Cher “kidnapped” her son Elijah Blue Allman from a hotel room with the “greatest and best intentions possible” —because she needed to get him into rehab after a drug relapse, a longtime friend tells Page Six.
The iconic singer hired a group of men to take her troubled son while he was attempting to save his marriage to his estranged wife, Marieangela King, according to court documents that surfaced this week.
Allman, 47, the youngest son of the “Goddess of Pop,” was with King in New York last November when four men barged into their room and took him away, according to a declaration made by King in a Los Angeles court, and took him to a clinic.
During their troubled marriage, the couple had been living without electricity in his Beverly Hills home, a source told Page Six.
A good friend of Cher told Page Six the star is simply fighting to save Allman, adding: “Cher is an amazing mother, in all the years I’ve known her, I’ve only seen her be the best, most amazing, giving mother.”
The star has two sons — Allman and Chaz Bono, 53 — and despite well-documented friction with her children over the years, the friend insisted: “Cher’s kids are the important things in her heart … I’ve no doubt that whatever she has done for Elijah has been with the greatest and best intentions possible.
“It’s obviously hard to be the child of an icon.”
Allman, whose father was Cher’s second husband, the late musician Gregg Allman, has spoken openly about his troubles and battles with heroin addiction.
He told how he started doing drugs at age 11 and has been in and out of rehab several times.
“Elijah is such a lovely, lovely guy,” said the Cher pal: “He’s got his mom’s amazing sense of humor and he’s a really talented musician. I’m sure he has his demons — we all do — but it’s such a shame to hear all of this as he had been doing so well.”
“My drug addiction was pretty much about an eight-year thing of really heavy using,” Allman told the Daily Mail in 2014 as he revealed a rift with his mom over his marriage to King, known as “Queenie.”
“I was taking lots of drugs on the road. I was smoking dope (heroin), taking a lot of pills, any painkiller we could get and drinking.”
Before his split from King, the couple were living in Beverly Hills and a well-placed source told Page Six that Allman had been determined to live off the grid and they were actually living without electricity.
Indeed, Allman previously said he wanted to created a medieval German-style “permaculture homestead” and was in talks to have their project followed by TV cameras.
However, he was recently spotted looking disheveled and strung out at the infamous Chateau Marmont hotel in West Hollywood, LA, where he reportedly has been living for the past six months, after the stint in rehab that followed his “kidnapping.”
Things came to a head on September 14, the day Cher had planned an intervention with her son, the Mail reported.
Before she could meet him, hotel staff — who had repeatedly reached out to the singer over their fears for Allman — found him lying face-down outside the hotel.
Two days later, police arrived and escorted Allman out of the hotel, the source said. He was then taken for yet another stint in rehab in Pasadena, Calif., where he is said to still remain.
A rep for Cher was unavailable. The 77-year-old star is currently in Paris for fashion week with her 37-year-old beau, Alexander Edwards.
When asked whether Cher had given him her opinion on the marriage, he said: “No. Crickets.” And as for his half-brother Chaz, he said the two of them had a rocky relationship: “We don’t really talk at the moment, which happens over the years.
“For me, the most important thing is that people should be happy in their own right, whatever that means,” he added.
In the January 2014 interview, Elijah, now 47 — who had an ax by his chair as he was going through an off-grid phase — told how his Lyme disease took a severe toll on his health as well as his relationship with his family.
“It was very hard for my mother to accept,” he said. “I am sure it is very anxiety-causing and nerve-wracking when someone falls ill and could potentially not be around.”
When asked him if his mother had failed to give him emotional support, he replied: “That’s not one of her strong suits.”
King, 36, wed Allman in December 2013 — without Cher present — and they split in December 2021. The separation has since become fraught as King has accused Cher of making her homeless and said Allman has failed to pay her monetary support in court papers seen by Page Six. An attorney for Allman has not responded to queries from Page Six.
King, a half-English and half-German musician, was born in India and grew up in the controversial Children of God sex cult with her parents, Irmgard and Michael Jaffray King.
Michael, who recently passed away, was a cousin of the UK’s former chancellor of the exchequer, George Osbourne, and had 11 children. Irmgard lives in Germany.
Two of King’s sisters, Jazzy and Ruby, meanwhile, appeared as the band Blonde Electra on Simon Cowell’s TV talent show “The X Factor” in the UK in 2014.
“I grew up in a cult,” King told the San Quentin News in 2018 after performing at the notorious San Quentin State Prison. Although its name was the Children of God, “They had nothing to do with God,” she added.
She said she grew up in the Soviet Union “restricted” and was not allowed to hear music. However, she fell in love with it when she decided to turn on the radio as a teenager.
Her sisters revealed back in 2014 that their dad believed “he’s God’s prophet on Earth.”
“Our parents met in a sex commune but have taken a vow of chastity and live as brother and sister. And yes, our sister is married to Cher’s son,” Jazzy told the Daily Star.
“Dad speaks with a very upper-class accent. Our ancestors would have had tea with the Queen … Obviously, all that ended when Dad was disowned for running off to the sex cult.”
King met Allman in Cologne after he traveled to Germany to seek treatment for Lyme disease.
In court papers filed in December, King described how she had spent 12 days in NYC with her estranged husband working on their marriage. However, on November 30 — the night of their anniversary — four men came to their door and removed him from their hotel.
“I was told by one of the four men who took him that they were hired by (Elijah’s) mother,” King wrote.
In the declaration, filed four days after the alleged kidnapping, she added: “I am currently unaware of my husband’s wellbeing or whereabouts,” although she added that he was in “lockdown at a treatment facility that is undisclosed to me.”
However, she said: “I understand his family’s efforts to make sure he is well, and I want what is best for my husband.”
Previously, she told how she had clashed with Cher as Allman said all mothers found it hard when their sons wed.
“You’ve got two strong women, two big bulls in the pen. I think there’s a respect and I think they butt heads a little bit,” he said.
“My girl is not docile, she’s not well behaved, she has an intimidating presence. I think it’s good for my mom to have a really strong and confident woman like my wife around, it’s a real breath of fresh air in that environment.”
Allman described Cher as being surrounded by a “chasm of yes people,” adding: “They can look up at the sky and say it’s red and 10 other people will jump in line and say it’s red, I’m not one of those people. So when I see that kind of s–t going on … I speak up about it. I don’t think it’s really the best quality of life for someone when they are just enabled to the Nth degree, I think history has shown that.”
Asked if he believed Cher has been a good mother, Allman said: “She’s had her moments and I know she’s tried, I think it’s a very complex situation that historically has never made for a good parent.
“I don’t think it’s anything she doesn’t know or hasn’t acknowledged. I know it’s a real regret, a real thing that for sure haunts her. I definitely know that the intent has been genuine. It’ll be mended because it has to be, it will just take time.
“We’ve never really dealt with our things from the past, but hopefully we will.”
