{"id":8311,"date":"2025-07-26T14:53:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T20:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherscholar.com\/cherblog\/?p=8311"},"modified":"2025-07-28T15:59:03","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T21:59:03","slug":"memoir-vs-memoir-part-2-the-1960s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherscholar.com\/cherblog\/2025\/07\/memoir-vs-memoir-part-2-the-1960s\/","title":{"rendered":"Memoir vs. Memoir Part 2: the 1960s"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This is the second blog post where we compare Sonny and Cher’s respective memoirs, And the Beat Goes On<\/em>\u00a0and Cher, The Memoir<\/em> (parts one out now). In Part 1<\/a> we looked at how the books were organized and how they each talked about family history and childhood.<\/p>\n

Now we’ll look at their lives together in the 1960s. Fair warning, this is going to be looong. Often when I start a blog I think, should this be an official Cher Scholar page or a blog? For instance, this is too long for a blog post but it also doesn\u2019t rise to the level of a permanent page.<\/p>\n

Oh crap. It\u2019s even longer now.<\/p>\n

Let’s get starting. First, reading these books side-by-side really shows the unusual complexity of this relationship. The second read, I feel Sonny is not as cold and calculating as I remember (although he is often factually wrong and rationalizing). He does some mea-culpas, especially when he\u2019s about to tell a story where he\u2019s going to look bad or sexist. These two disagree on many more “facts” than I thought they would and not over things you’d assume (like fights) but over who enjoyed what and when things even happened, like big important things, like their legal wedding.<\/p>\n

I had to remind myself Cher is remembering her life back from the age of 77 in 2024 and Sonny, with the help of a diary, was remembering back from the age of 56 in 1991. Some of the disagreements are solely between them. We\u2019ll never know what the true answer is if there even was one (what they said to each other in private moments). Then there are the disagreements maybe colleagues or family could resolve. And then there are those discrepancies anyone could have easily be researched and verified (like the name on a record label). Those are the most mind-boggling disagreements.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s fascinating to me that for the most part they tell the same stories, they both think the same stories are important and life-defining but maybe they each remember different details about it. Aside from that it is interesting to note which crucial stories each one leaves out of their timelines (Cher doesn\u2019t tell the \u201cLaugh At Me\u201d story and Sonny doesn\u2019t say a word yet about Carol Kaye’s famous bass line).<\/p>\n

We have to remember these are two separate people living separate but intertwined lives. Sonny is not perfect (and is often unlikable in Cher\u2019s book and Cher is often unlikable in Sonny\u2019s tale) but neither of them ever rise to the level of a big, bad villain.<\/p>\n

The pages\u00a0 dealing with how Sonny and Cher met up through the end of the 1960s were pages 57 to 178 in Sonny\u2019s paperback book and pages 124-240 in Cher\u2019s hardback book.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Meet Cute
\n<\/strong>Sonny describes their \u201cmeet cute\u201d with those words, like it was a RomCom. I was shocked by this. I only just learned the term “meet cute” from Substack and here Sonny was using it back in 1991! And then Cher uses the very same term in her memoir. Where the hell have I been?<\/p>\n

It was November of 1962 and Sonny says they met at Aldos, \u201can Italian restaurant.\u201d Cher correctly identifies it as a coffee shop above a radio station. It was Cher, Red and Melissa as a group meeting Sonny.<\/p>\n

Sonny describes Cher as \u201cgorgeous\u201d and Cher comments on Sonny\u2019s \u201camazing smile,\u201d his beautiful hands and that he was wearing a black mohair suit and a mustard shirt with a white collar and cuban boots. Sonny thinks Cher had \u201ccharacter\u201d but was \u201cunreadable.\u201d<\/p>\n

They both mention Cher\u2019s comment about Cher admiring Sonny\u2019s wearing \u201cblack on black\u201d but in Sonny\u2019s version, Cher says this at the coffee shop and in Cher\u2019s version she tells this to Sonny later when they go dancing.<\/p>\n

Cher remembers that they went to the Red Velvet Club right after meeting at the coffeeshop and that Sonny was more interested in Cher\u2019s friend Melissa (who was actually gay they both tell us). But in Sonny\u2019s version they all four went to Club 86 (a lesbian club) the next night and it was Melissa and Cher poking fun of the boys by taking them there.<\/p>\n

