Post by oh my cher on Nov 18, 2005 0:52:57 GMT -5
CHER – IS THIS HER FAREWELL TOUR?
By Eirik Knutzen
Cher (formerly known as Cherilyn Sarkisian LaPierre Bono Allman) has done it all during an amazing career with repeated flashes of brilliance that, incredibly, spans four decades. The sleek, outspoken 56-year-old singer-actress did it with a droll sense of humor while raising two children, essentially alone, but now the time has come to get off the road and sleep in her own bed for a change.
Don’t be mislead by Cher’s current year-long North American “Living Proof—The Farewell Tour” though. True, she will discard her wigs, low-cut sparkling outfits and avoid concert stages from Portland, Oregon to Sunrise, Florida, but is hardly leaving showbiz in her wake.
Beyond the tour—which keeps getting extended and may not end until sometime in June—Cher is prepping two CD albums, starring in a TV musical special on NBC and playing herself in a Farrelly Brothers comedy feature, “Stuck On You” with Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear, due to be released in December 2003. The highly charged Cher shoots the musical telefilm version of “Mame” as the wealthy and eccentric Auntie Mame who teaches her 10-year-old orphaned nephew the meaning of life. Nobody knows how it will turn out, but it is guaranteed to be different than previous silver screen efforts by Rosalind Russell and Lucille Ball. And when the opportunities arise, she plans to direct motion pictures and appear in occasional Broadway productions. Even after 40 years as a true diva, there seems to be plenty of time for Cher to top herself.
Born a month early in the desolate California desert community of El Centro, she is the exotic product of an Armenian father who faded out of the picture early on and struggling actress Georgia Holt, a striking lady with her sharp, part-Cherokee features. Raised in Los Angeles, the slim, 5'8" performer dropped out of high school at 16 to concentrate on acting. To raise money for acting lessons, Cher hired on as a background singer for famed songwriter/record producer Phil Spector and soon befriended fellow aspiring artist and future U.S. Congressman Sonny Bono.
Their first record as the Sonny and Cher duo in 1965, “I Got You Babe” zoomed to No. 1 on the Top 40 pop charts. “Baby Don’t Go” was right behind it, paving the way for three No. 1 hits in the ’70s: “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves,” “Half-Breed” and “Dark Lady.” She married Bono in 1969, just as their daughter Chastity was born, and the union lasted through most of their well-received TV program “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour”/“The Sonny and Cher Show.” Three days after their divorce was final in 1975, she married the occasionally troubled rocker Gregg Allman of the Allman Brothers Band and filed for dissolution nine days later. By the time the paperwork was finished, she gave birth to their son, Elijah Blue.
Reinventing herself at twice the speed of sound, Cher repeatedly hit gold or platinum jackpots, including the album Cher (’87), Heart of Stone (’89), Love Hurts (’91), Grammy Award-winner Believe (’9 , and Living Proof (’02). Her acting career received a huge boost when she appeared in the Broadway and film versions of “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean” (’82), earned a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for “Silkwood” (’83) and did respectable box office with Jack Nicholson in “The Witches of Eastwick” (’87). “Moonstruck” (’8 with Nicolas Cage earned her a Best Actress Academy Award and she made another strong statement as the director of the HBO dramatic film “If These Walls Could Talk” (’96); her HBO special as a performer, “Cher: Live In Concert” (’00) garnered three Emmy Award nominations.
The list of credits seems to go on indefinitely. The impish artist jokingly admits that about the only thing she can’t make work is marriage, but she has had “a wonderful time with all the wrong guys” while waiting for the right man to come along—including ace record producer David Geffen, Kiss band singer Gene Simmons and actor Val Kilmer. Happy and confident, she plans to keep on ticking—alone if necessary.
Okay, how many farewell tours will there be after “Living Proof”?
I’m not going to tour again because I think there’s a time when you should stop doing certain things, and I think this is the time for me to stop doing this thing. Sometimes when people quit something that they were great at, they come back not so great. I still can do it well, so I want to quit while I’m ahead.
