Life with My Sister Madonna

by Christopher Ciccone

  I’ve briefed Daniel ahead of time on the requirements for being Madonna’s dresser, and strategies for surviving the job without going crazy. So he fully understands that the best policy is to remain silent—no matter what abuse Madonna will inevitably dish out to him—and to talk only when answering the ubiquitous question “How do I look?” to which he is duty-bound to always respond, “Wonderful, Madonna, wonderful.”

  Thus armed with my advice, he helps her into the rest of her costume—high, lace-up black patent leather boots and eye mask—then hands her the riding crop she will brandish in the first number, “Erotica.”

  At ten to eight, Madonna, the dancers, the band, and I all join hands and form a circle. Madonna leads the prayer: “Dear God, it’s the opening night of the tour in London. Please watch over my dancers and my band. I know everyone is nervous, me included. We’ve worked really long and hard to get here. Please help us make this a great show. I love you all. Go out there and break a leg. Kick some ass. Amen.”

  Then it’s showtime.

  With security leading the way, Madonna and I, and her two backup singers, Niki Harris and Donna De Lory, all hold hands and begin the long walk from the dressing room, down the tunnel, then backstage, singing Stevie Wonder’s “For Once in My Life,” while Madonna’s manager, dapper Freddy DeMann, with his pencil moustache, chews gum ferociously and follows behind.

  When we arrive at the back of the stage, Niki and Donna take their positions with the band. Madonna and I continue down a narrow access tunnel that leads under the stage, from where she will make her first entrance.

  Madonna and I wait there alone, holding hands. She is not shaking now. She is calm in the extreme, secure in the knowledge that she knows every dance step, every lyric by heart. She is confident, in control, with little self-doubt, aware that once she is on the stage, in front of her audience, she will be where she belongs, doing what she does best.

  I kiss her on the cheek and say, “You look amazing. You’re going to be great. I can feel it. There’s nothing to worry about. Everything is going to be perfect.”

  She nods wordlessly, her eyes suddenly big and almost childlike. Before she takes her place onstage, out of habit I hold out my palm and she spits her Ricola cough drop straight into it.

  Then she gives me an elated, slightly frightened smile that says, “Here we go,” takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders, and steels herself to face her audience.

  The lights go up, and a burst of screaming hits us. An intense jolt of electricity bolts from the seventy-five-thousand-strong audience onto the stage and crashes over us like shock waves, powerful and exhilarating.

  Circus music booms through the stadium. Onstage, in front of a red velvet curtain, dancer Carrie Ann Inaba, naked except for a red G-string, slithers down a forty-foot pole, while a blue satinclad clown—the leitmotif of the show—watches onstage.

  I am now standing in the pit, the five-foot gap between the front-row seats and the stage. As Carrie Ann reaches stage level, then slides below, the curtain goes up to reveal Madonna on a smoke-filled stage, singing “Erotica.” Her close-cropped blond hair glitters in the limelight and she cracks the whip.

  Her dancing is elegant, fluid, a tribute to the early training we both shared. And her body is a work of art, thanks to the daily two-and-a-half-hour gym regimen she follows when she’s not on tour. Her yoga classes, too, are responsible for her perfect tone and muscle definition, her queenly posture, her poise. In a yoga class, of course, all her competitive instincts come to the fore. Whether it is yoga or friendships or Kabbalah, my sister always has to be the best, the greatest—the one woman who can wrap her leg around her body twenty-five times and stand on one finger.

  Madonna’s competitive spirit, of course, is part of what made her—well, Madonna. That, and her intelligence, her capacity to learn, her superlative memory, her unrivaled charm, and her talent for live performance, which—as I watched her in The Girlie Show—takes my breath away. I marvel at her connection with the audience, the vivacity and precision of her performance, the grace of her hand gestures, the artful turn of her head, exactly as we rehearsed them together.