Their Past Histories
\n<\/strong>Sonny says Cher had been working at See\u2019s Candy Store. Cher correctly identifies his first pseudonym as Don Christy (the pseudonym he muffed in his own history).<\/p>\n

Sonny\u2019s Apartment
\n<\/strong>\u201cIt wasn\u2019t long\u201d (Cher), three weeks (Sonny) before they ran into each other again when Cher spotted Sonny moving in to his apartment at the \u201csprawling complex\u201d (Sonny) at Franklin and Vine in Los Angles. They both tell a story about looking through the windows of their respective apartments and seeing each other. After hearing about Cher\u2019s living situation woes, Sonny offers to let her move in with him. \u201cNo funny business\u201d (according to Sonny) but Cher has Sonny saying, \u201cI don\u2019t find you particularly attractive.\u201d Sonny doesn\u2019t mention this. He insists that front the beginning he felt something for Cher. He says she was gorgeous, \u201cflawless except for a big nose, which I thought gave her character, something perfect-looking women lack,\u201d and that she was statuesque, coquettish, alluring, streetwise, had an \u201cintoxicating aura,\u201d magnetism and \u201cincredible strength\u201d and that he was \u201calready deeply smitten.\u201d(Lots of good adjectives there.)<\/p>\n

Sonny talks about Cher\u2019s chronic fears how she needed to have a TV on all night to sleep and how hard it was for him to plug the TV into the bedroom for her because there was no outlet. Cher mentions needing the TV on all night too and that she was full of phobias, one being that she was afraid of silence. Cher says their relationship was like brother and sister\/father and daughter at first.<\/p>\n

Cher tells the bathing-suit story, that Sonny\u2019s face was \u201ccrestfallen\u201d when he saw her shape and then says, \u201cmy kind of body wasn\u2019t in style yet.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cGod, you\u2019re skinny,\u201d she remembers him saying. Sonny mentions nothing about this or the other women he was dating while Cher first lived with him.<\/p>\n

They both tell the story that Cher lied about her age and said she was 18 and then 17 but was really 16.<\/p>\n

Georgia
\n<\/strong>I think where the memoirs probably differ the most is in their depiction of Cher\u2019s parents, John and Georgia.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if Sonny was too hard on Georgia or if Cher glossed over a lot. Cher admits her mother once bought her new clothes and then returned them in a fit of anger and Sonny tells this story as one of the stories about how Georgia was a less than great mom. Sonny describes her as a \u201cpretty party girl\u201d who \u201cmeasured success by men and cars\u201d and was very competitive with Cher. Cher glossed over their periods of not-talking or Georgia not talking to Cher as things she just can’t remember.<\/p>\n

Although allegedly Sonny and Georgia got along off and on (even after the divorce), Sonny does not have much nice to say about Georgia. And his comments are mostly in defense of Cher.\u00a0It\u2019s possible he was upset with Georgia again when he was writing his memoirs. But you also get the sense that Cher has left a bit of drama out of hers. By her own admission, she could go long periods without speaking to her mother and this was all really vague in her memoir.<\/p>\n

Of Georgia Sonny says, \u201cshe defined the phrase \u2018a real piece of work.\u2019\u201d He admits she was \u201cstriking\u201d and \u201cbeautiful\u201d and had the attitude of a star.<\/p>\n

He pulls no punches:\u00a0\u201cMotherhood wasn\u2019t high on Georgia\u2019s list of priorities. She liked men, parties, fast cars, and fancy restaurants. She preferred the high life. That she had a daughter, Cher, who turned heads on her own was almost too much for her to handle. There was room for only one beautiful woman in her life\u2014Georgia. That explains the volatility of her and Cher\u2019s relationship. It explains why Cher was so rebellious and anxious to get out of her mom\u2019s house that she dropped out of school after the tenth grade and set out on her own. It was a long time before I heard Cher say anything nice about her mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wow. Cher doesn\u2019t really take it to the level of volatility.<\/p>\n

