Cher (18 page)

Cher was less forthcoming with details when she later recounted the story of their breakup. In her version of the story she claimed, “One day I thought, ‘I’m gonna jump off the top of this building, or I’m gonna leave Sonny. And that night I thought, ‘Fuck it, I can’t jump off the top of this building. And, I left him. But for me it had come down to a choice, and it took me forever” (62).

What was Sonny’s reaction? According to her, “ ‘He said, ‘O.K.,’ ” and she walked out. However, she explained, “He told me later he thought about throwing me off the balcony” (18).

It wasn’t even an argument. I just left. I said I needed three hundred dollars and I was going to San Francisco, and Sonny gave me the money. I said afterward, “Why did you do that?” Sonny said, “Because you never said anything like that before, so I figured that you must have meant it.” I didn’t have a black eye. If I had a black eye, everyone would have known about it. In eleven years Sonny never laid a hand on me, which I think is a terrific thing (34).

And so began the liberation of Cher Bono.

6

DARK LADY

Cher returned to Los Angeles to the couple’s massive Holmby Hills home, and she and Sonny proceeded to live separate lives under the same roof, keeping news of their breakup a secret from the public. On December 9, 1972, Sonny & Cher finished filming their TV program’s Christmas episode. From the TV viewer’s perspective, if looked like just another warm and loving episode of their program. In reality, it was the beginning of the end of
The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour
, and the end of Sonny & Cher—pop music’s perfect couple.

From 1973 to 1974 Sonny & Cher kept performing together in concert and on their television show. The public and their fans were kept in the dark about the unthinkable truth behind the façade of the pop world’s sweethearts. While their marriage was completely over, their professional career continued. Sonny & Cher were starting to live the themes of their songs—especially their recent duet about the breakup of a marriage, “The Greatest Show on Earth.”

Cher’s affair with Bill Hamm only lasted a few months. At that point, she began dating another member of the Sonny & Cher band, keyboard player David Paich.

In an effort to recover Sonny & Cher’s suddenly slipping appeal on the album charts, MCA called for another live concert album to be recorded. The resulting album,
Sonny & Cher Live in Las Vegas, Volume 2
was released on October 15, 1973, and did even less well on the charts, only
reaching Number 175 in America. It was recorded at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas and was produced by Sonny’s friend Denis Pregnolato.

A live version of Cher singing the song “Superstar” was released as a Sonny & Cher single, but it failed to chart. Although it was a fantastic song, and Cher did a great job singing it, it was a bad idea as a single. Rita Coolidge had originally made it famous in 1970 on Joe Cocker’s
Mad Dogs and Englishmen
album. Bette Midler had just recorded it on her
Divine Miss M
album, and the Carpenters’ version had already been a Number 2 hit in 1971.

According to band member David Hungate, “For a whole year, we were operating behind a façade. Sonny had his girlfriend on the road, Cher was seeing whoever she was seeing at the time, and they were appearing on-stage as this all-American couple. Sonny was under a lot of stress, making the comeback and knowing that he could lose it all again overnight” (55).

They also continued living in their mansion together, at least under the same roof. Sonny and his new girlfriend, Connie, would occupy one end of the house, and Cher would come and go at the other end. It was the living embodiment of Cher’s hit song “Living in a House Divided.”

On September 20, 1973, thirty-one-year-old music industry insider David Geffen threw a star-studded party at his new club, Roxy, on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Among the celebrities to attend that night, and listen to Neil Young perform, were Carole King, Elton John, Bob Dylan, and Cher. Although Geffen had originally met Cher a decade earlier when she was a background singer of Phil Spector’s at Gold Star Records, that particular night sparks flew. Geffen gave Cher his Beverly Hills address and invited her to have dinner there the next night, and she accepted.

Geffen and Cher sat up until late at night pouring out their own personal frustrations to each other. Cher told him how painfully disastrous her marriage to Sonny was—and how they were now holding their relationship together just for the sake of their careers. Geffen was equally as frank and forthcoming with revealing his deepest and darkest personal secrets. Most notably, he confided in her that he couldn’t decide whether he was gay or straight. Having been exposed to gay men and women all of her life, Cher was undaunted by this revelation. He also told her that he longed to have a functional relationship with a woman, because he felt that this would make him by far the happiest. According to Cher, they instantly hit it off. Within several days she began a sexual relationship with him, the first functional heterosexual one of his life.

“I’m not alone anymore,” Cher recalls thinking to herself once her affair with David Geffen blossomed. “I was the first person to share his bed
and
to share his life. . . . we were really crazy about each other” (63). After that, they were inseparable.

Although Cher was in love with David, and the attention he showered her with, her daughter Chastity was not. “I really didn’t like Geffen, because he was the first person Mom dated after my Dad,” she was later to say. “Actually, Geffen tells the funniest story. Apparently, I walked in on him in the bathtub when he was naked, and I made some comment about my Dad’s dick being bigger than his” (64).

The failure of Cher’s all-standards
Bittersweet White Light
album drove home the fact that although it might be fun to watch Cher sing these old songs as costume vignettes on the duo’s television variety show, she was no Billie Holiday when it came to singing the blues. What the public loved from Cher—and always has—were sweeping mini-musical dramas set to rock and roll.

Anxious to return Cher to hit-making status, Snuff Garrett was back on the case for her next pair of MCA albums. Snuff worked with a musical arranger named Al Capps. It was Capps, along with a writing partner named Mary Dean, who came up with “Half Breed.” Playing up the fact that Cher’s mixed heritage includes some Native American roots, the song was tailor-made for her. It included an all-male Indian tribal chant, which sounded reminiscent of Johnny Preston’s 1960 hit “Running Bear.” However, according to Garrett, the chant on “Half Breed” actually mimicked a Dallas, Texas, jingle for a local Pontiac dealership, not Preston’s song.

