.
One Final Dark Secret
Her ex-lover, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963, and Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in 1968. But that didn’t stop more bombshell revelations of conspiracy theories, intrigue, and cover-ups. In 1972, actress Veronica Hamel bought Marilyn’s old home, and when she renovated the house, she made a shocking discovery.
Hamel uncovered an extensive system of telephone wires. Upon further investigation, these wires turned out to be wire-taps. No one knows if the CIA, the FBI, or even Joe DiMaggio had bugged Marilyn’s home with help from Frank Sinatra and their Mafia connections. Maybe those voices she heard over the years weren’t in her head, after all. Perhaps they were the CIA tapping her phone.
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Dan-Satch tells the story of the Oriental Brothers band in this riveting interview with Chuks Ehirim. He talks about their frustrating sojourns in Kano and Lagos; Ossai Igwe, Oliver Biaduo (Ambima), Alex Driving School, how Tony Awoma repeatedly came and left, what made Kabaka leave, and the fight over instruments he nearly had with Sir Warrior when he eventually left. He also talked about what inspired Iheoma (Onwe Onye Oso Nso), Osa Enwe Akwu, Uze Enwe Akwu, Obi Nwanne, etc.
Oriental Brothers band, a group of five starry-eyed young men – Dan-Satch, Kabaka, Warrior, Ichita, Aquila (five fingers) – was intrinsically linked to the hear miraculous Igbo renaissance after the civil war.
A few years after the Nigeria-Biafra war, the Igbo almost lost their identity. But out of the blues came a rag-tag highlife musical group known as Oriental Brothers International that tried to restore that identity. CHUKS EHIRIM traced the leader and founder of that group, Ferdinand (Dan-Satch) Opara, to his village in Ogwuama Nguru, in Aboh Mbaise, Imo State, where he got him to tell the story of the band.
How did the Oriental Brothers International Band start?
I think I have gotten tired of telling this story. What gets me angry mostly is, if I continue to talk about how we formed the Oriental Brothers band, how we made Ndigbo proud and gave them identity, especially after the Nigerian civil war, does anybody remember us? You had to come to my house. You have seen where I live. You know how long we were in active musical industry or how long we played music, do we have anything to show for our labour? Is there anything the government has done for us? We brought out the name of Owerri; in one of our songs, we said: “We have come back to Owerri land, to put it in proper shape.” We also did another song in which we advised every Igbo person to come back, so that collectively we could put Igbo land in proper shape. Yet in this Igbo land, all those who are rich are enjoying their wealth themselves alone. Right from the start, after the end of the civil war, when we suffered a great deal before we were able to get a recording contract, till today, does anybody look in our way?
If there is any big national event in the country, the government will invite big time Yoruba musicians and pay them millions of naira. Nobody remembers us. They are perhaps waiting for when all of us are dead and then they will start saying: Here are the legends of the Oriental Brothers International Band.
That is why we are here; to know how you are feeling.
Well, I am tired of talking. We have been talking, but nobody remembers us. Nobody deems it fit to say, since we engage some other bands in functions and pay them N3 million, N4 million, or N5 million, let us get this Oriental Brothers Band to play. If the federal government engages us the way they have been engaging others, we will get some money and I will renovate my house. You can see that this house I am living in is collapsing. So why do you want me to be talking every time of how we formed the band. Is there any of them who does not know? Does the president not know of the band?
The president knows about Oriental Brothers; how, immediately after the civil war, we started the band, moving about suffering, till we came out with the first record and that record made everybody happy. No government in Nigeria has ever remembered us or given us money. They gave ‘Udorji’ (so much money, as entitlement) to the civil servants in the mid-70s, for which we did the song, ‘Iheoma’ (lee nu mu, lee motor cycle). They shared their money, and did not give us any.
What we are now witnessing is that different people are playing our songs. All the musicians in Imo and Anambra states are playing Oriental Brothers brand of music. There is no censorship. What type of government is this? What do you want me to say? Don’t they know that we are Oriental Brothers? I am the founder of Oriental Brothers, Dan-Satch Emeka Opara. Other members of my band, those who are still alive, are still around. Ichita and Warrior are now late. We are still playing. We are still playing with members of the group. But nobody is controlling the piracy business.