In live concerts, what are you trying to give your audience?
I just want to give ’em two hours of not having to think about anything that they normally have to think about and just taking them out of themselves and just making it be pure enjoyment, because enjoyment is hard to come by, you know. It’s about being taken out of yourself and not having to think about anything, your daily problems or anything that’s bothering you and I think that’s the thing that I do best.
Do you prefer to work with a small television studio audience or an enormous live audience?
I like big audiences—the bigger, the better. In a huge room like the MGM Grand Garden Arena, the people provide a certain energy. And I can probably see the faces of a thousand people from the stage. We connect. The larger their energy, the better my performance—and the more I get back.
What do you feel is your own greatest contribution to the whole music industry?
Gosh, it’s just music. I don’t think about it as any huge legacy. I think it’s tough enough to just stay in the business this long. Music is just supposed to make people feel something and that’s what I’ve done.
Do you have a master plan for the future?
No and I never did. Things come to you then it’s just a matter of making a decision. But I’m never sure what I want to do next.
Are you ever surprised at how far you’ve come to reach this level in the entertainment business?
You don’t really think about it until you see a retrospective, like in my show there’s lots of retrospective film and video, but I’m usually busy on stage and don’t really see it. But because I have a TV monitor in my dressing room to make sure that I’m on stage on time, every once in awhile I will look over and think, “Oh yeah, that was 30 years ago.”
What is the worst nightmare you ever had on the road?
There was one night in Detroit three years ago where nothing went well … my wig fell off while I was dancing and I walked upstage and almost knocked myself out when I ran into a piece of equipment. It was a total mess. I was no good and it was just horrible. That’s when you just stop the show, have a moment with the audience, then just pick it up and go from there. Like during the tour in Sacramento recently, I dropped the microphone. It bothered me for about a second, but I just kept going. Something like that happens once out of 100 shows.
Are you keeping fit away from home?
You know what, at the end of the tour everything kind of goes to pot. But for the majority of the tour, it’s doing yoga to keep limber on one day and weight training on another day just to keep up my strength. Because you’re doing aerobics every night on stage running around for two hours, you maintain pretty well. So that’s it for the majority of the tour, but now I’m pretty much tired out … all I can do is do the show.
Ever get tired of people like Steven Tyler talking about your chronological age and fairly new additions to your anatomy?
Of course not, I adore him. Steven presented me with the Billboard Lifetime Achievement Award recently as a favor because he was on tour too. He flew into Las Vegas, then flew back out. I thought his insults were funny. I like it.
By the way, do you still have the tattoos that Tyler referred to on the show, including the butterflies on your butt?
I had a couple removed because I was getting bored. And it’s just nice to have the space back. When I got my tattoos, nobody was getting them and now everyone has them…
What is your own all-time favorite album and movie? And how close to your idea of perfection were they?
The movie has to be a tie between “Mask” and “Moonstruck.” I can’t pick a favorite of these two. In terms of albums, I think it might be between the first Sonny and Cher album, Look At Us and my Believe album. I’ve had lots of favorite songs also. It’s like my movies, I don’t ever like a complete anything. There’s a moment in a movie that I think is great or a song on an album that I think is great, but I’ve never made an album that I was satisfied with.
Did you have role models while growing up?
Oh yes, especially the Hepburn girls—Katharine and Audrey. Of the boys—Elvis Presley and James Dean. Those were people that I related to. I met Audrey just a couple of times, but stayed in touch with Katharine through the years. I’ve seen her, talked to her and I’ve written her notes and she’s written me back. Katharine is a great artist and was a strong woman when women were not supposed to be strong at all. For me, she was a great role model.
What do you think Ms. Hepburn is drawing from you?
I don’t know. Maybe that someone from a younger generation holds her in such high regard has an influence. Katharine thinks that stuff is foolish, but I don’t think it’s foolish because I’m a huge fan.
Where is your home at this very moment?