The song was brilliantly conceived and executed as a Cher story/song about a girl shunned for being half American Indian and half white. The
Half Breed
album cover featured a striking photo of Cher on horseback in the wilderness. The whole project was a smashing success. “Half Breed” zoomed up the charts in America, hitting Number 1 in October 1973. The album went to Number 28 on the
Billboard
chart and was certified Gold.

When Cher debuted “Half Breed” on television, Bob Mackie designed one of his most famous spangled—and controversial—outfits for her to wear. Atop her head she wore a huge white-feathered headdress, decorated with alternating red and yellow feathers, cascading from her head down to her toes. As a top, she wore a 1970s-style backless halter top with sequins and tassels, and from the waist down she wore a long loincloth
that reached down to her silver-strapped platform shoes. Not only did her navel show in this bare midriff Native American-inspired outfit, she appeared to be half nude!

According to Cher, at the time, “I remember when I first got that [outfit on] I thought, ‘Oh my God, Sonny’s going to have a heart attack when I walk out in this!’ It looked like I was naked and he was always a little bizarre about that. But he saw me in it, and he was O.K. with it” (39). The “Half Breed” outfit was in fact so hot that Mackie actually produced it in several colors for her.

The other sort of over-the-top story/song that Cher sang on the
Half Breed
album was a song, written for her by John Durrill, called “Carousel Man.” It was “Gypsys, Tramps and Thieves” in a carnival setting. The bulk of the rest of the album was made up of several of the current rock ballads of the era, including Paul McCartney & Wings’ “My Love,” the Bee Gees’ “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” and the Beatles’ “Long and Winding Road.” Another song was one that had been a hit for Seals & Crofts of “Summer Breeze” fame. It was originally entitled “Ruby Jean & Billie Lee” and was written about the duo’s respective wives. Cher took the song and made it more personal to her by turning it into a song for her daughter, entitled “Chastity Sun.” It was quite effective, and was one of Cher’s favorites from this album.

Another song from the
Half Breed
album, which was perfectly autobiographical, was the Gloria Sklerov and Harry Lloyd composition, “Two People Clinging to a Thread.” It was another song about two people living under the same roof while their relationship had totally eroded. Cher’s singing on this song sounds convincingly effective.

In early 1974, Sonny & Cher finished filming their final episodes of
The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour
. One of the last skits that they taped found Cher portraying the role of Mother Nature and Sonny a seeker of truth and wisdom. “Mother Nature, what is the secret of life?” Sonny asked Cher. Instead of reciting the line she was supposed to say, Cher looked at him and blasted back, “Go fuck yourself” (35). It was getting increasingly difficult for them to even be civil to each other.

Thursday, February 22, 1974, was the final taping day of the last episode of
The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour
. Afterward, the duo was scheduled to board a plane for Houston, Texas. It was there that they were booked for what would be the final Sonny & Cher concert performance. Prior to leaving the studio, Sonny said to
TV Guide
reporter Rowland Barber, “Our future begins tomorrow, with the rodeo at the
Astrodome. I don’t know what Cher’s doing, but after that I’m taking a little vacation” (65).

They were scheduled at the Astrodome for two shows, and a local rodeo was going on there at the same time. According to Sonny, they both arrived in separate cars, performed an afternoon and an evening show, and left in separate cars. What Sonny recalls the most was the smell of animal dung wafting up from underneath the temporary stage from which the duo sang to Houston’s enthusiastic rodeo fans. According to him, “The whole place smelled like shit. It was an appropriate metaphor for what Cher and I had become, the whole dismal, depressing, distressing situation” (35). At that point, “the love children of a generation” went their separate ways and allowed their lawyers to sweep up the shattered pieces of their private and personal partnership.

On February 20, 1974, Cher had marched into court and filed for divorce from Sonny. Publicly she would claim that being married to him made her feel like she was living a life of servitude under him. From this point on, the adventures of Sonny & Cher shifted from the network TV screen to the covers of magazines like the
Star
and the
National Enquirer
. In the press, the separated duo began to pour out their individual sides of the story. Their millions of fans were in shock.

However, no one was more stunned than Sonny. He couldn’t figure out why Cher wanted out of their marriage, let alone their successful business enterprises. When the pieces settled, Sonny was to claim,

I was Cher’s foil, her heavy, her boob. But I didn’t mind playing straight man because I knew that once our time before the TV cameras was over, and we went home, I was the boss. We cooked and we loved, and we did all the things that a husband and wife do. But you wouldn’t know it from the things Cher has said about me. Cher’s an ingrate. I made her what she is today. She’s never had the decency to set straight all those rotten lies about me—where she said I loafed while she did all the work. Not only are these stories lies, but they’ve begun to hurt my career. When we began, I used to have to coax Cher to go on stage, because she was frightened (66).

Then came the day when she lowered the boom on me. We had just resigned a three-year contract for our television show and were playing in Las Vegas when Cher came to me one night before the show and whispered, “Sonny, you told me that if anything ever was bothering me that I should tell you, right?” I said, “Right. What’s on your mind?” “The truth is,” she told me, “that it makes me jumpy to have you around the house. I feel as if I can’t be myself. I can’t play the radio. I can’t listen to records. So you’ll move out, O.K.” (66).

According to Bono, “I muttered, ‘Cher, don’t you realize what this will do to our careers? Your career? America will hate you. This will be your Nagasaki. We are the love children of a generation. Don’t you realize that every time I push back a strand of your hair, a million fans go out and buy another Sonny & Cher record? We’re America’s sweethearts’ ” (13).