Madonna

by Lucy O'Brien

  There were moments of high camp: the “La Isla Bonita” sailors, for example, or her delighted dance between two men baring six-pack muscles on “Fever,” or her donning military garb and shouting orders for “Holiday.” All this was diverting, but it didn’t match the power of her Dita Parlo character. The high points of the show were when Madonna gave full rein to her sense of theater. As she told Alex Magno: “This is the way I work: everything I do has to have a motivation, every step has to have a reason. I work like an actor.”

  What resonated most was Madonna as an early 1900s showgirl, holding herself taut in an Indian-style headdress for the intricate movements of “Vogue.” Or Madonna in top hat and tails aping Marlene Dietrich in the film Morocco. In an image as classic as the conical breasts, she became the female ringmaster, singing “Like a Virgin” with a heavy German accent and a knowing wink. “In rehearsals we asked ourselves, What is she doing? We all thought that was gonna die, it was so clichéd,” recalls her lighting director Peter Morse. “But when it came to it, the crowd loved it. Madonna knew what response she’d get.”

  There was also the sequence for “Bye Bye Baby” where, reminiscent of the Japanese cross-dressing all-female dance company Takarazuka, Madonna and backup singers Donna and Niki dressed as bawdy Victorian gentlemen and grabbed the lady dancers. It was during this tour that she, Donna, and Niki really came into their own. For the song “Rain” they sat together dressed in black like three wise crones, with the focus purely on their voices.

  “That was the first time we sat down together and felt our harmonies,” recalls Niki. “Madonna’s voice was starting to get strong. I could see a difference. She was into trying new things and trusting herself. It was great to sing with her. The three of us had a good balance—Donna was a good cover when Madonna was dancing, and I would do the gospelly, big-voiced stuff that complemented her and said something about being strong. We tried our best to emphasize what she did, rather than embellish it.” By now, the fans were seeing Madonna, Niki, and Donna as a powerful team. They also looked striking together. “We emphasized the different ways women looked. People embraced the fact that we weren’t just skinny dancers sitting next to her. We were inviting and inclusive.”

  The most compelling scene in the show was for the finale, “Justify My Love,” where Madonna and her cast strode gracefully onto the stage, wearing Dolce & Gabbana period costumes. With top hats, crinolines, and jackets of dove gray, white, and black, they looked like a majestic Edwardian mural. As the track, with its pared-down, atmospheric beats, drew to a close, the dancers exited the stage one by one, until Madonna was left alone. She turned her back to the audience, her bustle behind her, and silently drifted off, like a ghostly woman in black.

  As in her performance of “Vogue” in eighteenth-century garb at the MTV Awards, Madonna’s talent for visual theater came into focus with this tableau. “There’s something about the way she stages things,” says Peter Morse. “This scene was on the edge of reality, very surreal. It painted a vivid picture.” For Carlton, too, this was a key moment. “Energetically, it was still, but it has so much power to it. We wore original vintage costumes from old movies, rented for the tour. There was something about the way she and her brother Christopher were raised that has a natural class to it, and it came out there.”

  It was scenes like this that made art director Christopher Ciccone proud of the tour. An artist, interior designer, and businessman, Christopher has collaborated with his sister at various points in her career. He danced with her when she first started out in New York, and he helped to conceptualize the dramatic sets of Blond Ambition. Madonna liked working with him and trusted his vision, so his promotion to artistic director of The Girlie Show tour was a logical next step. “I think that was a high point in both our careers. Both of us at our peak, creatively and vocally and performance-wise, it all came together perfectly, in my opinion,” he said. Morse, however, had his reservations. “Christopher had some good ideas, but they were creative, not realistic. They were difficult to manage from a technical, theatrical point of view. For instance, he wanted the whole stage to be surrounded by red drapes—but you can’t put lights on that, it just goes black, green, or brown. He is an artist in his own right, but ideas on paper didn’t always look good on stage. We worked it out, though!”

