Cher reveals she ‘considered suicide’ during rocky marriage to Sonny Bono in heartbreaking confession
Cher is an icon in the music industry, but while her career was on the up, her personal life and marriage were causing her to think about ending it all.
From empowering hits about love, loss and getting up and trying again, to her own attitude when it comes to relying on men for validation, it’s hard to believe that Cher was ever in a position where she left like anything but a goddess.
But with her songs came the experience of heartbreak.
For those who don’t know, Cher first got her TV and music started when she joined hands with her then-husband Sonny Bono, to create Sonny and Cher, a band.
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The pair would have hit songs like I Got You Babe and went on to play The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, a show which aired on CBS from 1971 to 1974.
To everyone who watched them live or from the comfort of their own homes, the couple seemed madly in love, but there was something the general public wasn’t aware of.
It was that Cher wasn’t a free individual in her marriage or even her career - and it was all tied to Sonny.
Now, the 78-year-old has released a tell-all book which describes a moment where things got so bad that she considered suicide.
In Cher: The Memoir, Part One, she explained how Sonny controlled every aspect of their show.
She wrote about a time in 1972 that she was ‘dizzy with loneliness’.
Cher penned: “I saw how easy it would be to step over the edge and simply disappear.”
Having been with Sonny since she was only 16 years old and he was 27, he was all she knew.
However, Sonny was jealous and controlling.
She wrote that he was so jealous that she wasn’t allowed to attend Tupperware parties (a housewife party tradition), and she couldn’t wear perfume or listen to music at home.
He also controlled her finances to the point that she didn’t even have her own bank account, regardless of the fact that she was super successful and had money paid to her.
Sonny also controlled how much they worked, even if it was at the expense of their toddler, Chas (now Chaz).
It was in October 1972 that the man and wife filmed two episodes of their TV show back-to-back before flying to Las Vegas to perform two shows a night at the Sahara Hotel.
Cher had lost so much weight that she only weighed 98 pounds.
At 26, she wrote about how she proposed a break for the family, after hearing him say in a business meeting ‘how much money we’d made’.
She said: “So I said, ‘Oh great, let’s go to Europe.’
“Sonny looked at me with a frown and said, ‘Why? You can’t make any money in Europe.'”
When she clarified that she meant she wanted to travel as a family for fun, he ‘rolled his eyes and said, “Cher, c’mon.”’
He also agreed for them to ‘perform in Vegas every summer for God knows how many years …’ which is when she stepped ‘barefoot on the balcony of our suite and stared down’.
Cher wrote: “For a few crazy minutes I couldn’t imagine any other option. I did this five or six times, and each time I’d think about Chas, about my mother, about my sister, about everybody and how things like this could make people who look up to me feel that it’s a viable situation and I would step back inside.”
But after doing it again in between shows, she came to the conclusion that there was another way.
She wrote: “I don’t have to jump off, I can just leave him.”
The two finally divorced in 1975, and she’s been living life to the fullest since.
Britt Jones