Madonna

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Aware that they were sitting on potential dynamite, Sire Records sent Madonna on the road to polish her act. At this same time, Madonna also began expanding her knowledge of the music business. Instinctively, she realized that no manager, producer, agent or record company would ever have her best interests in mind, not the way she did. No one worked harder for Madonna than Madonna. So, her first order of business would be to strike up friendships with people at the record company who were in positions to assist her. She soon discovered that one of Sire’s key dance music promotion men was Bobby Shaw, whose job it was to take the company’s dance records to important clubs and promote them there. Madonna understood the importance of Shaw’s position because she, of course, had done it herself with “Everybody” when it was still in its earliest, unreleased form.

  On Fridays, Shaw customarily held meetings in his office where he played and discussed current music with the local disc jockeys. Madonna convinced Shaw to allow her to sit in on these meetings, which was practically unheard of in the business. “Leave it to Madonna to break tradition where this kind of thing was concerned,” says Shaw. “I couldn’t say no to her, now could I? Well, I could have,” he added, answering his own question, “but eventually she would have convinced me otherwise.” Along with the industry experts in the room, Madonna was able to listen to the latest records, learn who produced the hits, what was selling and in which direction the trends in music were headed.

  It was at this time that Madonna met John “Jellybean” Benitez, a disc jockey at the Funhouse in Manhattan. Benitez and Madonna became fast friends, and then lovers. On his arm, she attended record industry functions and, as he recalls, “for about a year and a half, I loved her very much. She was everything to me — my woman, my favorite artist, the bitchiest, funniest smart-ass I had ever known.

  “Yes, she used me to ‘network’ into the business,” he says, objectively. “But I did the same for her. I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that the people Madonna used along the way didn’t also get something out of the deal for themselves. But just by being associated with her, if you played your cards right, you could advance your career. Her position was that if you could get something out of exploiting her — the way she would you — then go for it.”

  With more than ample proof that the record company had a moneymaker on their hands, Warner Bros. was finally ready fully to exploit Madonna’s talents; she was given the go-ahead for her first album. While Mark Kamins thought he was going to produce the album, as earlier agreed, he was to be disappointed. “Madonna decided to go with Reggie Lucas at Warner, which was a bummer,” he recalls. “I was so pissed off. After all, we had a deal. But that’s the way it goes. She went a different way, and that was the end of that.”

  With her first album now the task at hand, Madonna could no longer represent herself. There was too much work to do, and she was so busy dealing with her recordings and concert act there was little time to focus on the business end of “show business.” It was time for her to find a manager. Experienced at handling her own career, she decided that she would only pass the baton on to someone she considered to be the best in the business. After some research, she set her sights on forty-one-year-old Freddy DeMann of Weisner-DeMann Entertainment, an aggressive and well-respected entertainment manager who, at the time, had the distinction of having represented perhaps the biggest music star in the world: Michael Jackson. Seymour Stein arranged an audition for DeMann. Afterward, DeMann had to admit that he wasn’t knocked out by Madonna’s act. He asked one of his assistants, “Who is this girl? And who in hell does she think she is?” Ultimately, it was on Stein’s recommendation that DeMann finally agreed to manage Madonna. Again, her timing was impeccable: just before she signed the contract with DeMann, the manager had had a falling out with Michael Jackson and was no longer working for him.

  When he heard that DeMann and Jackson had parted ways, Seymour Stein thought Madonna would be disappointed that she would not be sharing a manager with the world’s top hit maker. “I was afraid she would be upset about it, but she wasn’t,” he recalls. “Quite the contrary. She said, ‘Good. Now he’s free to devote all of his time to me.’ Of course, he had other artists at the time, but . . . that’s Madonna.”

  Madonna: The Debut Album

  Madonna’s debut album, released in July, could have belonged to any number of dance acts that came and went through pop music’s revolving door of 1983. Certainly, the eight-song collection didn’t offer even a glimpse of the massive superstardom to which it would be the introduction, but it certainly did give a strong indication as to what the pioneers in the Madonna movement, such as Camille Barbone and Steve Bray, saw in her.

