Madonna

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  More growth on her part? Or just more media manipulation?

  Only time will tell if Madonna is sincere in her spiritual pursuits and personal evolution. However, one can’t help but hope that what she now projects is who Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone really is, that the serene persona of this mother of two is the result of years of work on herself . . . and not just another interesting and transitional personality. If so, then maybe her real life — and not one just tied to some show-business fantasy, hers or ours — has only just begun.

  By winter 2000, the media continued to speculate as to whether or not Madonna would marry Guy Ritchie, especially when she was seen wearing the diamond ring he had given her after Rocco’s birth. In fact, the two had secretly decided to marry by the end of the year.

  As much as he seems to love her, some of his friends felt there could be trouble if the proud Guy Ritchie was forced to tolerate the indignities that often go along with being in a relationship with Madonna, especially given his temperament. For instance, at the party at Catch One celebrating the release of Music, he became involved in a confrontation with a wide-bodied security guard who refused to grant him access to a VIP section of the club.

  “But I’m Guy Ritchie,” protested the writer-director. Wearing a tank-top shirt with the word “Music” emblazoned on it, Guy’s impressive biceps were on display. His hair was cut short and dyed a light shade of blond. He wore a small diamond earring. In the background, the music was loud, pumping . . . and annoying. Ever-moving lights in every color of the rainbow bathed the scene. An irritating, thumping cacophony, which was actually “Impressive Instant” from Madonna’s Music CD, could be heard in the background.

  “I don’t care if you’re Lionel Richie,” said the uniformed guard over the din. He wore a headset so that he could take orders. “Your name isn’t on the list,” he declared, chewing on an ice cube. “Not on the list, you don’t get in. That’s the way it goes.”

  “Step aside,” warned Guy. As he tried to force his way past the guard, a camera’s flash went off. He stopped, turned his head and scowled at the photographer.

  Perhaps noticing that he was distracted, the guard put one hand on Guy’s massive chest and pushed.

  Guy whipped his neck around to face the guard, an incredulous expression on his face. He seemed amazed — and indignant — that the guard would dare touch him. “What, are you kidding me?” he asked in disbelief, his voice angry, his brown eyes threatening. “Are you mad?” It was as if he had taken a page out of the “Sean Penn Handbook of Social Behavior.”

  For a few tense moments, the two studied each other with severe expressions — their eyes inches apart — like playground adversaries about to rumble. The veins in Guy’s neck were standing out. Luckily, one of Madonna’s functionaries arrived on the scene. “I felt a spasm of alarm,” she later recalled, “when I saw that Guy’s jaw was clenched.” Taking quick stock of the situation, she grabbed Guy by the arm and escorted him to the reserved area where Madonna was with friends. As Guy walked toward his girlfriend, she was laughing gaily, oblivious to what had just occurred. He whispered something in her ear and, apparently in reaction, she looked in the direction of the offending security guard and gave a disapproving frown. Just then, someone else said something to her. She tossed her blonde hair, flashed a gleaming smile and began laughing again, relaxed, chatty. Guy, standing at her side with his hands in his pockets, looked dour.

  “We’re better when it’s just the two of us, and not all of the fans, groupies and press,” Guy told a reporter after the confrontation at Catch One. Madonna, as usual, was surrounded by her coterie of enthusiasts as Guy spoke to the newsman. “When it’s just me and the missus,” he observed, motioning toward Madonna, “that’s when it’s good. This? This isn’t good.”

  By Guy Ritchie’s definition, it was “good” a month prior to the Music party when he took “the missus” to dinner at the Palm restaurant in Hollywood. The couple were there to celebrate Rocco’s release from the hospital a day earlier. The best table had immediately been theirs, of course, as it was in every place they ever ate. As Madonna sat next to — not across from — Guy, she was constantly greeted by people who knew her, thought they knew her or wanted to know her. She took the intrusions good-naturedly, apparently happy to be out in public. Long hair with blonde streaks framed a face that seemed worry-free, content. Her skin held the translucence of youth. Her breasts were partly exposed by the cut of a daring, crimson-colored dress — she was still Madonna, after all.

  An iced bowl of caviar, plates of smoked salmon and cold chicken, and a silver basket of fruit were displayed on the table.

  Though talking to the waiter, who had inquired about the health of her child, she didn’t seem to mind revealing herself in an emotional, honest manner. “My life is perfect now,” Madonna said. “If I never do another thing again, at least I’ll know I’ve done this.”

  “Hear, hear,” Guy said, smiling broadly. He raised a glass of champagne in Madonna’s direction. Giving her an admiring stare over the rim, he added, “Here’s to a new life.”

  Epilogue: The Wedding to Guy Ritchie

  Publicity, or no publicity? For Madonna, if the choice had to be made, it had always been in favor of the former, and plenty of it — as long as it was on her terms. However, that was to change when it came time to plan her two-million-dollar wedding to Guy Ritchie.

