Cher (28 page)

She loves musicians, and finds them attractive in many ways. She finds them sexually attractive, although they may not be physically attractive. She finds them “hot,” especially bass players, guitar players. So, Michele and I had written this song about a girl we both knew, and we just adapted it to Cher. We added lyrics about her. That was the first song that we tailored to her as a person. That was probably the only song on the album that she liked, really, except her own song she wrote about Gregg. Then the album was released, and “Take Me Home” was a hit. The best thing about her, is when she puts on “Cher”—as anybody who is a real star knows how to do—she becomes bigger than life. She’s so charismatic, she was a big hit at the
Billboard
Disco Convention. It was a great moment for me (101).

The resulting
Take Me Home
album instantly put Cher back on top. It sold over 500,000 copies in the United States, and was certified Gold. For Cher, it was one of her biggest solo albums, and it made it to Number 25 in
Billboard
magazine. The title cut, “Take Me Home,” sold a million copies, was certified Gold, went to Number 8 on the pop charts in America, and to Number 1 on the disco chart. All of a sudden Cher was back on the record scene in a big way, with one of her most popular and sexy
singing performances. The song was also a hysterical come-on line, a perfect anthem for “the Sexual Revolution” of the 1970s. “Take Me Home” was a danceable invitation to be picked up for a sexual affair, and who better to be singing such a song than rock and roll’s favorite vamp with one name, Cher.

Cher had not had a Number 1 single of any sort since 1974’s “Dark Lady.” She had spent the intervening five years starring on the covers of all the tabloid magazines in the grocery stores. Cher laughed at the critics who scoffed at her doing disco, by quipping, “You can’t dance to the
National Enquirer
” (13).

Take Me Home
was a different kind of an album for Cher, both in the way it was structured and in the music it contained. After the 6-minute, 47-second title cut, Cher chose a mixed bag of songs to record on this album, which was to have the distinction of being the third Gold album of her solo recording career. In addition to “Take Me Home,” three of the other cuts on the album were composed by producer Bob Esty and his writing partner Michele Aller: “Wasn’t It Good,” “Say the Word,” and “Git Down (Guitar Groupie).”

The song “Wasn’t It Good,” which directly followed “Take Me Home” on the album, finds Cher asking her sex partner if he enjoyed being “done” by her. If “Take Me Home” is the courtship dance pick-up number, then “Wasn’t It Good” was obviously the après sex, cigarette smoking, afterglow number, set to the same danceable beat. The third cut on the album, “Say the Word,” seems to continue the story of the star-crossed disco lovers, with Cher looking for some commitment and devotion from her partner. All of the songs on this well-produced disco-tinged album deal with relationships on one level or another. On Peppy Castro’s “Happy Was the Day We Met,” Cher sings of a love affair, while synthesizer bursts audibly mimic emotional fireworks in this dance floor affair.

In this way, on the original vinyl configuration of this album,
Take Me Home
devoted the entirety of side one to disco-paced songs. Side two contained five cuts, offering a mixed bag of rock songs and more personalized ballads. Aller and Esty’s “Git Down (Guitar Groupie)” managed to mix rock guitar work with disco-styled flourishes. Cher got to use her vibrato-filled, torch song ballad-singing voice on Richard T. Bear’s “Pain in My Heart (Love and Pain)” (produced by Ron Dante). Tom Snow’s “Let This Be a Lesson to You” gave Cher an anthem-like, background chorus-filled song to proudly rave.

The two ballads that closed side two were among Cher’s favorite cuts. The song “It’s Too Late to Love Me Now” was a composition (by Rory Bourke, Gene Dobbins, and Jay Wilson) that Dolly Parton gave her to sing, and the song “My Song (Too Far Gone)” represented the first time that Cher had recorded a song she wrote. Composed with Mark Hudson of the group the Hudson Brothers (“Rendezvous”), “Too Far Gone” was a message song to Gregg Allman. It contained the lyrics “he’ll never really know his son.” Cher had been making quite a few public statements during this era about the fact that Elijah Blue Allman rarely ever received so much as a phone call from his estranged father.

