‘Bono’ Fide Partnership : Pop music: With a ‘60s-retro debut out, Ceremony leaders Chastity Bono and Chance are hopeful about the band’s future.

Chastity Bono wants to set the record straight about a few things.

Point No. 1: Her parents--yes, Sonny and Cher--have nothing to do with her band, Ceremony, whose debut ‘60s-styled pop album, “Hang Out Your Poetry,” has just been released.

“I wanted to do this myself, without their help,” insists Bono, 24, during an interview in a West Hollywood restaurant down the street from Geffen Records, the company that put out the new album.

“They didn’t hear the music until after we started making the album.”

Point No. 2: Her mother, who’s also a Geffen artist, didn’t help Ceremony get a record deal.

“Geffen was the last label we wanted to sign with because it is my mom’s label,” Bono explains. “But (Geffen A&R; executive) John Kalodner heard our tape and after a while decided to sign us. Mom wasn’t part of that. This is a business. No record company is going to waste money on a group just because it includes the daughter of one of their artists.”

And Point No. 3: Ceremony is not just Bono’s band. She co-leads it with long-time friend Heidi Shink, who goes by the name of Chance.

“The work is shared between us,” says the effervescent Chance, 28, the more talkative and outgoing of the two. “But many people don’t realize that. In a review, I’ll sometimes be mentioned down at the bottom, as an afterthought.”

It took a while for Chance, who’s from a middle-class family on Long Island, to get used to being a celebrity’s pal. “My ego has taken a beating a few times,” says Chance, who met Bono during their college days at NYU. “When I’m with her, people have this funny way of looking right through me, like I’m not there. I’m sort of used to it now.”

Bono’s celebrity status has been an obstacle from the start. They formed Ceremony in 1988, on the advice of the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir, but the band was unable to go through growing pains in private, like a normal group.

“People would find out about Chas and there’d be all this media attention about the club dates,” Chance recalls. “We even tried to use different names but word would still get out.”

Still, they managed to play clubs and develop material promising enough to attract Geffen, which signed the band in 1990. Then a massive overhaul of the band took place.

“We had to fire the old players, which was the hardest thing we had to do,” Bono says. “They weren’t right for the kind of music we were playing.”

That “kind of music” was a style highly influenced by such ‘60s stars as George Harrison, Crosby, Stills and Nash and the Grateful Dead, whose Jerry Garcia even guests on the album.

“We both listened to that kind of music when we were growing up,” Chance explains. “We started moving in that direction when we started writing.”

When the album came out, many expected the worst. Some reviews have been negative, but a number have praised it--singling out Bono’s vocals and often noting how much she sounds like her mother.

“It’s natural and not calculated,” insists Bono, who’s had no formal music training. “Why would I try to sound like mom?”

While their hopes are high for Ceremony, their expectations are within reason. “We’d be happy to develop a small fan base and sell enough albums so that the label would let us make another album,” Bono says. “That’s a realistic goal.”

So is one mentioned by Chance.

In all seriousness, she says, “We’d love to get trashed by Beavis and Butt-Head on MTV.”