by Lucy O'Brien
The “Bedouin” section was followed by an abrupt change of mood, with a New York skyline on the backdrop and Madonna in black swan feathers and bomber jacket strumming a guitar, Courtney Love–style, to “I Love New York” and an ecstatic “Ray of Light.” The energy in the room at this point was palpable, the audience’s reaction rapturous. It was like the moment in a nightclub, when everyone on drugs “comes up” at once. When the song subsided, Madonna finally sat down on the stage and addressed the crowd, as if talking to a few people in her living room. “Aah,” she sighed. “It’s good to be home.”
The London crowd cheered, as she went into an acoustic version of “Drowned World.” One of the edgiest moments of the show followed “Let It Be,” when she staggered around the stage, as if punch-drunk from fame. Throwing her body into disturbing shapes, she gave an artful evocation of how fame can corrupt and eventually disintegrate a character.
But as soon as she had touched on those themes, she dived into the hedonistic rush of the “Disco” section, with an Electribe 101–ish version of “Erotica” and the techno charge of “La Isla Bonita,” complete with Hawaii Five-O–style Technicolor backdrop. At one point during this song, she skipped up the catwalk with her dancers, grinning from ear to ear, looking like a teenage girl just having fun. For those few seconds, you got a glimpse of why she does this, how that uncomplicated girlish love of what she’s doing is at the root of her appeal. She then set “Hung Up” loose on the crowd, like a giant tidal wave, strutting along the catwalk with her surprisingly fleshy yet taut body encased in that shiny purple leotard. Then it was over, and the biggest disco in town picked up its baubles and trundled on through Europe, playing Russia and the Czech Republic (both firsts for Madonna), before finishing in Japan on September 21.
It had been an epic summer for her—one that started with a low-key set in a tent at the U.S. rock festival Coachella, to a full-blown world tour. Making nearly $200 million, it was the top-grossing tour ever by a female artist. Madonna had played sixty shows to 1.2 million people. She proved she was once again the reigning queen. Maybe it was time to hang up her baubles and rest. But she couldn’t resist the lure of the limelight—within a month, she was back in the news, but this time for an issue that was to nearly tear her apart.
18
COMING FROM GOD
“I WAS SO HYPED UP WITH ADRENALINE THAT I DON’T recall it actually happening. That was the biggest crowd I’ve ever played to and the closest to home I’ve ever played. I think my kids could hear me singing,” Madonna said after her appearance at Live 8. Family was Madonna’s priority in the summer of 2005, when anti–Third World poverty campaigner Bob Geldof wrote to her, asking if she could take part in a second Live Aid he was planning. At first, she said no. “I was going on holiday with my children and wanted to spend time with them. Then I thought again.” Using his considerable powers of persuasion, Geldof managed to get her to sign up for Live 8, a massive concert in London’s Hyde Park that was to raise awareness about famine and debt relief in Africa. Timed to coincide with the G8 superpower conference in Edinburgh, the event took place on July 2. There was an audience of 200,000 in Hyde Park, and millions more at a network of simultaneous rock concerts across the globe. In London, performers included Annie Lennox, The Who, and Pink Floyd, who got back together specially for the occasion.
Madonna’s set was a high point. Dressed in a sharp white tuxedo, she performed “Like a Prayer” with the London Community Gospel choir. Just before she started the song, Geldof showed the crowd a picture of Birhan Weldu, a starving girl at the time of the first Live Aid event in 1985. Twenty years later, there she was, in the audience, a beaming, beautiful, healthy young woman. Grabbing the moment, Madonna took Birhan by the hand and led her onstage while she sang the intro to “Like a Prayer.” Some criticized Madonna’s emotional gesture as opportunist, noting the rapidity with which Birhan was dispensed with once the song got underway. Even so, Madonna’s set was entirely appropriate: succinct, dignified, and vibrant. She obviously enjoyed the day. There was a point during the set when she rested onstage by the drum kit, watching her dancers body-popping, with the slightly proprietary, relaxed air of someone used to being in control. She knew that her trio of songs—“Like a Prayer,” “Ray of Light,” and “Music”—were going to metaphorically raise the roof.
