Cher (44 page)

We started this record in such a weird way, because the first thing I recorded was “After All,” and that was such a long time ago. They needed the song for the movie soundtrack. [Album coordinator] John Kalodner listens to the songs first and gives them to me and I choose the ones I like. In this case, the producers came with their own songs. Desmond [Child] came with his material and Michael Bolton came in with his songs. And you know that if you pick a Michael Bolton song, he’s gonna produce it. I had as much artistic control as I wanted, but I didn’t take enough. I love the songs, and I think my performance isn’t bad, but the music isn’t exactly what I wanted it to be. I tend to like music that’s a little harder. . . . The only change I would make on this album would be to make the music a little harder. I’d make it more guitar-oriented. My first love in life is rock & roll. I can do that style of music easily, but I’m having to work my way there (164).

In rock and roll terms, Cher’s
Heart of Stone
album was a perfect one. Assembled using nearly all of the same producers as she had on the
Cher
album, it contained six different cuts from Diane Warren’s songbook, either written solo or with cowriters Michael Bolton, Desmond Child, Jon Bon Jovi, and Richie Sambora. The songs were nearly all recorded with the same “power ballad” approach that had made Cher’s previous album such a self-assured hit. The one main exception to this formula was the song “After All,” which was the theme song to the movie
Chances Are
. A duet with Peter Cetera of the group Chicago, it is more of a delicate ballad and was produced by Peter Asher.

Aside from the hit singles,
Heart of Stone
also featured several exquisite cuts that made this one of her strongest albums ever. Among these
songs is “Love on a Rooftop,” written by Desmond Child and Diane Warren. Directly mimicking Phil Spector’s famed “Wall of Sound” recording formula, this electrifying cut echoes the pounding beat and forceful vocal delivery that once made the Ronettes so exciting in the 1960s. In fact, the song was originally introduced by Ronnie Spector on her little-known 1987 album,
Unfinished Business
. However, Cher’s dynamite version of this song takes the lamenting tune of days gone by and turns it into an anthem of hope.

Propelled by the amazing number of five separate hit singles,
Heart of Stone
ultimately sold over two million copies in the United States alone, hitting Number 10 in America and Number 7 in the United Kingdom. At the time, in America, this was her highest-charting solo album ever and the biggest-selling one of her whole career, as either a solo artist or as one-half of Sonny & Cher.

This relentless string of hits showed her off as a strong and confident belter of rock songs with crackle and excitement. “After All” (Number 6/U.S.), “If I Could Turn Back Time” (Number 3/U.S., Number 6/UK), “Just Like Jesse James” (Number 8/U.S., Number 7/UK), “Heart of Stone” (Number 20/U.S., Number 43/UK), and “You Wouldn’t Know Love” (Number 55/UK). Furthermore, both “After All” and “If I Could Turn Back Time” were certified Gold million-sellers by the RIAA in the United States.

One of the reasons for the huge success of the song “If I Could Turn Back Time” was the totally outrageous video that was filmed to promote it. Cher still had a sexy body, and she chose to show it off in a way that topped even her four most famous flesh-revealing outfits—the “Half Breed” loincloth, the “Take Me Home” Viking drag, the “Prisoner” slave-in-chains, and her see-through
Moonstruck
Oscar-accepting costume.

Said her designer, Bob Mackie, “When we design the costumes for her, it has nothing to do with fashion. It has nothing to do with anything but the fact that we are attempting to present to the world this . . . creature in her own right” (8). If that wasn’t the truth. This outfit alone restated the fact that there is truly no one in show business even remotely like Cher!

Shot aboard a U.S. Navy ship, this video gave the sailors a show quite unlike any they would have expected from a forty-two-year-old Academy Award–winning movie star. While dancing and prancing aboard the ship’s deck, and straddling cannon barrels, from below the waist, Cher appeared to be wearing two pieces of ribbon about an inch in width,
joined at the crotch and leaving little to the imagination. To say that she had “bikini waxed” was a sheer understatement. The “If I Could Turn Back Time” video was in fact so risqué that it was banned by MTV and was allowed to be shown only after midnight. Always one who loved to shock her fans, this time around, Cher had truly outdone herself.

