Cher (57 page)

She had her representatives phone the owner of Harrod’s, Mohamed Al Fayed, to inform him that she was too distraught to make her scheduled appearance. Al Fayed was more than sympathetic, having just lost his son Dodi in the car crash that also killed Diana, Princess of Wales, only months before. Wearing dark glasses, and clutching a tissue for her tears, Cher headed back to London’s Heathrow Airport and flew to Los Angeles. She was met there by a limousine and was driven to Palm Springs.

Sonny’s third wife, Susie Coehlo, was on her way to Palm Springs as well. When Cher arrived at the house Mary and Sonny shared, she was
still unsuccessfully fighting the tears of sorrow. According to family friend and former Sonny & Cher record producer, Denis Pregnolato, “Cher walked in and went straight to Mary and Chastity and the family. Everybody hugged and cried” (188).

Although they had been divorced for twenty years, indeed Cher and Sonny still had a bond that no one, not even their families, could quite understand. In spite of all of the critical things that Cher had said about Sonny, she still loved him very deeply. According to Chastity, she was startled by her mother’s emotional state. “I’d never seen my mother in that shape. She’s not a big crier” (171).

Public statements of sadness and mourning flooded in from across America. Sonny was first remembered for his contributions to rock and roll music. Ronnie Spector was to recall, “He didn’t give up. Sonny & Cher became huge and when that went away, he went into politics. He just kept plugging on.” La La Brooks of the group the Crystals remembered, “Whatever he had to do to please Phil [Spector], he did. And, it paid off” (36). Of his business sense, Darlene Love eulogized, “He was a smart, funny man who didn’t take himself too seriously. He’s the reason there’s a Cher” (205).

Ronnie Spector recalled in late 1989 how Sonny came to New York City to appear in concert with herself and Darlene Love at the Bottom Line. It was a special Christmas concert to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the release of the Phil Spector album
A Christmas Gift for You
. “I said, ‘Sonny, you’re the Mayor [of Palm Springs] now. I can’t believe you came to the show.’ He said, ‘I could not
not
do this. I had to be a part of the music” (205). Sonny Bono will always be remembered as someone who never forgot whom his true friends were.

California Democrat Rep. Jane Harman said upon hearing of his death, “We won’t forget his freshness, his humor, his ability to not take himself too seriously, but to take issues very seriously. I think he was an excellent member of Congress, one of the nicest guys. And Sonny, we’ll miss you, Babe” (188).

According to politician Bob Dole, “If you’re going to sum it up, he was the life of our party. He loved people, liked politics. He felt he had accomplished a great deal in just getting here—and he had” (188). Controversial Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said, “We all feel that we lost a very good friend. He was building a real fan club in Washington” (211). Even President Clinton eulogized Bono the politician by stating, “He made us laugh even as he brought his own astute perspective to the work of Congress” (210).

In her own statement to the press, Chastity Bono claimed, “Although my father and I differed on some issues, he was very supportive of my personal life and career and was a loving father. I will miss him greatly” (206).

Being at Sonny’s house in Palm Springs was a haunting, surreal event for Cher. She found so much memorabilia that threw her back to a long-forgotten time in her life. “Son saved everything,” she said. “I saw his old bobcat vest. I remember the day we found it, what car we were in, how the breeze was blowing. It’s so long ago it’s like another solar system,” she claimed. “Look, I never thought it would be like this. As long as he was here I could bitch at him, be angry. That was in this compartment, this was in that compartment, everything’s tidy. But if people believe things are tidy, they’re insane” (171).

During her time in Palm Springs that week for the funeral, Cher stayed in a bungalow at Sonny and Mary’s house. In between her own bouts of crying, Cher was there to comfort both her own daughter, Chastity, and Sonny’s widow, Mary. Reportedly, Cher and Mary, who had only briefly known each other up to that point, bonded as friends in mourning.

In the local newspaper,
The Desert Sun
, Mary was quoted as saying,

It’s more a sisterly thing than a rivalry. Cher has been a constant source of comfort for me. It was funny. We spent a couple of hours together, talking, and she asked me what I was going to wear. I said, “I’m going to wear a conservative dark suit. What are you going to wear?” She says, “I’m going to go like ‘Cher.’ ” I said, “ ‘That’s great. The two of us will personify his life with our wardrobes” (212).

The press coverage on the death of Sonny Bono was massive. As a stunned public returned to work after the New Year’s weekend, it was the biggest story of the first half of January 1998. It was teamed that week with the tragedy of a member of the Kennedy family, Michael Kennedy, who was also killed in a freak skiing mishap.

In a town that celebrates celebrity, New York City featured Sonny and Cher cover stories the entire week: “I MISS YOU BABE! Cher Distraught after Sonny Bono Dies in Ski Accident” (
New York Post
, January 7, 1998), “IT’S TWO STRANGE—Sonny Bono Dies in Eerie Repeat of Tragic Ski Accident That Killed Michael Kennedy” (
New York Daily News
, January 7, 1998), “CHER’S TENDER TRIBUTE—Through Tears and Smiles She Remembers Her Best Friend Sonny” (
New York Daily News
, January 10, 1998), and “Cher’s Moving Eulogy to Sonny ‘He Was the Greatest’ ” (
New York Post
, January 10, 1998).

According to Cher, she was especially leery about seeing Sonny in his casket. She knew that it was going to a painful moment. “He had these really cool hands, and I looked away and went, ‘Oh fuck it. I’ll just look at him.’ So I thought, ‘I don’t want this to be the last thing I see.’ He looks like such a Republican, and I’m going to really hate that” (171).