On March 1, 1979, I had my first in-person interview with Cher, at her suite in the Pierre Hotel in New York City. She was very excited about discussing all of her creative projects and career aspirations. She was especially enthusiastic when she talked about her
Take Me Home
album, which marked her return to the hit lists and the cutting edge in popular music.

“I like this album,” said Cher that day.

I don’t ever listen to my own albums, but there are a couple of cuts on this album that I really like. I must say that I like the second side more than I like the first side. It’s a little bit more my kind of music to listen to when I’m working. But, I don’t know; it’s strange I never thought that I would want to do disco. I don’t really know why I had that feeling in my mind. I guess that it’s the kind of disco that [she thought for a moment] I didn’t want to be the kind of disco artist that “Anybody could do the song.” You know just the same beat over and over again. I think that “Take Me Home” is a really good song—it
just happens
to be a disco song. I love disco to dance to. I just never thought that I would be accepted by that audience. I guess that I thought that, more than anything else. I like it, and I like being able to do it, and I guess that I was afraid that if I did it [she paused to think] First of all I wasn’t sure that I could do it and sing it right, ’cause I just felt that my style or whatever, it’s so “me.” I mean, you can’t hear one of my records and not know that it’s me, you know. And, you either like it, or you don’t like it. And I thought “I wonder if I’ll be able to fit into this kind of pattern.” But he [Bob Esty] wrote the song for me, and it just seemed to be real terrific. It was a good experience, ’cause I was real nervous, and Bob was real terrific in the studio, and I like all the songs really (1).

She reported that she was already making plans for her next Casablanca album. “We’ve got some great ideas for disco. I’m really excited about it” (1).

When I said to her, “You really have rock and roll roots don’t you?” she replied,

Yeah! I just can’t get it out of my blood. I love it—I love rock and roll! I’m crazy about it. I even think of disco as rock and roll. I just think of it as all rock and roll somehow. It’s just “today” music, or “my” music, or something. I love it. I love the Doobie Brothers, but I love Gloria Gaynor too. She’s amazing. I mean, “Never Can Say Goodbye” was one of the best songs I’ve ever heard. There are songs that just transcend. They’re just incredible songs. People who keep saying, “There’s no such thing as disco”. . . it’s like saying, “The world is flat!” It’s here. . . . people should really know it. It’s terrific! It’s great music to dance to. I think that danceable music is what tells everybody what’s “in” (1).

Cher told me that she was especially proud of “My Song,” which she wrote. “It’s the first one that I decided to record,” she announced. “I’ve been writing a lot lately. Usually I just write them and throw them away, and sometimes I just write them and stash them but I’m kind of more into writing them and recording them” (1).

When I interviewed Cher that day, there was a third person in the room, her current boyfriend, Gene Simmons from the rock group KISS. When I suggested to them both that they should record a whole album together, they both said at once, “No!” Then Gene replied, “Both of our fans would kill each other. There’d be civil wars” (1).

Take Me Home
instantly put Cher back in the forefront of the recording business. Instead of attempting to recapture the formula of her early 1970s work with Snuff Garrett, Cher found herself perfectly riding the disco wave that was sweeping the world in 1979, and excelling at it. When the single and album were released, Casablanca Records was determined to go all out to promote it. At the time,
Billboard
magazine was an active force in promoting disco records, and they were hosting annual disco conventions, in which disco DJs from all over the country and the world converged on New York City to hear all the latest records, and virtually party their brains out for a solid week. On February 26, 1979, Casablanca threw a huge party at a roller skating disco that commenced around midnight. Word soon leaked out that Cher was to be the special guest hostess, and it was
the
hottest ticket in town, especially since it was a private party.

