In “Cher: The Memoir, Part One,” the 78-year-old icon shares details about being overworked and completely controlled by her first husband, Sonny Bono, who reportedly admitted to having Consider killing her even if she has suicidal thoughts.
The pair became famous with their 1965 hit “I Got You Babe,” and by the time “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour,” which ran from 1971 to 1974, made them stars, Cher exhausted and looking for a way out.
Cher wrote that Bono was jealous and controlling, and wouldn’t let her wear perfume or even go to a Tupperware party thrown by Beach Boy Brian Wilson’s wife. He also controlled every aspect of her career and finances.
In 1972, when Cher was 26 and the couple were parents to a boy named Chas, who later changed his name to Chaz, the couple taped two episodes of their television show in Los Angeles before heading to Las Vegas. Vegas to perform at the TV show. Sahara Hotel. Bono then told her that he had signed them to “perform in Vegas every summer for God knows how many years.”
“I saw how easy it was to step over the edge and disappear,” she wrote. She walked “barefoot onto the balcony of our suite and looked down.”
“For a few crazy minutes, I couldn’t imagine any other choice. I did this five or six times, and each time I thought about Chas, about my mother, about my sister, about everything. people and how things like this can happen.” everyone who respected me felt that it was a viable situation and I would go back inside,” she wrote.
In the end, they reached an agreement that allowed her some freedom in trying to leave him. She’ll live with him during the week so they can continue working together, while she has weekends to herself at their Malibu home. But despite being famous and making a lot of money, she doesn’t have her own bank account and only receives an allowance of $5,000 per month.
As the friendship became fragile during this time apart, Cher wrote that Bono admitted he considered killing her out of jealousy.
Cher wrote that Bono told her over breakfast one morning, “You know, after you were with Bill that night in the Sahara, I was seriously thinking about throwing you off our balcony .”
He told her he had thought about simply pleading insanity to “have to go to jail for seven years before they let me out. Then I would get a book and show deal.” own.”
She wrote that she laughed and admitted, “Well, no need to push me because I’ll jump!”
Then, when they broke up and Cher started dating record executive David Geffen, he looked into her contracts and she learned how much Bono had been hiding from her. She was contracted as a low-paid employee for a company called Cher Enterprises, controlled by Bono.
“I’ve been working all my life, but obviously I have nothing to show for it. I never imagined for a second that I would need to protect myself from Sonny, of all people.” , but the contracts he made me sign.” secretly designed to strip me of my income and rights to my career,” she wrote.
She went to Lucille Ball for advice when she learned Ball had left her husband and business partner Desi Arnaz.
Cher recalls Ball telling her: “Fuck him, you’re the one with the talent.” Years later, Cher gave similar advice to Tina Turner, urging her to leave Ike Turner.
Sonny and Cher divorced in 1975, and she married Gregg Allman later that year. Four years later, they broke up partly because of his drug addiction.
“Cher: A Memoir, Part One” is out now.
— With TMX reporting
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