What the public seemed to be anticipating all week was whether or not Cher would be speaking at her ex-husband’s funeral. She had said such harsh things about him in the last ten years, yet obviously was grief-stricken about his sudden death. Finally, it was announced that she was definitely going to deliver the eulogy at the funeral, which was to be held on Friday, January 9, 1998.

When saddened, red-eyed Cher went up to the pulpit, it was an emotional moment indeed. She carried with her several handwritten yellow legal pad pages. Of her written statement, she was later to claim, “I didn’t want to blow it. I felt I had to repair all the damage and misconceptions about Sonny” (171). America watched the touching and emotional eulogy on television, as Cher gave the most important performance of her life. She was incredibly nervous, and afterward reported, “I had no control. My face was making all kinds of movements, I had to lock my legs and grit my teeth. I was terrified” (171).

In front of her family and friends, Cher began her eulogy by stating, “Please excuse my papers, but I’ve been writing this stupid eulogy for the last 48 hours, and of course I know this would make Sonny really happy.” Speaking about their first meeting she said, “He walked into this room. I swear to God, everyone else just washed away in this soft-focus filter. Like Maria saw Tony at the dance [referring to the characters in
West Side Story
]. . . . Of course at this time he was talking to a girl who thought that Mount Rushmore was a natural phenomenon, so we were definitely a marriage made in heaven” (213). She spoke of her love for him, their marriage, and their differences.

With tears in her eyes, and intermittently sobbing, Cher, who spoke for several minutes, said,

I wanted to tell Mary and Chesare and Chianna how proud I am of them, and of what he made of himself after we were separated and his accomplishments. I know that a person just doesn’t decide to become a Congressman in the middle of his life and then be one. But it was just like Sonny to do something crazy like that. He was the greatest friend. When I was young, there was this section in
Reader’s Digest
called “Most Unforgettable Character I Ever Met.” For me, that person is Sonny Bono, no matter how long I live or who I meet. That person will always be Sonny for me (213).

Chastity Bono was especially upset over the fact that at the time her father died they were divided about their differences in opinion.

I felt sad about a lot of things that my Dad did. I never really talked to him about gay issues until I did my
Advocate
[magazine] interview with him, and I felt badly about that interview. I thought it made him look bad, and as his child, I didn’t want to do that. I also felt badly that he was so clueless on our issues. When he cosponsored DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act, the anti-gay marriage bill], I took it very personally. I put a tremendous amount of distance between us and then he died before we were able to resolve it. Growing up, we were so close. I thought he was the greatest thing in the world. When you have such high expectations of somebody and they let you down, it hits you that much harder (193).

My older sister, Christy, who’s always trying to keep the family together, talked to him right before he died, and she said, “You really should call Chas.” And he said, “Yeah, I’m gonna do that.” What’s really interesting from a spiritual side is that the famous medium James Van Praagh did a reading with my mother recently [1998], and one of the things he said to her was that my Dad said, “I wish I listened to Christy. I should have called Chas.” This was something that my Mom didn’t know about. The only people that knew about that conversation were the three of us. . . . When he first died it was much harder, and I had to make my own peace with it. At first it was devastating. I felt terrible and guilty because I felt that I didn’t do everything that I could to work on the relationship, although he was equally to blame. At his funeral service I was having this dialogue with my Dad in my head, and I just kept saying, “My God, we fucked up. We were so stupid. Why did we let this happen?” It was hard. There was an open casket, and I’m not a big crier at all, but I broke down. One of the things my Mom used to say was that my Dad and I had the same hands, and I held his hand, and it was so cold. That made me feel terrible. At this point I feel that I’ve worked through it, and I feel more peace about it, but I still wish that it had gone a different way (193).

According to Cher, she had no idea that the CNN television news network was going to have cameras rolling at Sonny’s funeral until right before she arrived there. Viewing a teary-eyed Cher delivering such a moving testimony after years of berating Sonny publicly made several
people question her sincerity and her motives. Several months later, she claimed that the public and the press think that they know her, but they really don’t know the person within. “I think it hit home for me the most when people thought I was acting at Sonny’s funeral. That’s the definitive experience of people getting it so wrong that you just don’t know where anybody’s coming from. I was so blindsided by that. And that day, I actually did give a thought to packing it in and saying, ‘You know what? Fuck all you guys, you don’t get it anyway. I’m out of here’ ” (214).

Sonny’s death had been one of the most emotional experiences in her entire event-filled life. “[I] almost moved out of the country and gave up show business when the reports started coming in that I was acting at Sonny’s eulogy,” she was later to angrily state (144).

For a woman who had lived the majority of her life in front of TV cameras, movie cameras, and microphones, Cher was startled by the outpouring of media attention Sonny’s death brought to her, both sympathetic and then critical of her. Would this leave her too devastated to continue her career? Would she pour herself into her work with feverish determination? How would Cher emerge from this tragic event that would obviously force her to take a long, hard look at her life?

Sonny Bono had died at the top of his game. He was amid his fourth successful career when he died instantly. This fact hit Cher very hard. Was this going to force her into her shell, or would it force her onward to even greater achievements? Inquiring minds wanted to know.

17

BELIEVE

After Sonny’s death in January 1998, the spotlight was back on Cher, after over a year of relative silence. The past year had been a relatively quiet one by “Cher” terms. Following the funeral, everyone in the universe seemed to be asking, “What has Cher been doing lately?” She was about to deliver her answer in a big way.

Following the funeral, she seemed to have a whole new vantage point on her former husband and singing partner. Before she moved on with her career, she obviously wanted to put some of the negative things she had said about Sonny well in her past. In the spring of 1998 she reported to
People
magazine, “We both said some nasty things. We were flippant, full of ourselves, wanting to come off smart. I was pissed off and didn’t pull punches. We made great copy” (171).