  Producer Reggie Lucas had made a name for himself in the R&B music business with songwriting partner James Mtume, producing a series of hit records on such acts as Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway (“The Closer I Get to You”), Phyllis Hyman (“You Know How to Love Me”) and, most notably, Stephanie Mills (“Whatcha’ Gonna Do with My Lovin,” “Put Your Body in It” and “Never Knew Love Like This Before”).

  Under the band name Mtume, Mtume and Lucas wrote and produced one 1980 album (In Search of the Rainbow Seekers) for the Epic label before going their separate ways. While Mtume the band was creating their 1983 R&B hit, “Juicy Fruit,” Mtume’s ex-partner was producing an unknown white girl who didn’t possess the voice of Stephanie Mills or any of the other artists he’d worked with in the past: Madonna. When Madonna and Reggie Lucas began working on songs for her first album, the process became frustrating. “She had her way of wanting to do things,” says Lucas. “And I understood that. So we had to have a meeting of the minds, from time to time.”

  Madonna had written a song called “Lucky Star” (plus two others), which, along with Reggie’s composition of “Borderline,” seemed the perfect foundation for the album. However, after recording the three songs, Madonna was unhappy with Lucas’s production. “It’s just too much,” she complained at the time. “Too many instruments, too much stuff going on.”

  “You have to let me do what I do,” Reggie told her, according to what he would later remember saying.

  She made a long face. “But I have ideas. I have concepts,” Madonna argued. “I’ve been doing this for a long time, too.”

  “I know that,” he said. “But, Madonna, when you bring in a producer, you have to let him do his job.”

  “Well, just don’t get in my way,” Madonna told him, her tone threatening.

  The next day she apologized.

  After he finished the album, Lucas didn’t seem interested in redoing it to Madonna’s specifications. Instead, he went on to another project as quickly as possible, leaving Madonna to figure what to do next with her record. She decided to bring in her boyfriend, the talented Jellybean Benitez, to remix many of the cuts, including the fluffy, danceable (but forgettable) “Lucky Star.” Also on the album would be a song Jellybean would add to the album at the last moment, “Holiday” (which was written by Curtis Hudson and Lisa Stevens from the group Pure Energy), and produced by Benitez.

  “She was unhappy with the whole damn thing, so I went in and sweetened up a lot of the music for her, adding some guitars to ‘Lucky Star,’ some voices, some magic,” says Jellybean. “The thing about Madonna is that she has good instincts. You have to listen to her vision. I’m not sure Reggie did. We put together a great album, and I didn’t even get co-producing credit for it. But I didn’t care. I just wanted to do the best job I could do for her. When we would play back ‘Holiday’ or ‘Lucky Star,’ you could see that she was overwhelmed by how great it all sounded. You wanted to help her, you know? As much as she could be a bitch, when you were in the groove with her, it was very cool, very creative.”

  At first glance, Madonna’s album looked like a rebound project for Reggie Lucas, the kind of job a record producer of some note accepts for the money, and just to stay busy. It especially seemed that way when word got out that he didn’t want t
o finish the album Madonna’s way. Upon closer inspection, though, it was clear that the album was armed with hit records. Even if the songs had never become popular, no one could have denied that they were terrific, well-crafted pop songs that deserved to find an audience. However, one would never have known as much judging by the chart performance of the album’s first single, “Everybody.” The rhythmic call-to-party did reach Number 1 on Billboard’s dance chart — a chart driven more by a song’s popularity in dance clubs than by commercial sales — but languished at Number 103 on the trade magazine’s pop chart, the one, as they say in the industry, “that really counts.”