  As the consort of an internationally acclaimed superstar, Guy Ritchie has endured press coverage that he hasn’t been particularly happy about, and treatment by reporters that has, in his view, sometimes bordered on the disrespectful. For her part, Madonna never stops complaining about the media’s intrusion in her life. It’s been her mantra for years: “I hate the press. I hate the press.” With the passing of time, not much has changed in that regard: as much as she loves the attention, that’s how much she says she hates it.

  It was Guy’s decision, then — and not Madonna’s — that there would be no attendant publicity to their upcoming marriage ceremony. All of it — the nuptials, the reception, the parties — would be planned and conducted with an eye towards complete privacy, absolute secrecy. Madonna didn’t seem to care one way or the other about the matter. If she had to deal with the press on her special day, she would do it. Certainly her staff was equipped with the means to keep it all under control. However, Guy felt strongly that their wedding shouldn’t be made into a public spectacle, and so that was the way it was going to be. It’s fortunate that Madonna so appreciates a man who can take charge, for that is certainly what she got in Guy Ritchie.

  Two friends of the couple report witnessing a conversation between Madonna and Guy at Kensington Place restaurant in West London two-and-a-half months before the wedding, an exchange that, perhaps, betrayed some pre-ceremonial jitters on Madonna’s part.

  “I just don’t think there should be any press at all about any of it,” Guy told his fiancée. “I want it to be quiet, and private, don’t you agree?”

  “Well, look, if that’s how you feel then we should just run off to Las Vegas and elope,” Madonna declared, according to the witnesses. Even though she was indoors, she wore a knee-length, snake-skin coat (dyed red), because she felt chilled. “I guarantee you, though, it will be a circus . . . a zoo,” she continued, “so don’t kid yourself.”

  “Why do you say that?” Guy wondered.

  “Because everything I do is a fucking circus,” Madonna answered, snapping at him. “Or haven’t you noticed? Christ! Haven’t you seen the parade that passes by whenever I walk out of the house?”

  “Just let me handle it,” Guy said. He paid no attention to her tone, perhaps accustomed to it by this time. “As long as we agree: no media and no tricks. And you know what I mean, Madonna,” he concluded, pointing a parental finger at her.

  Madonna sighed heavily. “Look, I couldn’t care less,” she said, visibly irritated. Perhaps she was annoyed at the suggestion that she would purposely invite press attention to t
heir wedding. Or, maybe she was just coming down with a cold; she didn’t seem particularly well. She had complained earlier of having “the worst headache, ever since we started talking about this wedding.” Finally, she said, “I just don’t want the stress of trying to control it all. So, go for it,” she concluded. “Knock yourself out, Guy.”

  In the end, though she didn’t admit it at the time, Madonna was vastly relieved to know that Guy was handling matters concerning the media. To Madonna, controlling the press’s interest in her every move had always been a chore. However, to the easygoing, sports-loving Guy Ritchie, it was nothing more than a matter of gamesmanship. The way he figured it, if a photographer managed to sneak into the wedding and shoot a role of film, Guy would lose the game. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, though, because, after all, it was only a game. “However, I don’t like to lose,” he cautioned one confidante. “So, I can tell you right now, there’ll be no press coverage of the wedding. We’ll have to find a place that’s so out of the way, no one will have access to it.”

  It was Guy’s friend, Vinnie Jones, who suggested the “out-of-the way” Skibo Castle in Scotland for the ceremony. It’s been said that Andrew Carnegie once described his Highland castle — now the home of the private Carnegie Club, a residential sporting club — as “heaven on earth.” As the story goes, the Scottish-born iron-and-steel tycoon and philanthropist Carnegie left his native land at the age of thirteen to make his fortune in America. He returned one of the richest and most successful men of his generation. His search for a Highland home led him to the lush grounds and crumbling estate of Skibo, which he bought in 1898. After spending two million pounds — a phenomenal amount at that time — to rebuild the castle, he had made it into one of the world’s great residences, home base for his social life and philanthropic endeavors. At Skibo, Andrew Carnegie entertained such luminaries as King Edward VII, the Rockefellers, Rudyard Kipling, Edward Elgar, Paderewski, Lloyd George and Helen Keller. In 1990, British entrepreneur Peter de Savary purchased the estate for six million pounds, and then opened it as a private club.

  Today, the fully restored twenty rooms of Skibo Castle and the twelve private lodges on the grounds, provide a stately hideaway for the privileged and wealthy. The estate’s beauty — perched on rolling hills overlooking Dornoch, Firth — is of such magnitude and stunning clarity that it generates an emotional experience when merely looking at photographs of it, let alone actually experiencing it firsthand. The club also has a reputation for extreme discretion, especially after hosting the near-secret marriage of publicity-shy movie star Robert Carlyle. Regular guests include Jack Nicholson, Michael Douglas and Sean Connery.