The piracy law says that nobody should be playing any other person’s number, even in public (until a given period after the person’s death). But provided money is involved, if you hire a musician now to play for you, he will play Oliver de Coque, Oriental, Osadebe, Jimmy Cliff and what have you. That is not the way. Our Nigerian government is not controlling anything for us.
Your band members were young men when the war ended. How did you actually start?
I don’t have to be elaborate in explaining it because if we have to go into details, it will be too lengthy. I am Chief Ferdinand Dan-Satch Chukwuemeka Opara, the founder of Oriental Brothers International Band. I founded the band with my four other brothers. But before then, just immediately after the Nigeria-Biafra civil war, I went back to (auto) mechanic work. There was a band that was formed that time, Eastern Minstrels, led by one (Celestine) Obiakor, and John Ikediala (my brother) was their vocalist.
The band travelled to Enugu and quarrels ensued. Eastern Minstrels started having problems and due to the fact that I was a musician, having played in some other bands before going to learn work as a mechanic, I was in the workshop, Alex Driving and Mechanic School, at 44 Mbaise Road (Owerri) in those days. Ikediala’s wife, Louisa, came and called me. She said: “You are a musician, come and see that they want to kill your brother in the Eastern Minstrels”. She told me that she did not know what the problem was.
I went to where the band was based then, at a hotel called One In Town, and asked after the man from his sister and she said they had not come back. So, we sent some people to trace them. They were told that the band had gone to Nsukka. That was how they were traced and were asked to come back. So, my brother came back. We decided in my village that he would no longer play with that band again, for them not to kill him. He started asking how he would continue playing as a musician. I told him I was ready to assist him in getting instruments and make up another band and look for somebody to sponsor it.
That was how we formed another band, and the sponsor was Oliver Biaduo. Then I was asked to look for musicians who would play in the band. I then started scouting for boys. I got one boy, Tony Awoma, from Aba. I got Ogbajirigwe, and so many others whose names I cannot remember easily.
So, we formed that band and played together for some time at Biaduo’s hotel called Ambima, in Enugu. We were in that band between 1971 and 1972, but things were not moving fine. We came back to Owerri. On getting to Owerri, Ogbajirigwe left. Then there was one boy, Okuru. And Aquila came in. Aquila is one of the legends of Oriental Brothers today. I move everywhere with him. You heard when he spoke (before this interview commenced). If he says I should not grant this interview to you, I will not object to his view.
So (Israel) Nwaoba came to Louisa’s place to find out why we were no longer playing music. I told him some of our members came back from Enugu and dropped from the band, so we don’t have boys who would help the band to continue. I told him that we would still look for some other boys to continue the band.
But my parents were angry with me, for leaving my work as a mechanic to play music. They said music was not a gainful undertaking; that musicians were worthless fellows who don’t achieve anything in life. They queried the rationale behind me leaving my work for music. I told them: well, I just want to help this my brother to stabilise his band, then I will go back to my mechanic work. Then we formed another band, with Okuru and Peter. Then we got Aquila and we started rehearsing. We went to Enugu. It was at Enugu that we got Kabaka. As we were playing in Enugu, one of our guitarists, Awoma, dropped and we started looking for a replacement. That was how we got Kabaka.
Along the line, we got Warrior, here in Owerri. We then regrouped with Ichita and moved. From Enugu, Ikediala said we should go to Kano, that his brother, Japhet Ikediala, who lived in Kano then, would help us with sponsorship, so we could start recording our own songs. I agreed. So, we moved to Kano. While in Kano, we almost died of hunger. There was nothing to eat, practically nothing. The man himself would go and feed well with his brothers, but we, who accompanied him, had nothing to eat.
Then, those boys started to worry me. They kept asking me: why did you take us along? You want us to die of hunger? Send us back. But I told them that I didn’t have money to send them back. I also wanted to go back home. I began to regret leaving my job for music.
The same Ikediala started pleading with us to be patient. He said since I said I knew Lagos because I grew up in Lagos (I schooled at St. Dominic, which is now St. Dominic Catholic Church, Yaba). I was in Lagos when Queen Elizabeth came to Nigeria the first time. So, this man took us from Kano to Lagos, telling us that there was a place we would play. He said he would help us to do recordings at Radio Nigeria. So, we came to Lagos, finished our programme on radio and started playing at shows in one or two places.
