The average (masochistic) person can comb social media to look for posts from their exes talking about them; celebrities like Gregg Allman could just wait until the latest interview came out in any number of popular magazines. And in the mid-1970s, the Allman Brothers Band member had ample opportunity to do so as the world watched him go through a whiplash-style marriage to pop icon Cher. Their marriage only lasted nine days, which became irresistible tabloid fodder at a time when hyperspeed marriages like Britney Spears and Jason Alexander’s 55-hour stint as man and wife were still decades away.
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Neither Cher nor Allman was a stranger to the spotlight at the time of their days-long marriage. But Cher superseded Allman slightly, as far as celebrity goes, which was difficult for the rock ‘n’ roller. As Cher put it in a 1975 Playboy interview, “It’s hard to be Mr. Cher. [Gregg] wasn’t used to having 75,000 reporters and cameramen show up everywhere we went. Even when we were having a private talk in Buffalo about reconciliation, the press broke in.”
Her anecdote about the pair attempting to reconnect in upstate New York was part of a much larger conversation about her short marriage to Allman, including his struggles with substance abuse. Unsurprisingly, the rock musician wasn’t ecstatic about his dirty laundry being waved for all of Playboy to see.
Unfortunately for him, it wasn’t the only interview Cher did.
Greg Allman Couldn’t Stand This Interview With His Ex-Wife, Cher
The nine-day marriage of Gregg Allman and Cher is a peculiar moment in pop culture history. But no one could say Allman wasn’t passionate about his ex-wife. Speaking to Creem in December 1975, he admitted, “I bought all Cher’s records. She was my idol. Of course, she doesn’t believe me. But she’s flattered anyway. I love Cher more than any woman I have ever known. My first wife loved my wallet, not me. She got $62,000 from me. My second wife would sell her mother up the street for a snort of coke. But there was a time I loved her immeasurably. But it’s nothing compared to how much I love Cher.”
What he didn’t love, however, was the finger-sucking portrait Cher painted of Allman in her interview with Playboy from two months earlier. “It was s***!” He told Creem. “I hated it. All that bull s*** about me sucking her fingers. The interview was done three days after Cher filed for the divorce. Everybody wants to read that I kicked Sonny’s a** or I beat up Cher. Juicy stuff like ‘Gregg Allman Shoots Up In The Bathroom.’ Can you see it, me on the cover with a needle jammed in my arm? The People cover was bad enough. ‘She Keeps Him Off Heroin.’ Great. Now the FBI are hot after me, thanks to that cover.”
So, What All Did She Say That Was so Bad?
In the first part of her Playboy interview, Cher almost sounded like she wasn’t going to dish on her ex-husband’s so-called drug problem. The tabloids had long been writing about Gregg Allman’s foray with h*****. Playboy was just playing coy as the magazine lobbed softballs for Cher to knock down. But even if she wasn’t forthcoming about his substance abuse, she certainly wasn’t afraid to get into the nitty-gritty of their not-so-great first dates.
Cher first met Allman at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, after which he sent her a bouquet and began pursuing her for a date. Eventually, Cher obliged, agreeing to go to a restaurant called Dino’s, “where it’s really dark.” The pop singer said Allman began sucking her fingers, “And I thought, ‘Wait a minute, back up. I said, ‘Why are you doing this?’” That’s awkward enough.
But on their second date, Cher upped the ante. “While we were driving through the street, he was telling me something I didn’t care about, so I said, ‘You know what? I hate f***in’ small talk. You are boring the s*** out of me, and I’ve got nothin’ to say to you. I know that you must be interesting, and I am, too, so what gives? Pulling words out of Gregg Allman is like…forget it. Finally, things started to get a little bit more mellow when he found out that I was a person—that a chick was not just a dummy. For him, up till then, they’d had only two uses: make the bed and make it in the bed. That’s it.”
Oof. Suddenly, that post by your ex that only 100 or so people will see doesn’t seem so bad.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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