Cher (19 page)

What were their alternatives? Could they possibly have split up privately and still gone on as “America’s sweethearts” on camera? Admitted Sonny,

Our separation remained a well-kept secret for a year, throughout which we continued to perform together on television as if nothing had happened. I would have worked that way indefinitely. I was even willing to go along with CBS [TV] exec Fred Silverman’s idea to do
The Sonny & Cher Divorce Show
, designed to show that divorced couples need not necessarily hate each other. It was Cher who was unwilling (13).

Ironically, it sounded more like she was leaving her father than leaving her husband. In many ways this was exactly true. Admitted Cher, “We never should have gotten married. Our life together was a good show, but the cast was all wrong. He was playing husband, mother and father. I was Chastity’s mother, but I was really the older child. Sonny needs unquestioning adoration from a woman, and I couldn’t give that to him” (67).

The last episode of
The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour
aired on May 29, 1974. It was the show’s sixty-fifth episode. While Sonny was living with model Connie Foreman, Cher was very publicly involved with David Geffen and living with him.

When Cher was with Sonny, she was used to having everything done for her. With David Geffen, she grew used to having the same kind of pampering, plus lots of expensive gifts as well. He made certain that her white Porsche Daytona always had a full tank of gasoline and loved squiring her around town. Here was a man who wasn’t even certain whether or not he was heterosexual—and all of a sudden he had one of Hollywood’s most glamorous and famous women on his arm. They were photographed together at the Grammy Awards, and
Esquire
magazine even wrote a huge article about their affair, called “The Winning of Cher.” Anticipating marrying Cher, Geffen purchased a gorgeous Rolls Royce
for her, but she didn’t like it, so he gave the car to his brother and replaced it with an expensive diamond necklace. On another occasion, he bought her a large diamond ring to bribe her to quit smoking.

The very public breakup of Sonny & Cher was a glitzy real-life soap opera at its best. In a June 1, 1974, cover story in
TV Guide
magazine, the battling Bonos each took the opportunity to state their sides of the story. Proclaimed Cher,

Sonny was more of a mother to me than my own mother, if you know what I mean. But now I have to break out. And, Sonny’s not willing to make the transition with me. He’s always been used to Cher’s being one way. It’s doing this show that’s changed me. It was my first chance at really being a 50/50 partner with Sonny. . . . If nothing else ever happened to me, I’d have this high point in my life to look back on (68).

In the same article, Sonny pondered, “Separation sure is different when you’re publicly known people. I think it’s big of Cher and myself to say, ‘Hey, we have some problems.’ Of course it affects [the audience]. It affects us on-stage—can’t help it. But you saw the taping. There was more warmth than ever before between them and us” (68).

By 1974, Cher had recorded and released twenty-five record albums with and without Sonny, she had made three movies, and she was the star of one of America’s most popular Top 10 television shows. However, none of the publicity and notoriety that she had received up to this point could top the media coverage she got when she broke up America’s favorite couple and filed for a legal separation. This was just the beginning of the tabloid fireworks between Sonny and Cher, while the divorce proceedings dragged out over the next two years. It was clear that the real-life Sonny & Cher show was far from over.

While David Geffen was a wizard in the record business, he was not especially handsome. At the time, Cher quipped of her new lover, “I traded one short, ugly man for another” (17). Whatever Geffen might have lacked visually in the sex appeal department, he certainly made up for it in the business arena. Already a self-made millionaire in 1974, David had founded and become chairman of Elektra/Asylum Records, where he personally discovered, signed, and nurtured the talents of several singer/songwriters, including Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Carly Simon, Jackson Browne, and Judy Collins. He was not a record producer, but the record business’s hot new deal maker. He was also instrumental in shaping Cher’s new life post-Sonny. He encouraged her to get her
business affairs in order, bolstered her ego and insecurities, attempted to set her life on the right track, and eventually asked her to marry him.

Although Sonny & Cher were through, Cher’s solo career kept on chugging along like nothing was wrong.
Half Breed
had been such a hit in 1973 that MCA put her back in the recording studio with Snuff Garrett. This time around, they came up with their most adventurous album together. The 1974 album
Dark Lady
starts out with steam engine propulsion with Alan O’Day’s exciting “Train of Thought.” It then glides into the medium tempo “I Saw a Man and He Danced with His Wife,” a beautiful John Durrill song about love lost.