When her video was banned, Cher remained uncharacteristically blasé about it. “When they pulled my video from MTV, I understood it,” she claimed. “I didn’t care that they banned it. I really didn’t. It might not be suitable for very small children” (8). However, she claimed that she simply had a side of her personality that somehow needed to shock her audience.

Sometimes I get really tired and don’t have the energy to play Cher. Someone once asked me how I was able to wear that revealing outfit on the new video. But it’s weird because that’s not really me. In my private life, I’m really shy and introverted as a person. I can do things in my public life that I could never do in private. Cher could play to a hundred thousand people, but I would have trouble talking to one person. They’re both me, but “Cher” is just such a different part of my personality. One’s private and one’s something else that I don’t understand at all (164).

In true Cher form, that year the pop diva had the distinction of being named 1989’s “Worst Dressed Female Rock Artist” by
Rolling Stone
magazine. The same publication, in its 1989 annual Critic’s Awards, declared “If I Could Turn Back Time” the year’s “Worst Video.” Criticisms like this seemed to just roll off her back like water on a duck’s feathers.

What I do, I do for myself and my fans—the new ones and the die-hard ones. The other people, the critics, what they say is like the poison of the business. But you have to take that along with the good. Sometimes the critics just try to be cute or try to make a name for themselves. There are so many silly things that go into it that you don’t know what the fuck they’re trying to do. I think my fans have been unbelievable, because they just stuck by me when it looked like I was dead to the world and never coming back (164).

In the album liner notes of
Heart of Stone
, Cher doubly credits John Kalodner. According to her,

John Kalodner’s name is on the album twice. And, can I tell you something? If his name was all over, it was stamped on every part of the album, it wouldn’t be too much as far as I’m concerned. The only reason I’m on Geffen Records is because of John Kalodner. I’d be on Desert Island Records if not for him. I didn’t want to make the first album. I didn’t want to get back into the record business. I’m not nearly as good a singer as I am an actress. As a singer, I could never do what I really wanted to, because I wasn’t good enough. But I was smart enough to hear that I wasn’t cutting it vocally (164).

One of the most bizarre aspects of the
Heart of Stone
album packaging was the artwork on the original version of it—which is now something of a collector’s item. The cover was an artist’s drawing of Cher seated on the ground next to a rounded, heart-shaped stone. However, if you look at the illustration from afar, you can see Cher’s body positioning connects the silhouette of a dead man’s skull. The way the waistband of her dress wrinkles, teeth are formed, and the white-faced sketch of her face forms the skull’s eye socket. There is a famous Victorian illustration of a woman at a vanity table, but if you look at it from afar, it too forms the silhouette of a human skull. This illustration was very similar, but starred a forlorn-looking Cher. It was fascinating, yet hideous at the same time. Commenting on artist Octavio Occampo’s grim front and back cover designs, Cher claimed, “I think the album cover is a fiasco, but I’m crazy about it. It’s like one of those gigantic mistakes that got totally fucked, but when I look at it, it’s so me. I think it’s ugly, but I like it a lot” (164).

When Geffen Records went back to press the next run of
Heart of Stone
albums, the artwork had been completely changed. The ugly illustration was gone, replaced by a new portrait of Cher, by Herb Ritts. The album had already been certified Platinum in America when the artwork switch was done.

While Cher was in the recording studio working on her second album for Geffen Records, her relationship with her Bagel Boy, Robert Camilletti, was heading toward a crashing finale. While her fame was in the less-than-meteoric phase, they had found it easy to live together and go out in public together without any major incidents. Robert had not only costarred in Cher’s “I Found Someone” video, he had also landed a couple of featured roles in movies. He had also worked as a disc jockey at dance clubs. However, ever since Cher had won her Oscar in 1988, she was pursued by the press, stalkers, and the paparazzi even more relentlessly than ever before. When a rumor circulated that Cher and Robert were about to get married in a top-secret ceremony, the intrusive press encroached even further.

In order to approach or leave Cher’s Benedict Canyon home, which she lived in at the time, one would have to come down a long driveway. It was becoming increasingly more and more difficult for Cher and Robert to come and go out of the place without some kind of confrontation. Even the contents of their garbage cans were scrutinized by the press. Living in Cher’s universe was beginning to become a suffocating experience.