Her performance was a key point in a concert that stimulated awareness to such an extent that the G8 leaders later pledged a doubling of aid to Africa by $25 billion a year. Although the World Bank was to water down the debt relief, imposing conditions on recipient nations, Live 8 brought the thorny issue of Third World poverty to the attention of a younger generation.
It also politicized Madonna in a new way. In 2003, she gave an interview to the Sunday Times, in which she admitted to being ignorant of Fair Trade coffee—“one has to be educated about these things and I didn’t know.” At that point, the politics of developing nations clearly wasn’t high on her agenda. But the Live 8 concert marked the beginning of a love affair with Africa, leading to her Kabbalah-inspired Raising Malawi campaign, and, in 2006, the adoption of a young African boy.
THREE YEARS earlier, Madonna was desperate to have another baby. She was having fertility problems. “Because of my exercising and this, that, and the other, I’ve kind of screwed up my cycle a bit and I’m going to the doctors to make sure I’m OK to have a baby,” she said at the time. In order to mask the disappointment at not conceiving, Madonna did what she has always done, and focused on her work. As time went on, there were reports of Madonna and Guy drifting apart and seeking solace with other people. Some sources singled out Stuart Price as having a “special relationship” with Madonna, though that was probably more to do with their shared enthusiasm for the work than anything else. Much of the strain came from Guy’s reluctance to play second fiddle. “He feels totally hemmed in by her career,” said a friend. “It’s as if work is the only thing that interests her.”
IT COULD not have helped matters when, in September 2005, Madonna was the one in the limelight at the premiere of his new film, Revolver, a Kabbalah-influenced gangster flick that had already been panned by the critics. Before the film, her publicist had apparently told the throng of paparazzi that Madonna would “only answer to the name of Mrs. Ritchie.” Of course, when the star and her husband arrived, the “paps” took great delight in yelling: “MADONNA! MADONNA!” She snubbed the photographers, and the story was all over the papers the next day. On what was meant to be Guy’s night, Madonna still managed to steal the show.
It was unfortunate that Guy’s film, Revolver, didn’t get the attention it deserved. Starring Ray Liotta, Jason Statham, and Vincent Pastore, it was a conceptual movie involving chess, gambling, and toe-curling violence that operated on a number of levels. “[It’s] based on the formula of a game: where does the game start, where does it stop, and who’s conning who,” said Guy. Compared to his other films, this was his best-developed. “It took three years to write this film, whereas Snatch took me three months,” Guy admitted. His previous offering, Swept Away (2002), had been such a disaster, that with Revolver, he stayed firmly within his area of expertise.
Swept Away had been a sobering experience for him. A remake of Lina Wertmüller’s 1974 social satire about a spoiled socialite on a yachting cruise, who is tamed by a wild deckhand, it was Guy’s first attempt at making a feature starring his wife. A longtime fan of Wertmüller’s dynamic, socially aware filmmaking, Madonna in particular was attracted to the idea. Shot in Malta in the summer heat, the film was a glorified holiday for the cast and crew. Their enthusiasm for the production, however, didn’t translate to the film. “I had no idea [it] would be such a disaster…we had so much fun making it,” said Madonna’s stylist Arianne Phillips. The dialogue was unconvincing, though, and the acting strained. And Madonna’s character was rather unpleasant. Because the heroine was named after Guy’s mother, Amber Leighton, one wonders if this was Guy’s way of getting back at all the
controlling women he perceived in his life.
Once Amber (portrayed as a Fascist) is shipwrecked on a desert island, she is forced to submit to the Communist deckhand (Adrianno Giannini), and when she is broken down, they fall in love. Once again, Madonna found herself in a role where her character is degraded and dominated. Maybe her power and wealth makes the idea of submission strangely attractive. Either way, it didn’t appeal to reviewers, and the film went straight to video in the United States and the United Kingdom. Swept Away was lambasted by the critics and won five Golden Raspberry Awards. Incensed by the reaction, Madonna vowed never to act again. She felt that people were unjustly harsh, and she was probably right. In places, the film is like an extended music video, but it has its moments. Madonna’s performance is slightly wooden, but then many leading Hollywood actresses, such as Nicole Kidman and Demi Moore, have a brittle air about them, because they are so stylized. We have seen a lot worse: G.I. Jane, for instance.
