I Found Some Blog...by Cher Scholar

Photo Tour of Gregg & Cher

Reading reviews of Gregg Allman’s new autobiography "My Cross to Bear" I notice quite frequently that reviewers go straight to find out what Allman has to say about Cher. Columnist Liz Smith says it best.

"President Obama is on the cover of [Rolling Stone]. As a politically concerned citizen, I knew I should have headed straight for the president's interview with Jann Wenner, the magazine's editor and publisher. But the gossip columnist in me took over...Anyway, I went right to Allman's memories of Cher.

As much as people want to claim they are too cool to be interested in Cher, they secretly are.

Here's a 14-photo image tour of that old Hollywood tabloid couple we loved to talk trash about:

Their formal side

Their country side

Canyon of Dreams: The Magic and the Music of Laurel Canyon

I just received Canyon of Dreams: The Magic and the Music of Laurel Canyon by Harvey Kubernik. This book kept popping up as an Amazon recommendation for me: "Since you're obsessed with Cher, you might like this book."

Unless you are a 1960s/70s LA music nerd, I can’t really recommend the book for Cher fans; there are only some slim Cher references inside...mostly revolving around S&C when they were living in Lower Laurel Canyon during the time they made “Baby Don't Go" and "I Got You Babe”...an exciting time to be making music in LA to be sure.

The book is mostly a reverie of session players and music-makers who lived and worked "up in the country" of Lauren Canyon Drive and who came down to the clubs of Sunset Boulevard to play their music at night, stories of people who have faded from the limelight, like Jackie deShannon, Randy Meisner of the Eagles, Donovan and Glen Campbell. But the fact that Sonny & Cher make so many cameos in this historic scene is satisfying.

As I noted in my introduction to the Cher Zine 2, Cher’s reputation is improving just by nature of her name appearing more frequently in lists of the rock establishment's cannon. We find an example of this on this books inside flap:

"Lauren Canyon, California, is a zip code with its own playlist. The unforgettable sounds of Sonny & Cher; the Doors; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Joni Mitchell; the Eagles; Carole King; the Byrds; and many others were cultivated in the canyon…”

Included in the book are stories by S&C-connected people such as guitarist Barney Kessel who played on “The Beat Goes On,” keyboardist Don Randi who knew S&C in 1964 when they were Caesar & Cleo and played on “Baby Please Don’t Go” [SIC], and Jackie DeShannon, called The Queen of Laurel Canyon, who says Sonny and Jack Nitzsche wrote “Needles and Pins” for her and how the the record company didn’t like it but she “wanted something with an edge to it.” She said Brian Wilson skateboarded into the studio when they were recording it. Her version didn’t make it very far on Billboard (#84) while The Searchers version made it to #13 (#1 in the UK).

Dan Kessel talks about the hip acts of the day: Caesar & Cleo, Joe & Eddie, The Pair Extraordinaire, Ian & Sylvia playing the clubs of the Purple Onion, The Ash Groove and the Ice House.

Photographer and musician form MFQ (Modern Folk Quartet) talks about taking photos of the KHJ concert sound check at the Hollywood Bowl with Sonny & Cher, Donovan, and Bob Lind.

Randy Sterling talks about being hired for $36 to use his 12-string in the “I Got You Babe” recording needed for added Wall of Sound. He also worked on the “All I Really Wanna Do” sessions. He says he gave Cher a pep talk before recording the Dylan song because she was teary-eyed and self-conscious about it. He says she “knocked it out of the ballpark in one take. When we were doing it I knew it was good.” He says he even told Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman of the Byrds soon after that Cher’s version would be a hit.

Kim Fowley (creator of The Runaways) says his novelty single “America’s Sweethearts” with Bunny & Bear was a takeoff of Sonny & Cher. (Bunny & Bear...HI-larious)

Guitarist Tony Valentino (of The Standells) says he used to hang out near Pandora’s Box on Sunset Strip in 1966 and there was a lot of tension there between “rock band people with long hair and bell-bottoms” and people from “the other side” (does he mean the other side of consciousness? or the other side of the Santa Monica mountains, ie. the Valley People?). There was also tension between the hippies and the police who were always pushing people. He said he saw Sonny & Cher around Pandora’s Box the night of the riots. Sonny was producing and recording with The Standells (with drummer Hal Blaine and bassist Carole Kaye).

