My review of Cher: The Memoir, Part 1, by Cher

Cher: The Memoir, Part 1

by Cher

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Cher's much anticipated 432-page memoir has been analysed, criticised and praised by commentators quite at odds with one another, since its 2024 release. Diehard fans want one thing, bookworm historians want another, while detractors will always be just that, whatever she says or does.

Despite the famously dyslexic Cher reportedly hiring three ghostwriters to assist her over seven years of rewrites, some legacy media critics have pooh-poohed it, with The Independent's Adam White calling the end result 'flat' while asserting that it does not 'sound like her' and asking 'where's the sass?'

His take sounds to me to be less general than from a fan or cultist adherent's perspective. I see how her more hardcore 'in crowd' may have preferred more of their own lingo and niche wit. Yet one cannot expect the book to be so blinkered in its delivery – this had to speak to a far wider readership, on many of whom certain banter would have been lost.

Cher-isms are by no means absent, they just not as bountiful as certain of her devotees might have preferred. There is certainly no shortage of jovial expletives which, to me, did indeed sound very Cher, her self-deprecating humour out on full display, her earthy candour in full force.

The audiobook is mostly read by actor Stephanie J. Block, who has played Cher on Broadway – a choice perhaps necessitous because of Cher's dyslexia.

Lay reader reviews are mixed, with a common complaint of over coverage of her ancestry, childhood, parentage, passion for fashion and namedropping being collectively drawn out to the point of tedium.

I see their points, yet remained glued regardless. The flip side is that this sure gives bang for buck and never shies away from eyepopping anecdotes, so maybe it depends how much reading time one is willing to commit to this fascinating star.

One consideration with any memoir is that the exercise is necessarily a self-absorbing business, and often the author becomes so caught up in the cathartic task of fine detail recall that segments of the finished work are of more interest to themselves than their readers. In Cher's case her dyslexia may, to some extent, have ruled out this common autobiographical syndrome, leaving us to conclude that the multi-handed ghost-writing and final editing is responsible here.

The Memoir Part 1 covers her (admittedly protracted) journey through a bizarrely rocky childhood echoed in her 1971 hit single 'Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves', even at one point being held in an orphanage in Scranton, Pennsylvania, run by nuns who didn't want to release her back to her mother.

She states: 'Often when I think of my family history it sounds like the opening of a Dickens novel,' but notes that 'resilience is in my DNA.'

Her mother Georgia Holt married and divorced seven times, twice to Cher's father, Johnnie Sarkisian who would become a heroin addict with a 'penchant for larceny and a shaky relationship to employment'. 

Cher tells us: 'The women in my family rarely chose their men well.' Georgia even leaves one of her husbands for his brother. Exclaims the author: 'I mean, jeez. My family. You couldn't make it up.'

Hauled around the country by the peripatetic but hardworking and beautiful Georgia, Cher changes school every five minutes, in shoes held together with elastic bands.

There are ups between the growing up downs. When Georgia is based around Hollywood doing movie extra work, Cher lives around movie stars and plays in their front gardens with neighbourhood kids including Liza Minnelli, getting a peep through the front door at Judy Garland stood on the stairs holding a glass of something.

When she is 15, 25-year-old Warren Beatty almost collides with her borrowed car and, unaware of her age, takes her home and entertains her to make good for his reckless driving, leading to her getting home late and receiving a verbal dressing down by her mother. When he later calls her at home, asking her out on dates, her mother, as besotted with Beatty as were most women, nearly faints hearing his voice, her tone switching from castigation to approval.

Living in LA with family, 16-year-old Cher takes acting classes. In a crowded coffee shop break, she randomly meets fledgling 27-year-old songwriter and junior record producer Sonny Bono, with whom she later moves in with when out of housing options herself. Their relationship is initially platonic, with Cher acting as his cook and housekeeper. She writes that Bono thought she was 18, and that they remained just roommates until she was legal.

Sonny urges her to quit acting class and pursue full-time music.

The memoir moves into the '60s and '70s spotlight, through her unsteady six-year first marriage to Sonny, with whom she has baby Chastity (later to become Chaz), over whom Cher wins a contentious public custody battle. Then on to her four-year marriage to second husband Gregg Allman, with whom she has son Elijah Sky Blue Allman, and ends on a cliffhanger as she approaches the movie stardom status no one could have anticipated her could achieving.

Early pre-fame teen tales include a gay party with her closeted best buddy Steve, which is raided by cops (this is pre-decriminalisation). The two escape through a bathroom window, pursued by said law enforcement. Back at home, Cher's grandmother grounds her. This is the first we read of this future gay icon being surrounded by her tribe, although she has already noted being around them through childhood, her mother being in movies and therefore friends with many in the industry.

After living with Bono for some time, he arrives home one day, overhears her singing to the radio, and is surprised she can belt out any old tune. She soon hangs out with Sonny at Phil Spector's recording sessions in Hollywood's Gold Star Studios, initially as a sidekick and observer, then as an unpaid last minute backup vocalist when a regular doesn't show. 'I was utterly clueless,' she writes.

Encouraged by Sonny, she perseveres and records backing tracks with The Ronettes ('Be My Baby') and The Righteous Brothers (her background tones immortalised on 'You've Lost That Loving Feeling', officially deemed the most-played song on American radio and television in the 20th century) until ultimately forming her breakthrough Sonny & Cher duo with Bono.

