Free Cher by Mark Bego Page A

stuck to it. But, it would also cause a hostile reaction with some people. So when you went into a restaurant like Martoni’s we’d get some tough times. One time, some guys just wanted to beat me up. I got on the phone while I was eating there, and we had friends then that were killers, so we threw them out of the restaurant! So Mario Antoni got mad. I said, “What are you getting mad for? They were gonna beat the hell out of me. And I asked you to move the guys and you didn’t.” So they said, “Don’t ever come back again.” I said, “Come on, you’re my friends.” And they said “no.” Both Cher and I felt real dejected. That night, we went home, she went to bed and I wrote “Laugh At Me,” which was really over that incident. Then we recorded it. It was the only hit that I had as “Sonny Bono” (38).
    In addition to “Laugh at Me,” in 1965 Sonny released his second single, “The Revolution Kind.” In December of that year it peaked at Number 70 on the Billboard charts in America.
    It was also in 1965 that Cher and Sonny made their movie debut. The early 1960s witnessed a huge tidal wave of surfer movies like Beach Party (1963), Beach Blanket Bingo (1965), Beach Ball (1965), Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965), and Ride the Wild Surf (1964). These films were usually light on plot, heavy on bikinis and bronzed bodies, and featured performers like Lesley Gore, the Supremes, the Four Seasons, James Brown, or other up-and-coming pop stars of the day who would make cameo musical appearances. Usually they would show up in a concert sequence at the local surfers’ hangout. The movie that Sonny & Cher appeared in was entitled Wild on the Beach . The film starred Frankie Randall, Sherry Jackson, Cindy Malone, and Sandy Nelson, and the musical guests included Jackie & Gayle, the Astronauts, and last but not least Sonny & Cher. In the plot, the girls in the cast have rented a beach house, only to find that a group of boys have also leased the same house—with comical consequences. In a beachside club scene Sonny & Cher perform their song “It’s Gonna Rain,” which appeared on their first album, Look at Us .
    Due to the media blitz that took place in London when Sonny & Cher were thrown out of the Hilton Hotel, they were considered big media stars in England. When Twiggy came to the United States with her boyfriend Justin, it was Sonny & Cher who led the Hollywood greeting committee. And when the Rolling Stones arrived in Los Angeles on their first visit to California, they were Sonny and Cher’s houseguests. According to Cher, “When the Stones came to America for the first time, they wanted to stay with us. [I said,] ‘We haven’t got any furniture.’ They said, ‘That’s O.K., we’ll rent cots,’ because they were really uptight around the people they were with over here. No one looked like them, and they felt insecure” (18).
    Overnight success can be a strange thing to handle, especially when you’ve lived the majority of your life not having any money at all. Remembers Cher,
Being eighteen and walking on a stage and hearing ten thousand people screaming and yelling your name—the whole thing can make you lose all concept of who you are. Sometimes I’d get off the stage with my clothes and sometimes I wouldn’t. But, overall, Sonny kept on top of the situation for me. I was like a worker in a beehive, mostly, just doing my gig (18).
    Just after she became a singing star, Cher went on a shopping spree that she’ll never forget, mainly for the lesson that she learned from it.
I went into this store one day, just in my regular duds, and I saw a Rudi Gernrich outfit that I wanted. I asked this saleslady “Can you tell me what colors you have this outfit in?” She said, “It’s a very expensive outfit.” I said, “O.K. What colors does it come in?” “Well,” she said, “it comes in red and black, green and yellow, and purple and red.” And I said, “O.K. I’ll take all