  The double-sided twelve-inch single that followed — the yearning “Burning Up” backed by the droning but urgent “Physical Attraction” — didn’t make Billboard’s pop chart at all, but earned another Number 1 position on the dance chart, seemingly defining this young new singer as just another disposable post-disco dance act.

  Then, along came “Holiday.”

  Written once again by young journeymen Chris Hudson and Lisa Stevens, the festive, infectious anthem caught fire almost immediately, first soaring in dance clubs across the country — where audiences were already hip to Madonna — and then working its way onto R&B and pop charts. Ultimately, the song made it to Number 16 on that coveted Billboard pop singles chart — a triumph for a new act.

  Just when the marketplace had gone on watch for this new “dance act,” Sire mixed things up and released “Borderline.” Written by Reggie Lucas, the song was a sentimental track with a particularly strong melodic lyric about a love that’s never quite fulfilled.

  Maybe it was Madonna’s fluid, loving way with lyrics that had more to say than “shake your booty,” or the fact that listeners had become familiar with her tangy voice; regardless, on “Borderline,” her vocals sounded refined, capable, expressive. The combination — a not-so-great but affecting voice at the center of Lucas’s full, twinkling instrumentation — made the track as close to an old Motown production as a hit could get in the dance-music-driven eighties.

  Arguably, “Borderline,” along with “Holiday,” were two of the most important records in Madonna’s formative years, and not simply because they reached Number 16 and Number 10 respectively on the pop charts. Rather, the singles were pivotal because, musically, they supplied Madonna with two distinctively different platforms within the dance music structure. Most important, they delivered the one-two punch that allowed “Lucky Star,” so ingenious in its simplicity and danceability and the fourth single from the album Madonna, to glide into the Number 4 position.

  Later Madonna, who co-wrote five of the album’s eight songs, would refer to this first effort as an “aerobics album,” but the songs were in perfect alignment with the times. In spite of a slow start, the album eventually climbed the charts and, after a year in release, finally found its way into the Top 10. It went on to sell four million copies in the USA, eight million worldwide.

  Shortly after the album broke the Top 10, Madonna and Erica Bell toasted her new success with a bottle of champagne. Years later, Erica remembered the conversation as if it had happened just days earlier.

  Seeming contemplative, Madonna said, “I feel badly about some of the people who aren’t with me, the ones I met along the way.”

  “You mean, like Camille?” Erica asked. “Yeah, like her and the others.”

  “Well, this is a tough business,” Erica observed. “It’s the people hangin’ around the moment you become successful who get to celebrate with you . . . not the ones you met along the way.”

  Madonna agreed. “I guess so,” she said, clinking her glass of champagne against Erica’s. “Anyway, sentimentality is a weakness, don’t you think?”

  Erica didn’t respond.

  “People hate me,” Madonna observed.

  “I know they do,” Erica said.

  “Oh well,” Madonna shrugged. “I did what I had to do. At least I still have you.”

  “That you do,” Erica concluded as she hugged her friend.

  Perhaps the most perfect timing of Madonna’s career was in the seemingly magical way her recording career coincided with the growing popularity of the music video art form. Teenagers at this time seemed to be longing for idols. In the seventies, the disco era had spawned many hit records but very few memorable artists. Several music performers in the early eighties, however, would gain popularity for the unique images they showed the television-watching public in videos of their songs: Cyndi Lauper with shocking, orange hair, crazy makeup and thrift-store clothes; Boy George with heavy-lidded mascara eyes and woman’s wardrobe; Prince with his androgynous sex appeal and Purple Rain ruffles. All three, and so many others, including Michael Jackson — who really helped to pioneer the medium, and even expand it with his long-form “Thriller” video — benefited from the three-minute star vehicles in which videos allowed them to shine.

