PP Arnold: Soul Survivor

Find out a little more about Soul legend – PP Arnold – ahead of her intimate evening of music and conversation at The Atkinson.

PP Arnold: Soul Survivor
Thursday 10 October 2024, 7:30pm
£28 / £75 Meet & Greet. Plus booking fee £1 per ticket online/phone.
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PP Arnold – I’ve been an Ikette and hung out with Jagger and Hendrix – but my new tour is one of the scariest things I’ve ever done

The year was 1965 and her life changed in an instant. PP Arnold was a teenager, trapped in an abusive marriage, with kids tied to her apron strings. She prayed that her life would change, and then it did. Her friends called her and asked if she’d like to hang out at a recording studio. She made an excuse about needing to leave her home to go shopping and was swept away into another world. Within 24 hours, she’d been asked to join Ike and Tina Turner’s Ikettes – and the rest, as they say…

Though that day was 60 years ago, PP Arnold remembers it like it were yesterday: “Tina was even more glamorous and beautiful in person than on television. She was enchanting. She was dressed comfortably and casually, in a simple Sunday-afternoon blouse and trousers. The sparkle in her eyes and her infectious enthusiasm just slapped you in the face. I liked her instantly.”

PP Arnold was asked to sing that afternoon, to audition to become part of Tina’s band. What had started as a humdrum day had taken an unexpected, life-changing turn. She sang. The heavens opened. The angels appeared. “Tina looked at us and said: ‘Alright, you sound great. You’ve got the gig.’”

And that was that. Trouble was, PP was supposed to be at home and now had to tell her abusive husband, David, that she’d been asked to go off on tour. She was married with two young children, and she was late home – and destined for a beating. Ike and Tina were impressed and offered her a three-month contract, touring the USA, on $250 dollars a week. It was more money than PP dared dream of – and, crucially, she knew that it would help lift up her two babies.

While her husband’s response would have been to say no, and beat her, she spoke to her parents. “My life was literally in my daddy’s hands,” she says. He saw the good sense in PP going on tour, to bring in a wage, and the path of her life changed irreversibly. She was now in rock’n’roll, travelling with Ike and Tina, playing to packed houses across the USA every night, while her mother cared for her two children, Kevin and Debbie.

What PP didn’t know at the time was this: she was only just getting started, and a remarkable life would unfold. She’d be touched by tragedy on numerous occasions, most poignantly with the death of her daughter, Debbie, who was killed in a car accident while just a teen.

She became a solo star, with such hits as The Frist Cut Is The Deepest, Angel of the Morning, Tin Solider – with Small Faces – and more. She was friends with Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, Rod Stewart, The Bee Gees’ Barry Gibb, and more. Her move into musical theatre led to her singing on the original recording of Jesus Christ Superstar while a friendship with Sir Andrew Lloyd-Webber began when she featured in Starlight Express. There were many more highlights as she worked with Eric Clapton, Dr John, Boy George, The KLF, Ocean Colour Scene, and many more.

Truly, there have been few rock lives as remarkable as the girl from Los Angeles who was born into a family of gospel singers. Few have had the purity of expression or vocal ability as PP Arnold. Few lives have been as profoundly shaped by happenstance and tragedy.

While touring with Ike and Tina, she experienced racism at its worst. “I’d heard horrific family stories about life in the south, but I was still not accustomed to segregation first hand. In LA, we had our own communities and didn’t mix much. In the south, black and white mixed more, but only because the former worked for the latter.”

PP endured a terrible experience while touring. “I needed to go to the toilet real bad. I asked the bus driver to stop at the next gas station, but he never would and I got angry. When he finally stopped, I ran off the bus. Nobody followed me.”

PP went to use the public toilet but a red neck shouted at her: “You know you can’t go in there. Your toilet is always at the back of the garage.” PP went to the back of the garage and found an unpainted door with a big sign on it: For Coloureds.

“When I opened the door, there was just a big dirty hole with a filthy toilet on top of it, flies everywhere. I gagged at the smell and ran back to the bus. The driver told me: ‘Now you know why I didn’t stop. This is redneck country. They don’t care about negroes down here.’”

She was raped by Ike Turner. “When he was finished, I begged him to leave. He then tried to give me money. Money! Like I was some cheap hooker. I took a bath and cried and cried. I didn’t know what to do. If I told my family they would demand I come home. I couldn’t tell Tina. I really didn’t want her thinking I was after Ike.”

Worse was to come. When she went home, after the tour, her husband, David, tried to kill her. “I was watching cartoons with Debbie and Kevin when, without warning, he flew out of the kitchen swinging a butcher’s knife, cursing and threatening to cut my throat and kill the kids as well. When the moment arose, I knew I would have to make my escape – and quickly.”