Another thing completely different is that Sonny says Cher\u2019s biological dad worked for them when they were on the road as road manager. I vaguely remember a story Cher told about her Dad working with them and then trying to sell pictures of himself with Cher and Chastity to the press to support his drug habit and this is how Cher became estranged from him yet again. Sonny says her father died with him and Cher died not talking. Cher says nothing about this. Her comments about John Sarkisian are not terrible but not particularly fatherly either. More bemused and annoyed. She might mention his death and those later-day circumstances in her next memoir, when he dies.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Early Love<\/strong>
\nSonny says their relationship was all a tease for the first few months until a kiss on the couch occurred after a conversation about Cher\u2019s lesbian friend, Melissa. Cher doesn\u2019t mention this, but recounts a significant kiss with him after seeing the movie The Balcony<\/em>. This was after their forced separation by Georgia. They both tell this story of Georgia trying to separate them. Cher says it wasn\u2019t until she was whisked off to Arkansas that Sonny began to have feelings for her.<\/p>\n

At first, they slept in twin beds. How Sonny could have been such a ladies man with twin beds, I’ll never understand. But anyway, Cher says she would get scared and was allowed to crawl in bed with Sonny but he would say, \u201cDon\u2019t bother me.\u201d Sonny says he didn\u2019t \u201cmake a move\u201d until one night he got into her twin bed.<\/p>\n

They both agree this early time was some of their fondest memories of the relationship. Sonny recounts it as \u201ctwo lost kids found direction in each other\u201d and says somewhat poetically, \u201cI wanted to be the boy who walked the fence to impress the girl. And Cher believed I could do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cher tells stories of doing art projects with Sonny and acting like kids.<\/p>\n

Sonny mentions that their relationship was not very physical or sexual, but he keeps getting Cher pregnant somehow. The both talk about the pain of three early miscarriages which began before they started recording together. Cher admits she \u201cwent into herself\u201d after those miscarriages. Sonny says they was hard on him, too, and because they couldn\u2019t talk through it, Cher being so withdrawn. They both wanted to have children together. The first miscarriage was particularly heartbreaking for them and scary. During a later miscarriage, Cher says she was out shopping with her friend Joey when problems started and that she had the miscarriage in their bathroom. Sonny was at a Mohamad Ali fight that night, Cher says, and she spent the next day in the hospital. Cher doesn\u2019t mention a concert date in Minneapolis that Sonny was obligated to perform without her or, according to Sonny, the promoter would sue. Sonny tells the story and how horrible he felt about it. \u201cShitty\u201d he says. Cher said each miscarriage was worse than the last and she dreaded talking to her friends about them, seeming to support Sonny’s theory that she withdraws when in pain.<\/p>\n

They both talk about their non-legally-binding bathroom wedding. Cher says their rings were from a souvenir shop on Olivera Street. Sonny says they were from and Indian souvenir shop at Sunset and Vine.<\/p>\n

Sonny describes Cher as often very withdrawn and elusive. He says she would go into a \u201cblack hole\u201d for days. But also that she was smart instinctually, just lacked education, poise and confidence. He says her only job had been at the candy store. (He either forgets or doesn\u2019t know about Robinson\u2019s department store.) He says she didn\u2019t become the independent, \u201cwho gives a damn\u201d woman until after their divorce, after she continued to work on herself. But then Cher calls Sonny the most private person she\u2019s ever known. \u201cHe hid so much of himself.\u201d Cher says that after the very beginning, “he never asked much about me.\u201d She feels he became less and less interested in her as a person and that she started to feel like a shadow. Sonny said Cher was “a tough read”, “impossible to read,” that there was a pattern of her not wanting to talk to him. He says Cher had \u201cthe grace, mystery and independence of an ally cat.\u201d<\/p>\n

They both agree Cher could dance. Cher says Sonny got jealous of the fact she was a better dancer and didn\u2019t let her go out dancing anymore. Sonny says, \u201cpeople were always paying compliments to Cher about her dancing.\u201d Sonny admits he was insecure.<\/p>\n

