Content warning: This article discusses the topic of suicide.
Legendary singer, actress and television personality Cher is giving fans insight into her life in the spotlight with the release of a two-part memoir.
Titled Cher: The Memoir, part one will be released this month while part two will become available in 2025.
Here we break down some of the bigger revelations from the intimate story, told on Cher’s own terms.
SHE WAS BOOTED FROM A LONDON HOTEL – AND THE NEXT DAY SHE WAS FAMOUS!
In August 1965, Cher and husband Sonny Bono had just released I Got You Babe in the US, and were trying to crack the UK with advice from pal Mick Jagger.
But when they got to the London Hilton, the man at reception took one look at Sonny’s “caveman-style” fur vest and stated they had no booking and the hotel was full!
“No one in England even knew what Sonny and Cher was, but by the time we reached the Hilton’s revolving doors, escorted in person by the manager, there were two reporters standing outside,” Cher writes. “‘Sonny, Cher, did the Hilton just kick you out?’ they asked. ‘Was it because of how you look?’”
After resorting to a hotel with a “lumpy” bed, they “slept for 12 hours and by the time we’d bathed and dressed, we were famous.”
NO REGRETS OVER HER AFFAIR WITH A GUITARIST
In despair over the state of her crumbling marriage to Sonny, Cher recalls her growing attraction to a younger guitarist named Bill – and that she even boldly told Sonny that she wanted to sleep with him.
Guitarist Bill – who Cher describes as “a tall 21-year-old with a Texas drawl” – made the first move on the singer, unknown to her husband Sonny at the time. “It felt like my head almost exploded off my shoulders,” Cher writes about their first tryst. “Bill was a great kisser.”
The short-lived affair was the nail in the coffin of Cher and Sonny’s marriage, though she admits that despite being miserable with him, she still loved him.
TINA TURNER ASKED FOR HELP ENDING HER MARRIAGE
As a young woman in the spotlight, Cher wasn’t the only one struggling in a bad marriage with her performer partner – her friend Tina Turner was also desperate to leave her abusive husband Ike. She even asked Cher for advice on how she’d ended things with Sonny!
In her memoir, Cher looks back on the night Tina performed on Cher’s prime-time show.
“Before we went on she came to my room asking if I had some cover-up. She had a bruise on her arm she didn’t want showing on camera,”
Cher writes, “She sat down while I looked for it and then quietly said, very straightforward, ‘Tell me how you left him.’” Tina and Ike split in 1976, and Tina and Cher remained close until Tina’s death in 2023.
SUICIDAL BEFORE HER SPLIT FROM SONNY
“Standing barefoot on the balcony of our suite at the Sahara hotel in Las Vegas, I stared down, dizzy with loneliness as I saw how easy it would be to step over the edge and simply disappear,” Cher writes of her marriage to Sonny starting to go rapidly downhill in October 1972.
While Cher has been candid about her tumultuous marriage to Sonny, who she married when she was just 16, she opens up in depth in part one of her memoir about how bad it truly got. One big problem?
She says the success of their show, The Sonny And Cher Comedy Hour, had changed him – leaving her “deeply unhappy”.
Feeling “hopeless” and “desperate”, Cher recalls contemplating suicide “five or six times”, but the thought of their three-year-old daughter Chas brought her back from the brink. Then she had an epiphany: she could just leave Sonny.
The pair stayed together for a few years more for the cameras, but officially split in June 1975.
Tina leaned on her friend Cher through the hard times.
PLAYBOY MANSION WITH JOHN LENNON
Cher was friends with Hugh Hefner, so nights at his Playboy Mansion were a regular thing. But the night she bumped into drunk Beatle John Lennon and his mate Harry Nilsson in 1974 and drove them to “movie night” at the iconic house was certainly one to remember!
“There were about 50 people there and just as the movie was about to start, the two of them put on aristocratic English accents and started chanting, ‘Hef! Hef! Hef!’” Cher writes.
The drunken antics continued outside in the infamous Grotto, where Cher wasn’t too impressed when the pair stripped down naked!
“I went to find a drink and when I came back they were standing in the middle of the Grotto naked but still in the water, thank God,” Cher recalls. “I was trying not to laugh, but it was impossible not to.
It took me ages to get them back in their clothes. It was like herding drunks.”
Cher kept it together for their young daughter Chas.
You can pre-order a copy of Cher: The Memoir from Big W.