Barbara Shelley was the head of the publicity department at Casablanca when this event was held. It was her job to get every photographer in town
there to shoot pictures of Cher. No problem; everyone in Manhattan for the disco convention was fighting over tickets to the event. However, the next day it was Barbara’s job to try and stop the newspapers from publishing the photos they had taken of Cher. She distinctly recalls,

It was the Billboard Disco Forum, and Casablanca was throwing a lot of parties that year. Roller skating was “in,” it was really happening then. It was the rage, everybody was going roller skating, and roller rinks were popping up in New York City faster than singles bars. What we decided to do was to rent the Empire Roller Disco in Brooklyn, and we bused in several hundred people from Manhattan. I remember the party cost $20,000. We had a buffet dinner and all kinds of shenanigans going on. There were clowns, there were people dressed up to look like movie stars, and there were photographers galore. Cher is the kind of person who photographers love to shoot, because she’s so gorgeous, so every photographer in New York City was there (102).

The thing that was most memorable about the evening was the fact that Cher was wearing this fabulous roller skating outfit of black spandex pants, white roller skates, and this real glittery tiny top that looked like a skintight shirt that was sequined and reflected the colored lights every time she went around the rink. She had three bodyguards skating on either side of her; she didn’t skate alone. The funniest thing about the whole evening was that the shirt that Cher was wearing didn’t just reflect the light, it absorbed the light. When the photographer’s flashbulbs hit the shirt, the light was absorbed by the cloth of her shirt, and in the photos it looked like [bra-less] Cher was wearing a totally see-through blouse. In the photos the next day, it looked like Cher was virtually topless, and just wearing black spandex pants! So, our job in [Casablanca’s] publicity [department] was to attempt to recapture all of those photographs before they appeared in print . . . which was next to impossible. That was one of the funniest things that has ever happened to me in over ten years as a publicist (102).

While Cher was in New York City, she spent part of her time looking for an apartment she and Gene Simmons could purchase. Unfortunately, coop apartments in Manhattan cannot be purchased without the prospective buyer being screened by the other residents. It seemed that no one wanted Cher moving into their building. Even the Upper West Side fortress known as the Dakota turned her down. “They’re sorry they admitted John [Lennon] and Yoko [Ono]!” Cher told me during our interview, of the residents’ board of the Dakota and their refusal to sell to her.

I don’t know what they think I’m going to do there, but they’re not so crazy to have entertainers. When the lady was showing us [she and Gene Simmons] apartments, she said, “Well, there’s some apartments that I can’t show you because Gene is Jewish, and there are some apartments that I can’t show you because you’re an entertainer.” So, I was telling Diana [Ross], “Well, Jesus Christ, Diana! This is ridiculous.” She said, “What about me? I’m black, I’m an entertainer, and my husband [Bob Ellis] is Jewish!”—this was at a time when she and Bob were still together (1).

She really had her sights on moving to New York City at the time. Comparing it to Los Angeles, she told me,

There’s nothing—there’s no place to dance in L.A. L.A. is the vast wasteland for anything like that. L.A. rolls up at 11:00 p.m. People aren’t geared to nightlife out there. I like New York a lot. It’s a place that I’ve always enjoyed coming to. There’s so much to do here. When you walk down the street, and you walk out of the door, and everything is right there. It’s not like Los Angeles where you really have to make plans to do something. I like Los Angeles, I mean I would never give up my house there because it’s a kind of a life that I can also feel comfortable with, I’ve lived there my whole life, and there’s something about it that I enjoy, but I also enjoy New York. I have those two kinds of personalities really lazy and laid back, and also with a lot of energy and loving to do stuff. And, I like plays, and you guys get all of the movies here first (1).

Cher’s long-standing battles with the network censors also marred the television special she had just taped—
Cher . . . And Other Fantasies
.

The censors have always been on top of me to make sure that I didn’t show anything, but somehow when they’re busy worrying about showing something, we stick something [suggestive] in with a line in something. There are so many strange opinions on television, because on one end you have this faction that’s trying to get sex off the air, and on the other end you’ve got everybody in America who wants to see tits and ass and violence.
Charlie’s Angels
is the biggest [TV] show, and it’s not because anybody there studied with Dame Edith Anderson or Evans. It’s because they look good. . . . they look
real good
. I see Cheryl Ladd’s tits every time I turn them on (1).