Cher remembers every house they lived in, the style and sometimes d\u00e9cor (and sometimes about Sonny\u2019s decorating skills). Sonny mentions a few, but not each one.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Hero Worship
\n<\/strong>Cher admits she stared to hero worship Sonny but the feeling wasn\u2019t mutual. Sonny says \u201cthere was no question that Cher had stars in her eyes, [about Sonny] but for the life of me, I didn\u2019t know what she had in her head.\u201d<\/p>\n

Christy Bono
\n<\/strong>Cher contends that Sonny was a great Dad with Christy and that she visited once in a while and they would all hang out together. Sonny laments often in his book that he was not a good Dad with Christy and that he didn\u2019t give her enough of his time. He says this over and over again.<\/p>\n

Specialty Records
\n<\/strong>They both tell a story or two about Little Richard and the day Sonny brought home the Cadillac. They both mention the crappy Chevy Manza Sonny was driving. Sonny talks about creating the song \u201cNeedles and Pins\u201d with Jack Nitzsche and having Jackie DeShannon and The Searchers record it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Working With Phil Spector
\n<\/strong>They both have a \u201cworking with Phil Spector\u201d section. Cher says he wasn\u2019t \u201cunstable yet\u201d but alternatively moody and funny. \u201cYou had to read the room,\u201d Cher says and that if he was mad he would act like he didn\u2019t know you. Sonny confirms this (in his story about the end of their working relationship). Cher says she could give as well as she got with Phil Spector and that this could irritate Sonny (who was the only one of them who was officially employed there). Cher claims Spector told Sonny that she \u201cwas funny and showed spirit.\u201d In Sonny\u2019s version, Spector and Cher had \u201cno chemistry\u201d and that Spector was jealous of Sonny\u2019s relationship with Cher.<\/p>\n

Sonny starts his Spector session by saying he wanted Spector to produce Cher. \u201cI was convinced that this skinny teenage girl with bad skin, a big nose and an unusually deep voice was star material.\u201d Is he being ironic? No, I think he’s serious. But what happened to \u201cgorgeous\u201d? Sonny spent more time with Spector than Cher did.\u00a0 Whenever Spector was lonely, it seems he would call Sonny to hang with him in silence. And Sonny alludes to \u201cdark and troubled thoughts,\u201d a \u201ctroubled mind,\u201d \u201codd behavior\u201d and \u201can explosive temper.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sonny says Phil Spector called him his \u201cfunk.\u201d Cher says Spector never considered Sonny much of a singer and called \u201cCher, Sonny, Gracia, Fanita and Darlene\u201d collectively his \u201cfunk element.\u201d Who is right here? Maybe Darlene Love could weigh in on this one. I have a feeling I know what she’s gonna say.<\/p>\n

Speaking of which, Sonny and Cher both agree that the only person Phil Spector took crap from was Darlene Love, who Sonny says had \u201cthe balls of a buffalo.\u201d But only Sonny talks about how racist Phil Spector was to his own wife Ronnie Spector, the reported separate toilets and dinnerware he made her use at home and how he locked her in her bedroom for days. Sonny says in public he lavished her with attention but not in private.<\/p>\n

They both tell the same story about leaving for a hamburger one day without Spector’s permission but in Cher\u2019s story Sonny wasn\u2019t with them and was just as angry when they returned. In Sonny\u2019s version, he took the girls and it was Spector who was furious.<\/p>\n

Sonny mentions the Wrecking Crew but not by that name (the documentary which coined the term hadn’t come out for decades yet) but Cher calls them that.<\/p>\n

They both talk about recording \u201cYou\u2019ve Lost that Loving Feeling\u201d (Cher calls it a \u201conce in a lifetime song.” and the time Leon Russell came in drunk and belligerent which was a showstopper at the time because he was normally so quiet and shy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Early Sonny & Cher
\n<\/strong>They both agree that Cher was terrified to sing alone. Sonny says she would cry if asked to do a solo and would wilt (his word) when asked to sing. Cher doesn\u2019t dispute this. She says her voice would get locked up from stage fright.<\/p>\n

The both tell the story of Sonny finding Sonny’s cheap, broken piano. Cher has him finding it at a pawnshop for $85 and \u201cI still have that ugly thing.\u201d Sonny talks about a $100 pawnshop diamond ring he found for Cher but not a piano at a pawnshop. Sonny says the $50 piano came from a used furniture store. But then Sonny says it was the \u201c85-dollar piano” when he introduces the song \u201cI Got You Babe\u201d on both of their Live albums.<\/p>\n

