During her marriage to Sonny, Cher contemplated suicide 'five or six times'

She took up the pen to tell, without limits, the story of her rise, the underside of her publicized romantic relationships and everything that has never been said. In an extract from “Cher: the autobiography, part one” (Ed. Harper Collins), shared by “People”, the now 78-year-old singer also returned to the violent underbelly of her marriage to Sonny Bono.

After meeting when they were 16 and 27, respectively, Cher and Sonny found success together with the hit “I Got You Babe.” In 1969, they officially said “yes” and immediately launched a successful show, “The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour”. However, in their life as a couple, Sonny is not as amusing as on television and puts his partner through a real ordeal.

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Cher wanted to “just disappear”

“Controlling”, Sonny often verbally attacks the singer who writes of feeling “trapped” in a “loveless marriage”. So much so that on several occasions, Cher contemplates the worst, perched on the balcony of her room. “I was full of loneliness. I could see how easy it would be to just step over the balcony ledge and simply disappear,” she wrote. “For a few crazy minutes, it was the only option I could think of. I almost did it five or six times. »

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When once, in anger, he grabbed her and “slammed her against the wall”, Cher was categorical: “Looking him in the eyes, I told him: 'Listen to me carefully. If you touch me again like that, I'm leaving you, and you'll never see me again.” I wasn't joking, and he saw that I was capable of it. »

After Sonny, Cher experienced love elsewhere, notably in the arms of Gregg Allman whom she married in 1975, from whom she divorced in 1977, then married again a year later and divorced again the same year. Today, the 78-year-old singer could not be more fulfilled in her relationship with Alexander Edwards, a music producer and rapper 40 years her junior.