'I Got you Babe' is a smash 1965 hit, but the scope of opportunity for furtherance seems limited. Advised by industry peers to try the London scene, the pair becomes globally famous via headlines upon being refused accommodation at the Hilton Hotel, due to their hippie-chic clothing. This gave them the ultimate global publicity that no hired PR manager could ever have pulled off.

Sonny writes Cher's 1967 solo hit 'Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)' as she slowly starts to achieve solo vocal recognition, with her distinctive androgynous contralto voice and exotic semi-Armenian visage (inherited from her biological father), though the pair remain united onstage and off for the time being.

A string of the duo's hits followed, peaking with 1967's 'The Beat Goes On', then tapering off in sales as the pair strove to reinvent themselves in this rapidly changing countercultural era, of which they would become historically emblematic.

Low dive cabaret gigs would at time keep the wolves from the door, while the pair moved toward their more glamourised '70s TV variety show phase with The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour – their touring club act had, by chance and from practical necessity, morphed from pure song rendition to inserting whacky spousal sparring jibes in an attempt to get just any reaction from inimical regional club audiences, some comprising less than a handful, some so untrendy they had never heard of them, and others who saw them as yesterday's news.

Ditching their old hippie rags for Bob Mackie's glitzier creations (Cher's at first less revealing at Bono's husbandly insistence), their TV show would evolve, post-divorce, into Cher's own show, Cher (in which she and Mackie were able to use far sexier designs, sans Bono) before the friendly divorcees reunited onscreen for later '70s The Sonny & Cher Show.

But this all unfolds later in the memoir, so reader patience is required.

Meanwhile, Cher's Swinging Sixties anecdotes, when she first tastes fame, are delicious. There's the two-page much touted one about Cher and Sonny attending Salvadore Dali's NYC art studio, with Sonny's bestie Francis Ford Coppola. Dali is cleaning up after an orgy and Cher picks up a mechanically moving painted rubber fish she finds wedged behind her seat cushion. Thinking it a child's toy, she comments on its beauty, only for Dali to explain it is a vibrator.

Dali's assistant, Franco-American artist Ultra Violet, sits alongside Cher. 'She [Ultra Violet] was wearing a man's shirt and tie with a velvet skirt. She sat next to me and, saying nothing, repeatedly tapped my leg with her cane. If she does that again, I thought, I'm going to smack her.'

As would be expected, there is much priceless namedropping of idols of the era, e.g. 'Jimi Hendrix's name was added to a long roll call of talented musicians, singers, and industry experts who had died so-called rock-and-roll deaths in the late Sixties. Among them were the angelic Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, and Brian Epstein.'

She recalls meeting up-and-coming musicians like Mick Jagger and Dolly Parton, and drolly sets records straight on her disputed relationships. For example, the tabloids 'claimed I was dating Elvis and Robert Redford. Two men I'd never even met, although they'd have made great bookends (insert tongue in cheek).'

As industry associates and audiences began noticing Cher to be more the standout talent than Sonny, the once adoring husband becomes increasingly more unfaithful and controlling. In a moment of anger, Sonny spins her around and pushes her against their wall. 'I'd been beaten as a kid,' she writes, 'and I wasn't going to be beaten as an adult. Staring into his eyes, I said, "Let me tell you something. If you ever touch me like this again, I will leave your ass and it'll be the last time you ever see me."'

Years later, Cher asks marital advice of Lucille ball, who had ditched ex-husband Desi Arnaz: 'I told her, "Lucy, I want to leave Sonny and you're the only one I know that's ever been in this same situation. What should I do?"

'She told me, "fuck him, you're the one with the talent."'

Still more years later Tina Turner, a guest with notoriously abusive husband Ike on Cher's TV show, quietly asks her in a dressing room: 'How did you leave him?'

'I just walked out and kept going,' replies Cher.

Meanwhile, amid divorce proceedings, Cher learns how Sonny had made her legally an employee of a company 95% owned by Sonny and 5% by his lawyer, and that she was contracted to work exclusively for that company. Record executive David Geffen, with whom Cher had begun a relationship, helped her escape Sonny's underhand contractual ties. She divulges to the reader:

'There was something inside him that I could never understand, something that took him from being this fabulous, funny guy to being someone who would take everything from me.'

But as we all know, Cher is a cool and forgiving soul, and no one spoke more fondly of Sonny Bono than she did after his sudden 1998 death.

Whatever the mixed reactions to The Memoir Part 1, and whatever your take on her musical evolution, it's impossible to not like this superstar's frank and courageous dialogue, even if numerous ghostwriters and an editor have transcribed and repeatedly reworded it – Cher herself, has obviously listened to the audiobook and given it her final approval, so it can't be that far removed from her original 'voice' as some have asserted.

The Memoir Part 2 may be the great decider, covering more recent pop history, which more readers will have lived through, while moving into Cher's Broadway acting and Oscar-winning movie career.

History tells us she will move to New York to study acting with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, but skip enrolment after auditioning for and being cast in Robert Altman's Broadway play Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. She will win an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, be presented with Kennedy Centre Honour, be inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and earn a seemingly endless list of honorary accolades.

However, as the Goddess of Pop is known for not overly blowing her own horn ('There are a million people more talented than me who struggle to make it and will never be famous,' she writes, 'I’ve always thought that whether you get a break or not is purely down to luck'), there is rumoured to be some behind-scenes-trepidation of her second instalment ending up in a similar vein to her first – involving more personal trivia than career sensation – for which she has been critiqued.

And so, for this next instalment, the most devout Cherists await with bated breath. Meanwhile I, for one, loved this great telling of an exemplary human being and supreme entertainer. Cher is a living inspiration.