In certain ways, Howard Stern is like a lot of Cher’s fans, becoming angry while digesting details about her exploitative and emotionally abusive marriage to ex-husband Sonny Bono.
In her newly released “Cher: The Memoir,” Cher reveals a lot about her miserable times with Bono, who also was her partner in their famed Sonny & Cher pop duo and on their hit 1970s TV show, “The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour.”
While Cher discussed marriage to Bono on Howard Stern’s Sirius XM show Wednesday, the radio host acknowledged his own conflicted feelings about the former singer-songwriter who later became a Republican U.S. congressman representing Palm Springs.
“The relationship with Sonny in the book, there were times I loved Sonny, I became appreciative of Sonny and his skill, because I didn’t know a lot about Sonny’s background, and then there were times I wanted to strangle him—because he did horrible things,” Stern said on his eponymous “Howard Stern Show” Wednesday, according to a clip from the interview.
Stern, of course, is speaking metaphorically about strangling Bono, who died in a skiing accident in 1998.
In the book and in interviews to promote it, Cher, 78, revealed that she and Bono had a “loveless” marriage, even as they became one of America’s most popular celebrity couples, the Daily Beast reported.
They met in 1964, when she was just 16 and he was a 27-year-old aspiring musician. They got married in Tijuana, even though she was underage, then made their marriage official in 1969 while becoming parents to one child, Chaz Bono, now 55. They divorced in 1975.
Cher claimed that Bono regularly “manhandled” her, and that he “seriously thought about” killing her at one point, the Daily Beast reported. During their marriage, she wrote, she felt “trapped” in the marriage and contemplated suicide because Bono became controlling and paranoid and wouldn’t let her socialize with other people, the New York Times also reported. He also was unfaithful.
On top of all that, Cher wrote that Bono “took all my money,” as he wanted to be more than an entertainer — he wanted to be a mogul, the New York Times reported. He arranged their finances so that Cher was working for him, as an underpaid employee in a company he called Cher Enterprises.
Stern appeared to become especially incensed by Cher’s descriptions of how Bono took her earnings.
“I could never get him to give me an answer that was real for me enough,” Cher told Stern. “I said, ‘At what point, what time of the day or the night, or what were you doing when you thought, ‘I’m gonna take Cher’s money?’”
“He wanted to be Sonny & Cher more than anything,” Cher said. “He loved that time.”
Stern said that taking her half of their money was “outrageous,” no matter the circumstances, and pointed out Bono did so even though, “Here you are, the mother of his child.”
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Cher agreed, telling Stern, “Absolutely,” before recalling one explanation Bono gave her about why he’d taken her money: “His answer was, “Because I know you’d always leave me.’”
“But what kind of answer is that?” Stern said, outraged on her behalf.
During an appearance on NBC’s Today show Monday, Cher said she reached out to TV legend Lucille Ball, seeking her advice about her failing marriage, the Daily Beast reported. Ball had had a famous falling out with her husband and TV partner Desi Arnaz.
Cher initially told co-host Hoda Kotb that she couldn’t repeat what Ball told her on live TV. But Kotb assured her: “We’ll bleep it.”
That’s when Cher said Ball told her, “(Expletive) him.” Unfortunately, the morning talk show was not ready with its seven-second delay, and Ball’s advice went out on the airwaves uncensored.
Ball, who died in 1989, urged Cher to have faith in going it alone, without Bono. Ball was right; Cher’s music career continued to soar, and she began to act in movies, earning an Academy Award for best actress in 1988 for “Moonstruck.”
“You’re the one with the talent,” Cher said Ball told her.