the '70s

Gregg Allman Wooed Cher With Sitars and Heroin

Cher and Gregg Allman perform on stage at the Rainbow Theatre in London, England
Photo: David Redfern/Getty Images

Gregg Allman’s upcoming memoir My Cross to Bear of course recounts the saga of his relationship with Cher — quite possibly the most seventies relationship anyone ever had. In an excerpt in Rolling Stone, Allman says that the night they met, Cher “smelled like I would imagine a mermaid would smell [like].” (Seventies!) On their first date, they went to a Moroccan restaurant, “and we sat there, eating with our hands with the sitars playing,” as was legally required for all first dates in the seventies. Later, they went to a mutual friend’s house, where Allman “had just a little taste of doojee,” which is cool seventies slang for heroin, and some of their friends “nodded out.” Cher declared this the worst date ever, so they went out again to try to make things right. “This is when disco was just taking off, so we did some dirty dancing,” Allman writes, because “disco” is the center square on all seventies-memoir bingo cards.

Gregg Allman Wooed Cher With Sitars and Heroin