Cher admits she never got paid for writing biggest hit and makes sad Sonny confession

In the darkness of the Pan Pacific Auditorium in downtown LA, nine thousand screaming girls waited for Elvis Presley to take the stage. When he finally emerged into the light, eleven-year-old Cherilyn Sarkisian turned to her mother and said: “Mom, I’m going to do that.” It was 1957 and the moment eleven-year-old Cherilyn Sarkisian, from a poor family in California, became Cher. Since then she has gone on to sell more than 100 million records worldwide , is worth £280m and is the only artist to have a number one single on the Billboard chart in six consecutive decades. Her Farewell Tour grossed £195m . Now, as her 80th birthday approaches, the star who conquered the charts and Hollywood over a glittering career is the focus of a new BBC documentary charting her incredible rise to fame, and it all started when she saw Elvis. Cher said: “Elvis came out in his gold suit, and they flashed the lights. I’m thinking, oh my God, it must be amazing to be on that stage. It was the beginning of me knowing what I wanted to do. Most of my friends loved him, I wanted to be him.” It had been a tough childhood. She was born in El Centro, California, to a mother who was twenty years old and a father who was largely absent. Cher said: “We ate a can of stew or a can of beans one week but then sometimes we lived in Beverly Hills.” School was a struggle. She was dyslexic at a time when nobody knew what that meant. “I did badly on a maths test and I said, Mom, I just can’t see numbers, and she said don’t worry baby when you grow up you’ll have someone to do numbers for you. Well she’s right about that.” Cher’s big break came in a coffee shop in 1962, when she was sixteen. Salvatore Philip Bono, Sonny, walked in. “He wasn’t handsome. He just was so electrifying. He was wearing this beautiful mohair suit and a mustard shirt with a white collar and a mustard tie. And he had the most beautiful fingers I’d ever seen… I was thinking: who the hell is this guy?” He was twenty-seven and she was sixteen, couch-surfing with friends in Los Angeles. He let her move into his apartment, sharing a room with twin beds, until her mother Georgia found out and brought her home. By then it was too late. “When I saw him, everyone else disappeared,” Cher said. Sonny was working for the legendary producer Phil Spector, and one day came home to find Cher making the bed and singing. He brought her to the studio and her first single, All I Really Want To Do, was released in 1965, when she was eighteen. Cher said: “I’ve never been very confident about singing." The single did well and the first person to call and congratulate her was her mother Georgia. “She said, I knew you had it in you.” Sonny wrote their smash hit I Got You Babe in the middle of the night in 1965. He woke Cher twice to sing the melody back to him but she wasn’t convinced: “I said, you know, I don’t think much of this song.” When they came to record it she changed her mind. “I don’t think it’s the greatest record I’ve ever heard, but it captured a moment.” It went to number one in the US, UK and Canada, selling more than a million copies. At one point Sonny and Cher had five songs simultaneously in the Billboard top 50, a feat equalled only by the Beatles and Elvis Presley. They came to Britain in 1965 and the country has always been special to Cher. She said: “We couldn’t have become famous if we hadn’t come here. We got famous like the first day we were on the cover of some big newspaper, and then we did Top of the Pops, and then we just didn’t stop.” Back in America, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour launched on CBS in 1971 and drew 30 million viewers a week, and a string of solo hits followed. Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves went to number one in the US in 1971, followed by Half-Breed and Dark Lady. In 1969 Cher had given birth to their son, Chaz, but the marriage was already beginning to fall apart and she filed for divorce in 1974. The brutal financial settlement saw Sonny keep 95 per cent of everything the pair had earned, despite the company being called Cher Enterprises. When she confronted him he said: “I always knew you’d leave me.” Cher said: “That’s not a reason. Son, how could you do it?” The divorce was finalised on June 26, 1975. She married musician Gregg Allman four days later and in 1976 gave birth to their son Elijah Blue. That marriage lasted until 1979. After that came the movies, although Cher was a reluctant star at first, saying: “I got into acting because I couldn’t get a job singing. Nobody wanted to know me.” In 1983 she was cast in Silkwood alongside Meryl Streep and Kurt Russell. When the trailer screened in a New York cinema her name came up on screen and the entire audience laughed. Cher said: “My sister was crying, and I bit the inside of my cheek for a minute, and then I thought, you can’t argue with what everyone’s thinking, and that’s okay, but this is sad.” Director Mike Nichols told her they would be clapping at the end. They were, and she was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1987 she starred in three films back to back: Suspect, The Witches of Eastwick and Moonstruck, which saw her win an Oscar for Best Actress. As she came off the stage, walked straight into Audrey Hepburn. Cher said: “She just grabbed me and said, I’m so happy you won. And then we started being pen pals.” By the mid-nineties Cher’s music career had stalled. She had been dropped by two labels and her manager had left. Rob Dickens at Warners UK believed she had more in her and brought her over to London, where he suggested a disco record. Cher said: “I’m not doing that. I don’t have any street cred.” They agreed he would send her songs and she would say yes or no. One of the yeses was Believe, released in 1998. The verses weren’t working so she got in the bath, toes in the tap, and thought about who this woman in the song actually was. Cher said: “There’s no way she’s going to be heartbroken in the second verse. It just doesn’t go that way for me.” The line she came up with, “I’ve had time to think it through, and maybe I’m too good for you,” she never claimed as a co-write. Cher said: “I could have kicked myself.” At the time, it became the biggest-selling UK single by a female artist in history. Sonny had died in a skiing accident in January that same year. They had stayed close throughout, fighting constantly in a way that never really mattered. Cher said: “We never fought when we were married. That’s the strange thing. I just always gave in. But afterwards, we would fight. But you know, it didn’t make any real difference.” Her mother later gave her two toy bears that played I Got You Babe when you pressed their fingers. Cher said: “I have dreams about him. He just kind of hangs around.” Believe won a Grammy for Best Dance Recording in 2000. Two years later she launched the Living Proof Farewell Tour, billing it as her final concert tour. It ran until 2005, grossed £195 million and became the highest-grossing tour by a female artist in history. She has since done several more tours and a Vegas residency and a musical about her life ran on Broadway. Cher was finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and in January this year received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. On May 20 she turns 80 and has no plans to stop, with a new boyfriend, 40-year-old Alexander Edwards, and a new album on the way. Cher said: “This will probably be my last because you’re not really supposed to be singing at my age. But why stop breaking boundaries now?” *Cher at the BBC is now available on BBC Sounds and Radio 2 will broadcast on 17th May (2-3am)