Cher (25 page)

The lives of Sonny and Cher became the number one real-life soap opera of the 1970s. Not long after their official divorce, Sonny married Susie Coehlo (left), while Cher wed drug-addicted rocker Gregg Allman. Susie, Sonny, and Cher at the opening of Bono’s restaurant in Los Angeles. (
AP/Wide World Photos
)

Cher leaving Santa Monica Superior Court, having just filed for divorce from Sonny Bono. A year later she came back to the same courthouse to divorce Gregg Allman. (
AP/Wide World Photos
)

A reconciled Cher and Gregg Allman in 1976 celebrating the birth of their son, Elijah Blue Allman. Still entangled in this rocky marriage, Cher was simultaneously starring opposite her ex-husband Bono on their second series together,
The Sonny & Cher Show
. (
AP/Wide World Photos
)

Cher with her son Elijah Blue Allman and her daughter Chastity Bono at London’s Heathrow Airport. Cher was amid the short European concert tour to promote 1977’s
Allman & Woman
album. (
AP/Wide World Photos
)

On her 1979 television special,
Cher . . . And Other Fantasies
, the diva donned roller skates to do a take-off on the ballet film
The Red Shoes
, which she entitled “The Red Skates.” (
AP/Wide World Photos
)

By the end of the 1970s, Cher was ready for a new era of her turbulent life. She divorced Gregg and legally shortened her name from Cherilyn Sarkisian LaPiere Bono Allman to “Cher.” (
Harry Langdon/Casablanca Records/MJB Photo Archives
)

Cher at her highly publicized roller disco party in Brooklyn in 1979. The top she is wearing looked opaque to the naked eye, but once she removed the jacket, and photographers’ flashbulbs hit it, it appeared transparent. (
Waring Abbot/Casablanca Records/MJB Photo Archives
)

Cher was undoubtedly the most written-about, most talked-about, and most photographed celebrity of the 1970s. During that decade she was the star of three separate network television series and had three million-selling Number 1 singles and two divorces. (
Harry Langdon/Casablanca Records/MJB Photo Archives
)

Gregg had a long history of family trauma, and he used drugs as an escape. When he was a young boy, his father was murdered by a hitchhiker whom he had picked up along the roadside. This was just the first of the tragedies of his life. It was his older brother Duane who first found fame in the music world, having been a session guitarist on several records by Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett. According to Gregg, “[In 1969] my life didn’t have any point. I said, ‘the hell with it.’ Then I got a call from Duane that he had put a band together—two drums, bass and two guitars. He said, ‘Man, we need you to wrap it up” (86). And so, the Allman Brothers band was born.

The group went on to record five Gold and three Platinum albums Their most notable chart single was the Top 10 hit “Ramblin’ Man” in 1973. Ironically, it had hit Number 2 on the
Billboard
charts, while at Number 1 was Cher’s own “Half Breed.” However, the group seemed plagued by one misfortune after another. In 1971 Duane was killed in a motorcycle accident. A year later the group’s bass player, Berry Oakley, was also killed in a motorcycle accident. Gregg began to hate his life, and drugs seemed like a logical escape.

“There are cats out there who are gonna hit on anybody with a guitar strapped around his arm. The guy [dealer] says, ‘Hey, baby, you wanna buy? Just poke some of this into your arm, or up your nose, or anywhere, and it’ll feel better.’ ” Recalls Gregg, “It was like a cat in my body. His air is used up, and his claws are out, and he’s running around inside trying to get out. Then bam! The old spike [syringe] goes in and you can almost see the cat go to sleep at the bottom of your foot. But you know he’ll wake up and try to get out again” (86). Unfortunately, Gregg couldn’t seem to get that cat out of his veins. When he gave up drugs, he turned to booze. It was a vicious cycle, but there was Cher, the sequined queen of TV land, standing by his side time and time again, trying to straighten him out. After her first attempt to dry out Allman, Cher announced to
Time
magazine, “I laid down the law on drugs, and it’s been wonderful to see Gregg’s eyes clear” (17). Unhappily for Cher, Gregg’s lucid moments were always short-lived.

Cher and Gregg’s strained relationship was doomed from the very start. As soon as she started dating him, his ex-girlfriend, James Arness’s daughter Jenny, committed suicide over the demise of her affair with Allman. She left behind a twenty-three-page suicide letter, five of the pages devoted to Gregg.

One of the real turning points in Cher and Gregg’s relationship came in 1977 when Gregg testified in court against his road manager, Scooter Herring. Herring was arrested for supplying Gregg with half a gram of coke a day. Even though the federal judge trying the case claimed that the person who ought to be prosecuted was Mr. Allman, Gregg was granted immunity if he would corroborate the charges against Herring. “Man, it was heavy in there,” recalls Allman of the court hearing. “If I had refused to say anything, they were going to make me do a couple of years” (13). Several people branded Gregg a “stool pigeon” for saving his own skin by putting Herring behind bars. Commented Allman,

Scooter was my best friend, and he probably still is. And I would like to say that the bottom line of this whole thing is that he got a sentence of 75 years for conspiracy to sell cocaine, which is a pretty goddamn bullshit sentence if you ask me. . . . He’s alive and well and walking on the streets today. He never went [to prison], he appealed it. He’ll probably appeal it for the rest of his life. If they think I sold him down the river, anybody who thinks that is full of shit (81).

While she was married to Greg, Cher received a surprise phone call from David Geffen. He had called to make amends with her as friends. Cher dumping him several months ago had been devastating for him. It wasn’t until he took the 1970s fad course EST (Erhard Seminar Training) that he was able to get over his depression. “Everything is fine. I still love you,” he proclaimed to her, “but we don’t have to be together. Everything is great, and we can be friends.”

After she told him that she was happy for him, he changed the subject to the diamond necklace and diamond ring that he had given to her when they were together. “I still want my jewelry back,” he said in a demanding tone. Cher was equally firm with him when she replied, “Dave, go fuck yourself. I’m not doing it” (63).

In the summer of 1976, Cher gave birth to a son, whom she named Elijah Blue Allman. She later admitted that she should have just had Elijah out of wedlock. It would have saved her a lot of headaches with Allman. “I just wish I hadn’t married Gregory to get Elijah,” she explained.
“I wish I were the kind of person who could just do it on the run, a one-nighter, not have to live with the guy! When you’re not used to making decisions, you don’t do it well” (19). Gregg Allman claimed, “I’d like her to be pregnant all the time. She’s so happy then. Our astrologer told us we should have five kids anyway” (87).