Cher (11 page)

During the production of
Good Times
, in December 1966, Sonny fired Charlie Greene and Brian Stone and signed a contract with Joe De Carlo. Joe had worked with Sonny & Cher as part of Greene and Stone’s management company, but when he announced to Sonny that he was parting with Greene and Stone, Sonny decided to drop them as well and go with De Carlo.

On January 1, 1967, Sonny & Cher became the first pop group to ride on a float in the annual New Year’s Day Rose Bowl Parade, in Pasadena, California. And on March 17, 1967, Sonny & Cher began a ten-day concert tour on the East Coast of the United States.

In March of 1967, ATCO Records released the Sonny & Cher album
In Case You’re in Love
. Following the formula of their previous two LPs, the duo covered several of the current day’s hits, including the Mind-benders’ “Groovy Kind of Love,” Tim Hardin’s “Misty Roses,” Ben E. King’s “Stand by Me,” Gale Garnett’s “We’ll Sing in the Sunshine,” and
Bob Lind’s “Cheryl’s Goin’ Home.” Two of the best cuts were Sonny’s “Love Don’t Come,” an exotic and moody song with excellent acoustic guitars, and Sonny’s solo on the impassioned ballad “Cheryl’s Goin’ Home.” The album’s major backfire was a silly comedy routine penned by Sonny and set to ragtime music, called “Podunk.”

Not to be outdone by his mate, Sonny—the pop world’s new Pygmalion—not only had the hit “Laugh at Me,” which appeared on the Sonny & Cher LP
The Wondrous World of Sonny & Cher
, but also released his first and only solo album in 1967, entitled
Inner Views
. The highlight of this collector’s item LP is a Bono composition, the psychedelic-era ballad “Pammie’s on a Bummer,” which is about a bad “acid” drug trip.

Right after “The Beat Goes On” hit the Top 10, the duo seemed to do an about-face in musical direction. Sonny’s conservative views, and his miscalculations with the music he was choosing for the duo and for Cher’s solo records, were beginning to color the public’s perception of them. The year 1967 was known as “the summer of love,” and everyone from the Beatles to the Monkees was experimenting with drugs in their songs (the Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” the Monkees’ “Salesman”), and in their personal lives.
In Case You’re in Love
failed to climb to the Top 40 album charts, peaking in America at Number 45.

The sound and fashion of America—and the rest of the world—was changing. The Beatles album
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
represented a whole new sound of rock and roll, and suddenly Sonny’s cute autobiographical tunes about him and Cher, and Cher’s renditions of Bob Dylan songs, were failing to capture an audience. Furthermore, their calling card, their once outlandish way of dressing, was very quickly becoming less and less radical. Everyone was starting to wear bell-bottoms and other wild and colorful clothes. Now they had to compete with Sgt. Pepper jackets, the Supremes in beaded gowns with butterfly wings, Mama Cass in muumuus and knee-high go-go boots, and a whole new wave of hippies from San Francisco wearing tie-dyed clothes and sporting flowers in their hair.

Instead of just ignoring whatever aspect of the current trends he didn’t like or approve of, Sonny chose not only to make his feelings known, but to make a public statement about it as well. Between 1967 and 1969, he began making one managerial mistake after another. Before the decade was up, he would in effect bankrupt the duo, and lose both Cher’s solo record deal and the group’s as well.

A huge career miscalculation on Sonny’s part came when he and Cher appeared in an antimarijuana film that was distributed to high schools by the federal government. This was the same era when young Americans were getting into the drug scene, and the last thing they wanted to see were rock and rollers preaching against pot. All of a sudden Sonny & Cher represented the social values of the old guard. The film was not only ill-timed in its release, it made Sonny & Cher come across like their fans’ parents. Talk about a bad career move!

According to Sonny, “The whole sound and style of music began to come out of the drug culture. We didn’t want to get into that, so it left us” (17). “The establishment, which didn’t go to concerts applauded us. The kids, who did go to concerts, thought we were stupid,” said Cher (17). Sonny was later to admit, “We announced publicly that we were against drugs. That just about finished us off—our record sales really suffered. The funny thing is that it would have been so easy to fake it. People think I’m stoned all the time anyway” (47).

