Cher (50 page)

In 1998 Chastity published a book called
Family Outing
, in which she spoke very frankly about her sexuality and her famous parents’ very separate reactions to her revelations. With regard to Cher’s having “freaked out” at the news that her only daughter was gay, Chastity claimed, “But it actually strengthened her support in the gay community, because her
response was so primal and almost textbook for the parent of a gay child—and she got past it” (192).

Although Sonny Bono openly embraced his daughter’s controversial lifestyle choice, it was to cause political problems between father and daughter. In 1996, Chastity made this statement about Sonny: “He was talking to me at one point about gays having a minority status. I was very antigay then, because this was right around the tabloid time, and I was feeling, ‘Fuck anything gay.’ But now, of course, my view is different. I think we do need to be protected. We are a minority. But I haven’t really talked about that since with him” (64). Politically, now that Sonny was a conservative Republican on Capitol Hill, he was against giving gay people special rights in America. Although he loved his daughter, this left them at odds politically.

According to Chastity,

As far as my Mom, it was the opposite. We did not have a great relationship growing up. I knew that she loved me, but it was strained. We were very different, and I didn’t have very high hopes for ever having a close relationship with her. But when I finally came out, I stopped censoring what I talked about with her. I let her get to know me for the first time as a whole person. In doing that, I got to know her, and all of a sudden our differences didn’t seem like such a big deal. It turned everything around, and now I’m just super close to her (193).

When Chastity confronted Cher about making a statement to her gay and lesbian fans, Cher replied,

The most important and hardest thing in the world to keep remembering is to be honest about who you are—but that is the most rewarding thing. For some of us it is harder than for others. Being gay and being proud of it might take more energy, but it is so much more rewarding than trying to deny who you are. . . . Being who you are is not always popular. I know too. I have been on the popular side of being me and on the unpopular side of being me (26).

Due to a very public “coming out,” the relationships between Sonny and Cher and Chastity shifted a bit. Some of it was favorable, and some of it was unfavorable. Regardless of what the outcome was to be between all three of them, Chastity’s actions, and her levelheadedness toward doing the right thing, caused each of them to grow emotionally.

15

IT’S CHER’S WORLD

Concurrent with all of the drama that was going on in Chastity’s life, Cher’s own very hectic life and career were continuing right along at full velocity. From 1993 to 1998, she continued to be involved in one project after another. Although her popularity was waning a bit, and at times it seemed that she had withdrawn from the public eye, her activities and her creative output continued to move forward.

Through an organization called the United Armenian Fund Relief Organization, on April 28, 1993, Cher flew to Armenia. She had grown up knowing that she was of Armenian descent; however, she never knew firsthand what the country was like. She did know that Armenia was a grim and desolate place; a 1988 earthquake rocked the country and left its residents broke and hungry. At this point, the Soviet Union, which once ruled over it, had fallen apart, and so had the economy there. To top it all off, they were now at war with their enemies, the Azerbaijanis.

Cher was first of all curious to see where her ancestors had come from. And she wanted to see what she could do to shine some light of hope and charity upon the Armenian citizens. Cher and her party left from London’s Heathrow Airport and flew in an ancient 707 cargo plane that had seats bolted in the back of the cabin. With them they took dried food, medicine, clothes, and toys for the children. Mattel Toys had donated Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels toys toward the cause. In addition, the plane also had to be filled with enough food for Cher and her party, as
the resources of the country were so depleted that there was little or no food there to buy. On the way, Cher recalls that the plane ride was so turbulent that all of the passengers had to carry their own oxygen canisters just in case of mishap.

It was a harrowing landing in Yerevan, Armenia, and all along the way, Cher stopped to wonder to herself how on earth she had gotten talked into this goodwill project. However, when she arrived there, she saw that although the people had little, they were all humble and polite. Cher was deeply touched by this experience, and it certainly served as a reality check for her as an American, and as a wealthy international star.

Everywhere she went people asked her all kinds of questions about America, and what it was like to live there. Were there really cowboys there? What was Jack Nicholson like? What did teenagers wear there? Everything about life in America fascinated them. Cher walked around in wonderment, seeing an entire country filled with people with coloring and facial structure identical to hers.

She also went to several orphanages and was deeply touched by the sad eyes of the children she found there. All of the orphanages were full of children who had lost their parents in the recent war, and there was never any hope of anyone adopting them. Cher found her trip a hauntingly bittersweet one. She had finally seen the land of her ancestors’ roots, but what she found there was a country in shambles.

For the rest of 1993, Cher kept a pretty low profile. In January of 1994 she found herself back in the Top 40 on the American record charts. It was her latest teaming, with not one, but two male media stars, Beavis and Butt-head. As the obnoxious cartoon stars of the animated series on MTV bearing their name, the characters of Beavis and Butt-head, like
The Simpsons
and
Ren & Stimpy
before them, recorded their own album,
The Beavis and Butt-head Experience
. Well, at least Cher has a sense of humor about herself, or how else could we hear her singing the immortal lyrics “I got you Butt-head” on the airwaves?

With the exception of the fictional, precociously obnoxious cartoon characters grunting and snorting throughout, this particular hard-rocking cut is actually a fun new version of “I Got You Babe.” Rather tastelessly, Cher and Beavis and Butt-head use the song to roundly put down Sonny Bono. While the ending music to the song plays, the following dialogue unravels.

Cher wasn’t about to allow an opportunity to zap Sonny to slip through her fingertips, even it if meant facilitating two cartoon dorks in insulting her ex-husband. And, to top it off, the album was on Geffen Records, headed by Sonny’s old nemesis, David Geffen. Ever since their reunion on the
Letterman
show in 1988, Cher seemed to be on a relentless quest to put down Bono whenever she could.

