Howard Stern discussed his conflicted feelings about Sonny Bono with Cher, after she revealed new details about their marriage and divorce in her newly released Cher: The Memoir.
“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 The Howard Stern Show Wednesday.
Cher reveals many new details about her marriage to Bono, who died in 1998, as one half of the pop duo Sonny & Cher, including that she and her late ex-husband had a “loveless” marriage in which he’d “manhandled” her, and that he had “seriously thought about” killing her. The couple was married for six years from 1969 to 1975, during which Cher wrote that she felt “trapped” in the marriage and contemplated suicide. She also writes that Bono “took all my money.”
Cher talked about what losing her earnings like with Stern, who was incensed by her recollection of Bono’s actions in her book. “I could never get him to give me an answer that was real for me, enough,” Cher said. “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?’”
She added, “He wanted to be Sonny & Cher more than anything. He loved that time.”
Stern noted that taking her half of their money was still “outrageous,” no matter the circumstances, and pointed out he did so even though, “Here you are, the mother of his child.” Cher and Bono share son Chaz Bono.
Cher agreed, “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.
As for how she’s moved on since then, Cher also opened up quite a bit about her sex life and relationships. Stern questioned whether men have high expectations of her in the bedroom because she’s Cher—to which the icon said that yes, and “they get” what they expect.
“You can tell by the reaction,” she explained, noting that “few men” have left her, besides actor Val Kilmer, who was in his early 20s when he started dating a 36-year-old Cher in 1982. “I was madly in love with Val Kilmer, and he left.”
The now 78-year-old star said back in May that she dates younger men because “Men my age or older, well, now they’re all dead.”
Cher concluded, “Sometimes you’re only meant to stay with someone so long, and Val was, like, really young.”
