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Cher fans have been waiting a long time for her book — and she didn’t skimp on the tea.
The pop icon, 78, released Cher: The Memoir — Part One on Tuesday, November 19, sharing stories about everyone from Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli to Gene Simmons and Tina Turner.
The Grammy winner also opened up about her marriages to Sonny Bono and Gregg Allman, which ended in 1975 and 1979, respectively. Cher and Allman tied the knot just four days after she finalized her divorce from Bono, but their relationship was full of ups and downs. Just nine days after their wedding, Cher filed for divorce because of her husband’s substance abuse issues. (Allman died from liver cancer complications in 2017 at age 69.)
The duo reconciled after Allman went to rehab, but their marriage didn’t last, and they finalized their split in 1979. In her book, Cher described “the last straw” as a moment when Allman had a “paranoid breakdown” in their backyard. “Whatever he is now, it’s not safe for kids,” she wrote. “It only happened once, but I couldn’t risk it.”
Sonny Bono and Gregg Allman Cher’s book doesn’t only cover her romances, though — she also recalls hanging out with people like Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney in the early days of her music career.
Keep scrolling for more celebrity name-drops from Cher’s memoir:
Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli
As a little girl, Cher hung out with the children of Dean Martin, who were in turn friends with a neighbor family across the street. One day, the girls took Cher over to see if the family’s daughter, Liza, was around to play. She was, and her mother sent her outside to join the party.
“We did as we were told, and when we sat on the front steps Liza spontaneously burst into song with ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow.’ I remember thinking that was strange, as I’d never been around a kid who just burst into song like that, even though she was pretty darn good,” Cher recalled. “It was only later that I realized she was Liza Minnelli and that the woman on the stairs was Judy Garland. Now I realize she probably wasn’t drinking juice.”
Warren Beatty
Cher first encountered the actor, who was already a budding star, as a teenager. She was borrowing her stepdad’s car when a man in a convertible cut her off, nearly hitting her. When she got out to yell at him, she realized it was Beatty, who then invited her over to his house.
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“He showed me inside, fixed us some cheese and crackers, then leaned in and kissed me,” Cher wrote. “The two of us went swimming, with me in Natalie Wood’s bathing suit, and we had a great time.”
Cher’s parents were initially upset for missing her curfew — she got home at 4 a.m. — but they relented once they found out she was with Beatty, then 25.
Lucille Ball
The legendary comedian makes her first appearance in an early chapter when Cher recounts her mom Georgia Holt’s acting career. (The late Holt once appeared in a walk-on role I Love Lucy.)
Later, Cher called Ball to ask for advice about leaving Bono while they still had to film a TV show together. “Lucy and her husband [Desi Arnaz] had also become famous working together as stars on TV. And he was a huge womanizer too,” Cher explained. “Then Lucy had left him. She told me, ‘F— him, you’re the one with the talent.’”
The Beach Boys
Cher became friends with Beach Boys cofounder Brian Wilson after she began hanging out with Bono at work. “One day I was playing with the machine that punched letters into plastic tape for labeling equipment and decided to make Brian a bracelet. Because of my undiagnosed dyslexia, it came out as I Love You, Brain,” she wrote. “It became our little thing, and, by the way, he was the brain, with an amazing mind for music.”
The Rolling Stones
Cher met the Rolling Stones through Bono as well, but she was less impressed by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, then both 19, as she was Brian Jones. “Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts, both older, were adorable, but it was Brian, at 20, who caught my attention,” she remembered. “He was so beautiful that I thought he looked like an angel, and uncannily like Mick’s soon-to-be teenage girlfriend, Marianne Faithfull. He was the one I spoke to most. The rest had such thick accents that I could barely understand them.”
The Beatles
During a night out with the Stones in London, Cher met several other huge 1960s stars, including McCartney and John Lennon. “Looking around at all those famous people, I joked that if someone set off a bomb it would have been the end of music,” she quipped.
Diana Vreeland
The former Vogue editor invited Cher to appear in the magazine after meeting her at a party. This led to multiple shoots with legendary photographer Richard Avedon. “Richard and his stylists made me feel truly beautiful for the first time in my life,” Cher wrote. “Nobody else could have persuaded me to pose virtually naked in a backless dress, despite fearing what Sonny might say.” (Vreeland herself convinced Bono that the photos were “like a piece of art.”)
Gene Simmons
The “Believe” singer briefly dated the Kiss frontman in 1979 after meeting at a reception for former President Gerald Ford. “He called me ‘Puppy’ and surprised me for my birthday with ‘I Love You Cher’ written in the sky above the Beverly Hills Hotel, before a full choir and a marching band marched into our bungalow, through our hotel room, and back out,” Cher recalled of the rocker. “If that weren’t enough, he rented an army tank; filled it with my favorite chocolate bars, Snickers; and had us driven down Sunset Boulevard to Le Dome restaurant, where friends, family, and circus acts were waiting.”
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The duo dated “off and on,” but Cher noted that she was mostly focused on her kids and career at that time.
David Geffen
Cher dated the record honcho following her split from Bono, and Geffen soon realized that her contract with Bono essentially had her in “involuntary servitude.” The duo discussed marriage after Cher’s divorce from Bono was finalized, but it never happened.
“No matter how much I loved him, I wasn’t sure I was ready so soon on the heels of divorcing Sonny,” she recalled. “David was always taking care of me. I think he thought I would change my mind and maybe I would have. I wasn’t sure of the decision. I wasn’t sure about lots of the decisions I was making, because I still had no practice making them.”
Tina Turner
“Tina and I were friends longer than most of our fans have been alive, and well into her 80s, she never lost that incredible presence. I miss her mightily,” Cher wrote of her fellow singer, who once asked Cher for advice on how to leave her abusive husband, Ike Turner. “I looked at her and told her, ‘I just walked out and kept going,’” Cher recalled.
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Bob Mackie
Cher met her longtime fashion collaborator in 1967 at a fitting for The Carol Burnett Show. “Even though I only met Bob Mackie once or twice in those early years, I knew in my heart that we’d work together,” she wrote. “What I didn’t know was that he would become, hands down, one of the most important men in my life.”
Francis Ford Coppola
After Cher took a break from acting, the director encouraged her to get back in the game. “I told him about the rejections I’d had for being too old, too ethnic, too tall, or too typecast. I was ‘Cher, of Sonny & Cher’— made a punch line for my complicated personal life. I explained how producers and directors insisted I could only ever do TV comedy, never anything serious or real,” she recalled. “Francis was sympathetic but added, ‘The problem is that until you do something, nobody will believe you can. The worst that can happen is that you fail, but at least you’ll have tried.’”
The book — part one of two — ends on a cliffhanger and a quote from Coppola, who told Cher: “So what are you waiting for?”
