Cher (13 page)

It was 1969, the year of Woodstock, and this was the height of Cher’s hippie era.
3614 Jackson Highway
is a fascinating time capsule of an album, highlighted by a soulful rendition of “Cry Like a Baby,” an understated version of “(Sittin’ On) the Dock of the Bay,” and a fascinating version of the protest anthem “For What It’s Worth.”

According to their recording contract with ATCO Records, Sonny & Cher and/or Cher owed the company more recordings. Sonny was reportedly so unhappy with the
3614 Jackson Highway
album that he simply refused to turn any more recordings over to Atlantic/ATCO. What resulted was a huge stalemate between Bono and ATCO. It was Sonny’s plan to just hold on until the contract ran out, and then he would be free to renegotiate with another label when the right time came.

There were only three Sonny & Cher original studio albums released in the 1960s, plus the soundtrack album to
Good Times
and
The Best of Sonny & Cher
. There was certainly a formula to them. Naturally they would be heavily comprised of anywhere between three and six Sonny Bono originals. And the majority of the rest of the cuts were “cover” versions of several of the hits of the day, including “Unchained Melody,” “Then He Kissed Me,” “500 Miles,” “You Really Got a Hold on Me,” “Tell Him,” “Bring It on Home to Me,” “Misty Roses,” “We’ll Sing in the Sunshine,” “Groovy Kind of Love,” and “Stand by Me.” The soundtrack to
Good Times
was entirely comprised of Sonny Bono originals, including two new versions of their biggest hit, “I Got You Babe.” It also featured the fittingly Phil Spector–influenced love ballad “It’s the Little Things.”

In the 1990s Atlantic/ATCO released a compact disc called
The Beat Goes On: The Best of Sonny & Cher
, which united the reprise single “Baby Don’t Go” with the rest of the group’s 1960s catalog. With twenty-one cuts on one disc, this is the best single-disc retrospective on the 1960s Sonny & Cher. In 1998, Sundazed Records in America released all three of the Sonny & Cher solo albums on compact discs, each including three bonus cuts.
Look at Us
includes two cuts from the
Good Times
soundtrack (“It’s the Little Things” and “Don’t Talk to Strangers”), plus “Hello,” which is a studio dialogue from Sonny & Cher that was included as the “B” side to the 1965 single “But You’re Mine.”
The Wondrous World of Sonny & Cher
includes Sonny’s song “The Revolution Kind,” 1966 non-album hit “Have I Stayed Too Long,” and a never-before released gem, “Crying Time.”
In Case You’re in Love
includes the three final unsuccessful non-soundtrack ATCO singles: “Beautiful Story,” “Good Combination,” and “Plastic Man.”

Meanwhile, Cher recorded six solo albums and a greatest-hits collection entitled
Cher’s Golden Greats
in the 1960s, and she placed songs on record charts in England and in America. With the exception of
3614 Jackson Highway
, all of the songs on the first six albums were produced by Sonny Bono, who was also responsible for writing nine of those songs.

As was to be a pattern throughout her solo recording career, Cher’s and Sonny & Cher’s strongest markets would be the United States and England. From the 1960s through the 1990s, those two countries would continue to differ from time to time as to which of her songs would become hits. In the 1960s, the beautifully dramatic “Magic in the Air” and her version of “Sunny” were hits only in the United Kingdom, while “Where Do You Go,” “Alfie,” “Behind the Door” and “You Better Sit Down Kids” were strictly United States phenomena.

For Sonny & Cher, the year 1969 had brought about big changes in their lives and in their careers. For the sake of the birth of their child, they finally—secretly—got married. It was after Chastity was born. Sonny had their attorney and their friend Denis Pregnolato be their witnesses. They were officially, legally married in their Bel Air home. However, this time around, the ceremony was not held in the bathroom.