In 1994 Cher was one of the “guest stars” in Robert Altman’s next all-star cinema extravaganza, the satirical film about the world of high fashion
Ready to Wear
(
Prêt-à-Porter
). The film starred Julia Roberts, Tim Robbins, Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Kim Basinger, Anouk Aimée, Stephen Rea, Forest Whittaker, Lauren Bacall, Linda Hunt, Sally Kellerman, Tracey Ullman, Rossy De Palma, Lyle Lovett, Lili Taylor, Rupert Everett, Teri Garr, Harry Belafonte, Danny Aiello, and an international host of stars. Naturally a who’s who of the fashion and modeling world was also featured: designers like Christian LeCroix and Jean Paul Gaultier, and models like Naomi Campbell and Jerry Hall. Fashion mavens from all over the world converge in Paris for a week’s worth of
haute couture
events in the fabled City of Light. Cher was seen in another cameo appearance, arriving at one of the fashion events.

Three fashion editors (Hunt, Kellerman, and Ullman) vie for the attentions of a famous fashion photographer (Rea), the head of the Fashion Counsel is murdered, someone is being blackmailed, designers are having nervous breakdowns, and it seems that the entire cast is caught hopping in and out of bed with one another. Altman is a genius at assembling large casts of notable celebrities and weaving several stories together in an entertaining mix. He has a lot of fun with this high-profile
melange of a cast in
Ready to Wear
. One of his famed devices is to have certain themes or recurring events running throughout his pictures. In this film he pokes fun at modern Paris’s most notable flaw: the lack of clean-up-after-your-dog laws. Every few minutes someone else in this film laughably steps right into canine excrement on the sidewalk. Here is an assemblage of the world’s most chic and cultured elite, and still they are walking through dog shit.

Cher is first seen on a television monitor, arriving at one of the Bulgari fashion events, looking smashing in black leather pants. Next, we see her being interviewed by Kim Basinger, who portrays perky but stressed television personality, Kitty Potter. “I’m as much of a fashion follower as I am a perpetrator,” says Cher, appearing on camera as herself. She then tells Kitty, “I’m a victim as well as a perpetrator of all of this. And I think it’s not about what you put on you body. I think it’s more about what you are on the inside” (194). It’s ironic but amusing to hear this humble statement coming from the collagen-enhanced lips of a woman who—in her lifetime—has worn countless millions of dollars worth of clothes. At this point in history, Cher’s career-long wardrobe budget has already far exceeded that of even Marie Antoinette!

On October 8, 1994, Cher was one of the stars to perform in Memphis, Tennessee, at a mega-star-studded concert event called
Elvis Aaron Presley The Tribute
. The show, which was staged at the Pyramid Arena, was broadcast live as a pay-per-view event. Other than seeing “the king” perform when she was eleven years old, this was to be the closest she was to come to being a part of his legend. The evening was to make a lasting impression on her, and it was to give her the inspiration to record an Elvis-oriented song on her next solo album.

Also that year, Cher was heard on the album
The Glory of Gershwin
. Produced by Beatles producer George Martin, the concept was to team famed jazz harmonica player Larry Adler with some of the hottest stars of contemporary music and to record the classic songs of George and Ira Gershwin.
The Glory of Gershwin
was also an eightieth-birthday celebration in song for Adler. On the album, Sting can be heard singing a jaunty 1920s Charleston-style “Nice Work if You Can Get It,” Kate Bush can be heard warbling “The Man I Love,” Elton John sings of “Somebody to Watch over Me,” and Cher proclaims “It Ain’t Necessarily So.”

The liner notes state, “Each artist chose the song they wanted to sing. They then negotiated a musical arrangement with Martin and turned up at the studio, where recordings were conducted live, in the presence of
a full orchestra. None of them had ever worked this way before. Cher was not the only one to ask, ‘What am I going to be singing while
they’re
there?’ In any event, she loved it” (195).

In an album filled with fun highlights, probably the most lusciously surprising cut is Cher’s. The exquisite strings and full orchestra backing her, and a completely flattering arrangement, shows her off to delicious advantage. Cher starts the song soft and understated and warms it up to a vampy finale. “It Ain’t Necessarily So” makes one realize how much better her ill-fated 1970s standards album
Bittersweet White Light
might have been if George Martin had been at the helm.

To top it all off, in the fall of 1994, Cher launched her own short-lived mail-order company, entitled Sanctuary. It was a marketing idea to sell various “Gothic”-themed products. The cover and the artwork of her 1991 album
Love Hurts
had been designed with very Gothic touches—Gothic patterns, hearts, flaming torches, Tarot cards, all of that dark era of knights and mysticism, with a slight witchcraft bent. It was Cher’s way of leaping onto the Gothic bandwagon, and selling some candles and gargoyles along the way. Sanctuary didn’t end up to be a huge success for Cher, but it was certainly another creative notch in her multimedia belt.

Only Cher could spend a calendar year in the company of such diverse compatriots as she did in 1994. From Beavis and Butt-head, to the height of the Paris fashion world, to Elvis Presley, to George Gershwin. It was just a typical year in the life of the world’s most flexible pop diva.

The week of March 25, 1995, Cher was back in the Number 1 spot on the British record charts. This time around she was singing with Chrissie Hynde and Neneh Cherry, with Eric Clapton on guitar. The song they recorded together was a touching all-star version of the Judds’ inspirational country hit, “Love Can Build a Bridge.” Between Cher’s vibrato, Chrissie’s gravelly growl, and Cherry’s snappy delivery, this trio of rock divas sounds great together. “Love Can Build a Bridge” was originally recorded as a benefit for the homelessness charity Comic Relief, and became one of the three biggest British hits of her entire career. Yet the single wasn’t even released in America—and at present is only available in the United States as an import.