[By the way, The Standells are often called the Godfathers of Punk or purveyors of protopunk. They were matched with Sonny, according to member Larry Tamblyn, in an effort to tone down their image with the single “The Boy Next Door.” Blaine and Kaye are not mentioned in their Wikipedia credits. As members of the infamous LA session players, The Wrecking Crew, getting shafted from credit is not unusual for them.]

Songwriter and producer Ian Whitcomb talks about 1965 as a magical time and that he was friendly with S&C when they released “Baby Don’t Go.” He says, “Sonny loved my song ‘The Sporting Life.’ The odd thing was, even thought they didn’t have a hit. They still had a chauffeur and limousine.”

Most interestingly, Glen Campbell talks about picking guests for his “Goodtime Hour” TV show:

“When I did the TV show, I wanted to make sure I could get everybody I knew who was a good singer. Johnny Cash, Cher, Ray Charles, Roger Miller, Willie Nelson, John Hartford, Linda Ronstadt, Bobbie Gentry, Rick Nelson, Anny Murray."

[I think Glen Campbell trumps Gregg Allman when it comes to a critique of singing.]

Randy Meisner of the Eagles talks about their early managers (former S&C managers) Charles Greene and Brian Stone, “Managers are bad in a good way. We hadn’t even made a record and we were in a limo. Those guys had some class.” (Sounds like a pattern.) He said when he was cutting an early album at Gold Star, Cher walked in. “She watched us from the control room and gave me a smile. It almost made up for all the mac and cheese” [he was forced to eat because he had no money].

There are pics of Sonny or Cher on a few pages: Cher singing with Glen Campbell and Neil Diamond in the late 60s; Sonny with the Kessel brothers allegedly during the recording of “I Got You Babe.” (Did Sonny really wear that paisley shirt under a bobcat vest that day? Oy. Loud.); Sonny & Cher with Rodney Bingenheimer at Gold Star during “The Beat Goes On” sessions.

 

Allman Bio is My Cross to Bear

Speaking for Cher fans, I can say this "My Cross to Bear" is an apropos title: Allman has indeed always been our Cher-fan's cross to bear.

So finally husband #2 writes a book. Goody. Sonny’s book was factually flawed and he was sober during the creation of it. I'm not holding out much hope for a pristine account of events.

Here are some Cher-related excerpts as reviewed by Susannah Cahalan:

In 1973, he met Cher at one of his shows. She was far from a fan, only ever having heard the song “Ramblin’ Man.”

Allman had a serious crush on the singer, “She smelled like I would imagine a mermaid would smell,” he writes.

[Damp and sea-weedy?]

He convinced a friend to ask her out for him by bribing him with the promise of a white Cadillac. She agreed.

After a terrible first date, when Allman took Cher to a fellow drug addict’s house and shot up in the bathroom, they hit it off on the second date when they went out dancing. She wore a thousand-dollar, beaded Bob Mackie that just covered her breasts.

After dancing all night, he accompanied her back to her 36-room mansion.

“She started ripping my f---ing clothes off,” he writes. “She was hot to trot, man, and we made some serious love.”

The relationship blossomed fast, even though his bandmates disliked the coupling. Over time, however, she won them over. 

[Like when she saved their pitiful finances by encouraging them to pay attention to where their income was going?]

“She had the filthiest mouth in show business, and the guys in the band thought she was quite a trip,” he writes.
 
All the while, Allman was thinly veiling his heroin addiction. Cher, whose own father was a drug addict, he writes, was “naive” about it. Then, in 1975, after two years of dating, Cher casually mentioned, “Well, listen — Mr. Harrah, who’s a good friend of mine, has sent us down his private jet. I was thinking we’d fly over to Vegas and get married.”

“Well, why not?” he replied.

It was rough sailing from the beginning. He continued to use behind her back, and both threatened to file for divorce during the first year of marriage (Cher actually did file four days after their wedding when she found his stash).

The band broke up in 1976, right after the birth of his son Elijah Blue, prompting people to call Cher the Allman Brothers Band’s Yoko Ono.

Living with Cher wasn’t easy, he writes. When he’d want to go out for a quiet dinner, there would almost always be “at least 35 f---ing photographers waiting for us when we got there,” implying Cher had called the paparazzi on herself.

But it wasn’t easy living with the moody, difficult and drug-addled Allman, either.

