Cher (30 page)

On the cover of the
Prisoner
album we see a stark-naked Cher, covered in only a long black wig and metal chains that bind her to an ancient marble column. Was Cher beginning to feel like a prisoner of her image? According to her, this photo was not warmly received by women, many of whom found it demeaning to their sex. “I got into so much trouble because of this album cover. I had so many women’s groups mad at me. They were pissed off. ‘What did this mean, that I was chained up to the pillar?’ I don’t know, what do you think it means?” Cher asked (39).

Of the eight cuts on this album, six were specifically written for her and about her. The album opens with the pop/rock title cut, “Prisoner,” which was written by her former boyfriend and Toto member David Paich, along with David Williams. Another of the highlights on the album, was Cynthia Weil and Tom Snow’s “Holdin’ Out for Love,” a medium-paced rhythmic ballad about looking for a true love, instead of picking up dates at the disco.

Four of the songs on
Prisoner
were penned by Michele Aller and Bob Esty. “Shoppin’ ” was about Cher’s favorite hobby; “Hell on Wheels”
highlighted her then-current favorite sport—roller skating; “Holy Smoke” pokes fun at the state of world circa 1979; and “Outrageous” is truly a Cher theme song if ever there was one. On it she sings about wearing whatever she wants and putting on a flashy stage show. Writing with another collaborator, Michael Brooks, Bob Esty provided Cher with “Mirror Image,” which makes jokes about the Cher everyone reads about in the press.

Bob Esty explained of the project that became the
Prisoner
album,

Meanwhile, I was working on her second [Casablanca] album, which was originally entitled
Mirror Image
, and it was going to be all songs about her. “Hell on Wheels” was about her roller skating. “Shoppin’ ” was about her shopping fetish. “Holy Smoke” was about the gas crisis which was going on. She had a Ferrari and a Jeep, and we just pictured her at the gas pump, complaining. And then we wrote “Outrageous,” because of the fact that she is two different people. When she is herself, she is kinda like a rock & roller biker babe, and yet when she puts on her show she is all glamour and glitz. And then “Mirror Image” was a song about what it’s like to have your face in the tabloids every day of your life, surrounded by publicity, and wondering if people really believe all the crazy stories or not—and sometimes wondering if you believe it yourself. We had a concept the front of the album would be Cher in her public persona in a beautiful outfit—on her bed, or whatever it would be—looking sexy and fabulous. And, then the back cover would be the mirror image, her looking frustrated and surrounded by all this tabloid publicity spread out on her bed (101).

Although the projected
Mirror Image
was intended as a concept album, it ended up evolving into
Prisoner
. “What happened was, she never liked the style of music she was asked to do—dance music,” said Esty.

She loves rock & roll. So, she asked the members of Toto to write her a song, and they wrote her a song called “Prisoner.” You have to understand, David Paich and some of the other members of Toto were her band on the road. She was in heaven when they came into the studio and did their track, of a song I don’t think they spent much time writing to tell you the truth—it’s kind of a one line song. But, she loved it, and that was what was important. She brought in the song “Boys & Girls,” which she liked, so we did it. And of course she went to [photographer] Harry Langdon, who did the
Prisoner
photos with the chains, and the whole thing—gorgeous photos, beautiful shots. But, then the original concept of the album was not there anymore (101).

Unfortunately, Cher’s
Prisoner
album did not become the huge success that
Take Me Home
was. “Hell on Wheels” only made it to Number 59 on the
Billboard
Hot 100 chart. An almost-overlooked album at the time of its release,
Prisoner
is one of the most fun albums Cher has recorded. In the 1990s both
Take Me Home
and
Prisoner
were combined on seventeen-cut compilation CDs—first as a German import on Spectrum Records in 1990, and then as the American release entitled
Cher: The Casablanca Years
on Casablanca Records in 1996.

Although Bob Esty was one of the people who were largely responsible for Cher’s 1979 “comeback,” they didn’t remain close friends. However, his writing partner, Michele Aller, was to become one of Cher’s background singers in her concert tours in the 1980s. According to Esty, “I’ve always felt an kind of aloofness from Cher. Although she once had me over to her house to maybe give Chastity some vocal lessons. I got the feeling, even then, that Chastity wasn’t interested in becoming a singer” (101).