  This concert also showed how far Madonna had developed her choreography. The Girlie Show’s forceful movements echoed those of her modern-dance heroine Martha Graham. “The Graham technique is very hard physically, with very strong movements. It’s not good if you’re tall, but it helps if you’re short, like Madonna,” says British choreographer Jane Turner. “Madonna’s got great control. She’s completely at ease in her body, and has immense technique. She has the ability to sustain movement, and dancing that slowly is very hard. Every muscle is being worked. It denotes power and strength. She’s a bit like Tina Turner in that she often poses with slightly splayed legs, in a way that’s quite macho. She’s unashamed of her muscularity.”

  The Girlie Show ended on a high note with her revisiting the song “Everybody” dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. And as the lights went down for the final time, she emerged from behind the mask of a Pierrot, affectionately singing “Everybody Is a Star.” When there is nowhere else to go, it’s good to go back to where you started. The Girlie Show was Madonna’s homage to gay culture, a tribute to those suffering from AIDS, and a celebration of life. It was well received, but although she won back a large section of her audience, the fallout from the Sex book continued into 1994, resulting in one of Madonna’s most notorious TV appearances.

  On March 31, 1994, she was interviewed on the Late Show with David Letterman. The biting, bantering host introduced his guest as having “slept with some of the biggest names in the entertainment business.” At that, Madonna strode on wearing a long, black velvet dress and Doc Marten boots, her black hair cropped short and slicked back. She seemed brittle and nervous, her body language defensive. Within seconds, Letterman began provoking her with sexual innuendo, and she soon rose to the challenge, calling him a “sick fuck.” When he looked shocked, she continued using the word “fuck” throughout their conversation. “This is American television,” he said. “You can’t be talking like this.” She smoked a cigar as they traded awkward insults. Although she tried to make jokes and laugh, her hostility came through. “You used to be cool. Money’s made you soft,” Madonna accused Letterman. “You just kiss up to everybody on the show.” As Letterman tried to coax her into playing the talk-show game, she became more militant, saying, “Can’t we just break the rules? Fuck the tape, fuck the list. This is contrived.” By then the crowd was heckling. Letterman continued to goad Madonna, asking if she had a boyfriend. “Why don’t you ask if I have a girlfriend?” she retorted.

  Letterman finally tried to wind the interview up, but Madonna sat resolutely in her chair. “Don’t fuck with me, David. Don’t make me act the fool,” she snapped. By then, though, the damage was done. The star had uttered the word “fuck” thirteen times, given Letterman a pair of her underwear, and talked about peeing in the shower. The next day Madonna was lambasted in the press as having run out of ideas and “built a career on smut.” Her popularity was once again at an all-time low. Since then many people have criticized the “thirteen fucks” interview, but Madonna was reacting to Letterman’s intrusive questions about her sex life. Sensing the hostility of the crowd, she went into overdrive. That night she truly became the nation’s Sin Eater, the trickster. Her words had the same vitriolic charge as Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols saying, “You dirty fucker” on prime-time British TV at the height of 70s punk. “I’m happy you could come by now and gross us all out,” Letterman said to Madonna. She knew she wasn’t showing herself in the best light, but she was feeling victimized and lashed out. “That was a time in my life when I was extremely angry,” she said years later. “Angry with the way I was brought up. Angry about how sexist this society that we live in is. Angry w
ith people who assumed that because I had a sexuality that I couldn’t also be talented. Just everything.”

  When the furor died down, Madonna realized that it was time for damage control. She put in a more toned-down appearance on The Tonight Show, with Jay Leno, and then publicly made up with Letterman at an MTV Awards ceremony. But she knew the only sure way back into people’s hearts was through her music.

  IN 1994, Madonna went back into the studio, building on what she had started with Erotica. When she began work on the new album, Bedtime Stories, R&B and soul were in the ascendant. Janet Jackson was outselling her brother, Toni Braxton had gone global with her self-titled debut, and Salt-N-Pepa and En Vogue joined forces for “Whatta Man,” one of the biggest hits of the year. There was also Mary J. Blige—the sound of Southern Pentecostal meets street soul—and the mischievous, hip-hop-inspired TLC. Madonna took cues from this for her new record. Shep Pettibone’s house rhythms were gone, to make way for more fashionable beats. “I wanted a lot more of an R&B feel…The idea going in was to juxtapose my singing style with a hardcore hip-hop sensibility and have the finished product still sound like a ‘Madonna record,’” she said.