On one particular occasion, a press photographer in a car nearly ran Cher and Robert off the road and into a ditch, just trying to get a photograph. The following day, Cher had a doctor’s appointment, so they devised a plan to have Robert drive Cher’s car out first and divert the photographers at the gate. Their plan worked well on the exit phase. However, when Robert returned to the house to meet Cher, a pair of photographers jumped out at him and caused him to crash the car. He wasn’t hurt by the crash, but was angered intensely and took off on foot to pursue the photographers. After they fled, Camilletti sabotaged their car by yanking the phone out of it.

When the police arrived to investigate, the photographers claimed that Robert had threatened to kill them, so they had no choice but to take him down to the police station in handcuffs. Cher followed the police car down to the station, while Robert was booked, and she was going to post bail. However, as Cher sat in the police station, she found herself surrounded by a sea of press photographers flashing cameras at her. Meanwhile, in his cell, Camilletti was taking his own dose of verbal abuse from a cop who came up to him and commented, “Oh yeah, you’re the Wop that’s fucking Cher” (25).

Cher bailed Robert out, and they went home. However, he announced to her that he was done living in a fishbowl with her and that he was going home to Brooklyn. She was later to philosophically say of her affairs with younger men, “Val [Kilmer] left me. Robert [Camilletti] left me. The two of them were really young, and they were both looking for their own identity, and I’m a big shadow. The men I pick aren’t very impressed with my lifestyle. I always pick men who are more work-ethic sorts. I like straight men” (8).

On March 18, 1989, Cher was one of the stars of the HBO-TV special
Comic Relief III
, a benefit for the homeless. The show was hosted by Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg, and Robin Williams. The other stars to perform live at Universal Amphitheater included Arsenio Hall, Shelley Long, Gary Shandling, and Martin Short.

When
Heart of Stone
was released in the stores, Cher began a 1989 concert tour to promote it. The first of her appearances on this tour was in front of a crowd of 16,000 people at an outdoor amphitheater in Mansfield, Massachusetts. It was also her first concert appearance in eight years. That night, the concert was held to celebrate the tenth anniversary of a Boston radio station, WXKS-FM. When Cher reached the part of the show in which she was going to perform the song “We All Sleep Alone,” she announced from the stage, “This next song has particular meaning for me, because I just broke up with my boyfriend” (172). Backstage that night, a resolute Cher was quoted as saying of her breakup with Robert, “It’s okay. That’s life” (144).
People
magazine snidely swiped, “As for Camilletti, he’s still spinning discs, perhaps dreaming of someday running for Mayor of Palm Springs” (173).

Up to this point, Cher had always prided herself on being a dynamo of boundless energy. The idea of launching a concert tour, promoting her new album, promoting her perfume, promoting health spas, and beginning work on a new movie just seemed like business as usual for her. She was only forty-three years old, and in tip-top shape—why not go for it? With that, she plunged herself into that 1989 concert tour.

One of the most exciting aspects of the tour was that Cher’s son, thirteen-year-old Elijah Blue Allman was featured as a background guitar player. If your mother and your father are both rock stars, why not get into the family business? Also, Cher delightfully included fellow Phil Spector–days alumna Darlene Love as one of her background singers on this particular tour.

With her boundless enthusiasm, Cher worked with director/choreographer Kenny Ortega to create a spectacle of a rock show. Said Ortega at the time,

[It’s] a tense gig, put together in a relatively short period. Everybody was handpicked by Cher. I set up dancer auditions for her, and with the musicians, she saw maybe 70 guitar players, and sat through every one of them. And, she didn’t want a heavy metal show, but she liked the idea of a “heavy” set, something monstrous she could play with and we could climb in. Then two days before we left L.A., she said, “Kenny, let’s get props, let’s get crazy” (174).

The concert tour was a huge success. The top ticket prices for her shows were $200, and scalpers were asking—and getting—up to $600 a ticket. In August of 1989 Cher headlined at the Sands Casino Hotel in
Atlantic City, New Jersey. She may not have wanted to become a “Vegas” act again, but by playing Atlantic City, wasn’t she actually contradicting herself? Oh well, that’s so Cher.