Volume 1 of the singer’s long-awaited life story covers roughly the period from her birth to 1980, when Cher, a twice-divorced single mother with two children, found herself at a professional crossroads.
The young woman in the black-and-white photograph peers at the camera intently, exuding a confidence beyond her years. Her long, dark hair and bangs frame a striking face: porcelain skin, soft lips, a strong nose and soulful eyes accentuated by thick lashes and mascara, eyes that are simultaneously vulnerable and fierce, welcoming and mysterious.
She is the one and only Cher, an American icon who has long dazzled audiences around the world with her extraordinary singing, acting and comedic chops. She has won an Oscar, a Grammy, an Emmy and was recently inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The personification of female empowerment, Cher has done it her way, whether dating men half her age, topping the Billboard charts in seven consecutive decades, setting fashion trends or wowing TV viewers with her then-husband, Sonny Bono, on “The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour.”
Now, she has written the long-awaited “Cher: The Memoir, Part One,” the first of two installments. Turns out that the alluring woman gracing the book’s cover is the same one who appears in these pages: intelligent, sensitive and engaging.
In a conversational tone, she details her rough childhood, the fade-outs, the comebacks and the romances — with music mogul David Geffen; after her divorce from Bono, a subsequent marriage to the troubled Gregg Allman, the late singer and keyboardist of the Allman Brothers Band; and her happy times with blood-spitting Kiss frontman Gene Simmons, a.k.a. “The Demon.”
The book covers roughly the period from her birth to 1980, when Cher, a twice-divorced single mother with two children, found herself at a professional crossroads, figuring out what to do with the rest of her life.
At the center of the memoir is Cher’s life-changing, tortured, supportive, destructive and co-dependent relationship with Sonny. Without his prodding, vision and drive, Cherilyn LaPierre Sarkisian would likely have never become the fabulous Cher. And without her talent and love, Bono would have likely remained a bit player on the fringes of the entertainment industry.
Cher’s early years weren’t so fabulous. She was born in 1946 to Johnnie Sarkisian, a ne’er-do-well who soon abandoned his family, and his 20-year-old wife, Jackie Jean (who later went by the name Georgia), and her childhood was marked by instability, turmoil and chaos. She was even briefly placed in a home for children and unwed mothers.
Cher’s mother, a beautiful model and actor who had bit roles on “Gunsmoke” and “I Love Lucy,” had an unusual hobby: collecting and discarding men, having “seven or eight” husbands in the end, according to Cher.
Sometimes, Cher, her younger sister, Georganne, and her mother lived well. Other times, Jackie Jean struggled to feed them. They moved constantly, mostly in Southern California.