According to Sonny, there were no emotional fireworks, no fanfare, no party, just a simple ceremony. “Even if it wasn’t emotional, the piece of paper was significant,” Sonny was later to proclaim (35). Now they were really Mr. and Mrs. Salvatore Bono. Once Chastity was born, their focus as a couple wasn’t just a career move, now they were a family—a family that was seriously in debt.

During this period of time, even though their musical career was in a slump, they were still notable stars. The majority of their fans had no idea about their tax debt and money problems. Cher continued to be a hit with fashion magazines during this era. She recalls,

I went away to do a layout for
Vogue
for two weeks in Page, Arizona, and it was the most beautiful pictures you’ve ever seen. Georgio di Sant’Angelo did all the clothes, but you couldn’t buy them. He made them just for this shoot. It was the best session I ever did by far. You’ve never seen anything like it, ever, ever, ever. Ara Gallant did all the hair and make-up. I had braids down to the floor, and he painted my face. It was all Indian, on horseback and down under rocks, in this place where they shot [the film]
Planet of the Apes
. Georgio did the most beautiful clothes I’ve ever seen. Copies and extensions of real American Indian clothes. He just took it and went with it. Unbelievable. I was 23 (39).

As the decade of the 1960s came to an end, all was not well in the Bel Air dream home of Sonny and Cher. Both as a duo and recording solo, they had sold over forty million records. However, their once hip, hot, and exciting career was suddenly comatose. They tried desperately to sell the mansion they had purchased from Tony Curtis, but found the market for such huge homes in Los Angles to be “flat” at that time. Since Sonny had hocked most of their furniture to finance
Chastity
, they were living in a huge, opulent, empty mansion.

In Cher’s own words, “It was strange. The hippies thought we were square; the squares thought we were hippies. Sonny & Cher were down the toilet” (13). Always a drama queen, Cher insisted on having the last word, and this time around, she was 100 percent correct.

5

THE SONNY & CHER COMEDY HOUR

The saga of how Sonny and Cher pulled themselves out of the doldrums of debt is as fascinating as their initial rise to fame. With their recording contract with ATCO due to lapse, and no movie career, they put together a nightclub act and hit the road for middle America. However, this was not a rock and roll concert tour. The venture was clearly aimed at the parents of the kids who had initially been buying their records.

Their nightclub-act phase began with a month-long engagement at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas, starting in July of 1969. They performed two shows a night as the opening act for Pat Boone. Sonny recalled in his autobiography that Cher absolutely hated it. Still a victim of severe stage fright, she was totally freaked out by the fact that she could look right into the audience members’ eyes from her spot up on stage. Sonny told her just to talk to him and pretend that the audience wasn’t there.

Sonny wore a tuxedo, and Cher was dressed in smart-looking pantsuits or dresses. They were attired as adults this time around, with Cher’s new high-fashioned bell-bottoms as the only echo of their former incarnation. In their new nightclub act they sang several of their hit songs, but each was given either an up-tempo or slowed-down arrangement. These new Las Vegas–styled musical arrangements could never have been confused with the rock and roll sound of the old Sonny & Cher, nor the folk/rock flavor of Cher’s solo records. Even their new version of “The Beat Goes On” lost all of its youthful bite, so that it sounded more like something that Mel Torme might perform with Rosemary Clooney. Their act also
included such staid standards as “Danny Boy” and Beatles tunes like “Hey Jude” and “Got to Get You into My Life.” If they alienated the younger market with their antidrug preaching, they were determined to shift gears and appeal to the over-thirty-five crowd.

One of the things that evolved in their nightclub act was a biting sort of onstage bantering back and forth between them. Sonny would play comic “straight man” to Cher’s wisecracks, in which she would insult his songs, his lovemaking, his mother, and his singing. Their ad-libbing routines somehow worked well onstage, and they developed quite a sense of comic timing.