Snuff Garrett had several different songwriters he liked to work with. One of them was Durrill. He was one of the founding members of the Five Americans (“Western Union,” 1967), and he was presently the keyboard player with the Ventures (“Hawaii Five-O” theme, 1969). He was also responsible for what is perhaps Cher’s most tailor-made hit, “Dark Lady.” Says Durrill, “I had the idea of a woman meeting a fortune teller. I originally had a totally different ending, though. I was in Japan with the Ventures, when I got a note from Snuff ‘John: Make sure he kills her.’ So I went ahead and rewrote the last verse of ‘Dark Lady.’ Everybody knew it was a hit the minute they heard Cher’s vocal on the playback, though she didn’t particularly like it” (55).

Garrett once again proved that he knew a surefire hit when he heard one. “Dark Lady” was exactly that. When it was released in the spring of 1974, it became her third Number 1 hit in America and was so popular that it was also certified Gold for selling over a million copies. It also made it to Number 36 in England. (Oddly enough, it was to be Cher’s last single to even chart in England in over ten years.)

Three of the most fun songs on the
Dark Lady
album are “Rescue Me,” “What’ll I Do,” and “Miss Subway of 1952,” which are all completely different from one another. Bette Midler at this point had produced two hit albums proving that she could not only sell a sad ballad, but she also excelled at bawdy songs on which she played what used to be known as “a broad.” Cher admired Bette, and the song “Miss Subway of 1952” was her tribute to the woman who called herself “the divine Miss M.” In fact, Cher ad-libs at the beginning of this Mary F. Cain song with “To my idol the ‘Divine,’ let’s hope this never happens to us.” She then proceeds to sing of a disheveled woman cut from the same cloth as her comic creation Laverne.

“Rescue Me” had been a hit in 1965 for Fontella Bass. This was to become the first in a series of great remakes of “girl groups”–style 1960s
tunes Cher would record. By the end of the century, the tally of Cher songs using this formula was to include “The Shoop Shoop Song,” “Oh No Not My Baby,” “Baby I Love You,” and “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).” As on “Rescue Me,” Cher sounds like she is genuinely having a fun time singing these songs.

By deciding to record the Irving Berlin song “What’ll I Do” Cher proved once and for all that she could sell a classic “standard” song with the best of them. In 1974 the new Mia Farrow and Robert Redford film version of
The Great Gatsby
was all the rage. Music and fashion all went 1920s-style that season, from the photo of Redford in his strawberry ice cream–colored Gatsby suit, to a revived interest in the music of Irving Berlin. An instrumental version of the song “What’ll I Do” was used as the theme for the movie, and Cher happily jumped on the Roaring Twenties bandwagon with her own version of it, yielding a classy and beautifully orchestrated recording.

This highly varied album ends with Bob Stone’s “Apples Don’t Fall Far from the Tree.” This was another one of Cher’s shady-lady tales told in song. In this one, she lyrically tells of a woman who finally falls in love with a man who has no idea that she once sold herself at a brothel called Ruby’s.

For the album cover of
Dark Lady
, Cher enlisted famed fashion photographer Richard Avedon, who had photographed her several times in the past for
Vogue
magazine. The exotic-looking black-and-white photo was a full body shot of Cher, dressed in a sheer black ankle-length gown, holding a black cat like the one she sang about in the album’s title song. It was such a striking photograph that
Newsweek
magazine ran it in their regular “Newsmakers” section of the magazine. The cat’s hind feet were planted on Cher’s exposed right shoulder, and its front feet were on her outstretched palms. According to Cher, “The cat was a superfine feline. It had incredible claws, but they never came out once” (69). From this point onward, the covers of Cher’s albums would all be elaborate costume affairs, utilizing some of the hottest photographers in the business.

Released on May 13, 1974,
Dark Lady
was quite successful, yet it only made it to Number 69 on the American album charts. Still, it continued to produce hit after hit for Cher. “Train of Thought” made it to Number 27 in America, followed by “I Saw a Man and He Danced with His Wife” at Number 42. “Rescue Me” was later released as a single, in 1975.

