Babe, wake up, Cher’s memoir is out today! For anyone fond of the Goddess of Pop’s past penchant for strange tweets, it will come as no surprise that the memoir is fantastic.
Straight and to the point, Cher’s one-of-a-kind, easy, breezy approach to the world oozes off the page. Cher: The Memoir: Part One takes readers from her youth, covering her difficult relationship with her mother and her many, many stepfathers, to when she meets Sonny Bono and beyond.
From Cher’s teenage experience watching someone get stabbed at a New York party — which she secretly enjoyed because it felt reminiscent of West Side Story — to swimming in pools with movie stars while still underage, the first part of Cher’s memoir is still packed full of punch. For an introductory taste, here are some of the hardest hitting moments.
1. She lost her virginity out of ‘revenge’ to a boy that pissed her off
Describing how she lost her virginity, Cher explains how she had no interest in sex until a neighbourhood boy she fancied made her feel bad and she decided to get her own back. “The neighbor was sweet enough when we were alone, but as soon as his friends came around, he’d treat me like an embarrassing kid. One day, when his buddies suggested a trip to Bob’s Big Boy, he said, “Okay, let me get Cher.” They laughed and said, “You’re gonna take that kid?” and he ditched me.
“I was so hurt when he did that, I had revenge sex with him. I had never wanted to, otherwise I would have done it one of the five hundred other times he asked [...] When what turned out to be a massively overrated experience came to an end, I asked him, “Is that it? Are we finished?” Then I told him to go home and never come back. I wanted him to feel just as dismissed as he’d made me feel.”
2. She chronicles her upbringing with her mother’s many husbands
Georgia “Jackie Jean” Holt had seven husbands in total, six by the time Cher was 14. “Tired of being alone and still trying to make it as an actress, once again she made a decision for the whole family and accepted Gilbert’s proposal,” she writes.
“In an instant, Mom turned our lives upside down once more. After her announcement that we were moving to the East Coast soon after Thanksgiving, at eight and fourteen, Gee and I were again taken away from everything we knew and loved, which summed up our childhood. At the whim of what my mother thought best, I was learning that if I wanted control over my own life, then I’d have to find a way to escape.”
3. She saw a man get stabbed at the first New York party she went to
Smoking and drinking in her mum’s mink coat at her first party in New York, still-teenage Cher had quite the baptism of fire moving to New York while attending her first party. “The fun ended abruptly when a fight broke out in the kitchen and a man staggered into the living room with blood on his shirt. He’d been stabbed and had to be taken to the hospital.” But, in classic Cher fashion, she adds: “I also found the episode strangely thrilling, as if the Sharks and the Jets were playing out their roles in front of my very eyes.
4. She was once suspended from school for refusing to take off her sunglasses
“Having made the decision that there was no further use in [her] being in school,” Cher gradually started flouting more rules and defying authority. “I’d had weeks off after another bout of mono and then I was suspended for a week for refusing to take my sunglasses off in class. The sunglasses and two ponytails in my hair were an homage to my heroine Holly Golightly.” Very Cher.
5. Teenage Cher spent a night swimming in Warren Beatty’s pool
After a near car crash, a young Cher went to shout at another driver before she quickly realised he was Hollywood dreamboat Warren Beatty. He invited her round to his where they could swim at his pool. “It was a beautiful house with an amazing pool. He showed me inside, fixed us some cheese and crackers, then leaned in and kissed me. Now, this is interesting, I thought as I kissed him back.”
Beatty offered Cher a swimsuit belonging to his former co-star (and lover) Natalie Wood, and so they swam. “The two of us went swimming, with me in Natalie Wood’s bathing suit, and we had a great time.”
6. She describes meeting Sonny for the first time
“I swear to God, it was like Maria and Tony in West Side Story: everyone else in the room faded.” … “To this day, I can see our Hollywood meet-cute in my mind. Grinning from ear to ear as people jumped up to say hello and shake his hand, Salvatore Phillip Bono was one of the most interesting men I’d ever seen [...] It wasn’t love at first sight. I just thought this guy was special.”