PP ran for it when David used the toilet, then the police were called and he was taken away – putting an end to their terrible marriage. “David was as relieved as I was about our separation. Neither of us had any desire for reconciliation.”

By 1966, PP was on tour with The Rolling Stones. She first met Mick Jagger on the opening night of the tour, backstage at the Royal Albert Hall. They became firm friends – and more. “All I had to do was look at him and I’d laugh. He was so cute, with those big red lips. All the while, Mick and I were just hanging out and having some laughs together. At the end of the evenings, we started exchanging some pretty steamy kisses.

“I had never had a white guy as a friend, let alone as a lover, so when he undressed me and his white skin connected with my brown skin, it felt exciting. He was a gentle lover and he had no inhibitions. I forgot all about being shy. I felt like I was in a dream. I had crossed a line I had never imagined crossing. I would have hated it if he had tried to hide that we were together, so I was pleased it was no secret. From then on, I slept with him every night.”

The Rolling Stones’ manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, had plans for PP and invited her to record on his label: Immediate Records. She quit her job with Ike and Tina – amid anger and threats from the abusive Ike. It was the right decision. By May 1967, she was a solo star in her own right as The First Cut Is The Deepest hit the charts and stayed there for ten weeks. She hooked up with Steve Marriott, frontman of The Small Faces, and a new relationship began.

“This wasn’t just a physical connection, although we were definitely attracted to each other. We instantly became soul brother and sister. Steve was the only Englishman that invited me home to meet his family back then. That’s how beautiful and real he was. He didn’t introduce me as his girlfriend – although we were already fooling around a little – but as his mate.”

PP sang on Tin Solider, a hit for Small Faces, while her own record, The First Lady of Immediate, showcased her remarkably vocal talent. She was also caught up in the swinging sixties, a decade characterised by sex’n’drugs’n’rock’n’roll. One such encounter involved Mick Jagger – and his new girlfriend, Marianne Faithfull.

“I did my best to visit Mick when she wasn’t around, but one night she arrived with an American girlfriend and joined us in bed. Before I knew it I was in the middle of an orgy, with these two soft white blonde girls all over me. It was my first lesbian experience and happened so fast that I could only go with the flow. I tried to let myself go but I was also uncomfortable.”

PP became friends with the biggest stars as London became the coolest city on the planet. She hung out with Jimi Hendrix, a bluesman who was light years ahead of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and other wannabes.

“Jimi’s flat soon became the party epicentre of Swinging London and he would escape to my house when he needed peace, tranquillity and some good old down-home living. His presence filled my little home and I would laugh at how big his feet looked coming up the stairs. We talked about our new lives on the British music scene and compared it to segregated America. We shared a lot of laughs and a lot of sex. Now Mick wasn’t the only one with two lovers, but I kept all this on the down-low and only people close to us knew.”

Drugs were part of the scene, though PP kept the heavier, darker aspects at arms’ length. She’d seen the way others had been consumed and was wiser than to get too involved. Rod Stewart was keen to work with her – and they began a brief relationship.

“I was hanging out with Rod the Mod, as everyone called him. We had a lot of laughs and the sex was cool. He was very cute back then and we were both passionate about soul music, but he was also extremely arrogant and could be a spoiled brat if things didn’t go his way. He drove an MG Midget sports car and was very prissy about his leather gloves and all the gear.”

It was while she was hanging out with Rod that she got caught up in a drugs’ bust. “Rod and I woke in a daze about 7am to find three policemen and a policewoman in my bedrooms. We had come in at around 3 or 4 that morning and hadn’t got to sleep until 6am. I was furious. The policemen were searching my whole flat. It was a close call. All I ever did was hashish, but luckily on this occasion I had none and no paraphernalia either.

“My relationship with Rod gradually fell apart. We seemed to argue constantly. We had a lot of laughs but his arrogance reminded me of David and he was selfish and tight. When we nearly got busted, I realised he was also a coward like David.”

PP recorded a second album, Kafunta, and Angel of the Morning hit the charts in 1968. She married her manager, Jim Morris, though it didn’t last and he ended up getting involved with Howard Marks and smuggling drugs, before going on the run. PP lost her daughter, Debbie, in 1977, in a car accident, and withdrew from public life. The death was – and still is – shattering. “I painted her nails and made up her face. She was so beautiful. Her skin was still glowing the day of the funeral. She looked like the princess that she was. I placed a beautiful Egyptian necklace over her sari and buried her with it.”

PP told those stories in an autobiography that spans the first part of her life – the phenomenal memoir, Soul Survivor, and is touring the UK with an evening of spoken word and song.

“I’m looking forward to the tour,” she says. “Though I’ve never done anything like this before and it’s one of the scariest things I’ve done.”

It promises to be a spectacular evening with one of soul music’s greatest singers – and greatest story tellers.