When Chaz Bono — then Chastity, Cher’s daughter who underwent a sex change in 2008 — was interviewed by Howard Stern recently, she explained how bizarre living with a rock-star drug addict was. “He picked me up from school once and got lost on the way home,” Chaz said.

But for Allman the last straw with Cher was about the music. “I was really glad she never asked me what I thought of her singing, because I’m sorry but she’s not a very good singer,” he writes.

Sigh. Where to begin? First of all, I’m willing to concede that Cher is not one of the greatest singers but to say that she’s not very good at all is to say she can’t sing. Which is disingenuous. Please decide, rock and roll elite, if unflawed singing is an important component or not. Because there are plenty of flawed singers in the pantheon. Secondly, Cher, please write a rebuttal bio to these husband-tale-alls!

Excerpts from:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/books/rock_and_hard_place_QuHeXgBSoHEbbDh93ux67L

 

70s Heaven: More Video and David Geffen

Cher sings the Bread song "If"--a most unfortunate choice to play in your wedding if your wedding happened in the 1970s and 80s.

This is the most hilarious hair style on a Cher TV solo spot...even she looks pissed off about it.

The lyrics of this song really make me nuts, even when I was a preteen and particularly disposed to the sappy effects the song conveys:

If a picture paints a thousand words than why cant I paint you
(who says you can’t?)
The words will never show the you I’ve come to know
(sounds like a You problem)
If a face could launch a thousand ships than why can’t I launch you (No!)...than where am I to go?
There’s no one home but you; you're all that’s left me to.
(You’re all what’s left me to what? You shouldn’t end on a preposition for all this vagueness: that's all you've left me to)
And when my love for life is running dry, you’ll come and pour yourself on me
(Like in a nagging way?)
If a man could be two places at one time, I’d be with you  
Tomorrow and today, beside you all the way (tell it to the judge, rock star)
If the world should stop revolving spinning slowly down to die (WTF!)
I’d spend it all with you and when the end was through
Then one by one the stars would all go out (this is NOT romantic)
Then you and I would simply fly away. (you think so if-boy?)

The song is mercifully only 2 and a half minutes long.

In this clip of "I Got it Bad and That Aint Good" you see a promo cover of the Bittersweet White Light album (can I say--this was a particularly poetic title for a Sonny-produced Cher album, or any Cher album for that matter). The clip also contains the I-got-it-bad wig.

 

 

This is a clip I remember seeing in the 1970s, Sonny & Cher singing "Delta Dawn." For days I circled the house singing the chorus over and over again. My lucky mom. Sonny is really rockin it here....but it sounds like they turned his mic off before the end. And that....is quite a shocking bit of yellow. 

 

 

 

Romancing the Cher

Good Hollywood Reporter story that appeared back in February about David Geffen: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/grammys-cher-david-geffen-289539

  

  

Cher Biographies

The photo cover for the upcoming Cher biography Strong Enough by Josiah Howard is up on Amazon, due for release May 15.

Love it!

In the meantime, I finished You Haven't Seen the Last of Me, the big coffee table biography by Daryl Easlea and Eddi Fiegel. I loved this book, the writing, the layout and learned a lot. Cher Scholar being a Cher scholar (it's compulsive), I am left with these few questions.

1. Who's idea was it for Bonnie Jo Mason and Caesar and Cleo to change their names to Sonny & Cher? Phil Spector's? Their managers? Their own?

2.Do you spell her surname Sarkisan (as in the book) or Sarkisian? And was her second surname La Pierre or La Piere (in the book it's listed both ways on different pages).

3. Is Sonny's pant seam split on page 36?

4. Is the line from "Mama Was a Rock and Roll Singer": "You're rocking everybody in town" or "You're vamping everybody in town"?

There are some bloopers in the book...a few are:

1. Sonny's first wife has always been alleged to be Donna Rankin and not Donna Allen.

2. "Holdin Out For Love" wasn't written by Billy Falcon. The awful "Boys and Girls" was.

Things I loved:

1. Describing her character on The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour as a "glam bitch."

2. "The swirling fairground feel of "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves" sounds as stunning today, over 40 years later, as it did in 1971."

Anyway, good book for the Cher obsessed.

 

Dear Cher

Oy! So this end-of-year was off the hook! We've had non-stop visitors to Santa Fe. First Mr. Cher Scholar's mom and sister, then my parents, then Mr. Cher Scholar's friend John Lehr (a.k.a. the Geico Caveman) came for a weekend. We visited the forgotten New Mexican ghost town Trementina.

