Trigger warning: This article contains descriptions of domestic violence
Music icon Cher has detailed the first half of her life in her first memoir.
While the headlines are rushing in, from being briefly raised by nuns to her difficult relationship with her mother, one major takeaway is the piece of advice she gave the late Tina Turner.
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In part one of Cher: The Memoir, out yesterday, the music icon wrote about Tina Turner’s two appearances on Cher’s self-titled TV show. During one visit, Tina asked Cher for help to cover up a bruise from her then-husband Ike Turner.
“One of the days we were shooting, she came to my room before we went on asking if I had some cover-up. She had a bruise on her arm she didn’t want showing on camera. I told her I had something that would work,” Cher wrote.
Tina asked Cher, “Tell me how you left him.”
“I looked at her and told her, ‘I just walked out and kept going,’” she wrote.
Cher: The Memoir details the singer, actress, TV host and fashion icon’s life story. From her wayfarer childhood, which included times of extreme poverty, to her breakout in Sonny & Cher and eventual divorce from Sonny Bono, to her acting career from 1980, Part One of the memoir is already making headlines for its candid accounts.
Notably, the memoir paints a complex and troubling picture of her decade-long marriage to Sonny Bono from 1964 to 1975.
She describes Sonny as controlling and short-tempered, often restricting her interactions with others, including their band members. In one shocking incident, he burned her tennis clothes after seeing her socialising with her coach outside of lessons.
Cher also shares the emotional and physical challenges she endured during their marriage, including their struggle to conceive and her difficult recovery after giving birth to their child, Chaz. On her first night home from the hospital, Sonny reportedly left the house, leaving her alone and passed out on the bathroom floor from a hemorrhage.
Cher wrote that the request from Tina reminded her of the one she once made to Lucille Ball when she wanted to leave Bono.
“I called Lucille Ball to ask for her advice. I told her, ‘Lucy, I want to leave Sonny and you’re the only one I know that’s ever been in this same situation. What should I do?’”
“Lucy and her husband had also become famous working together as stars on TV. And he was a huge womaniser too. Then Lucy had left him,” she writes.
The abuse Tina Turner was subjected to in her own marriage to Ike was detailed in Turner’s memoir I, Tina. The story inspired the 1993 movie What’s Love Got to Do With It, starring Angela Bassestt.
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