Madonna

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  Madonna’s romance with chain-smoker but nondrinker Andy Bird was tumultuous from the start, generating reams of tabloid headlines over the course of about a year. At one point, she kicked him out of her California home and he ended up back in London, working as a doorman at the Met Bar. Another time, she left him stranded, penniless, in Florida for a week before begging him to come back in a string of heart-to-heart phone calls.

  Who can say why Madonna was attracted to Andy Bird? They seemed to have little in common. She was driven and ambitious, he was more laid back about his career. She was a multimillionaire, he didn’t have much money. However, he was a kind man, and also fun. A gentleman with a great sense of humor, Andy made Madonna laugh. He was polite, reassuring. He wasn’t cruel and argumentative like Sean Penn. He wasn’t emotionally crippled like Warren Beatty and John Kennedy, Jr. Actually, he was more like Tony Ward — loving and well-meaning while, perhaps, not terribly stable or financially secure.

  To his credit, Andy treated Madonna not like a star, but like a friend, which she found irresistible. They had picnics, they talked about movies, they joked with one another. In July 1998, the two exchanged vows in a Kabbalah ceremony that supposedly united them for all time. Madonna wore a flowing white gown. Both she and Bird were barefoot. She told friends at the time that she hoped to have Bird’s child, but that marriage might not be necessary since “we had this very lovely ceremony.”

  In a chapter that seemed right out of Julia Roberts’s Notting Hill, Madonna didn’t much care about Andy’s bank account — at least not at first. However, as weeks turned into months, she could not reconcile the fact that Bird was unclear about his future ambitions while, at the same time, being such a spiritual person. To her way of thinking, the purpose of spirituality was to use it to move your life ahead to the next plateau, not to fall back on it as an excuse to stagnate. Bird, however, felt that career concerns were secondary to those relating to the metaphysical. On a trip to London in the fall of 1998, at his urging he and Madonna visited the Inergy Centre in Kensal Rise, West London, which specializes in teaching yoga. Afterward, she said, “Yoga is very physical and strengthens me from within, not just externally. It helps me be more flexible about how I see the world and other people.”

  “She was a lovely girl and seemed to be very fond of our son,” said Bird’s mother after she and her accountant husband, Horace, shared a cup of tea with Madonna. “I liked her. I must say, she surprised me because she was so polite. I don’t know what I expected. I wondered if they would get married, but I knew that young people rarely get married these days. I know he cared about her a great deal. I have nothing but nice thoughts about her, but she had been around more than Andy, I think. She was more worldly.”

  At twenty-nine, ten years Madonna’s junior, Andy did seem to have some growing up to do. He was also insecure. Perhaps a defining moment occurred in their relationship when he accused Madonna of having a fling with a young film director while she was in London making a video. Madonna was having no such affair. (At least not yet.) Also, when it came to discretion with the media — a requirement if one is to have a relationship with a major celebrity — Andy Bird was a novice. “She goes through boyfriends like there’s no tomorrow,” Andy told a reporter. No doubt that wasn’t the kind of statement Madonna liked to hear her male companions make about her. She must have known that there were problems ahead.

  Madonna didn’t have many people she could turn to to discuss issues having to do with her boyfriend Andy. Those who had known her for years were not the best to give advice, she felt, because, as she put it, “they’ve all heard my stories a thousand times over, and they’re sick of them . . . and of me.” Perhaps this is the reason Madonna turned to a surprising new friend in trying to sort out some of her problems with Andy Bird.

  Gwyneth and Peter

  Madonna has had many female friends over the years, but she seems to have trouble maintaining such relationships, perhaps because she is so competitive by nature. By the fall of 1998, however, she and actress Gwyneth Paltrow had become close. Says Paltrow’s Los Angeles friend Jeannette Misterling, “It seems like a weird match, but they have so much in common, not the least of which is their desire to keep their friendship out of the public eye. They both have ambivalent feelings about the media, so they’d just as soon their friendship not be dissected. They both like to hang on to some things of a personal nature . . . and not just let the public have it all.”