Along the line, we were not making any headway, and Ikediala dropped and moved on – his brothers took him away. We kept suffering alone, looking for our relations who could accommodate us, but to no avail. Then the band boys kept troubling me, asking me to take them back to the East. I didn’t know what to do. As it was, there were two Benin boys Ikediala brought. I told them that they could find their way, but these ones I brought from home, I had to be responsible for them.
Five members of the Oriental Brothers International Band
At a certain time, I decided to join the club at Stadium Hotel, Surulere, belonging to Victor Olaiya. Immediately I got there, those my boys started saying, why are you joining another band without first taking us back home? I did not know what to do, so I came back to them again. I then decided to settle at Ikeja, in Easy-going Hotel. The owner of the hotel was my in-law; he was married to my sister, Nwaruoulo. So I went and reported to that my sister, asking her to find some money for me to send the boys home; that we were dying in Lagos.
The woman said she did not have enough to give me to take the boys home, but that if I could bring those my boys to her place, they could use there for stage shows. She added that we could raise some money in that process, and that if we make enough money, we would then go back to the East. After getting that assignment, I went back to the boys, to beg them. They told me that Warrior had left, to meet his brother, Rowland. We traced him to the place, for him to rejoin us in playing at Easy-going Hotel.
When we got to the hotel, we met some Cameroonian boys who had a resident band there. So we were playing our own type of music, which was different from theirs. When we played with them a little, I would bring in my own compositions and play them for some time. Then we had to go and look for Kabaka who was in Surulere, with his relations.
It was Goddy Nwaniwu who told us that he saw Kabaka at Surulere. We gave him little money to go to Surulere and get us Kabaka because he did not know where we were. Nwaniwu went to him, gave him transport fare, and brought him to us in Ikeja. We played with him that night after which he said he was going back to Surulere. He wanted to go back to the East, but I pleaded with him to exercise a little patience. Along that line, I began to search for where we could do some recordings since we had gotten some tracks. I mounted a search for recording companies.
I went to EMI, Philips and other companies. Unfortunately, at each of them, they would tell us that our music was not good enough. In fact, at EMI, the late Sunny Okusons told us that “the vocalist is just shouting”. The White man there wanted to sign us on, but Okosuns blocked it.
Was Okosuns working at EMI then?
Yes. I asked him why he was doing that to us. So, when we finished the audio recording, the White man told us that Okosuns said the shouting was too much in our music. That was our first number, ‘Ihechi Nyerem’, where the vocalist was saying, “ah eh…ihe chinyere m onye a nana m”. He said he was shouting too much. That was all. So, from there, we went to Decca West Africa recording company.
On getting to Decca, a certain Yoruba man there resisted. Then Victor Nwogwugwu gave me a paper, asking me to go to the studio. Nwogwugwu is the person who made it possible for us to survive.
Who was he?
That time he was the receptionist at Afrodisia (Decca). He later got to the level of artiste manager, even before we broke up with Afrodisia due to money issues and all that. And why we were quarrelling, which later led to our being dissolved, was because of Ebenezer Obey, who saw that Oriental Brothers had started defeating them. But we will come to that.
Nwogwugwu gave me a letter, directing me to go and see John Okwechime. That time Afrodisia was peopled mainly by White men. The director was one Mr. Chris. So, I went to the studio and enquired about Okwechime. They said he was the artiste manager. I gave him the letter from Nwogwugwu. He said okay. Then, we had not chosen a name for the band. It was after we finished recording that I wrote the name, Oriental Brothers.
He asked me how many numbers we had then, and I told him that we had several numbers, that if we are allowed to come for auditioning, he would listen to the songs and decide on which and which to be recorded. He then asked me to bring some money for fuelling their car to come to our hotel. He promised to help us, maintaining that left for the Yoruba there, they would continue saying that our music is not good enough for recording. He emphasised that as far as we are Igbo, he would want our songs to be recorded.
On the appointed day of their visit, Okwechime came with some of his co-staff. Before they came, I had told my boys to be ready for the auditioning which the visitors were coming to carry out on us. We had to look for money for that event. I met a friend, Ossai Igwe. Whenever you hear our songs, we continued praising Ossai Igwe because each time we were in need, we used to run to him to bail us out with funds. So that time, Ossai Igwe gave us N20 or so. We used it to buy some drinks and fried meat for the visitors. We also bought black ‘Polo’ T-shirts, which we wore as uniform, so that we could look organised. If people came and saw that we were not packaged, they would conclude that we were not composed. So, I went to the market and bought the T-shirts which we wore on that day.