One of Sonny’s biggest backfiring mistakes was the song “Plastic Man,” which the duo recorded and then debuted on TV’s
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour
on May 21, 1967. “Plastic Man” was about a drug pusher trying to “recruit” others to use drugs, and the slant of the song was decidedly antidrug in sentiment. In addition, Sonny & Cher were heard on the radio making public service announcements encouraging kids to stay in school. This was pretty ironic coming from twenty-year-old Cher, who was a high school dropout herself.

Into this changing marketplace, in April of 1967, Sonny & Cher released
Good Times
. They had a huge premiere for the film in Austin, Texas. Sonny & Cher were flown in on a chartered plane, they participated in a gala parade through the streets of Austin, and, according to Cher, the film did well in that town. However, in the rest of the world it was less than a hit.

The film
Good Times
runs 91 minutes and is about Sonny and Cher fantasizing about the roles they would like to play in the movies. Within the plot of their cinematic fantasies they appear as (A) themselves, (B) a sheriff and a dance hall girl in an 1800s western town (Irving Ringo and Nellie), (C) a hippie-esque Tarzan and Jane (Jungle Morry and Zora), and (D) a gangster and his gun moll (Johnny Pizzicato and Samantha). They got to sing, dance, ride an elephant; and Sonny got to write all the songs used in the film. To give the film additional star power, they hired respected actor George Sanders to play the sleazy movie producer who
was the film’s villain. It seemed like a brilliant idea on paper; however, when it was released in 1967 it failed to make the huge splash that Sonny had anticipated. Fortunately, he had pre-sold television rights to the film and made back all of the production costs up front. The song “It’s the Little Things” was released as a single that hit Number 50 on the
Billboard
magazine charts, and “Beautiful Story” made it to Number 53. The soundtrack album brought in extra money as well. So, through
Good Times
, Sonny and Cher found themselves with a movie credit to their name and money in their pocket. Mission accomplished.

Good Times
was no incredible work of art, but it was a fun, silly, rock movie, and it received several good reviews. At the time, the
New York Times
called it a “colorful, sprightly bit of good-humored silliness” (48). Leonard Maltin’s
1998 Movie & Video Guide
says, “Back when the singing duo was considered kooky, they made this enjoyable little film” (49).

As silly as the plot is, from the vantage point of the 2000s, viewing
Good Times
is like looking at a 1960s time capsule. During the opening credits, actual footage of Sonny & Cher arriving and performing at the Hollywood Bowl is used. There are some very cute segments showing Cher designing elaborate bell-bottom pantsuit fantasies with colored pencils and markers. Much of the footage, especially on the musical numbers, is really a precursor to music videos, similar to the ones that the Monkees were making famous every week on NBC-TV. There is a nice segment of Cher wandering through the California canyons in her bell-bottoms. There is also a quick glimpse of Sonny in the kitchen of their home, with a gallon can of imported Italian olive oil, obviously cooking up some specialty. The movie, in its own innocent way, is a filmed preview of things to come for Sonny & Cher: Cher as a film actress and Sonny as a future restaurateur. There is also an amusing segment of Cher as a torch singer in a beaded gown and a blonde wig. Little did she know at the time, but in the 1970s she was going to become famous for wearing over a million dollars worth of beaded gowns on national television.

However, while some of Sonny & Cher’s material was contemporary and cutting edge in 1967, some of it was embarrassingly silly. Although they were huge rock and roll stars, Sonny kept introducing vaudevillian elements onto their albums. Their debut album,
Look at Us
, contains the silly bit of nonsense called “Sing
C’est La Vie,”
on which the duo sounds as if they are doing a circus skit on a TV variety show.
In Case You’re in Love
featured a cut called “Podunk,” which found Sonny & Cher setting up one-liner jokes for each other like a vaudevillian comedian and his foil.
This bit of silliness was accompanied by bawdy ragtime music, which was very nearly the epitome of non-psychedelic.

Although
Good Times
had been a bomb, Sonny & Cher found that it didn’t hurt their ability to continue to do concert tours. It was also during 1967 that Cher announced that she was pregnant. Again the pair began to make plans for their upcoming parenthood. They were preparing for a weekend gig in Minneapolis, when Cher suddenly complained about stomach pains. As in her previous pregnancy, she suffered a miscarriage. With Cher in the hospital, Sonny attempted to back out of the Minneapolis engagement, but was informed that either he perform alone or be sued by the concert promoter. Backed into a corner, Sonny obligingly flew to Minneapolis with his friend and road manager Denis Pregnolato, and for the first time performed as Sonny
without
Cher.