One<\/a>: “7 years ago they had three things: an $85 dollar piano, a philosophy and each other.”<\/p>\n

Two<\/a>: This is in 1973 and by this time they are separated but not divorced. They are still working on the TV variety show together and are publicly together but they are living in separate wings of The Big House. In this second intro, it’s “ten years ago” and now they had a brass bed Sonny mentions (from a junk store or a drug store). Cher talks about this bed in her memoir.\u00a0 It was from an A-frame house they rented on Sycamore Trail behind the Hollywood Bowl. The shower leaked and the rug \u201cwas kind of hatchet,\u201d Cher says. The bed was from a secondhand store and they thought at first it was an iron bed. But it was just filthy and when they started cleaning it together Sonny said, \u201cCher, I think this is brass!”<\/p>\n

“Excited, we ran out and bought about twenty boxes of steel wool Brillo pads, scrubbing it all night long until it was gleaming. That damn bed was brass and it was beautiful.\u201d Sonny probably invokes it here to remind Cher of the talismanic power of this lucky object\u00a0 and the excitement of their early romance.<\/p>\n

Cher says Phil Spector didn\u2019t think Cher had a commercial voice. She said Sonny liked the movie Cleopatra<\/em> and decided on their first moniker should be Caesar and Cleo. Sonny agrees with this story. Cher said she cut his hair into that Caesar style. She said Sonny learned from Spector that b-sides should be instrumental numbers with silly titles so as not to detract from the a-side. And that Sonny inserted the \u201ccorny dialogue\u201d in their version of \u201cLove Is Strange.\u201d The b-side was \u201cString Fever\u201d by S. Christy. Arranged by Jack Nietzsche. Sonny talks about recording \u201cThe Letter\u201d (which Sonny says \u201cbombed…our families didn\u2019t even buy it\u201d) and \u201cLove is Strange\u201d with Harold Battiste arranging. This was late 1963, Sonny says ashe talks about the \u201cbare-bones\u201d record making he learned from Spector.\u00a0They both talk a bit about Sonny\u2019s friendship with Jack Nietzsche.<\/p>\n

Cher talks about their early gigs on the \u201cDJ circuit\u201d at rolling rinks and bowling alleys looking like Dick and Dee Dee or April and Nino. Very clean cut. Sonny is more specific: their first gig was a roller rink; their second was a bowling alley; there was no third gig.<\/p>\n

They both agree Sonny wasn\u2019t a genius songwriter but Sonny wrings his hands over this more than Cher does. Sonny goes into his feelings of imposter syndrome, mostly because he was surrounded by geniuses like Jack Nietzsche, Leon Russell, Brian Wilson and Phil Spector. Plus Bob Dylan and the Beatles were everywhere. In Cher\u2019s memoir she talks about how even so, Sonny could make it happen and that was one of his superpowers in a way. Sonny says he had heard once that Cher said his songs \u201csound like shit until they\u2019re unraveled\u201d and that he often had trouble communicating his songs to Cher and others.<\/p>\n

Cher said her early stage fright was torture. They both talk about her locked voice and resistance to walking on stage.<\/p>\n

Sonny is definitely smarting from Cher\u2019s later charge in portraying him as a \u201ccontrolling Svengali.\u201d In Cher’s defense, I actually think that part comes later in their relationship. Sonny feels Cher always portrays herself as the victim. By the way, Cher took great pains not to do this in her memoir. And Sonny talks about all the pressure he was under to launch their careers, although he admits Cher never complained about anything. He could just sense it, she had big goals. They both agree Cher was happy to let Sonny \u201cchart their course.\u201d And Cher looks back and can sympathize with his moods and stress levels during times they were struggling. They both agree they felt like it was \u201cthe two of them against the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>They both talk about recording \u201cRingo, I Love You.\u201d (Cher\u2019s first solo but not her first recording as I had always assumed.) They both agree Phil Spector loved the Beatles. At least Cher gets her pseudonym right: Bonnie Jo Mason. Sonny misremember it as Bobbie Joe Mason.\u201d (Yesh, Sonny. Another thing you can look up!) Cher says they recorded it at Gold Star Studio B, \u201cthe size of my car.\u201d Cher says she cringes at the early records and how nasal she sounded. She blamed teenage allergies. She talks about an album of covers they made for Liberty Records. \u201cNothing came of that.\u201d (Where is it??) Sonny doesn\u2019t mention any of this.<\/p>\n