  For the next number, “Vogue,” Daniel has added a black sequined headdress to her outfit, part Erté, partly Zizi Jeanmaire. The passionate interest Madonna and I both share in the icons of the past has heavily influenced the content and the vibe of The Girlie Show, and in particular The Virgin Tour scene in which she parodies Marlene Dietrich.

  Throughout our time living and hanging out together in downtown Manhattan, and when I lived with Madonna in Los Angeles—initially in the home she shared with her first husband, my then brother-in-law, Sean Penn, and later in the one she sometimes shared with Warren Beatty—we used to stay up until all hours watching old movies together. Dietrich’s movies—especially The Blue Angel and Morocco—were particular favorites, but we also loved Louise Brooks in Pandora’s Box, Joan Crawford’s Mildred Pierce, Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night, and Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday.

  Madonna’s hitherto unrealized dream is to become a great movie star. I wish her well, but secretly believe that the only part that she is truly capable of playing is that of herself, Madonna. A part that she has created and curated. And what a part it is: cross Shirley Temple with Bettie Page, Elizabeth I with Lucille Ball, Bette Davis with Doris Day, and you have a flavor of the artist known as Madonna.

  THE MOMENT THERE is a brief interlude between songs during The Girlie Show and Madonna goes offstage, I run backstage to her dressing room. If she was calm before the performance, during the interval she is always extremely nervous and jumpy. While she re-touches her makeup and sprays herself with Annick Goutal’s Gardenia Passion, her favorite perfume, I give her a heightened version of my standard pep talk:

  “You look fantastic. Your voice is strong. And your moves were terrific.”

  She stops trembling, takes a gulp of Evian.

  And strides back onstage.

  Part of what I said to my sister was true, part was slightly bullshit. Her moves are, indeed, terrific. Her voice, however, is another matter. My sister’s unwillingness to submit to the drudgery of regular singing lessons is a by-product of the supreme self-confidence with which she was born. That self-confidence has overridden any lack of training. She’s a showman—some may have better voices, but she is the living embodiment of the fact that discipline, vision, ambition, determination, drive, and, of course, self-confidence are what make a superstar. Her legendary self-confidence also seems to be a family trait that I’ve inherited: I relish testing myself and I always embrace a challenge. Although I’ve been a designer, an artist, and am now a director, I have eschewed any formal training in these disciplines. Moreover, like my sister, I rarely submit to authority and prefer to plunge into a career and learn as I go along.

  Until now, our strategy has worked for both of us, but now Madonna is starting to realize that the lack of a strict regimen of vocal training means that her voice is too thin for the demands she now places on it. One of her solutions is to hire Donna to be one of her backup singers, as her voice mirrors and supports Madonna’s. In contrast, Niki is on hand to provide the soul. Most of the time, Donna and Niki compete over who gets to sing which harmony, who is closest to Madonna, and who gets the most attention from her.

  Niki has a better voice than Madonna. Her voice is fully trained, and Madonna fights to keep her at bay because Niki is fully capable of drowning her out and often does. When that happens, Madonna sometimes orders Niki’s mike to be switched off.

  Once or twice, Madonna has even raised the possibility of firing Niki. Not that she would ever do it herself. A remarkable chink in my sister’s dominatrix-style armor is that—although she makes a big show of screaming orders to her underlings during rehearsal, on the road, and, in particular, when she is playing to the cameras as in Truth or Dare—she is utterly terrified of confrontation, avoids it at all costs, can never bring herself to fire anyone face-to-fac
e, and always delegates that task to one of her minions, usually me.

  MADONNA IS SINGING “Holiday” now and, transformed by her blond Afro wig and sequined clothes, is every inch the seventies disco queen, skipping around the stage, joyful, euphoric, completely relaxed and happy. For the first time tonight, I catch her eye and wink. She winks back at me. A few moments later, she throws me a quick, triumphant smile, a tacit acknowledgment that all our work together has paid off, and that The Girlie Show is a success. I smile back, elated by our complicity. She ends the show on “Everybody”—her first hit and the first song she ever cowrote—the audience goes wild, and the stadium floor heaves with the dancing crowds.