  According to close associates of both celebrities, the two women first became acquainted in the winter of 1996 when nude photographs taken of Gwyneth and Brad Pitt on vacation appeared in the press. Madonna was so outraged by the invasion, and felt so bad for Gwyneth (whom she did not know), she decided to telephone her. (One might wonder why celebrities always seem to know how to contact one another — even if they’ve never met — whenever they feel compelled to do so.)

  While Madonna told Gwyneth that she’d had similar experiences with intrusive photographers, and that she sympathized with her, Gwyneth admitted that she was horrified by the invasive pictures, much more than she would ever let on to her fans or the press. “How will I ever show my face in public again?” she asked Madonna, according to a later conversation with friends.

  “But what have you got to be ashamed of?” Madonna asked. “I’ve been seen nude many times and I actually think it’s only enhanced my career. However, you might want to go to a gym,” she advised Gwyneth. “You could use some toning. You’re too skinny.”

  After that conversation, the two women continued to exchange letters and phone calls. Whenever Gwyneth found herself in Los Angeles, she would always be sure to visit Madonna. They would end long, confessional lunches with caramelized apple tarts and vanilla ice cream, a favorite dessert of Gwyneth’s, along with great quantities of strong coffee.

  “Gwyneth is experiencing the upsides and downsides of being incredibly famous for the first time,” Madonna explained to her friend Juliette Hohnen. “I think people taking pictures of you and writing stories about you and putting their noses in your business for the first time is disorienting. I wish I could have had someone to turn to when I was at that point in my life. I don’t think I would have taken a lot of things so personally. So I’m happy to help her. I do see her as a younger sister, although she is very sophisticated for her age.”

  Earlier, at the end of 1997, after Madonna expressed an interest in Viggo Mortensen [who portrayed Demi Moore’s drill sergeant in the film G.I. Jane), Gwyneth helped arrange a date for her. (Gwyneth and Viggo were good friends and were scheduled to make a film together.) Though Gwyneth set the date for Madonna hoping that it would take her mind off Andy Bird, it did not go well; Madonna and Viggo had nothing in common. When Gwyneth asked Madonna if she and Viggo had slept together, Madonna laughed and denied it, adding, “By the time I got home all I wanted to do was go to bed . . . alone.” Besides, one-night stands now held very little appeal for her.

  Once in the States and away from Andy Bird — at least for the time being — Madonna began spending more time with divorced actor Peter Berg, who starred as Dr. Billy Kronk on the television show Chicago Hope . Peter advised her to let Andy go and move on with her life. He also promised to be there for her if she would do so.

  By August 1998, Madonna and thirty-five-year-old Peter — often fashionably unshaven — were seen in New York together, huddling romantically in restaurants and walking through Central Park. When the two showed up at a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop at eight in the morning after having been up all night together, they caused a sensation in the store. “Oh my God, can I have your autograph?” asked the girl behind the counter. “Can I have my doughnuts?” Madonna answered, testily.

  Two days later, the couple attended a concert by Savage Garden in New York at the Beacon Theater. Earlier in the day, Madonna had to discipline Lourdes for something she had done. She was upset about it, saying she felt terrible whenever she had to “raise my voice to my daughter.” Berg sug
gested that Madonna go shopping while he took Lourdes out for ice cream. “Anytime a man is willing to give a mother a break from a toddler, that’s a good man,” Madonna said. When, with shopping bags in tow, she returned home from her day on Fifth Avenue, Berg had dinner waiting for her. A contented Lourdes sat in her high chair at the table, washed and dressed for the meal.

  Peter Berg quickly became infatuated with Madonna, telling one friend, “She’s strong-minded, intelligent and independent. Her looks are an asset equal to her wealth. What else can a man ask for?” However, Madonna seemed unsure as to how to proceed. After Carlos Leon and Andy Bird, she was wary. She knew what she was looking for — but how would she recognize it when she found it? She now found herself examining the nature of love and risk. “At my age,” she said at the time, “love is a risky business — a risk I don’t think I’m willing to take — especially since, really, do I even need a man?”