  She began the process by meeting with hip-hop producers she admired, opting first for Babyface (aka Kenneth Edmonds), who had produced songs for an array of artists from Whitney Houston to Toni Braxton and TLC. Concerned that Erotica had been too dark and “ahead of its time,” she decided to write songs in a lighter, more romantic vein. With Babyface, she came up with the straightforward love ballad “Take a Bow,” which became a massive U.S. number one hit. Vintage romantic Madonna, it was slightly saccharine, compared to the rest of the tracks that ended up on the album, but it sold throughout the world. Babyface’s manager Ramon Hertz remembers when Madonna performed it live at the San Marino Music Festival in Monaco. “As big as I knew Madonna was, it didn’t hit me till we went there. We were driving down the street in convoy, with me, Madonna, and Kenny (Babyface) in a Mercedes-Benz up front. We turned a corner into a small village. It was crazy, bedlam. The streets were jam-packed on both sides with people shouting ‘Madonna! Madonna!’ It was like the pope. We could barely get the cars through. We laughed when Kenny said, ‘They don’t have a clue who I am.’”

  Madonna, though, was sensitive to artistic protocol. When it came to the live performance of the song, she made sure that Babyface (who was singing backup) was near to her. “In rehearsals he was on a platform behind her, but she brought him closer and made him a featured part of the song. That was sensitivity from one artist to another. You don’t often get that,” recalls Hertz.

  After their collaboration, Babyface introduced her to Dallas Austin, a young hotshot producer in Atlanta. He had already made a name for himself doing edgy, socially aware numbers for TLC, and his collaboration with Madonna resulted in two of the best songs on the album: “Secret” and “Sanctuary.” With its chunky backbeat, gentle strings, and funky guitar motif, “Secret” is both languid and tense at the same time. The song has the air of quiet revelation and a relaxation of spirit. Madonna insisted later that the song wasn’t just about love but also about spiritual self-empowerment. “It’s about God being in us all and not on a pedestal,” Madonna said. It was originally produced by Shep Pettibone under the title “Something’s Coming Over Me,” and Austin reworked the demo, bringing out a new warm, soulful tone in her voice, and making her swoony, humming sound a central feature of the track. “Sanctuary,” meanwhile, went further into mystic territory as a reflection on sex and fertility. But unlike the declarative stance of former albums, this was about Madonna seeking refuge, burying herself in a hidden love. For this, apocalyptic imagery is fused with fluid pictures of unconscious desire.

  Madonna then teamed up with Mariah Carey’s esteemed producer Dave “Jam” Hall for one of the quirkiest tracks on the album, “Human Nature.” A fierce riposte to all the critics of her Sex book, it combined a loping En Vogue–style rhythm with a hip-hop backbeat. Complete with the sound of doors slamming and a startling sample from “What You Need” by hip-hop band Main Source, it throbbed with a tightly restrained but devastating anger. The accompanying video, shot in black-and-white, with Madonna being shut in boxes, padded cells, and narrow rooms, shows how trapped and claustrophobic she had been feeling. Now an acclaimed video director, Dustin Robertson remembers working as assistant to Jean-Baptiste Mondino on the shoot. “That was when I first met Madonna. She stepped out of her trailer wearing the patent-leather outfit and stiletto-heeled boots. She stepped carefully yet confidently across a stage floor covered in electrical wires and boxes, and silence hushed over the entire set. She was stunning.”

  As with “Open Your Heart” and “Justify My Love,” Mondino knew how to capture Madonna’s essence. “Their energy is nothing alike, which is why the combo works so well,” Robertson told me. “He is cool and laid-back—she’s a stickler for details. He is an energy wrangler and has a wonderful way of handling M. She demands and prefers a strong handler to pull out the best she’s got to give.” Though it was a striking video and a masterful song, it was one that her American heartland wasn’t yet ready to embrace. When it was released as a single, “Human Nature” stalled at number forty-six in the Billboard charts.

