Life with My Sister Madonna

by Christopher Ciccone

  UNFORTUNATELY FOR SEAN, he is about to be confronted with a new and unfamiliar fact of life; since meeting Madonna just a few months before, her career has already made a quantum leap and her fame has increased by almost epic proportions. Madonna has been profiled in Newsweek, the single “Material Girl” has hit the U.S. charts at number two, and after Desperately Seeking Susan is released on March 29 and Madonna receives great acclaim for her performance—which I still can’t help thinking is Madonna just being herself—her star is even further in the ascendant.

  MY JOB AS dresser for The Virgin Tour begins. We rehearse for three weeks in L.A., and I get basic on-the-job training on how to be Madonna’s dresser.

  On the road, when we stay at hotels, my day begins when, first thing in the morning, I go to my sister’s room, check her messages, order sourdough toast and coffee for her, and return her calls. Then I and the rest of the team—including her dancers and the band—go to either the current venue or the next. Madonna always travels first class. She is careful not to show favoritism toward me because I’m her brother. An irony, really, considering that she grew up our father’s favorite and didn’t protest, but perhaps she now believes that what was glorious for the goose is no longer fitting for the gander. So I fly coach with everyone else.

  I arrive at the venue an hour before the show starts. In the dressing room, which on this tour is always in a small tent behind the stage, I inspect all the costumes and make sure that they are all on hand and in perfect condition. If an article of clothing has a hole in it or a hook missing, I quickly sew it up. As Madonna is extremely active onstage and always perspires a great deal, we tour with three versions of every outfit she wears onstage.

  Hence we have fifteen pairs of fishnets, ten pairs of gloves, three painted jackets, and three versions of all the other costumes in the show. I make sure that her first outfit is laid out and waiting for her.

  Blue lace bra, jean jacket, blue lace top, lace gloves, blue socks, leggings, blue jean skirt. Blue rag in her hair. Silver cross earring for her right ear, silver hearts earrings for her left, chain belt round her midriff. Two crosses around her neck, plus a gilt chain. Blue ankle boots.

  I dress her before the show. When she is ready, she has her makeup done, and finally her hair. She will open the show with three songs. She sings the first two, “Dress You Up” and “Holiday,” wearing the jean jacket. Then she’ll peel it off to do the last one, “Everybody,” in the lace top underneath. The rest of the outfit stays the same.

  She will have a change of costume every two or three songs, and that change has to be completed in a minute and a half or less. To ensure that the changes happen like clockwork, I hang all the rest of her outfits on the clothes rack in the order she will wear them. I lay her shoes out on the floor and unroll the gloves she’ll be wearing in the first change with the fingers folded back and turned inside out so she can just stick her hand through them quickly.

  On April 10, 1985, opening night of The Virgin Tour with the first of three sold-out concerts at the Paramount Theater, Seattle, Washington, I’m probably even more nervous than my sister. We’ve rehearsed the timing of the changes over and over, but nothing can compare with the real thing—knowing that Madonna is about to come offstage and that I have to change her entire outfit in seconds.

  After “Everybody,” she hurtles backstage.

  She is wet with sweat and is breathing heavily.

  I wipe her down.

  She stands still while I remove all her jewelry, then her top, her skirt, the rag out of her hair.

  She pauses to take a swig of Evian, and because every second counts, I use the time to check that all the fringes in her next outfit are unknotted.

  Then I help her into it: the black bra top, black fringed waistcoat and skirt, and finally the long black gloves.

  “What the fuck, Christopher, you haven’t pushed out the little finger! Fuck you, you piece of shit,” she storms.

  I stop dead, horrified.

  “Hurry the fuck up, or I’ll fucking fire you right now,” she screams.

  I open my mouth, then close it.

  She’s due back onstage again in fifty seconds.

  I straighten the fringe of her skirt again.

  She stamps her foot, wriggles, and one of the hooks holding her bra snaps off.

  Rather than take the time to sew up her bra with a needle and thread, I grab a safety pin and pin her bra together—careful not to let her know I’m using one.