  “I don’t want much out of life,” Madonna told Berg in front of mutual friends. She reached into her bag and took out her compact. After checking her reflection in the mirror, she went back into her bag to retrieve a stick of concealer makeup. She dabbed it under her left eye. “I just want a little peace and quiet as I approach old age,” she observed while patting the offending area with her pinkie finger. Then, snapping her compact shut, she said, “Is that too much to ask?”

  “You? Peaceful? Quiet?” Berg asked with an arched eyebrow. “Not in this lifetime. No. It’ll never happen.”

  “I know,” Madonna said with a smile. “Talk about wishful thinking.”

  At the Cafeteria, a New York restaurant, Peter Berg joined Madonna after she dined with Ingrid Casares, Sony president Tommy Mottola and fashion designer Victor Alfaro, one of the restaurant’s owners. In front of the others, Peter told her he would wait for her, “for as long as it takes, until you and I can be together.” With a sad smile, Madonna said, “Well, Peter, you’ll be waiting a long time.” For the rest of the evening, he seemed just to stare at her with admiration and love.

  Peter and Madonna then went outside together, but — much to the disappointment of fascinated onlookers — simply kissed each other on the cheek and went their separate ways into the softly drizzling rain. After walking a block, Madonna stopped and took off her brown, strappy Manolo Blahnik sandals, ignoring the ever-present paparazzi who were, no doubt, disappointed by her conservative outfit — a knitted top, layered earth-tone skirt and a matching sweater tied around her waist. Barefoot, she walked across a slick Manhattan street — successful, intelligent, rich, beautiful . . . and alone.

  Ray of Light

  By 1998, thirty-nine-year-old Madonna was all but finished with what was perhaps the most ambitious makeover in her entire fifteen-year career. For the last few years, always with great forethought, she had been going about the business of repairing the public relations damage of the downward slide that had been the result of sexually explicit projects in four different media: Truth or Dare in video, Sex in publishing, Erotica in music and Body of Evidence in film. Wisely, Madonna had decided to ease out of her role as a sexual revolutionary and slip into a more subdued persona as a mother and New Age thinker.

  It was more than just public relations, though. She really had been affected by her experiences with Evita and her new baby, Lourdes. “It’s just an evolution, really, since I made Evita,” she told Rolling Stone’s Gerri Hirshey. “Because going down to South America and getting beaten up the way that I was in the newspapers every day — and sort of living vicariously through what happened to Eva Perón — then finding myself pregnant. Going from the depths of despair and then coming out the other side . . . you know, becoming a mother, I just have a whole new outlook on life. I see the world as a much more hopeful place. I just feel an infinite amount of compassion toward other people.”

  Her first album released after the birth of her daughter, Ray of Light, was released in March 1998. It would combine her recently adopted New Age beliefs — which she seemed to have fine-tuned with Andy Bird’s help — with music that was both current and trendsetting. Indeed, if ever there was a recording that proved without a doubt that Madonna still understood how to stay ahead of the game in pop music, Ray of Light was it.

  After the movies, the soundtracks and the haunting ballads, Madonna knew that at her very core, she was still a dance music artist. She also realized that trends in that genre begin in the places where people dance — which is where Madonna would find her new sound.

  Techno and electronica had, for years, been the music played at so-called raves, hugely popular, illegal underground parties taking place in abandoned warehouses and deserted areas on the outskirts of town all around the world. This is where young music lovers, on alcohol and the popular rave drug Ecstasy, were zoning out on the beat of such ethereal, synthesized sounds. It was a hot sound, and one Madonna knew had not reached the masses. “It’s definitely an area that’s gone untapped,” Madonna observed at the time. “And I need to be in on it.”