In September of 1967, Cher’s version of the Joe Tex song “Hey Joe” stalled at Number 94 on the
Billboard
charts. In October, Sonny & Cher’s greatest-hits album,
The Best of Sonny & Cher
, was released the same month that they made a guest appearance on the hit television series
The Man from U.N.C.L.E
., which starred Robert Vaughan and David McCallum. Fortunately,
The Best of Sonny & Cher
was something of a hit for the duo, making it to Number 26 on the American album chart in
Billboard
magazine.

The single-disk
The Best of Sonny & Cher
album featured a montage of photos of the duo on the cover, with a colorful baroque pattern of designs framing them. The album featured a dozen of the duo’s biggest hits, teaming Top 10 hit “I Got You Babe,” “Laugh at Me,” “Little Man,” and “The Beat Goes On” with their recent singles like “It’s the Little Things” and “Living for You.” Conspicuously missing from the set was their other Top 10 hit, “Baby Don’t Go,” which had been on Reprise Records.

To promote their greatest-hits album, Sonny & Cher flew to New York City in November. Their stay in town encompassed Thanksgiving day. When Ahmet Ertegun, the president of Atlantic/ATCO Records, asked the pair what their plans were for the holiday, Sonny told him that they just planned to have a quiet dinner in their hotel room. Ahmet wouldn’t hear of such a thing, so he insisted that they join him in his East Side brownstone, where he would be serving dinner for several of his elite friends. According to Sonny, when they arrived there, they were instantly aware that they were out of their league. The dinner guests also included Andy Warhol, actress Viva, filmmaker Joel Schumacher, and
Vogue
magazine’s flamboyant editor Diana Vreeland. Drinks, cocaine, marijuana, and all sorts of intoxicants were consumed by the guests—except for Sonny and Cher. “Cher and I sat in the corner of a sofa like two aliens,” Sonny recalled. “It was eerie, watching everybody get loaded and loony” (35).

After salads and appetizers were served, the turkey was finally brought out. After everyone commented on the fabulous turkey, one young woman stood up as though she was going to say something, and instead projectile-vomited all over the turkey. Sonny and Cher excused themselves and left the brownstone. As they had originally planned, they returned to their hotel and ordered room service.

Cher’s next solo single, “You Better Sit Down Kids,” became a huge Top 10 hit for her, peaking at Number 9 in America in December of 1967. Another dramatic ballad about the breakup of a relationship, “You Better Sit Down Kids” is sung by a father leaving his children in a marital split. It didn’t matter that Cher was a young girl singing this song; she turned it into a soap-opera storytelling, at which she vocally excelled.

In December, Sonny & Cher released their last hit as recording artists for ATCO: “Good Combination.” Although “The Beat Goes On” had been a huge hit for them in February, in the United States and the United Kingdom, their five subsequent singles had all bombed. Not one of them cracked the Top 40 on either side of the Atlantic. “Good Combination” peaked at Number 56 in the United States alone. Their presence on the British charts was even more disappointing.

In retrospect, none of the five subsequent songs Sonny & Cher released in 1967 on ATCO were well suited to the marketplace. Not one of them was a worthy follow-up to “The Beat Goes On.” That song had been so “hip” and socially conscious. “Beautiful Story,” “Plastic Man,” and “Good Combination” were all out of the silly vaudevillian/lounge act mode that Sonny’s material increasingly veered toward. “Beautiful Story” was a silly pastiche of a song, “Plastic Man” opened with something that sounded like a Salvation Army street band—complete with tuba—and “Good Combination” sounded like the theme song to a 1960s TV show. The best song of the batch, “It’s the Little Things,” sadly got lost in the shuffle and never became the hit it deserved to be.

All of a sudden, after three years on top and five albums, Sonny & Cher put their recording career on hold. Although the two were continuing to tour as Sonny & Cher, Sonny’s focus turned to his new passion, turning Cher into a recording and movie star.

Once considered hip rock and rollers, in December 1967, Sonny & Cher opened their nightclub act at the cabaret at the Eden Roc Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. This was to be a somewhat oddly prophetic booking for them. Little did they suspect at the time, but the duo was destined to begin the decade of the 1970s as a “lounge act,” far from the rock realm and a million miles away from the hit record charts.