  “Fuck you, Christopher, I can’t fucking believe how slow you are,” she screams.

  Then she’s back onstage, singing and dancing like there’s no tomorrow.

  While I am left in the tent, close to tears, thinking, I can’t do this job. I’m doing my best but all I get is screaming. I can’t do this.

  I hear the applause of the crowd, the cheering, and know that she’ll soon be backstage again, screaming and shouting at me. I feel like walking out of the theater and never coming back.

  Then I switch from dresser mode to brother mode and realize I can’t abandon my sister. I think of the crowds, the fame, and the pressure on Madonna. Thousands of people are out there watching her, the adrenaline is pumping, she’s thinking of a hundred different things. Fifteen songs, fifteen dance routines, lyrics, steps, voice, movement, hair, makeup. And how everything—plus the ticket sales, the crew’s salary, the audience getting their money’s worth—depends on her.

  And at that moment, I realize that Madonna really wasn’t lying when she said she needed me, because she genuinely does. I am the one person she can rely on, the one person at whom—when the pressure becomes unbearable–she can vent, and the one person who will take it, because I’m her brother, and I feel for her.

  I make up my mind there and then that I’ll endure the abuse, endure the pressure, and that I won’t walk out, because ultimately, in the midst of the show, in the heat of the moment, my sister is at her most vulnerable and I want to be there for her because I empathize. Besides, she’s including me in her crazy, fabulous world, and I am relishing every moment.

  Some of those positive emotions evaporate when Madonna storms offstage, screaming at me again because her bra’s come undone. She rips it off, sees the safety pin, and goes ballistic.

  I listen to the torrent of swearwords and, instead of shrinking, flash back to our father scrubbing our tongues with soap because we’d said one solitary F-word. Nowadays, he’d need a whole crateful of soap to scrub Madonna’s tongue.

  I laugh silently to myself and carry on dressing her. After that, during each show, I block out all the obscenities, all the ranting, and concentrate instead on the change, focus on the job at hand, and ignore whatever she is yelling, unless it has to do with the costumes. Other than that, I learn to make myself scarce and not to react, no matter what.

  In a way, this tour is a learning experience for both of us. She has never been on tour before, and I have never been a dresser. That she asked me, who has no experience, to dress her on her first tour is a testament to the trust she now has in me.

  I believe that even a dresser with experience would still have found dressing Madonna difficult on The Virgin Tour. Other dressers had worked with stars before, but at this point few stars had toured with shows having so many costume changes. And I doubt that the majority sweat so much.

  Wiping sweat off Madonna’s body—even, at times, off her breasts—makes me incredibly uncomfortable. Nonetheless, during each and every change, I do just that because she needs me, and because that’s part of my job.

  After I wipe her body, then dress her, I make sure her hair is in position and her makeup in place, then I push her onstage. And when she comes offstage—in particular after the first set—I always tell her how terrific she was, how wonderful she looks, how much the audience loves her. And she goes back onstage again happy.

  The moment the show is over, I bundle her in a towel and then into her car, and the car whisks her back to the hotel. I follow in the t
our bus, along with the rest of the cast, who are all still dressed in their costumes.

  Once we arrive at the hotel, I go from room to room and, in one of my least favorite parts of my dresser job, pick up all the costumes and take them to the dry cleaner’s so they’ll be ready for the next performance.

  Then I go to my sister’s room and we talk about the show and how it went. She tells me what she thinks went wrong, what she thinks went right, gives me notes for the dancers and singers—who screwed up, who didn’t. If the show went well, she feels great. I reinforce that feeling. “Really great show, really great crowd, they were so happy to see you,” I say, and she is elated.

  Along the way, I am getting to know my sister and to love her. I feel protective of her because of the insanity of the world swirling around her, and I want to spare her some of it, if I can.

  Witnessing the crowds, the people, the fame, I realize how crucial I now am to Madonna’s sense of security, of safety. She is going places, and she needs someone to depend on. Right now, that person is me, and I’m happy to be there for her.

