Authors: Mark Bego
Said proud mom Georgia Holt of her own daughter, “The positive is watching your kid get started, like watching them learn to walk. . . . For eight years in Hollywood, no one would let Cher read for a film. Now, she’s done three back-to-back” (138).
Finally in June of 1987 the fruits of Cher’s labors began to blossom forth, with the theatrical release of
The Witches of Eastwick
. This odd mixture of black comedy, supernatural doings, and sexy dialogue proved a delightful summer hit with audiences, and with critics as well. Giving the film three and a half stars (out of four), Roger Ebert in the
Chicago Sun Times
claimed,
This movie plays like a plausible story about implausible people. The performances sell it. . . . It’s [Jack] Nicholson’s show. . . . he plays the devil: a role he was born to fill. . . . The women are played in the movie by Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer and Susan Sarandon, and they have a delicious good time with their roles. These women need to be good at double takes, because they’re always getting into situations that require them. When they’re together, talking up a storm, they have the kind of unconscious verbal timing that makes comedy out of ordinary speech (158).
“Nicholson’s back. And that old Jack magic has us in his spell,” wrote Rita Kempley in the
Washington Post
. “He is undisputedly the star of
The Witches of Eastwick
, despite formidable competition from his coven played by Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer and Susan Sarandon” (159). And in that same paper, Desson Howe wrote “Jack is crackerjack. . . . Sarandon (as music teacher Jane Spofford), Cher (earthy sculptress Alexandra Medford) and Pfeiffer (fertile town reporter Sukie Ridgemont) turn in excellent performances” (160).
Eager to promote
Witches of Eastwick
, Cher enthusiastically granted several press interviews to kick off her three-film streak. The day before
she began promoting
Witches
, Cher was busy on the other side of the camera, making her debut as a video director. As she had been considering on her fortieth birthday, she directed her new boyfriend, Robert, and herself, in the video for her upcoming single, “I Found Someone.” Becoming a director was another goal that Cher also longed to attain, and this was to be her professional entry into directorship.
Although
The Witches of Eastwick
was well received when it was released, Cher’s expectations for it were higher. “It didn’t come out quite the way I expected,” she claimed, “very few of them do” (144).
In October of 1987,
Suspect
hit the theaters. It did well at the box office, but was not a big hit. While Cher drew generally good reviews, the film was criticized for its plotting. Roger Ebert’s review in the
Chicago Sun Times
reflected this exact stance, when he wrote, “
Suspect
is a well-made thriller, but it was spoiled for me by an extraordinary closing scene where Cher, as the defense attorney, solves the case with all of the logic of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. . . .
Suspect
is fun when Cher and [Dennis Quaid] interact, she does a convincing job of playing a lonely career woman” (161).
Film critics in the city where
Suspect
was filmed were far less forgiving. Two separate reviewers for the
Washington Post
had problems with the film’s plot, and with Cher’s portrayal. Hal Hinson wrote,
In taking the part of Kathleen Riley, the beleaguered public defender in
Suspect
, Cher must have thought she would turn people’s heads around with a potent range and diversity of her talent. . . . There’s a sort of reverse vanity that draws performers to parts like this, and in Cher’s case, the sheer plainness of the woman is what must have first attracted her. . . . As Kathleen, Cher is trapped trying to play the one thing she’s not—dull. . . . On occasion, she gives Kathleen a chance to sass and talk back. But she can’t find anything of herself in this woman, and the performance is dogged, joyless (162).
Taking the same stance in the same newspaper, writer Desson Howe claimed,
Peter Yates’s
Suspect
, a Washington courtroom drama, breaks down under cross examination like those cornered witnesses at the end of
Perry Mason
. . . . Cher’s advances toward Serious Actresshood, via
Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
and
Mask
, are slowed by her paper-thin role as a liberal beauty who must represent the beast. . . . But for the most part, this case, which includes a convenient last-minute taped confession and a lifeless Cher–Quaid romance, should have been thrown out of court (163).