  Madonna exits the stage. After a few minutes, a performer in the blue satin Pierrot costume and sad-clown mask reappears. This time—although the audience won’t know it until she removes her mask—Madonna is playing the clown.

  As children, we were rarely taken to the circus, but as adults, Madonna and I loved seeing Cirque du Soleil in Battery Park, Manhattan. We both loved the Cirque du Soleil because of the sexy, bizarre, and fresh way in which they approached the concept of the circus. The Cirque went on to become a great inspiration on our future work together and, in particular, on The Girlie Show. There is, however, something of an irony in my sister dressing as a clown, because she is the world’s worst joke teller. I cringe whenever she attempts to tell a joke, either in private or in public, because she always botches the punch line.

  I understand that her basic inability to be truly funny stems from the childhood loss of our mother. For even in the midst of the upbeat Girlie Show, amid the worship of the crowd, the intoxication of the night, the sad clown eyes betray a profound truth about my sister. Like me, somewhere deep inside—because we lost our mother when we were so young—no matter how far Madonna climbs, how famous she becomes, how wealthy, and how loved, her soul will always be pervaded by a secret sadness. Just listen to some of the lyrics she has written during her twenty-five-year career, for such songs as “Oh Father” and “Live to Tell,” to name a few.

  THE CLOWN SCENE is over now; Madonna removes her mask with a flourish, bows low, and leaves the stage. As I wait for her in the wings, I do my utmost to blot out the deafening applause. She runs up to me, I throw a large white towel over her, put my arms around her, and hurry her out the stage door. She’s dripping with sweat and breathing heavily. I can tell by the look on her face that she knows the show has gone well. Within seconds, she’s in the limo with her assistant, Liz, her publicist, and her manager, Freddy, rehashing the show, while inside the stadium “Be a Clown” booms through the sound system, and the audience screams for more Madonna.

  Back at the hotel, Madonna’s suite is filled with yet more white flowers. She removes her makeup, takes a shower, then we go downstairs and join the cast and crew for a private champagne party in the Library Bar.

  On opening night here in London, she could easily have celebrated her success with England’s glitterati, who would all willingly have flocked to pay tribute to her. But that has rarely been her way. Apart from when we play Detroit or L.A., she always leaves the stadium straight after the second encore, then spends the rest of the evening hanging out with her team, the dancers and musicians from the show, whom she concedes are partly responsible for her success.

  While one of Madonna’s favorite phrases is “This isn’t a democracy,” and she is utterly unable to laugh at herself, I am impressed at how egalitarian she is to party with her team on opening night rather than with other celebrities. At the same time, way at the back of my mind, in a dark place I try not to probe, a voice I’ve spent a lifetime studiously ignoring tells me that part of the reason my sister doesn’t relish hanging out with celebrities is that if she did, she would no longer be the only big fish in a small pond, the queen bee, the star. Moreover, the majority of celebrities—her equals—wouldn’t laugh at her unfunny jokes, pander to her moods, or make her the center of their universe, the way her acolytes invariably do.

  She doesn’t stay long at the party. Instead, less than half an hour after we first arrive, she asks me to take her up to the suite.

  IN THE ELEVATOR, I am suddenly overwhelmed by a rush of euphoria. My opinion of my sister as a performer is at an all-time high. On a personal level, as a brother, my love for her is unbounded, and we have never been closer.

  “You were great tonight, Madonna,” I say, “really great.”

  We hug each other.

  “I love you, Christopher, I really do,” she says, “and I’m very proud of you.”

  “I’m proud of you, too. And thank you for giving me this opportunity. Love you.”

  I check that she has enough lemon tea in her room and that her humidifier works. Then I go back to my suite.