While she was still very much into her disco mode at Casablanca Records, Cher was one of the label’s stars to be featured on the soundtrack album from the movie
Foxes
. A 1980 teenage coming-of-age film, set in the disco era,
Foxes
starred Jodie Foster, Cherie Currie (of the Runaways), Randy Quaid, Laura Dern, and Sally Kellerman.

Giorgio Moroder, who was most famous for turning Donna Summer into a star, produced a two-record set of dance tunes for the
Foxes
soundtrack. The album also included Summer’s hit “On the Radio,” Janis Ian’s “Fly Too High,” and Angel’s disco-rocking “20th Century Foxes.” Cher’s song on the album, “Bad Love,” is especially notable as it was written by Cher and Moroder. It is Cher’s only recorded disco composition as a writer. She sounds game and bouncy on this rarely heard cut. While Moroder’s music on “Bad Love” sounds like a cross between Cheryl Lynn’s “Star Love” and Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls,” it is a prime Cher cut, circa Studio 54.

With the start of the new decade, Cher was ready for a whole new persona. Her romance with Gene Simmons came to an end, and her pal Diana Ross began dating him, reportedly with Cher’s full approval. Cher had a new obsession to occupy her time, rock and roll guitarist Les Dudek. Her fascination with Dudek extended beyond the physical, as she struck upon the idea that what she really wanted to do was to start her own rock and roll band. According to her, “I’ve always wanted to sing with a rock band even when Sonny and I first started out” (6). Well, she was about to have her chance.

A small item in
People
magazine announced that Cher had formed her own rock band, but no one was talking about its name, or anything about it. “Expect something weird and wonderful,” the magazine predicted (107). In August 1980, Daryl Hall & John Oates, the rock duo, had booked several concert dates on the East Coast, including gigs at the Garden State Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey; at the Dr. Pepper Music Festival in Central Park in New York City; and in Bethlehem and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. On the bill with Hall & Oates was an opening act calling themselves Black Rose. No one had any idea that Black Rose was in reality Cher, Les Dudek, and their new rock band.

No announcements were made before the show, or from the stage during the band’s performance. Cher and Les wanted to break in the act as a totally unknown band and see what happened. It wasn’t long before word leaked out that the girl screaming high-decibel rock and roll up onstage was actually one of the most famous women in the world—Cher.

A lot of things happened at the dawn of the 1980s. The music industry suddenly changed focus. Disco was out, and stripped down, early 1960s-style rock and roll was “in.” Suddenly, even the word “disco” was out. It already sounded
sooo
1970s, and so outdated. It began to go underground, and it was now to be called—even by
Billboard
magazine—“dance” music. Several popular 1970s acts suddenly abandoned synthesizers and strings to adopt the sound of “punk” rock.

The high priestess of California pop/rock, Linda Ronstadt led the pack with her Platinum 1980 album
Mad Love
. Carly Simon went for harder rock on her 1980 album
Come Upstairs
. This was also the year that Pat Benetar hit it big with “Heartbreaker.” This all opened the door for the Go-Go’s in 1981. Then in 1982, Bonnie Raitt followed suit with her album
Green Light
. It was an era for girls who rocked. In other words, this was the perfect time for Cher to be taken seriously as a “rock” star.

Cher’s new album, also entitled
Black Rose
, was released by Casablanca Records with no fanfare whatsoever. The cover had nothing on it but an illustration of a woman’s high-heeled foot, bearing the tattoo of a black rose and wearing a menacing pair of spiked ankle bracelets. On the back of the album cover is a photo of the band, free of any identifying names of the people in the photo. The inner sleeve simply states among the album credits “Vocals: Cher.”

After her identity leaked out to the press, Cher granted several interviews to explain her latest project. In each instance she stressed her commitment to the band, and downplayed her role in it. “I just decided I
wanted to become part of a real rock & roll band,” she stated at the time. “Black Rose isn’t ‘MY’ band. I’m just the group’s singer—it’s as simple as that. I know that a lot of people think that it’s pretty bizarre that I’ve joined a band like this, but it’s something that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time” (108).

