Music icon Cher has crammed more into one lifetime than most people would struggle to fit into a generation.
But at the golden age of 78, the multi-award winning star is turning back the pages of her life in her new memoir to reveal all about her struggles to become a global star and how she is now happier than ever as she approaches her milestone 80th year.
And with a career spanning music, TV, and film, it is no surprise her life story – written by the icon herself – is being split in two so fans can take their time getting to grips with her rich, ever evolving life story.
The latest instalment came last night when Cher was forced to flee her home because of Californian wildfires.
The music mega-star, who is on a global tour to promote her new book, Cher: The Memoir Part One, gushes: “Oh this is just part one. The second part will be released in time for next Christmas. I guess it could make a good movie too, like an eight or nine parter. That is true.”
Cher’s book chronicles her rise to stardom and the challenges she faced as part of the double act, Sonny and Cher with her late workaholic partner Sonny Bono.
The American pop and entertainment duo began their career in the mid 1960s as R&B backing singers for record producer Phil Spector and hit the big time in 1965 when their hit I Got You Babe spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US as well as topping the charts here and in Canada.
But despite the song’s success, Cher admits she never really understood why it became so big, confessing: “Sonny used to write during the night. He wrote all of his songs on the back of cardboards used in shirt packages. I wished I had kept them.
“He used to wake me up and go “Cher, just come and sing this”. This one night he woke me up and showed me I Got You Babe. I said “OK.” He was making me do it and I said ‘You know what this is not a very good song. I am going back to bed’. It turned out OK though.”
The song went on to sell more than three million copies worldwide but Cher says Sonny’s stranglehold on her life was sometimes so dark that it would lead her to contemplate suicide.
Recalling a moment she once thought about jumping off a Vegas hotel balcony at the height of their fame, she reveals: “One night I found out Sonny signed a contract for us to play Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas for three years. And he did not tell me.
“I was on the balcony and I thought ‘I am jumping off’. I could not do it anymore. I weighed like 98lbs – seven stone. I told him I was really unhappy. I am ready to jump off but in the last minute I thought ‘Wait a moment, you could leave him’.”
The couple’s career as a duo ended in 1975 following their divorce. In the decade they spent together, the pair were nominated for two Grammy Awards and sold more than 40 million records worldwide.
Rolling Stone magazine even ranked them No 18 on its list of the 20 Greatest Duos of All Time.
Today, Cher admits she is proud of what they achieved but admits the couple did not always see eye to eye – particularly when they first met soon after Cher dropped out of school aged just 16.
Cher says: “When I first met him he was not that cute. He had had a lot of fights when he was young. He had not had his nose job done at that time.
“He once told me I could share with him as he had twin beds in his place when we first got together. I thought ‘Uh, oh’ and he said ‘I don’t find you particularly attractive’. He used to have girls coming over all the time.”
Cher also admits she struggled to get a fair financial split from Sonny after their records topped the charts, saying: “Everybody bought houses on the money we made on our albums and I got $25 dollars. Sonny said if you had to pay him it would be a good deal.
“One time I said to him ‘Sonny, when was the minute you thought it was OK to take my money?’
“His answer was ‘I knew you would always leave me’ but that did not give him the right to do it. He was an assh*le.”
The pair even landed their own US TV show at the height of their fame but Cher admits Sonny was often jealous of her seeing other people – even one time when she tried to take up tennis just to get out of the house.
“Sonny kept me on a tiny leash. It came to a point where I did not own anything. I never said boo to him at all. One day a friend of mine, who is in the mafia, I said ‘Joe I need to get out of here. I need to learn how to play tennis, just to get away and do something on my own’.
“My friend Joe got me out and he got me the clothes and it was great. But Sonny ended up burning my clothes. I was so p*ssed off at that. That was one of the first chips to drop.”
Cher also faced Sonny’s wrath when she was once invited to a simple Tupperware party by the wife of Beach Boys star Brian Wilson.
She remembers: “There was one time I got invited to a party by Brian Wilson’s wife Marilyn and Sonny said no, I could not go. He did not even like perfume and music in the house.