  Tonight, we are on top of the world, my sister and I. And no one and nothing can touch us, not even our own human fallibility. We live for the performance, the show. The love, the closeness, the creativity.

  Tonight, I know without a shadow of a doubt that we are in step, in sync, in unison, Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney putting on a show, you and me against the world, together, now and for always. I contemplate our glorious future, both personal and professional, and it shimmers before me, flawless and without end.

  My own words echo in my mind: Thank you for giving me this opportunity. Love you.

  Thank you for giving me this opportunity. Love you.

  THEY SAY THAT those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad with pride. They also say that what the gods give, they can also take away. Tonight represents the high point of my life, but in the future both sayings will epitomize not a god, but a goddess—my sister Madonna.

  She will become mad with pride, with fame, with the oleaginous pandering of the sycophants, the mindless adoration of the masses. And what she has given me—the joy of creating with her, of being with her, of loving her and being loved by her—she will ultimately take away.

  ONE

  The great advantage of living in a large

  family is that early lesson of life’s essential

  unfairness.

  Nancy Mitford

  I AM ELEVEN years old and just another of the eight Ciccone kids about to have dinner with our father and stepmother, Joan, in the harvest-yellow kitchen of our home on Oklahoma Avenue, Rochester, Michigan. We are squashed around the dark oak table—just recently stripped and restored by Joan, and still stinking of varnish—and we are happy because we know we are getting chicken tonight.

  My four sisters are all wearing variations of maroon velvet dresses with white lace collars, all made by Joan from the same Butterick pattern. Madonna hates hers, but Joan has told her to “shut up and put it on” and has made her wear it anyway. Another night, Madonna might have run to our dad, and he’d probably have given in and let her wear something else, but tonight he was at a Knights of Columbus meeting and arrived home just in time for dinner.

  As always—not because we are poor, but because Joan is frugal—she has only made two chickens to divide between the ten of us. I feel as if I’ve spent half my life fighting to get the breast, which I love, but failing, simply because I’m too slow off the mark and everyone else beats me to it. Tonight, though, I’ve made up my mind that I’ll get the breast at last.

  But before I can swing into action, it’s my turn to say grace.

  We all stand up and hold hands.

  I take a deep breath. “Dear Lord, thank you for this beautiful day. Thank you for all my brothers and sisters.”

  My elder brother Marty, who has just been caught smoking in the basement and has been disciplined by my father, snickers.

  My younger sister Melanie—born with a silver streak on the left side of her hair, across her left eyebrow and left eyelash—assumes I’m sincere and flashes me a tender, beatific smile.

  My elder brother Anthony, who is coming down from a bad peyote trip and is still clutching Carlos Castaneda’s Separate Reality, closes his eyes tightly.
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  My sister Paula, always the underdog, makes a face.

  My baby half sister, Jennifer, gurgles.

  My baby half brother, Mario, in his high chair, plays with his rattle.

  My father and my stepmother exchange a quick approving glance.

  My older sister Madonna lets out a loud, prolonged yawn.

  I glare at her and go on.

  “Thank you for Grandma Elsie and Grandma Michelina. Thank you for our father and for Joan. Thank you, dear Lord, for the food we are about to receive, and could I please have a chicken breast tonight?”

  Everyone cracks up, even Madonna.

  I strike out. I don’t get the chicken breast. Not quick enough off the mark because I am still heartily laughing at my own witticism. Poetic justice, I suppose. But at least I don’t go hungry—because no matter how often my sister Madonna has portrayed herself as the quintessential Cinderella and insinuated that Joan was our wicked stepmother, Joan has never starved or mistreated us.

  On the other hand, she doesn’t believe in lavishing expensive food on us either. She always reserves any delicacies—Greek olives, Italian salami, expensive cookies—for her guests, whereas the kids’ biggest treat is granola. Whenever Joan isn’t around, no matter how much else we’ve eaten that day, just for the hell of it we sneak into the kitchen and pilfer a gourmet cookie earmarked for the guests.