YE OLDE AMERICA: Hello Sailor -- The Perverted Older Videos of Younger Cher

The music video for "If I Could Turn Back Time", directed by Marty Callner, takes place on board the battleship USS Missouri. It depicts Cher and her band performing a concert for the ship's crew. The video was filmed in Los Angeles on July 1, 1989, while the ship was stationed at the former Long Beach Naval Shipyard at Pier D. In the video, the band plays on the foredeck, and the ship is rigged with spotlights, light racks and strobes. Cher's son, Elijah Blue Allman, only twelve at the time, appears as one of the band's guitarists (he wears dark glasses and a Jimi Hendrix T-shirt).

Cher's outfit for the original video, a fishnet body stocking under a black one-piece bathing suit that left most of her buttocks exposed, proved very controversial, and many television networks refused to show the video. MTV first banned the video, and later played it only after 9 PM. A second version of the video was made, including new scenes and less overtly sexual content than the original. The outfit and sexual nature of the video were not expected by the US Navy when they had originally granted permission for filming. The USS Missouri liaison, Steve Honda, asked Callner to prevent Cher from wearing the outfit when he saw it on-set, but Callner refused. The Navy also received criticism for the video, and has since refused to allow any music videos to be filmed aboard its ships.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at August 29, 2016 3:10 PM