Attention Ol’Dirty Bastard and all you other bad boy (and girl) rappers, rockers and Sunset Strip powdered-nose trouble makers: Ike Turner says you too can be free, and believe me, he knows.

"If I had continued on the route on I was on, I wouldn’t be here talking to you today with the attitude I have about life today," says the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Ike-on (sorry, I couldn’t resist) during a late morning interview via the phone from his home in California "I used to pray to God to just get me through three days without cocaine. But I would always lie to myself. I never could get three days.

"Then, before I went to jail I saw this movie, Scared Straight, and I saw where they rape you and all this stuff. Now, in reality there’s as much drugs in prison as there is on the streets, but there was no way in the world I was going to do cocaine in jail, go to sleep and wake up GREASY! Do you know what I'm sayin’?

‘Fraid so, Ike.

"Well, I finally got my three days."

Talking to Ike Turner, with all due respect, is kinda like listening to a jive talkin’ Grandpa Simpson. Ike will tell you about the birth of rock and roll (complete with names, dates and exact street locations). He might let you in on his jail-house racket, buying candy bars from the commissary and selling them back to the other prisoners at a profit ("Hah! That’s one thing my mother she did good for me. She made me live out a hustle in this world, man. I used to sell chickens, scrap iron, bottles, anything for a dollar.") He’ll riff on everyone from the Stones ("I was tight with Brian, the one that drown-ded") to modern rappers and the media ("When they put out a record with bitch this and bitch that, it gets attention, do you understand? It’s the same thing as what you’re doing. You people don’t want to hear good news, you want to hear dirt!"). Hell, he’ll even give you the secret to quitting smoking and you don’t even have to ask.

Jus one thing though, don’t bring up that movie. You know the one, What’s Love Got to Do With it?, the ‘93 Tina Turner biopic featuring Larry Fishburne as a pimped-to-the-nines, wife-beating maniac by the name of Ike Turner.

Don’t ask, ‘cuz he’ll tell you anyway.

"You know what man? I’m not going to debate you on the other stuff that happened before, but I will say this: I went through seven years – since ‘93 – of hell since that movie came out. But now, like they say, when God is with you the devil can’t do you no harm."

"Whatever happened, true or false, that movie is ass-backwards. If I owe anybody an apology it’s to Tina and that would be for the way I was with women around her, not for all this fighting and crap – man, all this is bullshit. The public knows this and they don’t really give a shit, but it made news."

Whether or not you like, or even believe, everything that he has to say, there’s no denying Turner is one helluva fascinating character. Moreover, he is, by virtue of the tumultuous, up and down, sideways, bottom and out life he’s led, the epitome of the blues, rock and anything else that shakes, rattles and rolls.

And while Ike will pretty much shoot the shit on anything that comes to mind, it’s his music today, not former glories nor past scandals, that he’s really keen on hepping you to. And with good reason: for Ike and his true believers, it’s been a longtime coming.

For instance, the aptly titled, Here and Now, his 2001 Grammy-nominated CD showcases Ike in the one role that’s relatively new to the man–the star of the show.

That’s right, the star. Just take a quick peek at his CV. He’s widely acknowledged as being the brains behind the first rock and roll single, Rocket 88, but the credit on the sleeve goes to singer Jackie Brenston. Throughout the ‘50s he produced, arranged, backed and discovered the likes of B.B. King and Howling Wolf. Seminal, yes, but still strictly behind the scenes action.

Then in ‘59 he met Anna Mae Bullock and, for better or worse, rock, soul, the blues – whatever you want to call – it changed forever. The Ike & Tina (as Anna Mae renamed herself) Revue was born. They reigned supreme on the charts professionally and descended into domestic hell personally. When the dust settled Tina remained, rightfully so, a Queen, while Ike bottomed out on drug charges, landing him a bid in ’89.

Before the fall though, Ike was the man packing the strat, laying the grooves. But there was no mistaking who the real star was.

"We went over to London," recalls Ike. "All the headlines said ‘Ike & Tina Bombed.’ Now they’ve got their grammar a little bit backward over there from the way you and I talk. In America when they say you bombed out it’s no good, so I was like, shiiiiitt –t hat’s were my head was at. But what they meant was Ike and Tina EXPLODED! That was were it all started."

But, that was then and this is now. After cleaning up in jail, then coming out to see himself vilified on the big screen, Ike had to decide whether to surrender himself as a footnote in the rock and roll history books, or try to reinvent himself at an age when most would consider retiring. Of course, he chose the latter.

