Cher (20 page)

Last year I started listening to everything I could get my hands on—Stevie Wonder, Elton John, James Taylor and Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, everybody. By listening and singing along I started developing things that I didn’t have. I certainly got the instrument to work with. “Gypsys, Tramps and Thieves” and all those songs are million-selling songs. But they are ridiculous because artistically they aren’t fulfilling. Money-wise, they’re great, but I would like to spend four or five months on an album and do something really fantastic (34).

That album that Cher did take her time with was released in 1975, and it was truly one of—if not THE—best complete album of music that she was to release that entire decade. The album is entitled
Stars
, and it was
beautifully crafted by writer-producer Jimmy Webb. Cher herself hand-selected the majority of the cuts on the album, taking mostly non-hit material from several hit albums.

The
Stars
album was to be her breakout serious rock and roll album. The songs that appear on it include compositions from several recording artists who were popular or becoming popular in 1974–75 and were considered serious contemporary songwriters.
Stars
included Eric Clapton’s “Bell Bottom Blues,” Jackson Browne’s “These Days,” Little Feat’s “Rock & Roll Doctor,” Neil Young’s “Mr. Soul,” Michael Martin Murphy’s “Geronimo’s Cadillac,” and her first recording of the Boudleaux Bryant song “Love Hurts,” which had been a hit for the rock group Nazareth. On this particular album, she performed the song as a lovely string-laden ballad. She even delved into reggae on Jimmy Cliff’s “The Bigger They Come the Harder They Fall.” The album’s heart is its final cut, a poignant version of Janis Ian’s lament “Stars.” The song deals with the loneliness of fame.

The cover of this album was again an eye-popping work of art. This time around it was a close-up portrait of Cher, glamorously made up with tiny Christmas lights around and on her. Long shutter speed photography was employed, and Cher was obviously directed to move ever so slightly to allow the tiny colored lights to imprint arty streaks of color through the photo.

Stars
was totally unlike any Cher album that had preceded it. Her vocal work, especially on the title cut, sounds like it was really sung from the heart. Unfortunately, she soon found out that serious contemporary folk/rock ballads weren’t what the record-buying public was looking for from the reigning pop princess of TV land. This was stripped-down Cher, the serious songstress, no glitz, no glitter, and no Las Vegas arrangements. No one cared.

The
Stars
album sold almost zero copies and didn’t produce a single hit, peaking at Number 153. One of the problems was the fact that new female singers were arriving on the scene—stars like Gloria Gaynor
(Never Can Say Goodbye
, 1975) and Donna Summer
(Love to Love You Baby
, 1975)—emerging with albums full of the latest musical fad to sweep America and Europe. It was fast, danceable, and the exact opposite of the kind of rock ballads that Cher chose to sing on
Stars
. It was called disco. Since its emergence in 1974, disco began to give several of the biggest stars of the early 1970s some serious competition on the
record charts. For Cher, this was the beginning of one of her longest slump periods. She continued to release albums, but not to produce hits.

One of the first things that Cher did to mark her liberation from Sonny was to head to a tattoo parlor. According to Cher, “After Sonny and I separated, I got my first tattoo. I thought it would be something different, a statement of freedom. ‘Good girls’ didn’t have tattoos then, no one was doing it” (16).

For her first body “inking,” Cher decided upon a tasteful butterfly—flying across her butt cheeks. She claimed that she chose that spot because it was “where no one could see it.” Well, that was true, at least until the late 1980s when she cut her costumes up to the point where they were fully exposed. (The best sight of Cher’s butterfly-tattooed ass-cheeks is in the centerfold of the British CD
Cher’s Greatest Hits 1965–1992
, where they are exposed through fishnet stockings and an immodest thong.)

“The butterfly was more than a symbol of rebellion,” proclaimed canvas-like Cher, the tattoo junkie. “It was really the first step of an experiment to start making decisions on my own. I was 27 years old, but I had lived a sheltered life. I’d never gone on an airplane by myself. . . . I’d never been in a bank. I had made so few real decisions that I was bound to be bad at it. I was right. I
was
bad at it” (16).

According to her skin specialist, Daniel Eastman, the tattoos were originally intended to cosmetically hide a nasty sunburn on her
derrière
. Cher had very cleverly concealed a slight sun mishap without anyone being the wiser.

Now, here’s a girl who’s [American] Indian and Armenian, and her skin can accept a lot of sun, and she’s an avid sun worshiper. Once when we were in Miami, she overdosed on the sun—seriously, she severely burned her butt. As a result of the burn that she received, she had a tattoo tattooed over the damaged scar tissue, so you can’t notice it. That’s what that clever little tattoo on her tush is for (56).

During this era, circa 1974–75, Cher began making statements about how she longed to branch out as an entertainer. According to her, she wanted desperately to land a movie role, but she found no takers. In spite of all of the sketch comedy work she had done over the past four years, no one took her seriously as an actress. “I’d also like to try a movie, but the parts that they are giving women these days aren’t for me,” she said at the time. “You have to be Barbra Streisand or Katharine Hepburn. You
can’t name five women who are getting roles that are more than just stuck in there because there has to be a female in the movie. I’d like to see a female
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
. Women today have more adventurism than men” (34).