  Madonna took some adventurous musical steps with Dave Hall, creating the grainy neo-soul of “I’d Rather Be Your Lover.” The song was augmented with a bluesy rap by the neo-soul artist Me’shell Ndegeocello. A lesbian bass player and songwriter with cropped hair and cool tones, Ndegeocello was one of the first signings to the Maverick label. Andre Betts introduced her to Madonna after the Erotica album came out, and the latter didn’t waste any time signing her up. Ndegeocello’s 1993 debut album Plantation Lullabies helped to pave the way for a new organic soul movement of such 90s artists as India. Arie and Erykah Badu. Using the image of the plantation as a metaphor for modern-day ghetto life, Ndegeocello said, somewhat earnestly, “My lullabies are the calm before the revolution of the people of color.” She wasn’t as successful as Maverick’s later signing, Alanis Morissette, but Ndegeocello gave the label some cool credibility.

  Though Madonna was anxious to make an impact in this burgeoning soul market, her work with top R&B producers underscored her vocal limitations. At this stage, her voice just wasn’t powerful enough to hold and bend those deep, soulful notes. There are moments on Bedtime Stories where she sounds unsure and tentative, as if she is trying to get acquainted with the new self that’s emerging. Needing another flavor to expand the album, she looked to the United Kingdom, where club and dub sounds were being fused by acts like Björk, Massive Attack, and Soul II Soul. Brilliant studio remixer Nellee Hooper had written and produced for all three. “He has a very European sensibility, which I appreciate,” Madonna noted, and brought him to L.A. for her album.

  So began her journey with English studio wizards: via their electronic textures, she found the perfect setting for her voice. Along with Nellee Hooper, Madonna hired his right-hand man, the programmer/producer Marius De Vries. “I’d always been interested in sound design and poking around with old machinery and plugging in patch chords,” says De Vries, an ex–Saint Paul’s choirboy who ran a reggae sound system before hooking up with Hooper and becoming part of Björk’s team in the early 90s. When he and Hooper came to work on tracks for Bedtime Stories, there was slight trepidation at the number of producers already on board.

  “It was very much a multiproducer record. Nellee and myself had to stay conscious of who else was working on it, and be speaking the same language,” De Vries told me. Opposed to the “variety pack” approach, Madonna was determined to make her album as seamless as possible. Some suggested that already there were too many cooks. “No, because the cooks weren’t all in the room at the same time,” De Vries demurs. “But one had to be careful the thing didn’t end up sounding too unfocused. I don’t think there was a lot of communication between the various producers at the time of making it. It was to Madonna’s credit that she kep
t an overview, and the album ended up sounding relatively coherent.”

  The sessions with Hooper and De Vries took place that summer at Chappell Studios in Encino, California. On the first day of the session, De Vries mistook Madonna for the cleaning lady. “I was at the studio early to set up my stuff. I hadn’t put my contact lenses in so I was a little bit blurry-eyed. I stumbled into the place, started plugging things in, and there was this girl sitting in the corner of the room. I went, ‘Oh, hi’ (very noncommittal), and carried on setting up. I didn’t realize Madonna liked to get there quite so early. It took us about half an hour to disentangle that first misunderstanding!” laughs De Vries. “She was very charming and forgiving and actually quite enjoyed it. She has a sense of humor.”

  Hooper produced three tracks on the album. First was “Survival,” a lush, summery song that captured her state of mind—she was burned by the Sex backlash, but she had still kept her self-belief intact. This was followed by “Inside of Me,” a “missing you” love song, by turns arrogant and vulnerable, about keeping face and saving face. And “Bedtime Story,” a minimal trance track with deep, bubbling beats and lyrics about a journey into the subconscious. It was written for her by Björk. Madonna had been eager to meet and work with the alternative Icelandic star, but Björk preferred to keep her distance. “I had written the song specially for her, but my intuition told me that it would be wrong for me to sing on the song,” Björk said. “I also refused to meet her officially when she asked. When I meet her, I want it to be by coincidence, when we’re both drunk in a bar or something.” Friends close to Björk say that she was perturbed when Madonna began working with members of her own production team—Hooper, De Vries, and, later, Guy Sigsworth. The truth is, Björk is unique; there was no danger of Madonna sounding like her.