Tired of being boxed in creatively, in 1980 Cher tried life as a singer in the short-lived rock band Black Rose. Her attempt to be just one member of a band of equals was similar to what David Bowie attempted with Tin Machine, although Cher did it almost a decade earlier.
In an exclusive excerpt from her new book I Got You Babe: A Celebration of Cher, author and UCR contributor Annie Zaleski tells the story of this long-forgotten stage of Cher’s career.
Cher the Rock Star
Established bands typically book up-and-coming artists as opening acts—which is why nobody batted an eye when a then-new group called Black Rose warmed up for Hall & Oates at the duo’s triumphant August 1980 hometown Philadelphia show. But the fiery singer who turned up onstage fronting Black Rose was a surprise—it was Cher, going under the radar (at least in the promotional sense) as the uncredited vocalist.
That was by design. “The point is that this is not Cher,” a publicist said at the time. “Black Rose is just a band—a rock ’n’ roll band.” As for the secrecy around her presence, the publicist added, “There are probably a lot of people who don’t consider Cher a rock ’n’ roll singer, and they might have trouble accepting her as such.”
One person who had no trouble considering her a rocker? That would be Cher herself, who wanted to sing with Black Rose thanks to her fondness for the genre. “To me, rock ’n’ roll is like going to a party and having a really good time,” she said. But she also saw parallels between rock’s penchant for rebellion and her early career. “You know, ‘Cher’ has so many connotations for so many people,” she said in 1980. “It’s like, ‘How could Cher do rock ’n’ roll?’ Most of the people that we have now are too young to really remember when Sonny and I started. Even though our music wasn’t called rock ’n’ roll, we were pretty outrageous.”
As it turns out, Cher more than held her own with Black Rose, a septet that featured (among other players) her then boyfriend Les Dudek and future Kansas/ Ringo Starr collaborator Warren Ham. The group’s 1980 self-titled debut album favored no-frills hard rock with dashes of glam, power-pop, and new wave. Unfettered by expectations and her own history, she added theatrical howls and biting shrieks to “Never Should’ve Started” and belted out “Take It from the Boys” with a ferocious growl. This was no vanity project, but Cher embracing reinvention—something that would distinguish her career throughout the 1980s.
Unfortunately, Black Rose was a commercial disappointment and, despite a brief tour and several high-profile TV appearances on The Midnight Special and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, the band petered out. But Black Rose’s sound influenced portions of Cher’s 1982 solo album I Paralyze—and it foreshadowed her meteoric late-decade comeback, led by a 1987 self-titled effort and 1989’s Heart of Stone.
By this time, of course, it was on trend to merge pop and hard rock—and Cher was perfectly suited to work with hitmakers like Desmond Child (who cowrote the towering “We All Sleep Alone” with rock stars Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora), record blazing songs like the Michael Bolton–penned top 10 hit “I Found Someone,” and cut power ballads such as “Just Like Jesse James.” Pop culture had finally caught up to Cher, making her time in Black Rose look rather prescient indeed—something underscored even more when she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2024.
Excerpted from I GOT YOU BABE: A Celebration of Cher by Annie Zaleski. Copyright © 2025. Available from Running Press, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Watch Cher Perform With Black Rose
2024 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony
Ozzy Osbourne, Cher, Peter Frampton and Foreigner highlight this year’s HOF class.
Gallery Credit: Matthew Wilkening