While
Suspect
was doing respectable business in the movie theaters, Cher was busy launching a totally different kind of project—a new album. Concentrating on her movie career for the past couple of years, she was amid one of the longest albumless periods of her entire career. She hadn’t recorded any new songs since 1982’s
I Paralyze
. Having released thirty-six albums (twenty-two solo, eleven with Sonny, one with Gregg, one with Black Rose), Cher had announced in 1985 that she had signed a new recording deal with her ex-beau David Geffen’s record label. She already racked up eleven Gold and three Platinum records in her past, and she was ready for a couple more.
Interestingly enough, as nasty as Cher’s mid-1970s affair with David Geffen had ended, in the ensuing years, they had patched up their friendship. Since that time, David had long ago left Asylum/Elektra Records, and had started his own label, Geffen Records. He managed to lure several of his favorite performers into signing with his new label, including Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and Elton John.
Speaking of their affair, and the evolution of their mid-1980s friendship, Cher explained,
I know everybody thinks it’s bizarre. But it was great. David was one of the best relationships I’ve ever had. He was different than he is now, because he was only thirty when I met him. He wasn’t very sure of himself, and he certainly wasn’t very sure of having a relationship with me. Neither of us intended it to happen. We just fell in love. We’ve said the meanest things to each other, and we always come back to being really close friends (8).
Geffen was also glowingly kind when speaking about her. “Cher is an incredibly loving person, and incredibly willful” (8).
Not only was she willful, she also had a clear idea of what she wanted to do musically. She had no intention of repeating her past successes, or her past failures. She hadn’t had a major hit on the charts since 1979, when “Take Me Home” became a huge smash. Her two subsequent album forays into harder rock,
Black Rose
and
I Paralyze
, were more in the direction that she wanted to move into. Listening to both of those albums back to back, and then listening to her debut album on Geffen Records, one notices a musical progression. She now longed to be less like the musical persona of Bette Midler and more like that of Joan Jett.
Although she had sold millions and millions of records in the past, she remained her own harshest critic. “I’m a really good performer if you watch me work, but I’m not nearly as good if you listen to me,” she claimed.
All of my past hits were really embarrassing to me. I don’t think I would even listen to “Dark Lady” or “Half Breed”—it’s just not my kind of music. I’d rather listen to Bob Seger. I’ve always been ragged on in this business. The critics have always hated my albums—except for the fans who are turning out to be the most important anyway. I always wanted to be a better singer and I never was. That always drove me crazy. For me, going into the recording studio is a terrible experience (164).
The music scene had changed from the early to the late 1980s. The stripped-down, back-to-basics punk rock sound that Cher had emulated with the group Black Rose had become slicker, more synthesizer-based rock and roll. Simple and subtle ballads had been replaced in the Top 10 by power ballads in the style of Anita Baker and Whitney Houston. In-your-face women rockers like Madonna (“Like a Virgin”) and Joan Jett (“I Love Rock & Roll”) were concurrently confronting their listeners with frankness and a powerful vocal delivery. Now, more than ever before, pop songs like “Half Breed” and “Dark Lady” sounded like the products of a bygone decade.
There hadn’t been a new Cher album in the stores in over five years when 1987’s
Cher
was released. Having shifted her focus from music to movies, Cher appeared to have ended her recording career. How ironic that it was actually her old boyfriend, David Geffen, who was responsible for her huge 1987 musical comeback. In 1975, with the
Stars
album on Warner Brothers Records, Geffen had made a valiant attempt to make Cher a respected rock and roll entity. It had taken twelve years, and now with the brilliant
Cher
album, he not only made good his promise, he exceeded it—giving her the first million-selling Platinum album of her career. He brought back Cher in a big way, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
The album hit Number 32 in America and Number 26 in the United Kingdom. It proved to be a consistent best seller in her career, with three consecutive hit singles “I Found Someone” (Number 10/U.S.), “We All Sleep Alone” (Number 14/U.S., Number 47/UK), and “Skin Deep” (Number 79/U.S.).
A brilliant ten-cut disk,
Cher
not only reestablished her as a rocking diva of the first degree, the project teamed her with some of the hottest
songwriters, producers, musicians, and singers in the business. Five separate producers worked with Cher on this album, producing separately or in collaboration with each other. They included newcomer Michael Bolton, Desmond Child (who was the lead singer of Desmond Child & Rouge in the 1970s and was to help make Ricky Martin a huge star in the late 1990s), Peter Asher (who was one-half of the 1960s duo Peter & Gordon and is responsible for producing all of Linda Ronstadt’s biggest hits), and Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora (of the group Bon Jovi).
Cher had chosen five out of ten songs either written or cowritten by Desmond Child. She had first recorded two of his songs on her
I Paralyze
album (“When the Love Is Gone” and “The Book of Love”). This album also marked the first time that Cher recorded the songs of Diane Warren. On her four albums for Geffen Records, Cher was to record twelve songs by Warren. The only songwriters she has recorded as many songs by are Sonny Bono and Bob Dylan. And, speaking of Sonny Bono, on this album, she recorded a new interpretation of her first million-selling hit with him, “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down).” This new version of her classic 1960s hit was essentially Cher with the whole group Bon Jovi backing her. She gave the song a gutsy new attitude, making it one of the high points of the album. Additionally, she dedicated this album to her much-maligned ex-husband, writing in the liner notes, “This Album Is Dedicated With Love To Sonny Bono for the first time, and John (His High Kaladness) Kalodner for making me do it again.” John Kalodner, who is credited on all three of her original Geffen albums, had worked for years at Atlantic Records and in the 1980s moved to Geffen Records as an A&R person. Signing Cher to a recording contract on Geffen was largely his doing.
This album also found Cher supported vocally by several exciting guest stars, including Maurice White of the group Earth, Wind & Fire, who provided the “vamp” vocals on “Skin Deep.” By far, the most stirring song on this album is the all-girls song “Perfection,” which finds Cher leading her own vocal trio, where she is joined by Bonnie Tyler (“Total Eclipse of the Heart”) and her old pal from the Phil Spector days—Darlene Love (“Today I Met the Boy I’m Gonna Marry”).
Since the 1960s, Darlene’s once-fabulous singing career had hit rock bottom, and she had worked as a cleaning woman in the 1970s to support herself. In the 1980s her luck had changed, and she experienced a comeback as a regular star singer in New York City at the Bottom Line, and as an actress. Like Cher, she too was amid a career rebirth. That same year,
1987, Darlene was one of the stars of the film
Lethal Weapon
, playing Danny Glover’s wife. She has appeared in the subsequent
Lethal Weapon
films, and has since revived her singing career. In the 1990s she penned her own autobiography. “Perfection” was a wonderful reunion song for Cher and Darlene, and their voices blended well with Bonnie Tyler’s raspy growl.
Cher’s 1987 Geffen comeback album was also the third time she had released an album simply entitled
Cher
. The distinctive Matthew Rolston portrait of the diva on the cover, in a black leather jacket, perfectly personified her new rock image for the late 1980s and early 1990s. Released amid her successful run of three back-to-back hit movies, the 1987
Cher
album only further heralded the return of one of the music world’s most enduring stars.
When it was released in New York City on Christmas Day 1987,
Moonstruck
was an instant hit, both critically and at the box office. The press on it, when it went into general distribution on January 15, 1988, was overwhelmingly glowing from the very start. On the television show
Siskel & Ebert at the Movies
the pair of critics called
Moonstruck
“a treasure,” ecstatically proclaiming, “Cher is absolutely brilliant. It is the best work she’s ever done” (165). Roger Ebert, in his own printed column in the
Chicago Sun Times
, called it a “magical” film, noting,
The most enchanting quality about
Moonstruck
is the hardest to describe, and that is the movie’s tone. . . . at the heart of the story, there is Cher’s astonishing discovery that she is still capable of love. . . . The movie is filled with fine performances—by Cher, never funnier or more assured. . . . In its warmth and in its enchantment, as well as in its laughs, this is the best comedy in a long time (166).