The Cameroonians in that hotel began to question what we were doing. I explained to them that we were expecting visitors who want to listen to our brand of music. So, they gave us some permission. When the visitors came, we played first, second, third numbers etc. ‘Ihe chinyere m, onye a nana m’, ‘Taxi driver’, all those numbers. We also played ‘Ihe oma’. Then they picked ‘Ihe chinyere m’ only and said they wanted to give it a trial, to see if we could be admitted into Afrodisia. So, we finished and had some drinks with them. Two or three days later, we got a message that we should come to their studio for recording.
On that day, we went for the recording. Then there was no guitarist. It was only Kabaka and I. So, I handled the bass, and he played the lead. After playing the bass, I dubbed solo. So that was how we did the recording. Our recording style could be, one person can play the conga and also fill the maracas, to make sure that the music is a solid one.
After the recording, I chose the name, Oriental Brothers, naming the band after three brothers from the East.
So, the band was based in Lagos?
Yes, we were based at Ikeja. That was our original base. That time people used to refer to us as “Umu Ikeja” (Ikeja boys). At the time we released our first songs, people thought we were Biafrans who ran away from home to Cameroon. The type of music we played was different. When we finished that recording, Kabaka told me he wanted to go, because I put his name as band leader, that I wanted to use his name to make some claims (from the recording company). Then we didn’t know about 419 (obtaining by trick).
But did his name feature then as the band leader?
Yes, I did not regard that as anything. I was the founder. He was a run away. Something led to our putting his name. After our second or third recording, Kabaka decided he would leave the band.
What reasons did he give?
He said it’s my band, that he wanted to form his own band. I told him that it was not my band as such, that I used his name as the band leader. He said yes, that I duped him; for that reason, he would go and form his own. That was how he left. Along the line, after some years, the band started to split. So, I decided not to continue with some other boys, those of them who didn’t want to remain. They left and we continued playing till today. We have lost Warrior and Ichita.
But you and Warrior were very close and you continued even after Kabaka left?
Yes.
So, what caused your separation with Warrior?
Nothing, he suddenly said he wanted to leave the band. I didn’t know because he didn’t tell anybody. We used to have one promoter, (owner of) Black Power Organisation, at Aba. He is now late. These were the people who planned to bring this Oriental Brothers down. The man booked that we were to play some shows at Benin, Sapele, Warri and then Onitsha. Benin show was to be on a Thursday, Sapele on Friday, Warri on Saturday and Sunday Jump in Onitsha. They came here and did the bookings. I didn’t know they were planning a coup. The man said his boys would go and distribute or paste posters for each of the shows. So, on Thursday morning, Ogwi and the others came here. They went into the store and packed all the instruments. The driver asked for the key to the bus and I gave it to him.
They loaded all the instruments and moved. I hoped they left for Benin. Around noon, I moved. I got to Benin and did not see anybody. At the hotel, I was told that no band was booked to play there. They said there was no arrangement. I became afraid. I then moved to Sapele. It was the same story. Then I knew that the situation was bad. I slept at Warri and in the morning, I left and got to Papa Uwa, FESTAC Hotel, Onitsha; that was where we were to play. Papa Uwa confirmed that there was nothing like that. Meanwhile, the whole boys who were living in my house had come back.
Warrior became greedy and conspired with some people to destroy this band. He wanted to form his own band. They carried the bus and everything to his house. I came here and enquired. They said that Warrior and the driver were quarrelling, so I went to Warrior and he said that in fact that driver was insulting him too much. I told him to allow me carry the bus and instruments back to my house, and he said no; it would not be done so, that we should call Afrodisia to come and share the instruments among us. I asked him, which instruments are we sharing? Is it these ones?
Why? He said he had become tired of playing with Oriental Brothers, that he wanted to form his own band. I said, on what ground? I told him he was free to form his own band, but he cannot tamper with the instruments. He refused, so I reported the matter to Afrodisia and they told him to return the instruments. The instruments were for Oriental Brothers. If you form your own (band), you can now get new set of instruments. He said he’s a member of the Oriental Brothers, but they told him the band was registered in my name.
