Authors: Mark Bego
Still determined, Georgia decided that the trip to Arkansas wasn’t severe enough to shake Cher to her senses, so she took her to a home for wayward girls. Remembers Cher, “I had to move into this home for girls in El Centro. There were about ten truck drivers per room. Really heavy bull dykes. I was introduced to a few of them my first night there. One girl, Alex—I don’t know what her real name was—she told me about this guy she loved and I told her about Sonny. I don’t know what happened to her” (33). Anyway, Cher discovered that nothing could keep her and Sonny apart, and back to him she fled. “I was kind of impressed with Sonny,” she says. “He was the first guy to ever treat me well, to hold doors open for me. He took me to nice little places, like this little pizza place” (34).
While Cher was out of town with her mother, Sonny had a one-night stand with a woman named Mimi. Sonny was lonely, and thought nothing of it at the time. However, a couple of months later, Mimi informed Sonny that she was pregnant, and it was his child. Sonny made a financial settlement, and Mimi gave birth to a son named Sean. According to Sonny, he told Cher the whole story, and she wasn’t upset. “It was
strange,” claimed Sonny, “Our relationship wasn’t overly physical anyway, so maybe she felt some of the pressure was off her to perform” (35). Yet, they were still very much in love.
Meanwhile, back at Phil Spector’s Gold Star Studios, in Hollywood, California, the producer was busy pumping out classic pop records by the Ronettes, the Crystals, Darlene Love, and Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans. The interesting thing about the Crystals was the fact that although there was a group of girls known as the Crystals, there could be any number of different girls on each record. Frequently, the lead vocal would be sung by Darlene Love. According to her, “My voice was on mostly all those lead songs. Spector put the Crystals name on them, Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans, Darlene Love, nobody knew the difference” (13). Recording under several different names, including her own, Darlene Love is responsible for being the sound of more different acts’ hits than any other star in rock and roll.
Darlene recalls first meeting Cher at Gold Star Studios: “Sonny started bringing this girl with him. She was tattered-looking with straight hair and really dark make-up” (36). It wasn’t long before Cher was a permanent fixture at the studio. As long as Sonny was there, Cher was there too.
Songwriter Ellie Greenwich (“River Deep, Mountain High”), who worked with Spector, explains of Phil Spector’s operation, “He also owned most of the names, so he had the right to make whoever he wanted to be the Crystals” (13). This demonstrated very clearly to Sonny how any one performer or group of performers could actually have several different personas—like he and Cher eventually did.
When Cher returned to Los Angeles, she and Sonny resumed their unconventional but very strong love affair. Sonny was driven by a desire to turn Cher into a singing star. Although at times she was painfully shy, she kept telling him how much she wanted to be a huge star one day. He was determined to make her dream come true. It became his top priority.
Together they completely meshed. Sonny and Cher were like two misfits who somehow fit together. Recalls Cher of their chemistry, “We were both very strange people, very unmainstream, and when we came together, we weren’t freaky anymore for each other. We fit each other. We both had the same kind of dreams, and we liked the same thing. We thought the same thing was cool” (28).
One night at the recording studio Cher was hanging out with him and watching all of the activity during one of Spector’s sessions. That particular evening Phil was working on a new song by the Ronettes called “Be
My Baby.” According to legend, Darlene Love didn’t show up to record her background part of the song, and they needed another voice on the record. As Cher recalls, “Somebody said to me, ‘Can you sing?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Well, can you carry a tune?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘Well, get out there because we need some noise.’ From that time on, I did all the dates” (37). Voila! Cher was on a hit record!
Although she was very shy in the recording studio, Cher loved the idea of making records and hanging out in the studio with Darlene, Ronnie Spector (lead singer of the Ronettes), and Sonny. As she was later to recall of Spector’s music factory, “It was a time when girl singers were patted on the head for being good and told not to think” (24).
At Gold Star Studios, she also got the chance to meet several of the musicians. Remembers Cher, “I met Glen Campbell at one session when he was just a guitarist. He wanted to take me out and he asked Sonny if it was all right. Sonny said, ‘Yeah, I don’t care.’ I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a fine way to talk with me right in front of him’ ” (33). According to Sonny, she was flirting with Glen just to make him jealous. Perhaps it was her way of retaliating for Sonny’s affair with Mimi. Glen kept hitting on Cher, and she kept teasingly flirting with him. Finally Sonny and Cher had a big argument, and then they were back together again, stronger than ever.