Cher talks about how \u2018devastated\u2019 they were when the first records went nowhere. How it made Cher stop singing around the house and then Sonny stopped working with Phil Spector. Later she says Sonny felt it \u201cwas time to leave\u201d almost as if it was Sonny\u2019s idea. But Sonny actually details his last phone call with Spector and a disagreement they had about the changing music scene that Spector didn\u2019t want to acknowledge and how the Beatles were changing everything, Sonny says, “the Beatles ended Spector\u2019s reign,” how this led to his being immediately frozen\u00a0 out, if not actually fired.<\/p>\n

Cher talks about Sonny\u2019s relationship with DJ Sam Riddle from his promotion days. Sonny is pretty honest about what that \u201cpromotion\u201d entailed which was a lot of ways of describing payola.<\/p>\n

They both talk about meeting Brian Stone and Charlie Greene, with similar assessments of their characters. In fact, they both start new chapters at this juncture. chapters 7 and 11 respectively. Cher equates them to characters like in the Tony Curtis movie, Sweet Smell of Success.<\/em> Cher says they re-energized Sonny and were \u201ca match to our fuse.\u201d They both talk about living with them for a while to save money. Sonny talks about Greene and Stone helping them get their Atco contract with Ahmet Ertegun.<\/p>\n

Cher talks about her \u201cvocal freeze\u201d during the recording of \u201cBaby Don\u2019t Go\u201d and they both talk about Phil Spector\u2019s financial investment in it.<\/p>\n

Sonny & Cher both talk about meeting The Rolling Stones. They both talk about the bus trip to their first Los Angeles concert but Sonny doesn\u2019t mention Cher almost getting pulled out of the bus by a female crazy fan. They both say the Stones wanted to stay with them but that they didn\u2019t have any furniture. (I thought that actually happened and I envisioned Mick Jagger sleeping on their floor. Turns out Sonny imagined that too and that\u2019s why he said no.) In Cher\u2019s version, they all met in a lobby of a hotel where the Stones were staying and they were innocently flirting with her, which Sonny didn\u2019t like. In Sonny\u2019s version, the desire to crash with them came by phone. Sonny contends he never met them until the bus trip concert. But maybe all this happened on the same day.<\/p>\n

Cher tells the story of Mo Austin signing them twice by mistake but Sonny doesn\u2019t mention this. Cher talks about the role Bridget and Colleen played in their early style and how they lived in Sonny and Cher’s garage apartment. Sonny doesn\u2019t talk about them at all. Cher admits she dressed up Sonny in outrageous clothes first because he was already dressing experimentally, that she actually wasn\u2019t brave enough at first to wear the looks she persuaded him to try. Sonny doesn’t talk much about clothes.<\/p>\n

First Fame
\n<\/strong>Things started looking up when Cher made “All I Really Want to Do<\/a>” on Imperial. Sonny says that Imperial wanted just Cher. This is different than all the stories of Sonny masterminding two recording contracts, one for Cher and one for the duo.<\/p>\n

Cher talks about how Sonny wrote “I Got You Babe<\/a>” and how she didn\u2019t love it at first. Sonny remembers that she did like it and claimed she was going to keep that piece of cardboard it was written on forever. (She didn\u2019t.) Sonny claims they both knew it would be a hit. Cher says it was only when they were recording it in the studio, when people were coming around to find out what they were doing, that she knew it was good. It almost sounds like she still isn\u2019t fully convinced.<\/p>\n

Cher says it was released as a single. Cher is wrong about this because Ahmet Ertegun fought for “It\u2019s Gonna Rain” to be the a-side against Sonny’s wishes. It was Sonny\u2019s behind the scenes promotion work with Sam Riddle (again) that got “I Got You Babe” played instead.<\/p>\n