Los Angeles. My main residence is in Malibu, actually. I like it there because it’s a small town and I love to look at the water. The ocean represents limitless possibilities to me because there’s nothing there to catch your eye, to stop it, and that’s what I like about it.
Can you imagine life without the children?
No, I couldn’t imagine never being a mother. I think that my life would have been empty without them.
Was there ever a time you could just take a year off and say, “Okay, I’m gonna be a full-time mom”?
Not a whole year, no. That never happened, but there were long times off in that time period. For the most part I worked a lot, but my children came with me. I tried to schedule a lot of it and sometimes I just had to drag ’em along, but the truth is they loved it. Chastity was telling me the other night that the happiest time of her life was when she was little and we used to be on the road.
Do they ever join you on the road now?
Yeah. Elijah and Chastity come and go. They like the road life for a little while at a time. It’s fun for them. You know they went through it their whole lives and they enjoy it.
Are you ever shocked by what you read about yourself in the magazines and newspapers?
Not really. It’s usually stuff like I don’t dress like a serious anything, you know, or I don’t behave in my private life. But of course people don’t know what my private life is, so that’s just a bunch of crap. The truth is I don’t conform to dress codes; I didn’t start out that way and don’t think it’s very important.
How would you describe your own taste in clothes?
Eclectic. Personal and professional tastes are so intertwined, but when I’m not working I’m kind of a bum. No make-up and my hair is usually in braids or in a ponytail, or whatever. I still love older-the-better sweat pants, jeans and T-shirts.
What is the most unfair criticism that’s ever been leveled at you professionally as far as you’re concerned?
That I did too many things. Like you’re supposed to stick to one thing and that was it? And I was one of the first people who started out as a singer, then did TV and then did acting. It took people (in the entertainment industry) a long time to be comfortable with it—like somehow my career was fake because I didn’t stick to one thing. I guess it doesn’t occur to people if you can do something, anything, you might as well do it. Deep down, I don’t care what they think.
You’ve been single a long time—do you want to stay that way?
Oh, God, I’ve been married twice. I’m not going to be married again. It’s too hard. Well, maybe not…
By Eirik Knutzen
Cher (formerly known as Cherilyn Sarkisian LaPierre Bono Allman) has done it all during an amazing career with repeated flashes of brilliance that, incredibly, spans four decades. The sleek, outspoken 56-year-old singer-actress did it with a droll sense of humor while raising two children, essentially alone, but now the time has come to get off the road and sleep in her own bed for a change.
Don’t be mislead by Cher’s current year-long North American “Living Proof—The Farewell Tour” though. True, she will discard her wigs, low-cut sparkling outfits and avoid concert stages from Portland, Oregon to Sunrise, Florida, but is hardly leaving showbiz in her wake.
Beyond the tour—which keeps getting extended and may not end until sometime in June—Cher is prepping two CD albums, starring in a TV musical special on NBC and playing herself in a Farrelly Brothers comedy feature, “Stuck On You” with Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear, due to be released in December 2003. The highly charged Cher shoots the musical telefilm version of “Mame” as the wealthy and eccentric Auntie Mame who teaches her 10-year-old orphaned nephew the meaning of life. Nobody knows how it will turn out, but it is guaranteed to be different than previous silver screen efforts by Rosalind Russell and Lucille Ball. And when the opportunities arise, she plans to direct motion pictures and appear in occasional Broadway productions. Even after 40 years as a true diva, there seems to be plenty of time for Cher to top herself.
Born a month early in the desolate California desert community of El Centro, she is the exotic product of an Armenian father who faded out of the picture early on and struggling actress Georgia Holt, a striking lady with her sharp, part-Cherokee features. Raised in Los Angeles, the slim, 5'8" performer dropped out of high school at 16 to concentrate on acting. To raise money for acting lessons, Cher hired on as a background singer for famed songwriter/record producer Phil Spector and soon befriended fellow aspiring artist and future U.S. Congressman Sonny Bono.