  Just as she had once sought out the hot dance/pop producer of the moment to assist her foray into mainstream success (Nile Rodgers with Like a Virgin) and employed hot, urban producers to accommodate her hip-hop move (Dallas Austin with Bedtime Stories), Madonna smartly realized that to make an authentic album of techno-pop she’d need to go to the source of such music. Originally, she intended to collaborate with Robert Miles, Trent Reznor, Nellee Hooper, Babyface and William Orbit. In the end, probably in an attempt to give the project a strong identity, only Orbit — a writer and producer renowned in the field of techno and electronica — was retained. (Madonna historian Bruce Baron notes that there may be early demos of the Ray of Light songs co-produced with one or more of the original lineup. None has turned up so far, he says.)

  While William Orbit brought along his crew of collaborators, Madonna again called on the durable Patrick Leonard. Leonard would serve musically to anchor Orbit’s technology and, as he put it, “keep the resulting album sounding like it was Madonna at its core. She didn’t want to lose her identity,” he explains. “She just wanted to expand her sound.” Together, this team would create what could arguably be called Madonna’s most ambitious project since she’d tackled the musically elaborate Evita.

  With Ray of Light, Madonna by no means invented anything new. Madonna simply took the essence of the techno scene — its sound and personality — and then applied it to the commercial dance music sensibility she’d come to master so well. Just as pop culture heroes and icons before her, able to reshape themselves to the public’s whim at a moment’s notice (like the Beatles did in the sixties when they went from the goofy and melodic “She Loves You” to the psychedelia madness of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” in the span of just a few years), Madonna simply did what she knew she had to do to stay current: she brilliantly “morphed” into the current trend. She just happens to change with the times better than most of her contemporaries, many of whose attempts at keeping pace with the musical times often appear unimaginably contrived.

  The album’s first single, “Frozen,” is a simple yet majestic song about spiritual growth in a person who doesn’t seem to want it, made irresistible by infectious vocal melodies and musical accents that can be best characterized as Moroccan. A big success, the track reached Number 2 on the Billboard singles chart.

  The album’s title track and second single, “Ray of Light,” was the personification of what Madonna sought to achieve with the project. The track begins deceptively with a quiet, melodic guitar sound before giving way to a determined beat and whirlwinding synthesized sound. Lyrically, it’s a celebration of power and of self. Her sense of abandon is catching, and the track carries away the listener. The song was an instant hit, debuting at Number 5 in the Billboard charts — her highest entry to date. (Previously, in December 1995, “You’ll See” debuted at Number 8 and, in March 1998, “Frozen” equalled that entry position.). “Ray of Light,” which was Madonna’s fortieth chart single and thirty-second
Top 10 hit, captured the heady feeling of the era — the “new” energy of the coming millennium.

  “The Power of Good-bye,” a song about the strength that comes in letting go, has a catchy Europop feel to it. Indeed, lyrically throughout, Ray of Light offers a certain amount of reflection on the person Madonna feels she used to be, and who she’s become. For instance, “Nothing Really Matters” has her owning up to selfish ways of the past.

  “I don’t really want to dissect my creative process too much,” she has said when asked by reporter Jancee Dunn to explain the songs she writes. “What’s the point, really? I want people to have a visceral and emotional reaction to things, rather than to have in their mind where all my stuff came from. You know, if I see a bug crawling across the floor and it inspires me to write the most incredible love poem, I don’t want people to be thinking about their relationship, and then think of my bug crawling across the floor.”

  Without a trace of bondage or oral sex in a single lyric, this album’s songs instead spoke of ecology, the universe, the earth, “the stars in the sky,” angels and heaven and, surprising some observers, contained respectful references to God and “the Gospel.” In one song she talks of “waiting for the time when earth shall be as one,” while in another she does her best to make a pop dance tune out of a yoga chant. However, when the album was released, the music industry at large, though usually unflinchingly supportive of an artist as commercially successful as Madonna, didn’t think it would be a success. The sound of the songs wasn’t radio friendly, some observers argued. Other naysayers surmised that Madonna, at least by pop music standards, was too old to do this kind of album. They were all wrong. Ray of Light went on to sell four million copies in the U.S. — twelve million internationally. It also presented an older pop icon to younger audiences as an artist to whom they could relate and musically embrace.