Cher was asked to put on a show for the Princess in 1965, but the spectacle didn’t go quite as planned.
Cher with Sonny Bono. Photo: Getty
While a superstar like Cher has no doubt performed to crowds numbering hundreds of thousands, singing to Princess Margaret was a daunting prospect – even for a global phenomenon. The iconic entertainer didn’t feel it had quite been her best performance, as she reveals in her new book, Cher: The Memoir.
Princess Margaret had flown into Los Angeles in 1965 for a series of charitable engagements with her then husband, Lord Snowdon, writes Cher in her new biography, published this week. ‘Having read all about us in the English press, the Princess invited us to perform at the Hollywood Palladium,’ she elaborates, referring to herself and her husband, Sonny Bono, with whom she performed as the pop duo, Sonny & Cher.
Princess Margaret was apparently not impressed by the performance, which Cher herself describes as a ‘fiasco’ in her new book. Photo: Getty
‘This came as a surprise, because the old guard either had no idea who we were or thought we were freaks,’ she continues. ‘It boggled the imagination how much that wasn’t our audience. The best that could happen is we’d live through it.’ Perhaps the 19-year-old Cher had underestimated the Princess, who was said to greatly enjoy pop music. In season four of The Crown (where Princess Margaret is played by Helena Bonham Carter) she can be seen dancing around at home, drinking champagne and shimmying her hips to David Bowie’s 1983 hit, ‘Let’s Dance’. ‘It’s a side to Margaret we so rarely see—she’s completely relaxed and alive and mischievous,’ music supervisor Sarah Bridge told The New York Times. ‘It’s just a really fun scene.’
Despite Margaret’s enthusiasm, neither Cher nor her husband wanted to carry out the performance—but ‘we couldn’t say no to Princess Margaret,’ the singer explains in an extract from the book, as per People. The concert didn’t go to plan: Frank Sinatra, who was supposed to introduce Sonny & Cher, dropped out at the last minute, so Bob Hope was called upon to compère instead. The event started late and there was no stage, meaning the duo had to stand on the dance floor to perform, and Princess Margaret was suffering from laryngitis.
Sonny and Cher performing in 1965, the same year in which they put on a special performance for Princess Margaret. Photo: Getty
‘The acoustics were so bad that, coupled with sound problems, we performed terribly,’ writes Cher, adding that one critic from the Saturday Evening Post described them as howling ‘like a pair of coyotes’. She adds that ‘the audience must have agreed, because very few people applauded, and halfway through our set Princess Margaret asked for the sound to be turned down because she had a headache. The engineer then accidentally cut the mic and interfered with what we could hear, which threw Sonny completely.’
The concert went from bad to worse, and Cher describes herself as wanting nothing more than for the whole ordeal to end as quickly as possible. ‘I think we were wearing white outfits, but we should have been wearing camouflage,’ she writes. ‘The whole event was a fiasco… I was mortified. It was like a bad dream that we couldn’t get out of; we just had to stand there and wait for it to be over.’
Prince William speaks with US singer and actress Cher after the Royal Variety Performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London on November 30, 2023. Photo: Getty
One might imagine that such an experience would put any singer off performing to royalty for life, but Cher returned to the stage last year to sing for Prince William and the Princess of Wales, as well as Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden and her husband, Prince Daniel. The superstar was a special guest at the Royal Variety Performance at Albert Hall in late November 2023, at which she belted out her most festive hit, ‘DJ Play a Christmas Song’. Judging by the rapturous applause from the crowd, the show went far more smoothly this time around.
Cher met with Kate and William on the night, and a video from the event showed her telling the Prince that it was her first time at the Royal Variety Performance – an announcement which he found hard to believe. ‘How did we get to this point?’ he asked in surprise, adding: ‘Well, thanks for saying yes!’ and calling her performance ‘amazing’. Cher then told William that she had enjoyed herself too – marking a stark difference between this performance and her last show for royalty.
Originally published in Tatler.com