Then Mr. Cher Scholar and I threw a Christmas party to end all Christmas parties. Strung the house with lights inside and out, set up a candle-lit interior and made homemade eggnog punch, cookies, guac and a beef brisket topped with our favorite Kansas City BBQ sauce, Gates. I abstained from eating the cow.

So here it is almost a month later and no Cher posts! Cher scholar Dishy was kind enough to send me the link to the updates from Sonny-and-Cher scholar Rick's Sonny & Cher site: http://www.sonnycher.com/ -- the most awesome of which is the postings of Cher's advise column from 16 Magazine issues from the 1960s.

It's called "Dear Cher" and although not as wise and pithy as Cher Scholar's column (more Q&A in the latest Cher Zine), it's a real hoot: http://www.sonnycher.com/dearcher.html

Not that I believe Cher wrote these teen-psychology-attempts anyway. Whoever was the real mentor behind "Dear Cher," they were constantly in a state of despair when teens refused to declare their ages when asking for Cher-advice.

My question for Cher back in the 60s would be this: the pattern to that bathing suit above looks awfully similar to Lady Gaga's infamous Meat Dress...is that a Meat-bikini?

Happy holidays everyone. I'm looking forward to the new Cher album next year. Although I spent last night listening to Thin Lizzy singing "Fighting My Way Back" wishing Cher would cover that for a future retro-rock album.

If only Santa would listen to my Cher-related Christmas wish list. 

 

141 S. Carolwood Drive, Holmby Hills

New book on that fabulous and mysterious house Sonny & Cher owned in the early 70s, bought from Tony Curtis (the second house they bought from Tony Curtis, that is) on Carolwood avenue off the Sunset Strip.

Full article from The Hollywood Reporter

Exerpt:

A new book spotlights 20th Century Fox co-founder Joseph Schenck's affair with Marilyn Monroe at 141 S. Carolwood and the separated Bonos' decision to live in separate wings because CBS threatened to cancel their show if either moved out.

"Who'd have thought I'd end up in that house? … Just to say 'Carolwood' is mind-boggling," Tony Curtis said in an interview six months before he died in 2010, recalling the grandest place he ever lived. "Some day, we're going to live right here," Cher told husband Sonny Bono in 1967 the first time they visited the Holmby Hills estate, known for most of its existence by its address, 141 S. Carolwood Drive.

In the impossibly high-priced world of L.A. real estate, the Italian Renaissance mansion has ranked -- from the day it was built at the height of the Great Depression -- as one of the area's most coveted houses. Erected in 1932, the six-bedroom house has been inhabited by 20th Century Fox co-founder Joseph Schenck, Superior Oil founder William Keck, Curtis, Cher and Ghazi Aita, a shadowy businessman who surrounded himself with model-actress-whatevers. It is now in the hands of the widow of Ameriquest founder Roland Arnall, an architect of the subprime mortgage meltdown. "Writing about it was irresistible," says Michael Gross, author of Unreal Estate (Broadway, $30), a look at the uppermost echelons of L.A. real estate. (Gross penned a book about a famed New York building, 740 Park, in 2005.) Beginning with the founding of the neighborhoods that comprise the so-called Platinum Triangle of Holmby Hills, Beverly Hills and Bel-Air, the author tells the story of fame, wealth and social striving in L.A. through the inhabitants of 16 of the area's great mansion

But 141 S. Carolwood Drive stands out for its famed owners and their stories of trysts, broken marriages, dissolution and predatory capitalism. Designed by architect Robert Farquhar (also responsible for Beverly Hills High School), it was commissioned by Florence Quinn, the former wife of department store mogul Arthur Letts Sr., the visionary behind the creation of Holmby Hills...Lots began to sell there in 1925, with enormous mansions springing up on nearly barren hills. Carolwood cost $150,000 and was touted in the Los Angeles Times as the largest residence built that year. Quinn's red-tile-roofed, L-shaped mansion clocked in at 12,000 square feet (big for its time, not large by today's McMansion standards) and sat on four acres of lawns, gardens and fountains. A sweeping staircase still dominates the vast wood-paneled reception hall.

