Cher reveals troubled marriage and personal struggles with Sonny
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Music icon Cher’s new memoir reveals shocking details about her turbulent marriage to Sonny Bono, including multiple instances where she contemplated suicide. At 26, weighing a mere 98 pounds from exhaustion, she reached her breaking point in October 1972 during their Las Vegas performances.
Her distress peaked when Sonny committed them to additional performances at Caesars Palace while managing their CBS show and parenthood. Standing barefoot on her hotel balcony, she contemplated ending it all.
“I was dizzy with loneliness,” she writes. “I saw how easy it would be to step over the edge and simply disappear. For a few crazy minutes I couldn’t imagine any other option. I did this five or six times [during the Vegas stay], and each time I’d think about [her child] 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.”
In her new memoir, Cher recalls a dark moment in her “loveless marriage” to Sonny Bono when she considered jumping off the balcony of her Las Vegas hotel room.
More: https://t.co/OjBaKKZDE2 pic.twitter.com/7kUJxxobcr
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) November 19, 2024
A flirtation with her band’s guitarist ultimately gave her courage to leave. When confronting Sonny about her desire to sleep with Bill, he surprisingly asked, “How long do you think you’ll need?”
Their separation agreement included weekend access to their Malibu residence and a monthly $5,000 allowance, while maintaining public appearances for their show.
Born to Jackie Jean Crouch and heroin-addicted Johnnie Sarkisian, Cher’s unconventional childhood included time in a Catholic children’s home and living in poverty in Los Angeles. Her mother’s acting career brought them close to Hollywood, where Cher later met Sonny at 16.
Their relationship quickly turned professional and personal, leading to fame with hits like “I Got You Babe.” However, behind the scenes, Cher endured controlling behavior, infidelity, and financial manipulation.
“I’d worked my whole life, yet apparently, I had nothing to show for it. I’d never for a second imagined that I needed to protect myself from Sonny, of all people, yet the contracts he’d had me sign were secretly designed to strip me of my income and the rights to my own career,” she writes.
Unimaginable that Cher considered suicide while married to Sonny Bono — and that he told her he considered killing her. https://t.co/2R39xKf7gV pic.twitter.com/pWvMAlKLbf
— Matthew Rettenmund (@mattrett) November 19, 2024
Despite later marriages to Gregg Allman and currently dating Alexander Edwards, Cher’s memoir suggests lingering affection for Sonny, who died in 1998.