  FROM THE MOMENT we arrive in Portland, Oregon, on April 15, it feels like one of the strangest cities I’ve ever visited. Outside the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, religious fanatics are picketing the show, milling around with placards proclaiming that Madonna is Satan’s spawn, and that she is going to hell.

  My desire to protect my sister is intensified when, after we play Portland, Freddy, who doesn’t say a word to Madonna about it, tells me that death threats have been directed at her. I freak out. From that moment on, I become hyperaware of what is going on around her, extremely protective, even paranoid. Those emotions will never leave me, and even today, when I see clips of Madonna surrounded by crowds of people, or playing in a massive stadium, I am afraid for her.

  After the menacing insanity of Portland, I can hardly believe that we are only at the start of the tour. Madonna performs in San Diego, in Costa Mesa, and in San Francisco, then triumphs in three sold-out concerts at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles, where we learn that Like a Virgin has been certified four times platinum.

  Then we move on to Tempe, Dallas, Houston, Austin, New Orleans, Tampa, and Orlando, and on May 11—the same day that “Crazy for You” hits number one in the charts—we play Miami. Then we move on to Atlanta, Cleveland, Cincinnati, two sold-out concerts in Chicago, St. Paul–Minneapolis, Toronto, and finally—we end up in Detroit.

  By then, in my mind the cities have all merged into one and are interchangeable. But the indisputable highlight of the entire Virgin Tour is playing Detroit. When the lights go up, Madonna yells, “There’s no place like home.” It’s a great line, sentimental, humble, and it appeals to her number one fans.

  The entire stadium bursts into cheers.

  For a moment, she seems deeply moved.

  “I never was elected homecoming queen. But I sure feel like one now,” she says.

  Then she bows her head, as if she really is overcome by tears. Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t. Whatever the truth, this is obviously a moment of unrivaled triumph for her. Grandma Elsie is in the audience, and so are Christopher Flynn, Joan, my father, and all our brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Watching them from backstage, I can see that they are all stunned, proud, and not a little bemused by what has become of the little girl they all thought they knew so well.

  Madonna now has living proof that all her dreams have come true. She has made it, she is now a big star, and her life will never again be the same.

  Yet amid all the triumph and the applause, the massive career leap she has made during The Virgin Tour, some self-doubts still surface.

  After the show, in her room late at night, we are watching Mildred Pierce together. Suddenly, Madonna switches the TV off.

  “Christopher, if Mom were alive, what do you think she would say about me, about the show?”

  I hesitate for a second, then, because I won’t involve my mother, even the memory of her, in any falsehoods, I tell the truth.

  “I don’t think she’d like you bouncing around the stage, the crosses, and the overt sexuality.”

  Madonna looks stricken.

  “But I think she’d be very proud of you, anyway,” I quickly add.

  TWO DAYS LATER, on May 27, Madonna is on the cover of Time. “Madonna: Why She’s Hot” analyzes her global appeal. The article also includes a long interview in which she rewrites her history and that of our family and sets it in stone.

  These are some of her mythmaking phrases: “I was the oldest girl so I had a lot of adult responsibilities. I feel like all my adolescence was spent taking care of babies and changing diapers and babysitting. I have to say I resented it, because when all my friends were out playing, I felt like I had all these adult responsibilities…. I really saw myself as the quintessential Cinderella. You know, I have this stepmother and I have all this work to do and it’s awful and I never go out and I don’t have pretty dresses.”

  I know it makes a good story, and I applaud her imagination.

  Of Marty and Anthony she claimed, “They would hang me on the clothesline by my underpants. I was little, and they put me up there with clothespins.” A seeming impossibility, yet a story often repeated by the tabloids, and a testament to my sister’s talent for evoking potent visual imagery.

  Then there is the oft-repeated tale of her first visit to New York: “I got into a taxi and told the driver to take me to the middle of everything. That turned out to be Times Square. I think the driver was saying, like, ‘Okay, I’ll show her something.’ I think he got a chuckle out of that.”