In the mid-1940s, it passed through the hands of Hotel Bel-Air founder Joseph Drown, who sold the house to one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, movie mogul Schenck. "He furnished it in a manner described as spare -- perhaps because he considered the stars, starlets and Hollywood players he filled the place with sufficient decoration," writes Gross of the first president of United Artists and, later, chairman of 20th Century Fox.

Schenck's most renowned decoration at Carolwood was Marilyn Monroe. "Though no one alive can say for certain, it seems reasonably clear that he began an affair with [her] there," writes Gross. "According to legend, she spotted him leaving the studio in his limousine, flashed him a flirty smile and got his card and a dinner invitation in return." She became a regular at his parties, home screenings and poker games, standing behind his chair while he played. Soon, she was living in the guesthouse. She was 21 and recently had been dropped from her contract at Fox, with only a few small movie roles under her belt.

Schenck sold the house in 1956 to Superior Oil's Keck, who added an indoor swimming pool and gold bathroom-sink fixtures shaped like oil derricks. Curtis bought it a decade later, seven years after his now-classic turn in Some Like It Hot. The actor, writes Gross, "did remember Carolwood as he'd dated [Monroe] when she was bunking in [the] guesthouse." The mansion, then worth $300,000, was a symbol for the actor of finally having made it, trading up through a series of ever-more-impressive houses

...But by that point, the house had intoxicated another Hollywood star: Cher.

"We never knew how or why we got invited to a party at Tony Curtis' house. We'd never met him before," the singer wrote in her 1998 memoir The First Time. She recalls gasping when she and Bono first drove up to Carolwood in 1967. "We've never seen anything like it," Cher told Curtis. He responded: "Come tomorrow. I want to show you my other house."

The couple ended up buying Curtis' previous house, 364 St. Cloud Road in Bel-Air -- now owned by Larry Flynt -- but she told Curtis to let her know if he ever wanted to sell Carolwood. She got her chance in 1972 when he offered it for $1 million. When Cher's lawyer made a lowball offer and Curtis insisted on more, she boomed, "I want that f--ing house!" The singing duo, flying high with The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, reportedly paid $750,000. But their marriage crumbled soon after they moved in when she confessed her love for their guitar player. The breakup was one of the nastiest in showbiz history, and for a year they lived in separate wings because CBS threatened to cancel their show if either moved out.

Cher's taste in furniture was a far cry from her "fur-vested hippie look," writes Gross. Her decorator went on buying trips to Europe, acquiring Louis XIV chairs and an 18th century buffet. "I guess we were trying to appear established. We were nouveau riche, but better nouveau than never," she wrote in her memoir. Cher eventually won the rights to Carolwood in her divorce from Bono. By then, she had already taken up with record executive David Geffen, who helped guide her solo career -- thankfully, his plans (as related in a 1975 Esquire story) to open up the house by installing a pyramid skylight never saw the light. Next up was husband No. 2, Gregg Allman, who entered drug rehab soon after they married. Writes Gross, "Cher would later recall her fury when friends of his snorted coke off her antique table."

Carpet-business owner Ralph Mishkin and his wife, Chase, bought Carolwood in 1976 from Cher for $950,000 and renamed it Owlwood, after the birds that inhabited the estate. "We restored the house completely. It hadn't been well cared for," says Chase Mishkin, now a successful Broadway producer (The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Memphis). "Cher whipped through and covered the walls in the master bedroom with a thousand yards of fabric. It was all pretty unattractive."

Ouch!

Joan Rivers, Cher and Billy Sammeth

So...this piece of drama all went down last year but I just recently saw the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work on HBO last weekend…so it’s all fresh to me. This is a sad little documentary about show business and aging and workaholism. Yes, showbiz may love the young; but sometimes I wonder if it just isn't obsessed with the new (you can be old...as long as you're new)…which makes it tough for any legend such as Cher or Joan Rivers. 

Rivers has a wall-sized filing system for all the jokes she's ever written, categorized by topic. This type of professionalism and organization impressed me. Anyway, Rivers had been working with Bill (of the Take Me Home liner note's "Billy, I love you Billy!") Sammeth as her manager since before her husband Edgar died (and maybe even far longer). Rivers seemed highly attached to him because he was her only collegue who could remembered her "old days." He was one of the few witnesses to her history. All through the documentary she has trouble reaching Sammeth and, in one tear-filled scene, she decides to let him go.

This was all fascinating to watch because I remembered Cher firing her long-time manager Sammeth in the late 90s and I wondered why. Was he fired for similar reasons? It turns out, he was.