"People were saying, maaan, where have you been? Do you understand? Because I’ve always been bashful. All my life people have been telling me, Ike why don’t you come out front? But I’m afraid of rejection, I’m talking about even from when I was in school man. I’m good at teaching other people and bring out of you if you’ve got talent. But, as far as me doing it myself, I never had the nerve.

Turner credits Rob Johnson of Ikon Records with slowly coaxing him to the fore, first with recordings, then performances.

"We had three piano players. Picture an airplane: I'm the motor and they’re the wings," he recalls of those first shows with characteristic bravado, before revealing the flip side to the Ike Turner personae. "I was so scared man, if you would have felt my leg it would have been wet. It was the first time I went on stage to do a show by myself, where everything relied upon me.

"Anyway, to cut a long story short, we played about 12 more shows and I started to get some confidence. Then we went to the Meridian in Paris and did 12 shows. And the people would not stop applauding. I don’t know man, it just touched me so deeply.

"All of my life, what I have dreamed for... I feel as though I really cheated myself. What I always wanted, I was afraid to do. Finally, I’m 70 years old – I don’t look 70, I look 40 – [but] I feel like I’m 19 or something."

Still, as Ike goes on about his newfound glory (and he does) one can’t help but wonder how he thinks about today in relation to the stellar life and career he damaged beyond repair all those years ago when the Ike & Tina Revue tore their way through hit after hit, rocketing from the juke joints of the south to Royal Albert Hall in the heart of swinging London.

"There’s no comparison. I sent Tina a letter expressing my feelings, apologizing to her and the kids for what I put them through [during] our marriage. Cuz when I die, I want to die clean," he says, trailing off on a more emotional tangent before regaining his focus. "Anyway, man, I’m so proud of my life today. My career is better today than it has been in my entire life.

"When I come up [to Edmonton] I’m going to play a number called Catfish Blues, this is the real gut bucket blues. What everybody is playing today that they’re calling the blues all sounds alike–everybody is sounding like everybody. I think the blues has more to offer than that.

"There is no more Sam & Daves, there is no more Ray Charles, no more Sam Cookes, because there is no radio station playing this music. Before I leave this earth, man, I’m going to get black music back on the radio."

The great 88 debate

So, is it or isn’t it? It’s been long credited by some as being the first rock and roll single, the one that inspired Bill Haley to pen Rock Around the Clock: Ike Turner’s Rocket 88. But if that’s the case, then what gives with Little Richard constantly bellowing to anyone who will listen that he’s the architect of rock and roll? Ike explains:

"Little Richard wrote in the introduction to my book [Taking Back My Name] that I am the original. But I want to straighten out something while we’re on that; personally, I don’t think that Rocket 88 is the first rock and roll record. The real truth of it is Rocket 88 is not rock and roll. I think Rocket 88 is the cause of rock and roll. Now, I’ll explain it to you: back when I cut Rocket 88, white radio stations in the south didn’t play race records. When we went to Memphis, Sam Phillips had a friend, Dewey Phillips, who was a disc jockey at WHBQ, which was a white radio station that white kids listened to. What Sam did was talk Dewey into playing this record on his radio station, which was the first time race music was played on a white radio station. This was when Sam Phillips came up with the idea that if he got a white boy to sound like a black guy, wow, we got a gold mine. He went and got Elvis. He went and got Jerry Lee Lewis. And they called that rock and roll. You know what I’m sayin’?"

Speaking of Elvis...

Well, as long as we’re on the subject, we may as well let Ike finish his story. Mr. Turner, if you please:

"I moved to West Memphis, Arkansas a few months after we cut Rocket 88. We were playing at black club over on 11th street and there was this white boy driving a gravel truck who would park out back to hear me play pee-yana.

"Now, I didn’t know this was Elvis at the time, I didn’t even know his name. We would play for 45 minutes and rest for 15. On the break I went out there and saw him standing by the gravel truck and I said ‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll open this door here so you can hear us better.’ And he drove his truck right up to the door. Finally, he would ease in a little bit to hear us – it was Matt Murphy, he played with the Blues Brothers, Junior Parker and I. Anyway, I don’t know man, he did that for months.

Years later we went to open up in Las Vegas at the Hilton Hotel, and Elvis Presley was playing in the main room – Ike & Tina, Redd Foxx and I-don’t-know-who-else, were playing in the lounge. In the meantime I was messing around with one of the girls in the Sweet Inspirations and one night, man, I won $470,000 on the dice tables there. I was pushing all these chips out the back where the employees come in, and this white guy comes up and says do you remember me? I said, no I don’t. He pulled his hair back off his face and said I’m the guy who used to come to West Memphis to see you play. And that was Elvis."