  Then: “I got a scholarship to the Alvin Ailey School.”

  Her mythmaking isn’t outrageous, just interesting. And it would continue right through her career. Throughout all that time, our family listens to her reinventing history, but doesn’t call her on it. Most of us are far too dazzled by her fame and all the attention it brings us and quite simply don’t want to rock the boat.

  AFTER THE EUPHORIA of Detroit, we play Pittsburgh, then Philadelphia, Hampton, Virginia, then Columbia, Maryland, followed by Worcester and New Haven, and finally end up where we both started on track dates together, New York. On June 6, 7, and 8, Madonna plays three sold-out concerts at Radio City, followed on June 10 and 11 by two final sold-out concerts at Madison Square Garden.

  Among the celebrities at the show are Don Johnson, John F. Kennedy Jr.—then about to start his law studies—and graffiti artist Futura 2000. After the show, all three of them pay court to Madonna in her dressing room. Don Johnson moons around like a lovesick puppy, clutching a large bunch of long-stemmed roses, which seem to be wilting by the minute. John, more handsome than even in his pictures, hovers shyly by the dressing room door. Madonna doesn’t even throw him or Don a glance and, instead, focuses on Futura and fondles his hand while they exchange whispers. I get the picture at once; my Machiavellian sister isn’t interested in Don, but is set on arousing John’s jealousy. Her tactics appear to succeed, as down the line she will have her way with him.

  After the last Madison Square Garden concert, a homecoming party is held for Madonna at the Palladium, where she is mobbed. We spend most of the evening behind the velvet rope in the Mike Todd VIP room, reminiscing about the tour and laughing and dancing. I remember feeling a rush of power by association. I am Madonna’s brother. The brother of a superstar. I am so caught up in the magic of my brave new Madonna world that I don’t care that I am losing myself, and that working with my sister is now my entire life.

  None of my friends or family know that I am Madonna’s dresser. Most of them assume that I’m just her companion. I never tell them that I actually spend much of my time picking up her sweaty underwear. It’s my job, but I continue to be embarrassed by it and would be humiliated if anyone in my life knew.

  I’VE LEARNED A great deal about Madonna and about myself during the tour, and she’s made a crucial discovery about herself: by the third song of the show, she is usuall
y already out of breath and exhausted.

  Consequently, she decides to train for five months before each subsequent tour. I am convinced that she will tour again as soon as possible. I can tell that onstage is where she is happiest and most secure. A few years later, Warren Beatty will claim that Madonna “doesn’t want to live off-camera.” But for once, he is wrong. For as early on as The Virgin Tour, I know that my sister really only wants to live—and only lives—when she is onstage.

  After the euphoria of the tour, I go home to Morton Street and land in reality with a thud. I find adapting to everyday life extremely difficult. And it will become more and more difficult after every tour.

  I still have to grapple with Danny’s jealousy of Madonna, and that he thinks my job as dresser is demeaning. But I don’t care. Although on June 24, Madonna and Sean announce their engagement, she and I are getting closer and closer. Moreover, as a result of my work on the tour, she is starting to let me into her life to a much greater extent, and to trust my creative input.

  Many years later, she will pay me a backhanded compliment during an interview published in the pages of Elle Decor: “It doesn’t surprise me in the least that Christopher is good at so many endeavors. Everyone in our family was creative in some way—we all could either dance or paint or play a musical instrument. Christopher, for some reason, could do all three.”

  SECURE IN MY role as my sister’s renaissance man—a jack-of-all-artistic-trades—one morning, soon after the end of the tour, I glance at Madonna in her miniskirt and rubber bracelets and start thinking like her dresser again. But I talk to her like a brother, without fear of being fired.

  “Your legs look like fat sausages in that skirt,” I tell her. “You’re grown-up now; you need a cooler image, more classic, more Katharine Hepburn than Boy Toy.”

  For a second, I think she is going to slug me.

  She thinks about it, then smiles ruefully. “I guess you’re right, Christopher. So let’s go shop.”