According to Cher,

We went on the road and played nightclubs. At first, we died. Then we started getting off on the band, just getting into a little rapping, and then we noticed that people were beginning to laugh so we just started working on it. We never wrote anything down. If something worked, we’d add it, and if it didn’t, we’d chuck it out. My sense of humor began cutting a little bit, with him [Sonny], the band, the audience, the hecklers. People would laugh and Sonny would say, “We’ll keep it.” It was great. That part of my personality had been stifled for so long it was wonderful to use it onstage. I was getting myself together, getting out my frustrations. The act worked and we started building a following on the club circuit (18).

They booked themselves onto the Fairmont Hotel circuit, and many of the engagements were several weeks long. One of the first ones that they did on the road was the Elmwood Casino, in Windsor, Ontario, across the river from Detroit. Cher recalls staying at a seedy hotel across the street from the casino, daily wondering what the hell they were doing there, and how the hell they were going to get out of there. They took whatever bookings that they could get, just to keep paying the bills. A month in Dallas, a month in New Orleans; a booking at the Ionia, Michigan County Fair; slowly but surely they began to get into the rhythm of doing a nightclub act no matter where they were booked. Along the way, Cher began to develop a snappy quick-on-her-feet way of ad-libbing with drunks, hecklers, the band, Sonny, or anyone else who shouted up to her onstage. It was a long haul back to the top of the entertainment business. Cher was to call this particular phase of their career “the nightclub tour from Hell.” In looking back on this era, she notes that Sonny was the “charming buffoon,” while she played the “glamorous bitch” (25).

In June of 1970, Sonny & Cher opened their new act at the ritzy
Empire Room of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, the same building where they had performed for Jackie Kennedy years before. Somehow their comedy routines worked, and their act appealed to an adult audience. All of their months on the road had polished their new act. Said Cher of the abusive put-downs she aimed at Sonny, “At first Sonny didn’t like it much. He’d say, ‘Cher, you’ve got a smart mouth!’ But it worked” (13). And that was the bottom line. The audiences liked them, and they were drawing crowds. Although their financial situation looked bleak to them, the name of “Sonny & Cher” still sold tickets, and they still did have devoted fans.

Sonny attempted to retaliate comically on stage, but it was Cher who would always come out ahead in their mock battles. He would explain mid-act, “Look folks, now don’t . . . don’t worry about Cher’s smarting off like that, ’cause she’s . . . ’cause when she gets out of hand, I take care of her, I give her, you know, a couple belts and that . . . that straightens her right out, you know. So don’t worry.” He’d turn and look at Cher, who was standing on the stage next to him, and continue, “In fact, I’m really surprised that you’re still popping off. Didn’t you get enough last night?” Dead silence.

“I didn’t get ANY last night,” she would deliver deadpan, and the audience would crack up at the sexual innuendo. She would look back at Sonny and ask, “I don’t know if you’ve got a magic act, or what? Now you see it now you don’t” (54). Bang, bang, she shot him down.

By now the pair had developed comically cartoonish versions of their own public and private personas, and they were projecting their creations onstage. They came across as warm and friendly and glamorous, and they appealed to audiences of all sorts.

David Hungate, who played guitar with Sonny & Cher on the road recalls, “They hit on a kind of Louis Prima and Keely Smith routine for their live act. Cher, like Keely, was the quiet, sarcastic one, and Sonny was the funny Italian guy. They were warm and cuddly, which I think was part of their appeal—there was a desire out there to repair the rift that had developed between the freaks and the straight people” (55).

Sonny & Cher’s comic arguing and songs made an odd rock and roll hybrid of an act, lying somewhere in between
The Bickersons
(Don Ameche and Frances Langford’s radio show), and Louis Prima and Keely Smith’s famous Las Vegas act. Their new tuxedo-and-dress look also proved to be a huge hit with middle-of-the-road audiences. Based on their growing new success, Merv Griffin signed them to appear as guest
hosts on his television show for one week in 1971. Sonny & Cher’s stint on
The Merv Griffin Show
was seen by CBS-TV programming director Fred Silverman. He liked their appealing blend of onstage repartee and songs, and he offered them their own six-episode, one-hour summer replacement television show on his network. They jumped at the opportunity, and
The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour
was born.