After Sammeth was fired by Rivers, he sued her: http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/entertainment/joan-rivers-sued-by-ex-manager_100385990.html

Turns out when Cher fired him, he sued her too: 
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,615521,00.html

This article compares the two incidents:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/06/25/billy-sammeth-and-his-lawsuit-against-joan-rivers.html

And predictably Sammeth was apparently upset about the way he was depicted in the Rivers documentary. Excerpts:

Still, several friends of Rivers’ say privately that Sammeth’s disappearances were something she complained about over the years. They also point out that she didn’t edit the film, and therefore isn’t responsible for how he comes off in it. “She had no approval of anything,” says one friend. “She did not have final cut. It was a movie about her—it was not ‘her movie.’” (Efforts to reach the film’s directors, Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg, were unsuccessful.)

Sammeth and his lawyer, meanwhile, caution against reading too much into an old lawsuit filed by Sammeth’s other big client, Cher, in which she too accused the manager of not being attentive enough to her needs.

In it, counsel for Cher describes how Sammeth, “unhappy” with life in Los Angeles, relocated to Northern California in the mid-'90s and “attempted to continue the relationship from his home via cellular telephone. Eventually, communications between the parties deteriorated and… Cher terminated the 20-year relationship.”

As Sammeth recalls it, going into the third-person, “With Cher, Billy did not want to become the live-in person in her life. I bought that house on purpose so I didn’t become a prisoner for Cher. You give them almost all of your life, and then as soon as Cher saw that I was going to Northern California, there was a big red flag called abandonment.”

He may have a point. After all, Cher is legendary for firing people, having gone through over half a dozen agents during the 1980s. According to a New Yorker article about Sammeth in 2002, Cher actually fired him once and rehired him four days later. Sammeth thinks the root of the drama between them comes from Cher’s upbringing. “Her mother was married eight times, and twice to the same guy,” he points out.

[Cher is legendary for firing people? Wha?? Doesn’t Cher maintain some impressive long-term professional relationships? Like her costume designer Bob Mackie, her wig-maker Renate Leuschner, her personal assistant Deborah Paull, her choreographer Doriana Sanchez, Billy himself who started working with her in the late 70s? I can’t remember the last news story about a Cher firing. In fact when she fired Billy, it seems significant. And what does Cher’s mom’s marital tendencies have to do with anything???]

“Whatever happened between him and Cher, it was settled amicably,” Lask says. “In this business, people get hired and fired all the time. It’s a peculiar business with peculiar personalities with people who say ‘I love you, doll,’ and then terminate you.”

“I love Joan, I love Cher,” Sammeth says. “I do love them. This is not a bitter manager, he’s an upset manager, he’s angry. I got to a point—what is it? The Equal Rights Committee that said silence equals guilt.”

[Does that statement make sense to anybody?}

I don't know what is more sad, this story or the latest gossip that Cher's album has been pushed back to 2012.

  

Bric a Brac

Cher's new single, "The Greatest Thing" has turned into a duet with Lady Gaga. And the world is agaga waiting for it. It's being tweaked even as we speak. The new album is set for Christmastime but that sounds like a hard deadline to meet when they might still be recording tracks.

The movie Zookeeper came out on DVD and Blu-ray yesterday.

And Cher-scholar Rob sent me a great copy of Cher and Gregg Allman singing "Love Me" -- see screen shot above.

 

Rock Seen by Bob Gruen

Ahhh, the sweet smell of almost-respect.

Entertianment Weekly's September 2nd issue includes a review of music-photographer Bob Gruen's new book of rock icons.

The snapshot review is titled "Legends on the Loose" and the five examples of representative legends chosen to showcase are Debbie Harry on Coney Island in 1977, The Ramones on their way to CBGB's in 1975, KISS posing for an album cover in 1974, John Lennon in Yonkers in 1975 and...wait for it...Sonny & Cher in the picture to the left taken on Lexignton Avenue in New York City in 1973.

Melissa Maerz calls the book "a disarmingly natural look at icons like Blondie and Cher before the era of the posed rock-star portrait kicked in."

Don't they look groovy?

But what a list of heavyweights to be included with. In the last decade, Cher's been making it into more and more of these lists of "legends." Like the theory of Starstruck, The Business of Celebrity suggests, it's all about who you're seen with.