Were it not for a simple piece of advice from Mick Jagger, the world might never have heard of Cher. And who would want to live in a world without Cher?
Speaking recently to US broadcasting legend Howard Stern, Cher recalled how The Rolling Stones frontman advised her and partner Sonny Bono to move to England to be discovered - "We'd just made I Got You Babe, but no-one had heard it" she revealed - but were turned away from a Hilton hotel by a snobbish male receptionist who lied to their faces about no room ever having been booked in their name.
Cher picks up the story in her recently published autobiography, Cher: The Memoir, Part One.
"As far as I was concerned, no one in England even knew what Sonny and Cher was," she writes, "but by the time we reached the Hilton's revolving doors, escorted in person by the manager, there were two reporters standing outside.
'Sonny, Cher, did the Hilton just kick you out?' they asked. 'Was it because of how you look?'". Too exhausted to speak, I let Sonny handle everything. When the journalists had what they wanted, he hailed a taxi to take us to another hotel where the bed was lumpy, there was no TV and water trickled out of the shower. We slept for 12 hours straight and by the time we'd bathed and dressed, we were famous."
I Got You Babe was released in July 1965, and reached Number 1 on the UK single's chart, and Number 1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, the following month.
In a nice twist of fate, given Mick Jagger's career guidance for the duo, The Rolling Stones would end up miming to I Got You Babe on a September 1965 edition of popular British television music show Ready Steady Go.
"The thing I miss about Ready Steady Go! is the miming," says Jagger in his introduction to the performance. "We haven't had any miming competitions for a long time, but here we've got a new lot from Leighton Buzzard who're going to do their best for you."
The show's director then cuts to host Cathy McGowan and Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones, who begin miming to the song. At the first chorus, the camera shifts to the band's other guitarist, Keith Richards, who can be seen pretending to play the tuba, without a mouthpiece, his cheeks puffing in and out. Before long, a sheepish-looking Charlie Watts wanders in bearing a giant sunflower, which Jones rather rudely thrusts into Richards' bell. And as if all this were not chaotic enough, TV viewers were then shown the band's manager Andrew Loog Oldham professing his love for Mick Jagger.
The 1960s: a different, but undeniably fabulous, time.
Watch the clip below:
