Sonny Bono and Cher’s Friends Share Details About the Former Couple’s Legendary Relationship
- Cher and Sonny Bono shared a deep and enduring love that lasted beyond their divorce in 1975, with friends and family recalling a bond that ran deep even decades after their split.
Tears flowed and Cher's voice wavered as she delivered her eulogy for Sonny Bonoin 1998. Despite everything, she said, he would always be "the most unforgettable man" she'd ever met. "No matter how long I live or who I meet in my life, that person will always be Sonny for me," Cher said, weeping.
"She was crying from deep in her soul. Everyone was in tears," singer Tony Orlandorecalls. "I was about three rows back, sitting with President Gerald Ford, and I remember him turning to me and saying, 'Oh my God. What a love story.' "
The intense bond that united streetwise Cherilyn Sarkisian LaPiere and musically gifted Salvatore Bono — and sustained them on the way to becoming America's best-loved husband-and-wife team — is the stuff of legend.
And though their marriage ended in divorce in 1975, followed by years of acrimony, friends, family and colleagues of the beloved couple say they remember a different version of the pair's story — and a bond that ran deep even decades after the split. "Sonny was the great love of Cher's life," J. Randy Taraborrelli, author of Cher: A Biography , says. "As much as she resented him through the dark times, they had so much good stuff, too."
I Got You Babe
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America fell in love with The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour in 1971. Though Sonny, the dutiful husband, and Cher, his sharp-tongued wife, teased and nitpicked at each other, fans saw the affection that flowed between them. "They were such a real couple," Tony says. "Totally unself-conscious."
But the real love story of Sonny and Cher began a decade earlier, in 1962. Cher, then an 16-year-old aspiring singer, was fascinated by the unmatched 11-year age gap and the fact that Sonny was trying to make a career in the music business. There was an immediate connection. "He had this thing about him," Cher, 79, recalls. "I saw him, and everybody else in the room was just washed away — kind of like when Maria met Tony at the dance [in West Side Story ]."
Sonny, too, was intrigued by this exotic-looking girl who had survived a broken home, yet was quite naive. Cher admits that at 16 she was "a girl who thought Mount Rushmore was a natural phenomenon."
But "Sonny saw her as a diamond in the rough," says Taraborrelli. Sonny gave her a place to live and started bringing her to the recording studio where he was an apprentice to 1960s hitmaker Phil Spector. Sonny even convinced them to allow Cher to sing backup for the Righteous Brothers in 1964.
"Sonny was always hanging out," recalled late session drummer Hal Blaine. "He wasn't that well-liked, and everybody was jealous because Cher was so beautiful. But she was such a sweetheart and had a really unique voice — you kind of understood why Sonny couldn't help but be with her."
Cher insists that the first year of their relationship was platonic. "I was more an annoyance to him, a silly kid, but I had a crush on him," she says. Part of the allure to her was his role as mentor. "I took every opinion he had and made it my own."
Sonny recalled, "We were like two people with dreams. Cher hooked up to my dreams."
Once Cher's mother, Georgia, discovered that her teenage daughter was living with an older man, she threatened to have Sonny arrested unless Cher moved out — which of course drove them closer. "Nothing happened with us romantically until my mother made me move out," Cher recalls.
"When I was packing my things, we both looked at each other and started crying. He actually cried, too."
All I Ever Need Is You
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The objections to their friendship did not matter. "It was them against the world," says Taraborrelli. Sonny wrote songs for them to perform as a duo, and in 1965 they got better reception when he billed them as "Sonny & Cher."
In 1965, "I Got You Babe" — the single that would become their anthem — was a hit, and suddenly they were the darlings of AM radio. "Their early success had something to do with their image," says Richie Unterberger, author of Jingle Jangle Morning: Folk-Rock in the 1960s . "They made it look cool to be young and in love."
"Success felt strange," says Cher, who celebrated with Sonny by buying luxuries, like Tony Curtis' Bel-Air mansion. "We were going to take a paper bag of money down to the Cadillac dealer." In 1968, Cher became pregnant, and it seemed like there was no dream too big. "In my whole life, I never thought there was happiness like we have," Cher wrote, in a diary they shared. "I love [Sonny] with all my heart and respect him more than any other human in the world."
Chastity Sun Bonowas born in March 1969 and their little family was complete. "They were terrific parents," says George Schlatter, a producer on Cher's 1975 variety series. "They gave her a lot of their love and time."
"Our 10 years were the happiest of my life," Sonny recalled. "I don't regret a moment of it. I ate, lived, breathed the three of us."
Bang, Bang
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The fun came to a shrieking halt when two movies that Sonny bankrolled and Cher starred in, 1967's Good Times and Chastity in 1969, were commercial flops. Then, the IRS hit the couple with a $180,000 tax bill. "I never let Cher know we were in trouble," Sonny said. "I took a loan out on our furniture. I was borrowing money from our chauffeur!"
By the late 1960s, their brand of pop music had gone out of fashion, so Sonny reinvented them as a nightclub act. "He created 'Sonny & Cher,'" she says, adding that her husband had so much confidence that he allowed himself to become the butt of the joke, "because he created the joke." In 1971, their nightclub act begat The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour , which brought them a new wave of fame, fortune — and trouble. "Cher began growing up and started to resent Sonny's control over her," Taraborrelli says.
As she matured, Cher started to fight against Sonny's restrictions. Their backstage arguments became more heated, and the biting, sarcastic act they played out onstage became much more real. "Everything exploded between Cher and myself," Sonny wrote in his diary in 1972. "Chas is 3 and a half now, and she's fantastic. She doesn't know Mom and Dad are on the ropes. For the past five years, I have been worried about our career and I never worried about us."
Cher dropped a bomb, which Sonny called "Nagasaki," by demanding a divorce in 1974. "I couldn't be his student any longer," Cher recalls.
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For a long time, the bitterness between them went both ways. Cher accused Sonny of having held her in "involuntary servitude," adding that leaving was the happiest day of her life. Sonny, while less likely to jab back in the press, went on the defensive — lodging a $24 million breach of contract suit against Cher.
But time helped the public rancor to die down. In 1987, Cher asked Sonny to reunite with her on Late Night With David Letterman . The crowd ate it up.
Sonny was a U.S. congressman married to his fourth wife, Mary Bono, when he died in 1998 in a skiing accident in South Lake Tahoe, Calif., at age 62. It was an event that tore Cher's heart out.
"I'd never seen my mother in that shape," Chastity, who broke the news to her, said. "She's not a big crier."
Now, 28 years later, Cher has come to terms with losing Sonny. His death, she says, has made her less afraid of dying — because he's already on the other side. "Even in death," she's said. "I don't feel separated from him yet."
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