Their first record as the Sonny and Cher duo in 1965, “I Got You Babe” zoomed to No. 1 on the Top 40 pop charts. “Baby Don’t Go” was right behind it, paving the way for three No. 1 hits in the ’70s: “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves,” “Half-Breed” and “Dark Lady.” She married Bono in 1969, just as their daughter Chastity was born, and the union lasted through most of their well-received TV program “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour”/“The Sonny and Cher Show.” Three days after their divorce was final in 1975, she married the occasionally troubled rocker Gregg Allman of the Allman Brothers Band and filed for dissolution nine days later. By the time the paperwork was finished, she gave birth to their son, Elijah Blue.
Reinventing herself at twice the speed of sound, Cher repeatedly hit gold or platinum jackpots, including the album Cher (’87), Heart of Stone (’89), Love Hurts (’91), Grammy Award-winner Believe (’9 , and Living Proof (’02). Her acting career received a huge boost when she appeared in the Broadway and film versions of “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean” (’82), earned a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for “Silkwood” (’83) and did respectable box office with Jack Nicholson in “The Witches of Eastwick” (’87). “Moonstruck” (’8 with Nicolas Cage earned her a Best Actress Academy Award and she made another strong statement as the director of the HBO dramatic film “If These Walls Could Talk” (’96); her HBO special as a performer, “Cher: Live In Concert” (’00) garnered three Emmy Award nominations.
The list of credits seems to go on indefinitely. The impish artist jokingly admits that about the only thing she can’t make work is marriage, but she has had “a wonderful time with all the wrong guys” while waiting for the right man to come along—including ace record producer David Geffen, Kiss band singer Gene Simmons and actor Val Kilmer. Happy and confident, she plans to keep on ticking—alone if necessary.
Okay, how many farewell tours will there be after “Living Proof”?
I’m not going to tour again because I think there’s a time when you should stop doing certain things, and I think this is the time for me to stop doing this thing. Sometimes when people quit something that they were great at, they come back not so great. I still can do it well, so I want to quit while I’m ahead.
In live concerts, what are you trying to give your audience?
I just want to give ’em two hours of not having to think about anything that they normally have to think about and just taking them out of themselves and just making it be pure enjoyment, because enjoyment is hard to come by, you know. It’s about being taken out of yourself and not having to think about anything, your daily problems or anything that’s bothering you and I think that’s the thing that I do best.
Do you prefer to work with a small television studio audience or an enormous live audience?
I like big audiences—the bigger, the better. In a huge room like the MGM Grand Garden Arena, the people provide a certain energy. And I can probably see the faces of a thousand people from the stage. We connect. The larger their energy, the better my performance—and the more I get back.
What do you feel is your own greatest contribution to the whole music industry?
Gosh, it’s just music. I don’t think about it as any huge legacy. I think it’s tough enough to just stay in the business this long. Music is just supposed to make people feel something and that’s what I’ve done.
Do you have a master plan for the future?
No and I never did. Things come to you then it’s just a matter of making a decision. But I’m never sure what I want to do next.
Are you ever surprised at how far you’ve come to reach this level in the entertainment business?
You don’t really think about it until you see a retrospective, like in my show there’s lots of retrospective film and video, but I’m usually busy on stage and don’t really see it. But because I have a TV monitor in my dressing room to make sure that I’m on stage on time, every once in awhile I will look over and think, “Oh yeah, that was 30 years ago.”
What is the worst nightmare you ever had on the road?
There was one night in Detroit three years ago where nothing went well … my wig fell off while I was dancing and I walked upstage and almost knocked myself out when I ran into a piece of equipment. It was a total mess. I was no good and it was just horrible. That’s when you just stop the show, have a moment with the audience, then just pick it up and go from there. Like during the tour in Sacramento recently, I dropped the microphone. It bothered me for about a second, but I just kept going. Something like that happens once out of 100 shows.
Are you keeping fit away from home?
