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143 In June 2002, Cher seemed to be beginning a long adieu to her career as a pop music performer. It was long since time to depart, she thought; as she exclaimed to one audience that protested loudly when she announced her plans, “Give me a frigging break. I’ve been a diva for 40 frigging years. This is the last time I’m going to do this.”1 Her fans refused to let her go quickly. Living Proof—The Farewell Tour was originally planned to move through fifty cities in the United States and Canada in the space of four or five months. As soon as it was announced, however, ticket sales dictated otherwise. By early September, the tour had grossed over $44 million and Cher decided to extend her run, saying: “So many cities sold out right away that it seemed we should have done more shows . . . We originally did just two Madison Square Gardens, and now we’re doing two more. It’s the same in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and a lot of other places. I’m only doing one farewell tour, and nobody said it had to be brief.”2 Even while the second leg of the tour was in its planning stages, there was talk of yet another addition. Cher was not destined for the largest North American cities alone. Such smaller venues as Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania , and Lubbock, Texas, clamored to be on the waiting list should she continue the tour. In between North American jaunts, Cher managed a trip to the United Kingdom as well. By the beginning of 2003, the schedule for a third U.S. leg was set to continue until June, and plans for European and Australian segments had been announced. And as if this were chapter 6 Cher’s “Dark Ladies” Showbiz Liberation 144 | Chapter 6 not enough, amid the frenzy of press coverage and ticket sales, there were additional sources of . . . Cherness? Cheritude? Perhaps Cherity . . . to be found. She made appearances on awards shows (for instance, to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from Billboard magazine in December 2002) and agreed to allow one of the Living Proof concerts (taped in Miami on November 8, 2002) to be broadcast on NBC in late spring 2003. In fact, the farewell tour lasted until April 2005, when it closed with a performance at the Hollywood Bowl. Quite a long goodbye . And profitable, too. But of course, Living Proof was not the actual end of Cher’s life in performance; since 2005, she has worked on more studio recordings, made appearances on television, and a return to film, and her series of Las Vegas performances only ended in 2011 (for now!). But the Living Proof tour still marks an important moment in Cher’s extraordinary career because it was self-consciously designed to be a summation of Cher’s history as a pop diva. It is no surprise that retrospectivity was at a premium. Who could design costumes better than Bob Mackie, whose creations had defined Cher’s 1970s look? By his own account, he planned a riotous set of costumes to move decade-by-decade through Cher’s looks. His favorite, he asserted, was an elaborate number to be worn for the performance of “Bang, Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down).” It was a combination of tattered red leather coat, tattooed bodysuit, and feather headdress which he described as “The Matrix meets Maori meets Mohawk . . . It’s not your usual go-to-tea outfit.” The tour logo and tour book by successful LA designer Margo Chase also reflected an attitude of memory distilled into excess. In a moment of demotic exegesis for the press, Chase observed: “The logo . . . is in the form of a cross with wings, constructed with the letters in her name. The wings symbolize the enduring spirit of Cher’s music, while the cross refers to the religious symbols used in the stage production . . . The cross also nods to the gothic, Cher’s most recognizable style.”3 Chase set up the tour book dualistically. The front cover, all blue and platinum blonde to represent the “angel” Cher, contrasted with the red and green “devil” Cher of the back; inside, the materials fell into a series of recent/current photos of the diva as well as an assortment of historic shots from each of the singer’s four decades of celebrity with period-style graphic accents. One advance review of the album, whose release in early 2002 had perhaps...

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