Not long after she turned eighteen, Cher informed Sonny that she was pregnant. They were both very happy about the prospect of being parents. At the time, Cher kept this a secret from her mother. Unfortunately, Cher suddenly suffered the first in a series of miscarriages.
Cher claims that at the time, Sonny could have talked her into just about anything. She was in total awe of him. “I was the young student,” she was to point out. “I took every opinion he had and made it my own” (16).
After Cher had sung on several of Spector’s greatest hits—including “Da Doo Ron Ron” by the Crystals, “Be My Baby” by the Ronettes, and “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ ” by the Righteous Brothers—Sonny hoped that everyone else at Gold Star Studios would see his skinny live-in girlfriend in a new light. He wanted to make her into a recording star and thought that Phil Spector would jump at the chance. It didn’t happen immediately, but one night Phil invited Sonny out for a drive in his car. Sonny got into Phil’s car, and during their drive, Phil told him that he had an idea for a song that could be recorded by Cher. The song was called “I Love You Ringo.” Since the Beatles were currently dominating the radio airwaves in America, Phil figured that this would be a perfect way to capitalize on the whole Beatles craze. Sonny loved the idea.
Cher recorded the song, with Phil producing. The record was sold to Sceptor Records, and it was released under the fictional name “Bonnie Jo Mason.” According to Cher, the name change was Phil’s idea. It was his theory that in order to have a hit single in America, you had to have an all-American–sounding name. Unfortunately, the record was an instant flop. Still finding her solo singing voice, Cher sang the song in a very low key. “I sounded too much like a boy,” says Cher of the recording. “Everyone thought it was a faggot song” (13). Back to the drawing board.
Not long after that, Sonny decided to take some of his own money and make a record with Cher. In October of 1964, Bono composed a song called “Dream Baby” for Cher. It was released on Imperial Records, and in order to leave the failure of Bonnie Jo Mason behind, this single was released as a solo recording by “Cherilyn.” The song was also clearly produced to mimic Phil Spector’s famous “Wall of Sound” method of recording. This formula would call for multitracking of the instruments and voices so that a handful of studio musicians would sound like a rock and roll orchestra. Although “Dream Baby” perfectly fit the formula, the single was not a success. More fine-tuning on the act was necessary.
Expounding upon what he had been taught by Spector, Sonny Bono was to explain,
I learned everything from Phil. I could never write commercially. I was writing, but I couldn’t do it commercially. My favorite thing Phil used to say to me was “Hey Sonny, is it dumb enough?” And I’d go, “What’s he saying to me?” What he meant was that it was simple and had a “hook.” He termed that “dumb.” I started to understand that in my writing, and that ingredient had to be there (32).
With regard to the trademark sound that all of Phil Spector’s productions had, Bono said,
“The Wall of Sound” in itself is basically . . . [sound] leakage. What he’d do was line up three pianos and they would create their own echo. It [the sound] would come back down and wind up in another microphone, say the drummer’s microphone. There was this echo going on in the room as we were performing and that basically was the “Wall of Sound,” and he was able to control that. . . . I learned that and then just moved on when Phil and I stopped working together (38).
Sonny wanted to make Cher into a solo star, but she needed some exposure—and some self-confidence. According to legend, the first time
she was in the recording booth, she was so frightened that she couldn’t sing unless Sonny was standing right next to her, singing with her.
It was the session to record what turned out to be the duo’s first single, “Baby Don’t Go,” which was recorded at RCA Studios using the musicians from Phil Spector’s stable from Gold Star, including Leon Russell, Barney Kessel, and Don Randy. According to Cher, they were so broke that they convinced the musicians to play for free. It was intended to be a solo recording for Cher, but once she forced Sonny to sing along with her on the chorus, it became a Sonny & Cher classic. As long as Sonny was by her side, Cher felt that she could accomplish anything.
Cher was also mortified by the idea of singing live onstage in front of people, so they hit upon the idea that they could work as a team. With Sonny up on the stage with her, she would overcome her stage fright. They decided to call themselves “Caesar & Cleo.” Explains Cher, “A lot of people [had] called Sonny’s hairstyle a Caesar cut because there were no Beatles as a reference point at that time. And because Elizabeth Taylor had just come out with [the 1963 film]
Cleopatra
, everybody said we looked like Caesar and Cleopatra. So that’s what we called ourselves at first, Caesar & Cleo” (6).
To complete the Cleopatra look, Cher began to wear her eye makeup in the exaggerated fashion of ancient Egypt. She would color her upper lash line with a fine black mascara brush, drawing the black line to the side of her face in points a good half-inch past her eye. Mimicking the Egyptian tradition of kohl-lined eye makeup, she had a look that was uniquely her own.
