BEAT GOES ON

She had the loudest show on the Strip in 1980.

The most expensive ticket in town in 1990.

Now, Cher is the most anticipated Las Vegas arrival of 2008, and she's promising "the most special show we've ever done" in 200 dates during the next three years, starting today in the Colosseum at Caesars Palace.

Cher and Las Vegas are much alike, reinventing themselves over the years without abandoning their mutual zeal for going over the top.

Some fans plunking down as much as $250 for a ticket may not pause to realize Cher has been working the Strip for 39 years.

The diva who turns 62 on May 20 never comes off as retro or nostalgia, perhaps because she has never left the public eye long enough to be missed. "Cher, she's her own thing. She's got one name, she's been around 45 years doing this," said Doriana Sanchez, the singer's longtime director and choreographer.

"There's so much to draw from in every era. In every era she's had a hit, in every era she's won an award," Sanchez said. "She continues to create, and that's exciting for me."

"Las Vegas and I are a very good fit," Cher noted in February during an interview to launch ticket sales for the first engagement, which continues through June 1 (publicists said she is too busy for an update).

Las Vegas never knew Sonny and Cher as the fur-vest and dingo-booted hippies who charted with "I Got You Babe" in 1965 and "The Beat Goes On" in 1967. But after that initial wave, Sonny Bono abandoned, as he once described it, "that fruitless pursuit of the young crowd."

The two charted a new course, trading the jeans for dresses and tuxes. By the time they reached the Flamingo, as Pat Boone's opening act on July 3, 1969, "we were so thrilled to do it," Cher recalled.

"We started out in these really dicey places and we were working ourselves up through the Fairmont chain. ... For us, this was the big time."

The experience on the nightclub circuit paved the duo's way to "The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour" in 1971 and honed their trademark banter.

"People really hated us when we started; they just didn't get it," she said. "We were trying to do our best. Sonny was in a tuxedo, I was in a long dress." Still, "we were just dying on the road. Nobody would show up. We started doing jokes for the band because there was nobody in the audience. That's how we got our talking to each other.

"If something was funny we'd leave it in."

TV success promoted the duo to Las Vegas headliners. But their personal breakup also went conspicuously public in late 1972 with canceled shows at the Sahara and reports of Bono hitting his spouse. Even before the meltdown, Las Vegas Sun columnist Joe Delaney noted "customer complaints stating, 'Why doesn't he talk less and let Cher sing more?' "

Sing more she did, on her own at Caesars Palace. Cher was in the showroom rotation from 1979 through 1982, with one 1980 midnight show making news when state officials leveled a $180 fine for sound levels exceeding 115 decibels.

"It was nice except it was so hard, two shows a night every night," Cher remembered of the Caesars era. "That is something I don't miss at all. There was such a long lag between the first show and the second show, it just killed me."

Those were lackluster years for the Strip as well, and the singer yearned for more. "The truth is, I wanted to do movies and I wanted to do something else. I didn't hate going there, I just hated that it was the only place I could go. I remember Mike Nichols coming in one night (saying), 'You're so great, why aren't you making movies?' I just started sobbing hysterically."

Nichols cast her in "Silkwood," launching a film career that kept Cher away from the Strip until 1990, when casino operator Steve Wynn routed her rock arena tour to the new stage at The Mirage. "This is going to be a very strange show for a lot of you," she told those who paid a then-record $82.70 to hear "I Found Someone" and other hits reinventing the star for the MTV era.

By the time HBO cameras captured a 1999 special at the MGM Grand Garden, Cher was an arena regular. After the "Living Proof" tour made its fourth pass through Las Vegas in 2005, the Celine Dion way of staying put was looking better and better. "We were exhausted," Cher said of those Vegas stops, adding, that nonetheless, "it was just a little bit more exciting than the other places. Not Madison Square Garden though, because that's the most exciting place you play."

"Living Proof" was billed as a farewell tour, and the future will tell how true that turns out to be. For now, it's the fans who will be doing the traveling. The star plans to make it worth their while.

"Cher loves her fans, and she really wants to surprise and make her fans happy," said longtime collaborator Sanchez. "I know most artists do, but she wants them to be really surprised about what she wears and what we do."

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.