Life after love
Cher finally spills the beans about Sonny
Cher doesn’t need to turn back time because her time, as always, is now. But even Cher admits she is where – and to some extent, who – she is thanks to Sonny Bono, her late ex-husband.
The veteran singer pays an emotional tribute to him each night when she sings their beloved duet “I Got You Babe” at her ClassicCher Vegas show, accompanied by a video of Sonny.
“I didn’t think I could do it before,” Cher confesses. “I didn’t think I’d actually get through it.” But she does.
It has taken Cher many
years to resolve her conflicted feelings about Sonny and his influence on her life. Sonny and Cher were perhaps the most popular star couple of the 1970s and no small part of that is due to Sonny, who Cher met when she was just 16. “I was this massive amount of energy with no direction,” Cher admits. “I knew what I wanted to do, but I never would have gotten there without Sonny.”
They fell in love, had a child, struggled professionally, finally launched a hit variety show and sold over 40 million records before she walked away after 13 years.
“Sonny shaped her identity and made all of the pertinent decisions in her life,” tells biographer Mark Bego, author of Cher:IfYouBelieve.
But Cher was irritated by Sonny’s controlling nature and bitterly resented what she termed the “involuntary servitude” their marriage had become. Their split was acrimonious and their relationship remained tumultuous.
Sparksfly!
Sonny’s 1998 death in a skiing accident shook her to the core. But now, at 71, Cher has finally gained the perspective and wisdom to let go of all of the anger she’s felt toward her ex for so long and look back at their relationship with love.
“We had this bond I couldn’t break,” she says. “I couldn’t break it if he walked in this room right now.”
The story of Sonny and Cher changed every time it was retold, thanks in large part to Sonny’s gift for selfpromotion. But these days, Cher is finally opening up about their relationship and revealing new details.
The first time she saw 27-year-old Sonny in Los Angeles in 1962, “I swear to God, everyone else in the room disappeared,” she recalls. A high-school dropout with an absentee father, Cher had moved away from her mum Georgia Holt to live with a friend.
Charismatic and connected, Sonny worked for music producer Phil Spector and he took Cher under his wing, albeit platonically for the first year. “I don’t find you very attractive,” she remembers him saying.
Cher was an avid student,
“always watching how he dealt with stuff”, she tells. “I took every opinion he had and made it my own.”
With her rocky upbringing, Sonny gave Cher’s life structure she hadn’t experienced before. “He felt almost like my father,” she says. “He was the most stable person I’d ever met.”
Their relationship deepened by the time they struck gold with 1965’s “I Got You Babe” and though Cher suffered four miscarriages, she gave birth to a girl, Chastity, four years later. “It changed my whole life,” she tells. “I didn’t grow up until after I had the baby.”
Sonny and Cher tied the knot after Chastity’s birth and their fame grew with their TV hit, TheSonny&CherComedy
Hour, in 1971. Viewers loved their bickering, but off camera, Sonny’s dictatorial tendencies took a toll.
Cher says, “He didn’t want me to grow up or have any freedom.” Josiah Howard, author of Cher:StrongEnough, adds, “She couldn’t play tennis because he didn’t want to. She couldn’t go to certain movies.” He even banned her from cutting her hair.
Other problems arose. “Stardom made Sonny a huge womaniser,” Cher tells. Hurt and betrayed, she couldn’t eat or sleep. “I was literally going to jump off a balcony,” the singer reveals. “Then I thought, ‘Cher, why don’t you just leave him instead?’” And she did.
Once Cher made her decision
in 1974, she didn’t talk about it much. “It was like she grew up and grew away from him,” says Blair Farrington, who worked with the star following her divorce.
But more roadblocks lay in her path. Sonny and his lawyer owned Cher Enterprises. Music mogul David Geffen, who she dated, told her, “You know you’re an employee?” She felt tricked and trapped.
Her life after Sonny wasn’t easy. According to their contract, Cher was forbidden to work without him. “I really was flat-out alone and penniless,” she recalls. Cher’s confidence suffered as she tried to reinvent herself. “Sonny had made every decision for me,” the star recalls. “I knew how to
sing and how to be a mother. I didn’t know anything else.”
As they hammered out their 1975 divorce, Cher began testing her independence. “I always thought I was the minutest part of Sonny and Cher,” she confesses. “Then when I had to do things on my own, I thought, ‘Well, I’m not as weak as I thought.’”
Cher found a lucrative pay cheque in a 1980s Las Vegas residency, but she wasn’t happy. “I needed the money,” says the singer.
She’d married rocker Gregg Allman – who died last month at 69 – four days after divorcing Sonny. The couple had a son, Elijah Blue, but they divorced in 1979. “I had both of my kids and I had to pay Sonny this huge settlement,” says Cher.
What she really wanted to do was act. So when film producer Joe Papp let her audition for the 1981 Broadway production of ComeBackto the 5 & Dime, JimmyDean, JimmyDean, she jumped at it. “I was really good,” she boasts. Then the star walked away from a $485,000-a-week Vegas gig to pursue her dream. “Her knack for reinventing herself amazes me,” says her colleague Blair.
After JimmyDean, Cher landed roles opposite Meryl Streep in Silkwood and Sam Elliott in Mask. She struck Oscar gold for her lead part opposite Nicolas Cage in 1987’s Moonstruck. Cher
had come into her own.
Sonny hadn’t been so lucky. His third wife, lifestyle guru Susie Coelho, recalls, “When Cher became huge, Sonny wasn’t completely supportive of her fame.”
Still, some of their old spark returned when they reunited on LateNightwith
DavidLetterman in 1987. “It wasn’t just Sonny who was crying,” Cher recalls. “Most of the audience was in tears.”
But she was icy and had emotionally moved on. The star remembers, “I was thinking about finishing the show. I had other things to do.”
Eleven years later, Sonny, by then a congressman for California, died in that tragic skiing accident in Nevada. At the time, he and Cher were battling over their daughter Chastity’s unhappiness – she had already come out as gay, but it wouldn’t be until 2009 that she publicly identified as transgender and became Chaz.
“When Sonny died, Cher felt she had been hit by a ton of bricks,” tells her biographer Mark. But not until recently has she been able to completely forgive him and embrace his memory.
“Sonny could be the best person you ever met – the funniest, the most adorable – or not,” Cher says. “I could forgive him almost anything.”
That newfound perspective on her ex comes as she has grown introspective, with Cher candidly confessing, “When I think about my life, it was a really good life. It was hard. It was crazy.”
It will also be a Broadway musical in 2018, as the star confirmed this month, but it will show a Sonny that’s very different to how she once thought of him. “I couldn’t wait to not be Sonny and Cher,” she says. “But I don’t mind going back – it’s my choice now.”
Sonny had made every decision for me. I knew how to sing and how to be else’ a mother. I didn’t know anything