You know what, at the end of the tour everything kind of goes to pot. But for the majority of the tour, it’s doing yoga to keep limber on one day and weight training on another day just to keep up my strength. Because you’re doing aerobics every night on stage running around for two hours, you maintain pretty well. So that’s it for the majority of the tour, but now I’m pretty much tired out … all I can do is do the show.
Ever get tired of people like Steven Tyler talking about your chronological age and fairly new additions to your anatomy?
Of course not, I adore him. Steven presented me with the Billboard Lifetime Achievement Award recently as a favor because he was on tour too. He flew into Las Vegas, then flew back out. I thought his insults were funny. I like it.
By the way, do you still have the tattoos that Tyler referred to on the show, including the butterflies on your butt?
I had a couple removed because I was getting bored. And it’s just nice to have the space back. When I got my tattoos, nobody was getting them and now everyone has them…
What is your own all-time favorite album and movie? And how close to your idea of perfection were they?
The movie has to be a tie between “Mask” and “Moonstruck.” I can’t pick a favorite of these two. In terms of albums, I think it might be between the first Sonny and Cher album, Look At Us and my Believe album. I’ve had lots of favorite songs also. It’s like my movies, I don’t ever like a complete anything. There’s a moment in a movie that I think is great or a song on an album that I think is great, but I’ve never made an album that I was satisfied with.
Did you have role models while growing up?
Oh yes, especially the Hepburn girls—Katharine and Audrey. Of the boys—Elvis Presley and James Dean. Those were people that I related to. I met Audrey just a couple of times, but stayed in touch with Katharine through the years. I’ve seen her, talked to her and I’ve written her notes and she’s written me back. Katharine is a great artist and was a strong woman when women were not supposed to be strong at all. For me, she was a great role model.
What do you think Ms. Hepburn is drawing from you?
I don’t know. Maybe that someone from a younger generation holds her in such high regard has an influence. Katharine thinks that stuff is foolish, but I don’t think it’s foolish because I’m a huge fan.
Where is your home at this very moment?
Los Angeles. My main residence is in Malibu, actually. I like it there because it’s a small town and I love to look at the water. The ocean represents limitless possibilities to me because there’s nothing there to catch your eye, to stop it, and that’s what I like about it.
Can you imagine life without the children?
No, I couldn’t imagine never being a mother. I think that my life would have been empty without them.
Was there ever a time you could just take a year off and say, “Okay, I’m gonna be a full-time mom”?
Not a whole year, no. That never happened, but there were long times off in that time period. For the most part I worked a lot, but my children came with me. I tried to schedule a lot of it and sometimes I just had to drag ’em along, but the truth is they loved it. Chastity was telling me the other night that the happiest time of her life was when she was little and we used to be on the road.
Do they ever join you on the road now?
Yeah. Elijah and Chastity come and go. They like the road life for a little while at a time. It’s fun for them. You know they went through it their whole lives and they enjoy it.
Are you ever shocked by what you read about yourself in the magazines and newspapers?
Not really. It’s usually stuff like I don’t dress like a serious anything, you know, or I don’t behave in my private life. But of course people don’t know what my private life is, so that’s just a bunch of crap. The truth is I don’t conform to dress codes; I didn’t start out that way and don’t think it’s very important.
How would you describe your own taste in clothes?
Eclectic. Personal and professional tastes are so intertwined, but when I’m not working I’m kind of a bum. No make-up and my hair is usually in braids or in a ponytail, or whatever. I still love older-the-better sweat pants, jeans and T-shirts.
What is the most unfair criticism that’s ever been leveled at you professionally as far as you’re concerned?
That I did too many things. Like you’re supposed to stick to one thing and that was it? And I was one of the first people who started out as a singer, then did TV and then did acting. It took people (in the entertainment industry) a long time to be comfortable with it—like somehow my career was fake because I didn’t stick to one thing. I guess it doesn’t occur to people if you can do something, anything, you might as well do it. Deep down, I don’t care what they think.
You’ve been single a long time—do you want to stay that way?
Oh, God, I’ve been married twice. I’m not going to be married again. It’s too hard. Well, maybe not…