NOVEMBER 23, 1975 – David Bowie performed “Fame” on the CBS-TV show “Cher” the variety show that replaced “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour” on CBS’s schedule after Cher and Sonny Bono got divorced. (Bono went to ABC for “The Sonny Comedy Revue”). Cher’s other guests on the show also included Steve Martin and Teri Garr.
Bowie who was living in New York at the time had written “Fame” with John Lennon during a jamming session. Based on a riff of his back then guitarist Carlos Alomar, the track off his 1975 album “Young Americans” turned out to be Bowie’s first #1 hit in the US, despite the fact that Bowie himself did not see single potential within that song, eventually stating that he “wouldn’t know how to pick a single if it hit me in the face”.
“Fame” was followed by a moving rendition of “Can You Hear Me” performed as a duet with Cher. The pair wore all white for the duet, aside from Bowie’s grey, tweed jacket and Cher’s red wig, echoing Bowie’s own hair color. Both “Fame” and “Can You Hear Me” were sung live over a pre-recorded backing track. The duo performed on a round stage, surrounded by live musicians in the shadows, doing some synchronized dance steps and even bumping their rumps. Then a medley began with “Young Americans,” Bowie’s great soul single from earlier in the year (it had hit #28, only his second top-forty hit in the US at that point). Then Bowie took a sharp left turn into Neil Diamond, doing his “Song Sung Blue.” That was followed by “One” (written by Harry Nilsson, but then most famous in the Three Dog Night version), “Da Doo Ron Ron” (the Crystals), “Wedding Bell Blues” (written by Laura Nyro, but a #1 hit for the 5th Dimension), “Maybe” (the Chantels), “Maybe Baby” (Buddy Holly), “Day Tripper” (the Beatles), “Blue Moon” (the Rodgers and Hart standard), “Only You (And You Alone)” (the Platters), “Temptation” (Bing Crosby), “Ain’t No Sunshine” (Bill Withers) and “Young Blood” (the Coasters) before the duo returned to “Young Americans” and vamped to the finish line. Bowie didn’t sing these songs half-heartedly, even during the schlockier selections. When he tackled the 1958 doo-wop single “Maybe,” he showed real passion, theatrically falling to his knees. Cher seemed content to be rocking a spectacular red wig, but she delivered the “break down and cry” line in “Young Americans” in her lower register, putting it across like a pro.
Bowie’s appearance was a short, incongruous break from the sessions for his “Station to Station” album, one of the darkest chapters of Bowie’s life. Living on cocaine and red and green peppers, he explored black magic and would often stay in the studio for 24 hours straight, with the curtains always drawn because he “didn’t want the LA sun spoiling the vibe of eternal now.”
Bowie finished the album, left America for Berlin, Germany and got healthy. Cher and Sonny Bono reunited in 1976 (professionally, not romantically as she had married Gregg Allman in the interim) for “The Sonny and Cher Show.” In 2007, the rock parody biopic “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” parodied variety-show rock with a schlocky version of Bowie’s “Starman,” but even actor John C. Reilly crooning with sideburns in a spacesuit couldn’t be weirder than the reality of Bowie and Cher.