In part one of Cher's new memoir, the star reveals all about her childhood, her heady ascent into fame and a Salvador Dali orgy

By Luke Goodsell for the ABC

Among the many highs of a career that stretches back more than 60 years, Cher's 1996 interview with Dateline never fails to delight.

Prompted for her thoughts on the necessity of men, she unleashes one of the great declarations of independence - and an all-time zinger:

"My mom said to me, 'You know, sweetheart, one day you should settle down and marry a rich man.' And I said, 'Mom, I am a rich man'."

It should come as little surprise, then, that the first volume of the pop icon's new autobiography opens with a 10-year-old Cher and her mother at an Elvis Presley concert in 1956 - the girl not so much crushing on the King, but wanting to be him.

"I knew I wanted to be on that stage in the spotlight one day, too," she writes in The Memoir, Part One.

At 78, the artist born Cheryl Sarkisian has moved through so many decades of pop culture that it's almost supernatural.

In the early 1960s, she sang on hits that defined an era of American pop. Still in her teens, she became a star - alongside her partner, Sonny Bono - as one half of Sonny & Cher, a musical duo whose 70s variety show was so popular that Cher dolls once outsold Barbie.

Then came the hit movies, the Best Actress Oscar, the fabulous Bob Mackie couture that all but redefined diva-dom. Her 1998 anthem 'Believe' made such radical, pioneering use of Autotune that the game-changing sound was originally dubbed 'the Cher effect'.

In The Memoir, Part One, she turns back time to take us through the first decades of her career, from her maternal family's poverty - where her mother was once forced to dance for money in bars at the age of five - and her peripatetic childhood to her rollercoaster ride through fame, heartbreak and rebirth.

It's all told with her indomitable spirit, determination and sense of humour. (Even if her grammar has been cleaned up.)

The journey ends as Cher enters the 1980s, so you'll have to wait until next year for Part Two. For now, though, here are some of the highlights from the opening dispatch.

She was placed in foster care as child

Abandoned by Cher's father, Armenian hustler Johnnie Sarkisian, Cher's mother Georgia Pelham scraped by as a singer, waitress and occasional bit player on the periphery of 40s and 50s Hollywood - where she was replaced for a role in The Asphalt Jungle by a young actress named Marilyn Monroe.

The precarious lifestyle meant that Cher was once put into foster care against the will of her mother, who was deemed irresponsible.

"That kind of shit has been happening to women since the beginning of time," writes Cher, who says the episode fuelled her sense of abandonment - and drive to become independent.

Warren Beatty tried to pick her up when she was 16

In 1962, a then-unknown, 16-year-old Cher took the family car out for a drive and almost collided with a reckless motorist, who turned out to be movie star Warren Beatty.

The legendary Hollywood womaniser - then 25 and dating his Splendor in the Grass co-star, Natalie Wood - invited Cher back to his house, where the two went swimming. (She wore Wood's bathing suit.)

Cher's mother was enraged that her daughter had been out all night, until she found out who she'd been with - and allowed her to go on two more dates.

She walked in on a Salvador Dali orgy

During the late 60s, Cher, Sonny and his poker buddy, Francis Ford Coppola, were invited to dinner at the New York home of surrealist Salvador Dali. Upon arrival, they realised they'd walked in on an orgy that was winding down.

While Sonny and Francis perched uncomfortably on a sofa eating chocolate replicas of Dali's melting clock-face, Cher encountered one of the artist's colourful, battery-operated fish - which she assumed to be a bath toy.

"Oh my God, Salvador, this is beautiful!" she exclaimed.

"Yes," he replied. "It's lovely when you place it on your clitoris."

Sonny and Cher's stage act was all thanks to a heckler

The late-60s counterculture swiftly rendered Sonny & Cher irrelevant, forcing them to play low-rent nightclubs and casinos.

One night in Ontario, Cher grew tired of the listless patrons and fired back at a heckler. Sonny joined in. Before long, their between-song banter became a hit with audiences.

Within a couple of years, The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour would be watched by millions.

Phil Spector once pulled a gun on her

Cher had a storied history with the pop genius and convicted murderer Phil Spector, who she writes about with complicated emotions.

Before their own success, Sonny and Cher worked behind the scenes at the producer's studio, where Cher found herself laying down vocals - for the very first time in her life - on no less than the Ronettes' 1963 smash 'Be My Baby'.

In the 70s, Spector enlisted Cher and singer Harry Nilsson to record background vocals on the album he was producing for John Lennon, but released their collaboration without the consent of his guests' record labels.

A furious Cher marched up to Spector's mansion, which she describes as being "like an old haunted house", where the producer - who was convicted of murdering girlfriend Lana Clarkson in 2003 - picked up a revolver and began twirling it in front of her.

"Don't f*** with me, Phillip!" she fired back.

"You can't pull that shit on me, you asshole. This is me, Cher, OK?"

Tina Turner asked her for advice on how to leave Ike

While Cher mostly writes of Sonny with affection, certain revelations remain painful - such as the controlling contract he had her sign, which essentially made her his employee and stiffed her out of her earnings.

His behaviour could also be erratic. Following their divorce, Sonny dispatched one of his goons to threaten a guy who was flirting with Cher, telling him, "He'd get his fingers broken" if he wasn't careful.

Shortly after Sonny and Cher's separation, one of their TV guests, Tina Turner - then being violently abused by her husband, Ike - came backstage to ask Cher for some make-up to cover a bruise on her arm.

"Tell me how you left him," Tina enquired.

"I just walked out and kept on going," Cher replied.

Turner soon did just that.

Francis Ford Coppola encouraged her to pursue acting

As a teenager, Cher had studied acting professionally, but her dreams of a Hollywood career in the 70s went nowhere.

She writes that producers saw her as "Too old, too ethnic, too tall, too typecast", insisting that she belonged in TV comedy.

It was Francis Ford Coppola who encouraged Cher, while she was visiting her friend Teri Garr on the set of his movie One From the Heart.

"Why aren't you making movies?" The Godfather filmmaker wondered.

The rest, of course, is history - or Cherstory, a title that seems to have sailed right by the publisher.

Cher: The Memoir, Part One is out now.

- ABC