Despite all the persuasions, Warrior refused to release those instruments. The day Afrodisia came to retrieve the instruments from him, he came out with two speakers, but they told him that those were not the instruments. I looked at the whole thing. I did not want any fighting or war with him, so I let him be. He went away with the instruments and the bus (a mini luxury bus).
Afrodisia said if that’s the case, we would issue you a new set of instruments. So they issued me new set of instruments and also issued him with another set of new instruments and asked him to return those old instruments to their office, so they could register him on new label as ‘Dr. Sir. Warrior’ – that is his own band. But Oriental Brothers still remains Oriental Brothers.
So that was how the whole issue was resolved. They said I should leave him if he wanted to be on his own. I didn’t know that was how that boy (Warrior) was. There was nothing between Warrior and I.
So Afrodisia provided you the instruments you were using?
Yes, but we were paying for them. It was on royalties. They used to take the money from what they were paying as royalties.
Was that the reason, even when you were separated, you still came together to release album?
No. The reason is that when we separated, his music was selling well, yes. And my own music was also selling well, but his way of playing was no longer Oriental Brothers’ style. If you listen to Warrior’s music, it is not the same with Oriental Brothers music. The style of my music is different from his. But they wanted to get us back as one group playing that particular Oriental Brothers’ music. They tried, but what they promised us, they did not do. I left Afrodisia when I saw that they were not able to retrieve those instruments from Warrior. I stayed on my own, especially when I had stroke, which I suffered for five years. That ailment resulted in my no longer playing guitar; I now sing.
After, Afrodisia decided to use that name as its own. It was recording our songs without paying us. We discovered that and I went to court against them. I later defeated them and they folded up and ran away. At the court, they claimed that Oriental Brothers was theirs, but I proved to them that it’s mine.
What informed some of your lyrics, like ‘Iheoma’, ‘Ihe chi nyere m’ and ‘ebele onye uwa’?
There were some numbers I composed and gave to John Ikediala and they were released, but he recorded them and collected the money for himself. So the message behind Ihe chi nyere m, onye a nana m is that nobody should snatch what God has given me (or someone else). Secondly, you know that this music comes through inspiration. In those days, we used to buy cassettes because you could be in the bathroom and the message (inspiration) then comes. When it happens that way, you could record it because if you don’t record it, it could vanish.
Ebele onye uwa was a premonition of the split of Oriental Brothers. I didn’t know that it would happen that way shortly after that song was released. That song explained how some people ganged up to cause the final split of the band. There were people who were not happy with the progress the band was recording in the music industry.
What about ‘Obi nwanne’?
‘Obi nwanne’ was something we formed during the regime of Governor Sam Mbakwe (of blessed memory). We advised him to govern with brotherly love. That was how the message came. It is not what we can explain in full now.
Your second album after you split from Warrior, ‘Eji apa onye ri ndu apa’, was a hit. What was the message?
He said “Para m a para” (which means to carry someone who could not walk on his own). So I told him that a person who said he should be so carried, it will be done according to his wish because already he had wished to be carried. So I called on the kinsmen to come together to go and carry the person who so wished.
What about ‘Osa enwe (ghi) akwu, uze enwe (ghi) akwu’?
That is about Nwaiwu and Nwanyanwu. It happened in this village. The families are still there. There was a farm here, after Florence Mgbemena compound, by the right. The two people were quarrelling over ownership of the piece of land. They fought and had machete cuts. I was one of those who rushed the wounded to the hospital in Emekuku. When the matter was investigated, it was discovered that neither Nwaiwu nor Nwanyanwu owned the land. The real owner of the land was late, but those two persons almost killed themselves over the land.
What of ‘Iheoma’?
‘Iheoma’ was about Udoji award of 1975. The federal government offered workers what was known as ‘udoji’. Some people got so much money and bought motorcycles or cars. Nothing was given to us musicians then. So, we came out with that number, asking them why they didn’t remember us. It is like what we are still saying; nobody gave Oriental Brothers anything despite our contributions to happiness of the people and growth of the music industry. The government does not remember that we contributed to the making of Imo State. They have continued to enjoy the wealth of state without remembering us. That was how they enjoyed ‘udoji’ without extending anything to us. There is no human being who hates good things. When they took everything without giving us anything, Kabaka asked me, where is your own motorcycle since everybody had bought motorcycle? I replied: I do not have any motorcycle.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview was first published on March 22, 2015
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