I Took My Mum To Her First Cher Concert And It Was As Wholesome As You’d Expect
"She sat there with a smile on her face, waving her hands and swaying from side-to-side to every song."
When Cher sent a cryptic tweet in March implying that she’d be the headline act at the upcoming Mardi Gras after party, the first person I heard from was my mum.
“You have to see Cher,” she told me. “You can’t miss her when she’s this close.”
And so, like any obedient gay son, I got two tickets to see Cher at Mardi Gras.
I don’t mind admitting now that I was a little disappointed. It’s not that Cher did anything wrong. She gave us everything you could expect from a 20 minute, one-off performance — she played the hits and worked the crowd like a pro.
But is this really any way to see an icon for the first time? Crammed into the Royal Hall of Industries at 3am for four songs, more than a little worse for wear, trying to peer over a shirtless man’s obnoxious shoulder muscles?
No, it was not. Something better had to come along…and it did.
Cher The Love
My Mum has loved Cher since she was a little girl. She’d sung along to ‘I Got You Babe’ at the end of every Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour. She’d been there for every album, every film role, every rise and fall, and every re-invention.
Some households had Paul Kelly blasting from the speakers every weekend, but mine had Cher (and, in a handy coincidence, plenty of ABBA Gold). I followed in Mum’s footsteps: first, by watching re-runs of Sonny & Cher on TV1 when I was home sick from school, and later by being Extremely Gay.
But Mum isn’t the sort of person to splash out on concert tickets for herself, even for Cher. But just knowing that at least one member of her family had seen Cher in the flesh was enough for her — but it wasn’t enough for me.
And so, when it was announced that Cher would be bringing her full arena show Down Under, I knew what I had to do. I bought two tickets and gave them to Mum for Mother’s Day.
My mum has a rule; physical activity really isn’t for her (“I don’t sweat”). But when she opened the tickets, she jumped up and down in her kitchen like an excited teen.
The Big Day
I awoke last Thursday to a text: “I’m excited”. And as the seats at Qudos Bank Arena filled with a mixture of over-excited gays, tipsy middle-aged mums, and very patient husbands, I could feel Mum’s excitement growing. This was it — the moment she’d waited for but never thought would come.
What we got was more than we could ever have hoped for. It wasn’t so much a concert as a tribute show performed by its own subject — a kind of pre-death wake where you get to give your own eulogy, and the story you have to tell is fucking great.
It wasn’t so much a concert as a tribute show performed by its own subject — a kind of pre-death wake where you get to give your own eulogy.
The show opened with ‘Woman’s World’ and didn’t slow down. With six decades of hits, there’s only room for bangers, and Cher delivered in spades: ‘Strong Enough’, ‘The Beat Goes On’, and ‘Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves’. This was no pared back, 20-minute preview show. This was the full Cher Vegas experience.
Along with the hits, we got 10 costume changes, a handful of stories from across her career and some heartfelt moments, including a rendition of ‘I Got You Babe’ sung with a digitised version of Sonny. And wigs! So. Many. Wigs!
It kicked up a gear when she began dropping in tracks from her glorious ABBA covers album (‘Fernando’ being a particular standout) before she threw herself into some classics like ‘Walking In Memphis’ and the massively underrated ‘Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)’. She finished — of course — with her genre-defining hit, ‘Believe’.
Do You Believe?
My plan for this article was to write something like “Every Incredible Thing My Mum Said While Seeing Cher For The First Time”, but the fact is that once the curtain came down, Mum barely said a word. Along with the rest of the arena, she sat there with a smile on her face, waving her hands and swaying from side-to-side to every song.
Every person there on the night would undoubtedly have their own personal highlight, but mine came when Cher emerged from one of her many costume changes in her signature big black wig, black stockings and leather jacket, which could only mean one thing: it was time to Turn Back Time.
When Mum realised what was about to happen, she moved in a way I’d never seen before. It was a full body jolt. Her fists slapped her thighs in excitement, she reached out to grab my hand. She seemed to grow in her seat. It was a moment of pure, unadulterated, involuntary, joy that comes with seeing a lifelong dream come true.
As we left the arena for the train station — me heading east and mum heading west — she was beaming, and as I pulled into Central Station I got a simple text message, “I loved it… Thank you.”
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Rob Stott is the Managing Editor of Junkee Media. He tweets about extremely gay things at @Rob_Stott.
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Lead photo: Kevin Bull