At the time, Mike Nichols was getting ready to film
The Fortune
, and Cher talked her way into an audition. Nichols claimed that she was all wrong for the part, and he turned her down with the explanation, “There are two kinds of girls in the world: the kind you want to fuck, and the kind you don’t.” The role was for the latter, and Nichols told her that she couldn’t believably act the part. “You’re going to be sorry, “Cher remembers saying to him in their brief encounter (37). Years later he asked her to costar in
Silkwood
, but in the 1970s no one in Hollywood took Cher seriously as an actress.

On the other hand, no one in Hollywood took Sonny seriously as an actor either—much to his disappointment. “I was up for a part in
Godfather II
,” he explained in 1974. “Well, I missed out on that, and I really wanted it. Now I’ve just missed a part in
Earthquake
. They decided the character should be a black man. So, I’m still trying. It’s the one thing in the world I want most to do—be a movie actor” (65).

In 1974 MCA Records released a final recording by Sonny Bono as a single. It was his own solo version of his Vietnam protest song, “Classified 1A.” He produced the cut, which was arranged by his band member David Paich. It didn’t work as a single for Cher in 1971, and it certainly didn’t work for Sonny as a solo recording artist either. The flip side of the single was a new autobiographical song about his relationship with Cher called “Our Last Show.” This dreary destined-to-fail single found bewildered Sonny singing about his shock over what had happened to him and Cher, as singing partners and as husband and wife. (Unavailable for years, both of these songs were released on the 1995 compact disc collection
All I Ever Need—The Kapp/MCA Anthology
.)

There was clearly only one alternative for Sonny solo, and Cher solo, and that was to return to television. No one wanted either of them in the movies, no one asked him to produce records, and no one cared to listen to Cher as a serious vocalist on records. And so the aborted idea of doing
The Sonny & Cher Divorce Show
gave way to two separate new ventures in the 1974–75 TV season, ABC-TV’s
The Sonny Comedy Revue
and CBS’s
Cher
show.

It was Sonny who made the first move.
The Sonny Comedy Revue
made its television debut on September 22, 1974. The producers utilized
some of the same comedy troupe from
The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour
, like Teri Garr (who had yet to become a comedy movie star) and Freeman King. Art Fisher was again the director (without his former codirector Jorn Winther), but the sparkle that had made the former show work was clearly its missing element: Cher. It wasn’t that Sonny didn’t try hard enough; he needed Cher as his counterpart. The show lasted an unlucky thirteen episodes before it was canceled.

Next, Cher came up to bat. Her return to television began with a Wednesday night prime-time special entitled simply
Cher
. It was followed, four nights later, on February 16, 1975, by the weekly
Cher
show. The TV special made a huge splash, with a small fortune spent on costumes alone and three superstar guests: Flip Wilson, Elton John, and Bette Midler. Although Wilson was famous for his own early 1970s TV series, Elton and Bette were rarely seen on network television, and the show was a highly rated, delicious treat. The first regular show featured guests Tatum O’Neal, Raquel Welch, and Wayne Rogers of TV’s
M
A
S
H
.

The elaborate wardrobe for the
Cher
show was as much a part of the show as its star. According to designer Bob Mackie at the time,

Depending on the number of costumes, Cher’s clothes bill for her weekly show runs between $3,000 and $10,000. And for the special she did with Elton John and Bette Midler, the bill hit $30,000. I understand Cher’s wardrobe is the biggest ever for a weekly TV show. But then, of course, her gowns are very much a part of the show—and since she owns the production company, she also owns all the clothes (72).

Cher was very excited about her new television show . . . at first. “The look is really hot!” she exclaimed before either of her shows aired. “It’s not quiet. It doesn’t lay back. It’s just hot. It comes out and punches your brains out” (73). And that was just the set and costumes she was talking about!

“Everybody I’m having on the show are people I like to see,” she continued.

I’m tired of seeing the same old guest stars who turn up on every show. I think it’s important on a variety show to see people you don’t ordinarily see. As for songs, I’ll be doing both old and new songs. I open my special with “Let Me Entertain You,” and my series with “You’re Nobody ’Til Somebody Loves You.” A lot of ladies in this business can sing rock & roll, but not old songs, and vice versa. I’m at home with both. I find it easy to do old songs. I like to do everything (73).

The press on the special and the first regular episode was quite favorable. According to
Variety
, “A winner . . . more direct focus was on Cher the singer, skit player, and monologist—not to mention clotheshorse—and she did well (if not spectacularly) in all roles. . . . there seem enough pluses to suggest that
Cher
will make it” (74). And, the
Los Angeles Times
exclaimed, “Three cheers for Cher and her new CBS variety show. . . . Sonny without Cher was a disaster. Cher without Sonny, on the other hand, could be the best thing that’s happened to weekly television this season” (75).