Obviously a lot of people are going to wonder why I want to give up the Vegas routine and join a rock band. I know that I still have a particular image, and that’s not going to change overnight. TV and Vegas are still a part of my life, but they had become very repetitious and boring for me. I just wanted to have a little more fun as a performer, and rock & roll gives me that opportunity. It’s a very free-flowing and unpredictable medium, and that’s what makes it so much fun (108).

Obviously, unpredictability is one of Cher’s finer points.

I don’t want people to get the idea that I’m in Black Rose as a one-shot deal. I’m committed to this band as an ongoing venture. I’m not saying that I’m not going to play Vegas or appear on TV anymore, I mean those things are still an important part of my life, but Black Rose is also going to remain an important part of me. We have some incredible people in the group. I think Les is one of the best guitarists around, and Mike Finnegan, who’s our keyboard player, and Rocket [Ron Ritchotte, guitarist], are really incredible on stage. In this band we’re all sharing equal footing, which is something I really like. I think that if people will just open up and give us a chance, we can convince even the true skeptics that we can rock & roll with the best of ’em (108).

However, the album never even made it onto the record charts, and the critics ate her alive. “The critics panned us, and they didn’t attack the record they attacked me! It was like, ‘How dare Cher sing rock & roll’ ” (37).

When they were all in Los Angeles, Cher and the members of Black Rose wandered into a new wave club to catch a couple of the bands that were performing. Cher immediately felt that the audience there that night was amazed that the former star of the G-rated
Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour
would bop into a punk club and not expect to get heckled. She told
Rolling Stone
magazine, “They didn’t appreciate me being there at all. I was just in the audience and somebody said, ‘Hey Cher, where’s Sonny?’ It really pissed me off, so I told him, ‘He’s at home, fucking your mother’ ” (100). Touché Cher!

From the very first drum and guitar downbeat, it is very clear that the
Black Rose
album is a very different musical affair for Cher. With all-male background singers, exciting guitar work, and multilayered keyboards, the song “Never Should’ve Started” kicks off this raucously energetic eight-cut excursion into Cher the rock and roll singer. One way to describe the
Black Rose
album would be to say that this is what Cher would sound like if she were fronting the group Heart. Her vocal power and ass-kicking attitude throughout make this album unlike any other Cher LP—before or since.

Perhaps the fact that it was not originally marketed as a “Cher” album allowed her to really let loose and swear and scream and shout with the abandonment of a banshee in heat. On the song “Julie,” Cher sings about a rival for her boyfriend’s affections. She ad-libs threats toward Julie, calling her a “liar and a bitch.” On the song “We’ll All Fly Home,” she sings of a “lonely fucking stranger” standing out in the cold. On “88 Degrees,” Cher ponders her own fame and the temperature, complaining, “Shit, it’s 88 degrees!” Cher was no longer the innocent teenager who had once recorded “Baby Don’t Go,” nor the G-rated TV show hostess. She was now the lead singer of her own hard-rocking 1980s band, and she was ready to let loose. Always one to worry about the shape and sound of her singing voice, on a couple of the songs on the
Black Rose
album, Cher sings several of the lyrics—especially “We’ll All Fly Home”—sounding like she’d had several belts of whiskey, a pack of cigarettes, and attended an all-night party before heading off to the recording studio. This is the one and only “punk rock” Cher album, and it is a unique original.

Cher has always been one to take pride in remaining on good terms with her ex-boyfriends. For two of the
Black Rose
cuts she turned to a pair of her ex’s: David Paich for “Never Should’ve Started” and Bernie Taupin for “Julie.” Concurrent boyfriend Les Dudek wrote the cut “You Know It,” which he sings as a duet with Cher.

Cher had great hopes for Black Rose. At the time she proclaimed,

I’m very pleased with the album. And I must admit, I don’t think my voice has ever sounded better. My voice has always been very strong. In fact I always thought it might be a little too brash for the type of material I did. Now though, I need every bit of volume I can get just to be heard over the music that the guys put out. I’ve always been more used to having an orchestra there to help me along. In rock & roll it’s just every man for himself (108).