Words: Abby Aguirre. Photography: Getty Images
she was not an owner of Cher Enterprises, the company Sonny
had founded in her name. Sonny owned 95 per cent of Cher
Enterprises. Their lawyer owned the other five.
Cher suggested to Sonny that they become business partners.
Sonny wouldn’t do it. Instead, he warned her that if she left,
“America will hate you and you won’t have a job.” Cher filed for
divorce, claiming that Sonny had tricked her into “involuntary
servitude” and that their business dealings amounted to a violation
of the Thirteenth Amendment. When the divorce became final in
1975, Cher walked away with nothing. Worse, because Cher
Enterprises had outstanding contracts Cher broke by leaving, she
owed Sonny millions. That same year, Cher was on the cover of
Time, alone, in the original beaded nude dress Mackie designed
for her. In some parts of the South, people ripped off the cover.
But it didn’t derail her. She’s had decades of hits and paradigm-
shifting fashion moments, plus won an Oscar. If you somehow
have not seen the movie Moonstruck, go to YouTube right now
and pull up the clip of Cher’s character Loretta Castorini watchingLa Bohème. Watch the scene knowing this: “There was no-one
onstage. The director was whispering what was going on, what
was happening: ‘And now she’s dying, and now the snow,’ and
all that. And I started crying,” says Cher. In Streep’s words,
“Moonstruck was when she showed how completely effortless
her fully-rounded talent was — funny, heartbreaking, inimitable —
no-one else could’ve done it that way. She owned that part. She
jumped out of the screen. It was like we’d been waiting for her,
and round the corner she came: ‘Yeah, and I can do this, too!’”
When Cher accepted her Oscar, on her way to the stage,
she tripped, lost an earring, and said, “Shit!” At
the podium, she addressed the audience,
including her children, Chastity and Elijah Blue,
her son with Gregg Allman; Cage and Streep;
and Rob Camilletti, the bagel baker she still
describes as the love of her life.
The average person might need a rest after
all this. In any event, the average person
definitely does not then release a music video
in which she straddles a cannon aboard the
USS Missouri in front of thousands of sailors.
But the really un-average thing is that Cher is still
at it. Just this morning, she went back to
Television City, where she and Sonny once
filmed the Comedy Hour, to be a guest on
The Ellen Show and to promote her new ABBA
album, her new Broadway musical, and her
Here We Go Again tour.
How on earth do you fit all this into one
Broadway musical? How on earth did Cher fit
it into one lifetime? We haven’t even gotten to
the part where Chastity became Chaz five
years before Bruce became Caitlyn. If you
must know, Cher was scared at first, mostly
about the public’s reaction and especially for Chaz. But this, she
weathered: “All of a sudden, this person comes in, and it’s fine.
That’s the child that you love, just in different wrapping paper.”
And we’ve barely touched on the time she magically knew the
robotic Auto-Tune effect would be the next big thing a decade
before everyone else, knew it with such conviction that she told an
executive he could change the effect “over my dead fucking
body”, and thus unleashed, at the age of 52, what remains her
greatest-selling single to date, posing the question: “Do you
believe in life after love?”
Before I leave, I ask Cher why she thinks following fun and
acting on instinct has, in her case, produced so many pivotal
moments. “It doesn’t always,” she says. “Look, I’ve had huge
failures in my life. Huge dips and ‘Oh, you’re over. You’re over.’
This one guy once said, ‘You’re over,’ every year for I don’t know
how many years. And I just said to him, ‘You know what? I will be
here when you’re not doing what you do anymore.’ I had no idea
if I was right or wrong. I was just tired of hearing him say it.” E“MY MUM SAID TO
ME, ‘YOU KNOW,
SWEETHEART,
YOU SHOULD
SETTLE DOWN
AND MARRY
A RICH MAN.’
I SAID, ‘MUM, I AM
A RICH MAN.’”“I FEEL LIKE A BUMPER CAR. IF I HIT
A WALL, I’M BACKING UP AND
GOING IN ANOTHER DIRECTION. AND
I’VE HIT PLENTY OF FUCKING
WALLS IN MY CAREER. BUT I’M
NOT STOPPING.”“ALL OF US INVENT
OURSELVES.
SOME OF US JUST
HAVE MORE
IMAGINATION
THAN OTHERS.”MORE
CHER WISDOM