"She smelled like I would imagine a mermaid would smell – I've never smelled it since, and I'll never forget it."
So wrote Allman Brothers Band founder Gregg Allman of singer Cher, whom he first met in January 1975. The pair would go on to have a famously tumultuous courtship – Allman set the tone for what was to come by passing out after injecting heroin on their first date – followed by an equally stormy marriage.
A month after they met, Cher hosted the first episode of her eponymously-titled variety show on CBS. With her star very much still in the ascendant – she'd won a Golden Globe for The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour the previous year – it was expected to showcase Cher's talents to the full: the singing, the dancing, the comedy.
Music played a big part in the show. It was produced by David Geffen, and Elton John performed on the first episode. Other guests included Bette Midler, David Bowie, Ray Charles, The Jackson 5, Ike & Tina Turner, Dion, and Linda Ronstadt. And on May 11, Cher was joined by actress and comedian Carol Burnett and actor Dennis Weaver. And her new boyfriend showed up.
"Gregg was only important to the people who worked on Cher because he was important to Cher," said production executive Lee Miller. "I remember him being very nice and very pleasant, he was not a problem at all, but he was only booked on the show because Cher insisted. No one else – and I mean no one – not the Cher show staff, not the sponsors, not the CBS executives, thought it was a good idea."
Gregg Allman played two songs. The first was a duet cover of Fontella Bass and Bobby McClure's Don't Mess Up A Good Thing – Allman had released it as a single in 1973 – with Gregg at the piano and Cher's hair teased into a magnificent, egg-shaped afro. The pair are in matching, glitter-bedecked costumes, with the horn section and backing singers resplendent in Cher-branded tops and a set that seems to have been constructed from exhaust pipes. It is, as they say, quite something.
Allman also played his signature song, Midnight Rider. Originally written for the Allman Brothers' second album Idlewild South in 1971, Allman had become so identified with the song that he re-recorded it for his debut solo album Laid Back in 1973, releasing it as a single that hit the US Top 20.
It's a mesmerising but odd performance. The camera cuts between Allman, who sits in half-shadow with his guitar, and Cher, who leads the Dee Dee Wood dancers through a series of choreographed manoeuvres that, at face value, have little in common with Allman's harrowing tale of desperation and escape.
"I remember that segment well," recalled Wood. "When we were taping, I swear to you, not one of us could understand a word that Gregg was singing. We kept looking at each other like, 'What the hell is going on here?' But we had to do it. We had to go ahead and tape Gregg and his segment exactly the way he did it. Cher wanted him on the show and that was that."
On the other hand, pop history buffs will be delighted to note that Cher appears to begin a "voguing" sequence at the 2'24" mark, and in doing so brings the move into mainstream American homes a full 15 years before Madonna popularised the dance with her Vogue single.
Two months later, Cher and Allman were married, the ceremony at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas taking place just four days after the bride's divorce from former husband Sonny Bono was finalised. And, just 10 days later, she filed for divorce, citing Allman's problems with drugs and alcohol. They would stay together, fighting through thick and thin, but the writing was clearly on the wall.
“We had our good times, we had our bad times,” Allman wrote. “We were just different in a whole bunch of ways. I was really glad that she never asked me what I thought of her singing, because I’m sorry, but she’s not a very good singer."
The relationship lasted long enough to produce an album, 1977's Two The Hard Way, dreadfully credited to Allman and Woman, but the tour that followed was a disaster, with rock and pop fans fighting in the crowds as the two musicians did the same backstage.
“That record sucked,” Allman wrote. “It bit the dirt, and it didn’t sell worth a shit."
Cher and Allman divorced in 1979.