  No one took better advantage of the medium, though, nor to greater effect, than Madonna. Borrowing liberally from the downtown street scene, from nighttime clubbing and from icons such as Marilyn Monroe, she added a dash of her own brand of simple sexiness for an early image that was simply unforgettable. Even with her bubble gum – sounding first album, her look fueled ample controversy as she co-mingled sexuality and religion, belly button – exposing T-shirts and rosary beads. Many observers felt her use of crucifixes to be sacrilegious, but the religious symbol became a crucial part of the Madonna fashion craze. “I don’t think that wearing the crucifix was an attempt to seek out controversy,” says Mary Lambert, herself a controversial director who would direct several of Madonna’s music videos. “I think that it had meaning for her — religious significance, mystic significance. Madonna is a very religious person in her own way.”

  At the time, Susan McMillan of the Pro Family Media Coalition declared of Madonna’s image, “Underwear as outerwear is only there to titillate men. And believe me, some sicko seeing a fourteen-year-old girl walking down the street in nothing but a lacy bra isn’t going to stop and say, ‘Excuse me, before I grab you, can I talk about what kind of statement you’re trying to make?’”

  Of course, Madonna loved the outrage she generated in zealots like Susan McMillan. It was what she wanted, what she worked for . . . and what she knew would make her a pop sensation just as much as any music she could ever hope to record. She believed that the more the press dubbed her style “trashy,” the more vociferous the parental objection to her look — which in turn would only encourage rebellious children to emulate her. Young girls, who were soon dubbed “wannabes” by the press (as in “wanna be Madonna”), began wearing cross earrings and fingerless gloves. They tied scarves and stockings in their wild hair — again, all introduced to popular culture by Madonna in her videos. Her success most certainly validated the blueprint for attention drawn up by Madonna as a child: do something to shock people and, if it’s outrageous enough, it will get them talking. She didn’t care what they were saying, as long as they were saying something about her.

  The image Madonna projected was selfish, vulgar and sexual. More than anything else, the statement she was making with her image and attitude had to do with a hunger for fame and notoriety. It wasn’t phony or contrived, that’s for certain. It was organic — she just threw her costumes together, she has said, from whatever she had in the closet, from whatever cheap clothing she had picked up at thrift stores — and very timely, as well.

  “Do you think my mother would be proud of me?” she asked Jellybean Benitez after her first album was released.

  “Oh my God, Madonna, yes,” he remembers answering. “Look at what you’ve achieved. Look at all you’ve done. Any mother would be proud.”

  Madonna smiled. “And my father?”

  “Absolutely,” Jellybean said. “Tony’s happy. You know it.”

  “Yeah, well,” Madonna concluded, “not that it matters.”

  Two-Timing

  While Madonna and Jellybean Benitez enjoyed their new
found success as a result of “Holiday,” the romantic relationship between these two immensely creative and emotionally explosive people soon became combative. “Egos, man,” Jellybean observes when trying to explain the problems he had with Madonna. “It happens in show business. She was getting to be huge, and, now, I had my own success going on. Slowly, things changed between us.”

  “I never saw fights like the kind they had,” Erica Bell recalls. “Jellybean is five feet, six inches, a little guy. He wore his hair shoulder length, he was cute. Not a muscle guy, but Madonna didn’t go for muscle types anyway. Mostly Latin guys. Still, he was pretty wild, temperamental . . . like her.

  “I remember one time he walked out on her, and she just went crazy. She was a heap on the floor, sobbing and moaning, writhing on the floor as if she was having some kind of a breakdown. ‘What is this about?’ I wondered. I know for a fact, because she told me, that she had three abortions, Jellybean’s kids, along the way. She wasn’t secretive about it. All of her friends knew. She loved Jellybean, but didn’t want children at that time. ‘I can’t wreck my whole career by having kids now,’ she told me. ‘I’m way too selfish. The only other person I think about is Jellybean.’”

  While she may have told Erica Bell as much, it seems unlikely that Madonna would have had three abortions in two years. Those who knew her at this time have said that she did use contraceptives. However, in press interviews over the years, Madonna has noted that the press “knows every time I have an abortion,” implying that she has had more than one such procedure.