7. There was no romantic spark between her and Sonny at first
Though Cher had a relatively instant platonic crush on Sonny and the pair quickly moved in together (out of friendship and convenience), Sonny didn’t feel the same way for years. As Cher recalls, when Sonny offered her to move in, he said: “Don’t worry, I’ve got twin beds [...] And honestly, I don’t find you particularly attractive.”
Meanwhile, for Cher: “I thought the sun rose and set on his Sicilian ass, even though I knew that I wasn’t his type. My kind of body wasn’t in style yet, and one day when I borrowed a bathing suit from [their friend] Melissa to go to the beach, I watched Sonny’s face drop when he saw me. ‘My God, you’re skinny. You don’t have any shape at all! Is that all there is to you?’”
8. Cher’s mum caught her living with Sonny because his underwear was in the cupboard
Still not quite 18, Cher and Sonny lived in a one bedroom apartment where they slept in twin beds. Though nothing romantic had formed yet, she hid the arrangement from her mother due to her age gap with Sonny (11 years). “The day my mother showed up unannounced, I was taking a shower,” she writes.
“Half-naked, I ran around frantically hiding Sonny’s clothes, throwing underwear into the kitchen cupboard where I kept the tea [...] I let her in and ran to get dressed in the bedroom when I heard her say, “Cher, I think I’m going to make myself a cup of tea.” Cher ran to block her access to the cupboard, but her mother opened it. “With an expression on her face that I knew only too well, she demanded to know who I was really living with.”
9. Sonny was almost violent with Cher once, before she put her foot down
While looking after a German shepherd puppy together, Cher remembers Sonny moving the puppy out of his way using his foot, to which she objected. “Before I knew it Sonny had spun around and pushed me up against a wall. He didn’t yell and he didn’t hit me, but he had ahold of my shoulders and his face was clenched.
“I was so vehemently opposed to being manhandled, having seen Mom go through it, that I thought, Fuck this. I’d witnessed fear and I’d seen violence. I’d been beaten as a kid, and I wasn’t going to be beaten as an adult. Staring into his eyes, I said, “Let me tell you something. If you ever touch me like this again, I will leave your ass and it’ll be the last time you ever see me.” I wasn’t kidding, and he could see that I meant it.”
10. She talks about miscarrying her and Sonny’s first child
Cher and Sonny weren’t trying for kids in 1963, the year she first got pregnant, but it happened, with both stars unsure of how it was going to affect their lives. “In the end Fate intervened and I lost the baby. It happened spontaneously when I was sixteen weeks pregnant and home alone. I felt a burning pain and screamed because, having never been pregnant before, I didn’t know what it meant,” she writes.
“Sonny was right there for me, and we cried together at our loss. When it was over, Sonny took me home to rest, where I went quiet and withdrew into myself for a while. Within a week, though, we were right back at Gold Star [studios] to pick up where we’d left off.”
11. Sonny and Cher briefly lived with The Rolling Stones
After meeting them when they came to visit Gold Star Studios in 1963, Sonny and Cher really hit it off with the Stones, especially Brian Jones and Charlie Watts. The duo moved in with the two Stones members and their girlfriends. “Charlie, Brian, Sonny, and I had become a real team, and their encouragement was amazing for Sonny,” she writes. “The guys liked living together because they could meet and strategize at any time.”
12. Cher didn’t think ‘I Got You Babe’ was any good at first
When Sonny woke Cher up in the middle of the night to sing her the very first drafts of ‘I Got You Babe’, the song that would go on to sell over a million copies and spend three weeks as U.S number one, she was unfussed. “I loved the modulation, and I liked that he used “babe,” the term of endearment my mom had passed on to me,” she writes, “but overall I still didn’t think much of the song. It wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong.”