At this time, Sonny & Cher appeared in the movie Wild on the Beach<\/em> to sing \u201cIt\u2019s Gonna Rain<\/a>\u201d (giving weight to that being the single) and Cher says Sonny was convinced that this song \u201cwould cash in\u201d and that he was also fascinated and absorbed in learning from the movie\u2019s director. Sonny doesn\u2019t mention this movie experience at all.<\/p>\n

They have dramatically different London stories. Cher tells a very simple story that Mick Jagger and Jack Good ((of Shindig<\/em>) both advised them to go to England. She says they hocked their furniture to go. She tells the story about the London Hilton turning them away as soon as they arrived and their being reporters outside wanting to talk to them about it (that\u2019s the suspicious part), but she doesn\u2019t believe this was a set up because the man checking them in didn\u2019t seem that good of an actor. Later she says when they did the song “See See Rider” on her first solo album, they changed a verse to reference the London Hilton experience.<\/p>\n

Cher talks about loving her trip and this being one of her favorite times with Sonny, shopping and being suddenly famous. She says Stone and Greene did plant a rumor about there being a Saudi Prince offering Sonny money for Cher (sounds like a Tom Cruise movie plot and also makes me think they would try that hotel trick). She talks about giving her first autograph there in London. In Sonny\u2019s book he says she\u2019s been practicing that autograph and Cher admits in her memoir she had been practicing it since she was about 11 or 12 years old. Chersays the food wasn\u2019t great but everything else was.<\/p>\n

Cher says it was when they returned to America, that “I Got You Babe” had become a hit there. It was like they returned as barnacles on the ship of the British Invasion.<\/p>\n

Sonny\u2019s chain of events is very different. According to him the song took off \u201clike a rocket\u201d to number 1. He does tell a story about being denied a room in a hotel but he puts that happening in New York City at The Americana Hotel and that there was a verbal altercation between the desk clerk and Stone and Greene, not Sonny. But Cher has a definite memory of Sonny taking a photograph of the registration book. Sonny & Cher had to stay at Ahmet Ertegun\u2019s house, Sonny says. (Later he tells a stories about a few libertine parties at Ertegun\u2019s place where S&C felt out of place, including one Thanksgiving that was where a model threw up all over the turkey). Sonny also does not believe it was a publicity stunt. Sonny doesn\u2019t believe it because he didn\u2019t think Greene and Stone were that smart. \u201cAll I can say is, they should have been so clever,” he says. Ok, I believe it then. (Sonny is so convincing. See?)<\/p>\n

THEN he says they went to London, \u201cwhich was the center of everything hip in music,\u201d he reminds us. From Sonny’s telling it that the song was Top 10 there before they went to London and he even remembers pandemonium for them at LAX when they left, that the airport \u201cground to a halt\u201d due to them. Sonny says the London Hilton also<\/em> refused them a room, along with any other hotel in town, and so they again stayed at a flat owned by Ahmet Ertegun. Cher remembers them retreating to a kind of divey “pre-war” hotel.<\/p>\n

Sonny also has a completely different memory about London\u2019s affect on Cher. He says Cher was \u201cscared of foreign countries\u201d and that it was \u201ca control issue.\u201d (Isn\u2019t Sonny the one with the control issues?) He says Cherhated the entire experience and couldn\u2019t even muster the enthusiasm to go shopping.<\/p>\n

He goes on to talk about Cher\u2019s theory that she wouldn\u2019t live past 30, her general hypochondria and fatalism. This struck me as sad because Cher talks about real viral infections like mono that took her down during this period and how kind Sonny always took care of her when she was sick in these early days and how that kind of set up their whole relationship.<\/p>\n

In Cher\u2019s story, her first taste of American fame was the hoards of screaming fans (5k) at JFK upon their return. She says they were broke when they left LAX and they came back rich. She notes signing her first autograph there.<\/p>\n

These are huge differences, not trivial ones. Where were they when the song finally broke? Cher claims Georganne was on the London trip too. Maybe she can give her two cents on Cher\u2019s mood in England and what happened when. Could one or both of them be conflating different memories. Entirely possible. Memories are famously unreliable.<\/p>\n\n\t\t