Actress Sally Kirkland became acquainted with Cher during this transitional period in her life.

When I first met her, it was in 1974. I was giving a party for Bobby De Niro and Al Pacino. It was a party I had given to welcome them both to Hollywood, from New York. Cher came to that, and so did Mama Cass, and hordes of others. I remember that Bobby was hiding outside the house, because he was so intimidated. I remember that Cher was thrilled to meet him. That was when I first met her. She would always come to the parties. I have to admit, that it was Cher who gave me the courage to dress outrageously. I always liked her, and was always grateful that she was so uniquely her. I had gotten to watch her on TV for years, and a lot of my hippie look was copycatted from her. She has an amazing amount of courage and balls. When she broke up with Sonny, she went down a road that was not an easy one. For the most part, she has been a single woman taking on the world as a single woman. I am sure that myself, and many others have made bold decisions based on the strength we have gotten from her courage. I could sense it the minute I met her (70).

Cher’s current record deal had ended with MCA’s 1974 release
Cher/Greatest Hits
, which peaked on the charts at Number 152 in December of that year. As part of Sonny & Cher, her last MCA album was the
Sonny & Cher/Greatest Hits
album, which included all of their Kapp/MCA studio-produced hits plus the live nightclub versions of their signature songs “The Beat Goes On” and “I Got You Babe.” It also marked the first album appearance of their Budweiser beer theme–like song “When You Say Love.” Unlike an effervescent bottle of beer, sales on this album were decidedly flat. Released on September 3, 1974,
Sonny & Cher/Greatest Hits
only made it to Number 146 on the
Billboard
album chart in America.

Thanks to David Geffen’s negotiating, Cher signed a new $2.5 million record deal with Warner Brothers Records. It was also Geffen’s idea to reunite her in the recording studio with Phil Spector. According to Geffen at the time, “Phil Spector was my idol. He was God” (71). Since Cher had sung on three of Phil Spector’s biggest hit productions—“Da Doo Ron Ron,” “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” and “Be My Baby,”—it seemed like a logical step to put Cher back in the studio with him. Spector’s manic behavior during this era is equally legendary in the music business. After he married Ronnie Bennett, the lead singer of the Ronettes, he had lived holed-up in their Los Angeles mansion, only occasionally venturing out into the light of day. In the 1970s, Ronnie had escaped Phil’s clutches and much like Cher, was trying to find her own way as a solo singer. Phil’s last major project had been remixing some
jumbled-up audio tapes that the Beatles had produced before their
Abbey Road
LP, and they were released as the Fab Four’s 1970 farewell album
Let It Be
.

Geffen cut a deal with Warner Brothers Records and Phil Spector to record and release one Cher test single on “Warner/Spector Records.” The resulting 1974 single was to be Cher’s big “break out” hit on the label. Unfortunately it was a highly noncommercial failure. The “A” side was “A Woman’s Story,” which was a big dramatic “wall of sound” ballad with an ethereal chorus of voices, sounding as if Cher was delivering a message from heaven above. The “B” side was a slowed-down version of the Ronettes’ 1963 smash, “Baby I Love You.” Cher’s vocal on “A Woman’s Story” is really quite strong and forceful; unfortunately, the sound of the song was simply not what was commercial in 1974. The public wanted to hear more trashy story/songs à la “Dark Lady” and “Gypsys, Tramps and Thieves” from Cher. They didn’t want eclectic audio artwork from her. To her audience she was a pop star at that time and was not considered to be a serious rock diva. The follow-up Spector-produced single was a duet with Harry Nilsson, entitled “A Love Like Yours.” Again, it came and went without much fanfare. Today, original copies of “A Woman’s Story” are ultimate collectors’ items, second only to copies of “Ringo I Love You” and original 1970s Cher dolls. After “A Woman’s Story” and “A Love Like Yours” failed to become hits, Spector was out of the deal.

Still following David Geffen’s advice, Cher began work on the first of three solo albums for Warner Brothers. It was their intention that this was the album that was going to make millions of fans around the world take her seriously as a rock star, and not as just a pop singer. At the time Cher announced,