After Swept Away, Guy knew that he had to contend with the fact that many people saw him as Madonna’s man. The very thing that made him hot property—his independence as a filmmaker—was being compromised. His way of dealing with that was to affect a tough exterior in public, calling Madonna “the missus,” and rarely openly showing affection. “Deep down he blames her for his career nosedive,” said a friend. By the end of 2005, their marriage was in trouble. Some close to the couple said that Guy could be a little macho (Gwyneth apparently found this so irritating she was seeing less and less of her old friend), while Madonna found it hard to shift the focus away from her own concerns. In an effort to shore up their marriage, they worked on a series of pledges, which included spending more time together, and Guy’s idea for an hour a day of “Madonna time”—her designated hour for talking about work. They even sought marriage guidance from a counselor in Harley Street.
It seemed to be working. When the marriage was in a more settled phase, they put on hold their efforts to conceive and considered plans for adoption, turning to friend Brad Pitt for advice. In 2005, his partner, Angelina Jolie, had adopted a daughter, Zahara, from Ethiopia. They represented a growing trend for intercountry adoption, with prospective parents looking for children as far afield as China, Eastern Europe, and Africa. Sunday Times writer Steven Swinford said: “In Africa, babies have become a rapidly growing export. The number of Ethiopian children adopted between 2001 and 2004 more than doubled, to 1,535. Madagascar, Mali, and Burkina Faso are also proving popular.”
With Africa in mind, Madonna and Guy began the eighteen-month-long vetting process required by the British authorities. Because of her work with Raising Malawi, a charitable organization focused on helping orphans in one of the world’s poorest nations, Malawi was an obvious choice. Hard-hit by drought, this landlocked country in southeastern Africa has a spiraling AIDS crisis and an average life expectancy of forty. More than half the population lives below the poverty line.
Before she first flew out there, Madonna requested a list of twelve children for possible adoption, and the one that caught her heart was David, a thirteen-month-old boy at the Home for Hope orphanage. In October 2006, she and her entourage (which included security guards, publicists, and a camera crew) drove in a convoy of three Nissan 4×4s down a dirt track thirty miles outside of the capital, Lilongwe. Though Madonna was filming this as part of her own campaigning documentary about Malawi, the visit had all the pomp and circumstance of a royal delegation. When she and Guy arrived at the orphanage, one of the village elders said it was as if she “was coming from God.”
Many of the orphans were in a desperate state. More than 250 children slept in the five dormitories, and despite the dedication of the small staff who ran it, many of the children were malnourished and vulnerable to killer diseases, like malaria. According to one of the teachers, Madonna was carrying David, “smiling and saying, ‘Ah, beautiful.’” David’s mother, Marita, had died after giving birth to him, so his father, Yohame Banda, who could not afford to feed his son, took his son to the orphanage. He eventually gave him up for adoption. “They told me a mzungu (white foreigner) had seen a picture of David and liked him very much,” said thirty-two-year-old Banda. “My family and I agreed this was a very good opportunity for David to get an education and grow up healthy.”
Madonna spoke with Banda, promising to take good care of his son. Malawi has strict laws regulating foreign adoptions of children, which normally mean that would-be parents must foster the child in the country for eighteen months before moving abroad. But because of the “special circumstances” of the case, the high court in Lilongwe granted Madonna an interim adoption, with the eighteen-month trial period to be completed in Britain. She and Guy flew home, to be joined by baby David just over a week later. Adopting her new “Ray of Light,” however, was not going to be that simple.