“There was one night he had to go to hospital with kidney stones and I went to the cinema with my friends and I was like ‘Thank you God’. He did not want me to go anywhere.”
Cher admits the writing was on the wall for their marriage in 1971, when Cher was mother to the couple’s two-year-old daughter Chastity Bono and starring alongside her husband in The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour. Although a fun time workwise, personally Cher had hit rock bottom.
She remembers: ““At some point, I knew it was rough when Sonny started smoking cigars. He just lost interest in me. He took me for granted. We had so much fun on the Sonny and Cher (TV) show. It worked well but husband and wife?
“We were partners but he also had such a roving eye and he had a girlfriend, and he cheated on them with one-nighters. He was ‘busy’. There must be another word.”
Their TV show was cancelled in 1974, and the couple divorced a year later – although they reunited professionally for the Sonny and Cher show, which ran from 1976 to 1977. Their last performance together was on US TV in 1988, singing I Got You Babe.
While Cher relaunched a successful solo career, including her own hit TV show, Sonny’s attempts to go solo were less successful. Eventually, he entered politics, serving as the mayor of Palm Springs from 1988 to 1992. In 1998, Sonny died in a skiing accident aged 62.
Following their split, Cher went on to become one of the biggest-selling female solo artists of all time with global smash hits such as If I Can Turn Back Time, The Shoop Shoop Song, Walking in Memphis and the 1998 smash hit Believe.
Sonny was forced to watch on from the sidelines having carved out a career in politics after being elected to the US Congress as a Republican Representative from California.
Today, Cher believes she owes her success to her mother Georgia who trawled bars during the American depression of the 1930s after being dragged along to various drinking haunts by her alcoholic father.
Cher says: “I just took my mom’s voice and just ran with it. At 80 she and I did this TV special together. She was crazy. Just my mom.
“She sang in bars for nickels during the depression when she was young. Everyone thought my mother could be the next Shirley Temple.
“My grandfather would take her as he was drinking.
“[But] She had a terrible life. She had to take care of my grandfather as he was a terrible drunk.”
Cher adds: “They lived like in skid row in Oklahoma and in Los Angeles.”
But her mum’s talent helped drive Cher to success.
“My mother inspired me. When I was young my mother told me ‘You won’t be the prettiest or the smartest, but you will be special’. I remember I was not very good at maths at school, but mom told me: ‘Don’t worry if you are not good at maths as when you grow up you will have someone to do your maths for you.’”
Today, Cher continues to dominate the charts and fly the flag for LGBT+ rights alongside her son Chaz who came out as a lesbian aged 18 before transitioning from female to male in 2009.
The singer has already teased how a new album is already in the works for 2025 and believes her gay fanbase will be on the front row if she decides to embark on a worldwide greatest hits tour.
Praising their support over the years, Cher says: “This is the thing. My gay guys have never left me. They never left me. When I was down they were there and when I was up they were there. We are very similar as we are both outsiders.”
And after years of unhappiness with Sonny Bono, cheering Cher on into her next decade will be her latest boyfriend, music executive Alexander “AE” Edwards who is 40 years her junior aged just 38.
Content that she has now found true happiness, Cher reveals: ‘Why do men fall in love with me? Well, because I am a really good girlfriend. I am monogamous and if I look at a man when I am with a boyfriend I know it is over. I am really funny and I am sweet-ish, I am really good. I am a good girlfriend and I am very supportive too.”
Cher hopes fans will get to learn all about her life in her new memoir ahead of the second instalment’s release this time next year.
She admits she was crazy to write it but is glad she did, saying: “I don’t know why I have written it. I must have been out of my mind.
“In my life something just presents itself and I say ‘That sounds like fun.’ It was hard though at first as it did not start off right.
“I guess you don’t want to tell everything about your life. You just don’t. I didn’t….”
But Cher realised she had to tell the whole truth or it just wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.
“But I just thought ‘Either do it or hand back the money’,” she admits . “[So] I just held my nose and just jumped in.”