Caesar & Cleo were far from an instant hit. Their first public performance was at a roller rink and their second was at a bowling alley. They then landed a gig at the Hollywood club called the Purple Onion. The only reason they got the booking was that Georgia’s brother Mickey was the owner. Cher remembers the outfit that she wore for their first performance as Caesar & Cleo: a shell beaded top, beige crepe pants, and high heels. “In the beginning we were trying to have this kind of ‘Dick and Deedee’ look. Sonny bought a suit, and I got a dress” (6).
Sonny even got a record deal for Caesar & Cleo with Reprise Records. The deal was for three singles only. If any of them became hits, the company could offer them a long-term deal. They proceeded to record three cover versions of other people’s hits that were each released as singles by the company. The three songs were “Do You Wanna Dance,” “Love Is Strange,” and “Let The Goodtimes Roll.” Somehow Caesar & Cleo
weren’t making any waves in the record world, so taking a lesson from Phil Spector with regard to changing the names of a recording artist to suit a project, Bono and Sarkisian went back into the recording studio and made a record under a different name: “Sonny & Cher.” The record was a recording of a song that Sonny had written called “Baby Don’t Go.” He turned around and sold it to Reprise Records, who had no idea that “Sonny & Cher” were actually the Reprise Records unsuccessful duo, “Caesar & Cleo.”
By this point Sonny had brought himself and Cher to the attention of two personal managers named Charlie Greene and Brian Stone. They believed in the fledgling singing duo so much that they were willing to financially go out on a limb to get a record released by the duo. According to Greene, “I hocked my typewriters for that first record, ‘Baby Don’t Go.’ Got $168, you know. It was just a West Coast hit anyway” (33).
Another song, called “The Letter,” also written by Sonny and recorded by Sonny & Cher, was released on Vault Records and also went nowhere. Then ATCO Records signed Sonny & Cher to their label and cut a single with “It’s Gonna Rain” on one side and “I Got You Babe” on the other side, both of which Bono wrote.
According to Cher, she was not impressed with “I Got You Babe” the first time she heard it. Sonny used to compose all of his songs on an old upright piano he bought for $85. They were broke at the time, and they were staying with their managers, Brian and Charlie, and their respective girlfriends. Sonny had to keep the piano in their garage, because there was nowhere else to put it. Back then he did all of his best writing in the middle of the night, writing on used cardboards that the local cleaners would fold his shirts with. Cher was asleep when he came bounding into the house one night, waving some notes on one of his lucky shirt cardboards. Reluctantly, she accompanied him back to the garage. Cher had wanted him to write her a song that had a key modulation in the middle of it, similar to what had been done in one of Jackie DeShannon’s recent hits. Sonny began singing the song, reading his notes and lyrics from the shirt cardboard it was inscribed upon. Although she wasn’t thrilled with the lyrics of “I Got You Babe,” Cher loved that he had put the modulation in the middle of it for her. She thanked him for putting the modulation in as per her request, but told him that she didn’t think it was among his best work. Little did she know at the time, but that one simple pop ballad that Sonny sang to her that night was going to become the duo’s instantly recognizable signature song.
Sonny was to recall that he got into a big argument with the president of Atlantic/ATCO Records, Ahmet Ertegun, as to which side of the single to promote as the “A” side. Regarding the evolution of Sonny & Cher’s trademark hit, Bono explained,
At the time, [Bob] Dylan was always going “Babe this, babe that.” [The word] “babe” was all over the streets. I thought, “Man, that’s a hook if you ever use it right.” Philip [Spector] would always play that kind of 6/8 rhythm, so I could duplicate that 6/8 rhythm. You play and sing until a hook came in. . . . and “I Got You Babe” came in. I knew the hook was real strong. I knew that was the one. I was looking for a song that would get us past where we were with “Just You” and “Baby Don’t Go”—those did well, but I was looking for that song that would create the rocket. We cut it and on the other side I cut “It’s Gonna Rain.” I wrote it in about four minutes and sent the demo to Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records. So Ahmet goes, “Man, that’s the greatest song!” He said he wanted to put out “It’s Gonna Rain” right away. I said, “Ahmet, wrong song!” So he goes, “No, no.” We had this big fight over that. He was gonna push “It’s Gonna Rain.” So we took “I Got You Babe” to [radio station] KHJ and [disc jockey] Ron Jacobs liked the right side. So I said, “Put it on the air,” and he gave it an exclusive. Now the record company had to go with “I Got You Babe” (32).