After her visit to Malawi, a media storm broke out. A coalition of more than sixty aid agencies and children’s charities mounted a legal challenge to get the adoption blocked. Under the umbrella organization the Human Rights Consultative Committee, they claimed the adoption was unlawful, because Madonna hadn’t lived in the country for eighteen months. “The rich shouldn’t get preferential treatment,” said Emmie Chanika, director of the Civil Liberties Committee in Malawi. “Do we have checks so people cannot grab our children? I am fine with the idea of adoption but I want people to go through the system.” However, a Malawian government official insisted that Madonna had been “pushing papers for some time” before David was taken out of the country.
The case was adjourned once the interim order went through, but the debate grew more heated, as other organizations weighed in with their opinions. “Where possible, we work with our partners overseas to keep children within their families,” said Alison Sanderson from the International Children’s Trust. “Psychologically and emotionally…the [local] family is the best place to bring up the child.” David’s extended family in Malawi, including uncles and a grandmother, were worried about the situation. “People have taken advantage of my brother because he has little education,” said the boy’s uncle Profera. There was concern that Yohame didn’t fully understand what adoption means. “He doesn’t know the boy is completely and forever going to be out of his custody. The issue is about awareness and ignorance of the whole process,” added Undule Mwakasungule, director of the Center for Human Rights and Rehabilitation in Malawi. Yohame Banda confused matters by sending out mixed messages. He said that he had never agreed Madonna could take his son on a permanent basis, but then later said he would not contend the adoption.
Opinion was polarized. Some saw Madonna’s £1.6 million pledge to help 900,000 orphans as a bid to fast-track the adoption process, while others saw it as a valuable gift to the country. “We must be frank. We can’t afford to look after the thousands of babies that are being orphaned every day,” said Mirriam Nyirongo, a retired nurse working in an orphanage in northern Malawi. “If rich people like Madonna take just one child, it will be a major boost for [the country].”
The contrast between David’s life in Africa and his prospective one in England was huge. In the Lipunga village he left behind, the primary school has 892 children and six teachers. Four of the eight classrooms do not have desks. The village is fourteen miles from the nearest clinic and forty miles from a hospital. With his new family, David would shuttle by private jet between mansions in Mayfair, Wiltshire, New York, and Beverly Hills. He would be educated at top private schools and have access to the best health care. One of the first presents Madonna bought for him was a £5,000 rocking horse from Harrods. Although Madonna enjoys a privileged life, she and Guy still had an unnerving wait from when they met baby David to when the interim adoption order came through. “Madonna was so happy when this worked out,” said an associate of the Raising Malawi project, “she has such a strong image, you never think of her as crying, do you? However, I saw tears when she got the news that the adoption was going through. She was very emotional about it.” Mad
onna said simply: “It’s so worth it. He’s just the best little baby ever. Guy and I have never been happier.”
Throughout October and November, the story refused to die down, with online polls and letters passionately voting “for” and “against.” Madonna went shopping for a baby like he was a fashion accessory. She did this as her latest PR stunt. She should adopt from her own country before swanning off to Africa. If Madonna wants to help Malawi, she should pay off its national debt—she’d still have some to spare. But there were other voices: that the star should be saluted for her courage, that she should be allowed to bond with her new baby in peace. That “angel Madonna” has highlighted the problem of all children suffering in Africa. “How dare anyone question her motives?” railed Guy. “It’s so preposterous that anyone would be critical of Madonna for wanting to share her love and wealth.”
Once again, Madonna had become a lightning rod for criticism. Feeling victimized, she issued a defensive statement: “After learning that there were over one million orphans in Malawi, it was my wish to open up our home and help one child escape an extreme life of hardship, poverty, and, in many cases, death, as well as expand our family.
“Nevertheless, we have gone about the adoption procedure according to the law, like anyone else who adopts a child. Reports to the contrary are totally inaccurate.”
Rather than lie low and wait for the furor to die down, she launched her own media onslaught, giving a tearful interview on the Oprah Winfrey Show. She said that David was severely ill with pneumonia the day she and Guy drove up in their 4×4. “I was in a panic,” she said. “I didn’t want to leave him in the orphanage, because I knew they didn’t have medication to take care of him.” They managed to get him to a clinic to give him a bronchial dilator and antibiotics, so he began to recover. “I was transfixed by him. I was just drawn to him,” she declared.