  When he went to Scotland to scout out this playground for the rich and famous, Guy felt that it was the ideal site for his wedding to Madonna. He wanted a spectacular affair, partly because he wanted to impress his — and her — friends and family, partly because he felt that Madonna deserved it and also because he knew that they could well afford it. At first, when shown a brochure of Skibo Castle, Madonna thought that the location was too isolated and, as she put it, “it sounds scary, like something out of a Dracula movie.”

  “Oh, you’ll change your mind about that,” Guy said, knowingly. “Trust me.”

  “She did a lot of acquiescing to Guy,” said a friend of Madonna’s who would speak only if guaranteed anonymity. “She wanted a nice ceremony, obviously, but leaned towards having it in Beverly Hills. She didn’t want her friends to have to fly all the way to Scotland. But she made a decision to let Guy do it his way. She told me, ‘Look, I and my staff manipulate everything that happens in my world. I don’t want Guy to feel that he’s in for that kind of life. So, let him have it his way. I’m cool with it. Honest to God,’ she said, ‘I just want to get the whole goddamn thing over with.’

  “With the two kids, the promotion of the new CD [Music], the planning of music videos and other career moves,” says her friend, “she was always feeling completely exhausted, headachy and irritable . . . not in the mood to plan a wedding, and definitely sleep-deprived because of Rocco.”

  Madonna told her friend that she would “just as soon get married in my living room in Los Angeles wearing a nice tube top and some embroidered jeans. But,” she she went on, “if I have to put on a big show, I guess I can do it. I haven’t done a tour in a long time,” she joked, “so I have enough energy for a good show.”

  She only had one concern: that Rocco’s baptism — which she had promised her father would take place before the wedding — would be memorable. “That was her only real interest,” said her friend. “Not the wedding, but the baptism,” which she wanted to have at nearby thirteenth-century Dornoch Cathedral in north Scotland, about five miles north of Skibo.

  When it came to the question of security, and how much of it there would be, Guy considered Madonna’s first wedding in 1985 to Sean Penn in Malibu, California. Though it is widely believed that she had actually orchestrated much of the public drama and excitement that surrounded that ceremony, Madonna has never stopped complaining about it — to Guy, to friends, to the press and to anyone else who would listen. Because he hadn’t been there, Guy really didn’t know to what degree the madness had been manipulated by his “missus” — though, knowing her so well, he probably suspected some involvement on her part — and how much of it was truly an unwanted intrusion. So, to be safe — and maybe to ensure that he would not have to hear her grouse about her second wedding — Ritchie hired a security force of seventy professionals from Rock Steady, a well-respected private firm, in an effort to guarantee the security of this second ceremony.

  With plans nearly finalized, Guy went on to book all fifty-one bedrooms on the 7,500-acre Skibo Castle grounds for five nights. However, there would be certain rules. Guests would not be permitted to come and go at will, and would only be allowed to leave the castle for Rocco’s baptism at the nearby cathedral. They would be carefully monitored at all times, “for your safety and ours,” Guy explained to one of his more sceptical invitees. There would be no televisions or radios in any of the rooms. Mobile phones had to be turned off. In effect, contact with the outside world would be all but denied the guests for the entire duration of their stay, five days. Of course, for some of Madonna’s celebrity friends who always seem somewhat annoyed by having to live in the real world with real people, the thought of this sort of isolation was pure and perfect nirvana. For many of Guy’s pals, however, it was a preposterous proposition. “I do think he’s been hanging round the missus too much,” said one, snickering.

  Guy’s guest list would be limited, anyway, since Madonna had stipulated that invitations be extended only to wives of male guests, or to girlfriends who were familiar to her. She didn’t want her fiancé’s single and unruly buddies bringing strippers or other women of questionable professions to the castle for a good time.

  “Look, it’s going to be brilliant,” Guy promised one friend who balked at the amount of time he would have to spend at the castle accompanied by a woman with whom he was about to end a relationship, but who Madonna insisted he bring along anyway. “It’s a special place. You have to experience it. It’s the good life, and it’ll be good for you. And, anyway,” Guy concluded, “what the fuck? Why not join me and the missus for some fun, eh?”

  *

  On December 5, 2000, Madonna and Guy set off from their London home for Scotland to sign certain legal papers related to the forthcoming union, and to make the final arrangements. After the private jet (carrying the couple, two bodyguards and a personal assistant), touched down at Inverness airport at 11:30 A.M., it was met on the tarmac by two Range Rovers, provided by the Carnegie Club.

  As flashbulbs popped all around her from the waiting and excited media, a glowing Madonna descended from the plane wearing dark glasses, a tartan coat and embroidered jeans. Guy followed, casual in a jacket and jeans. After quick smiles and a few waving gestures, the couple retreated into their Range Rover, and took off.

&nbs
p; Before viewing the castle, Madonna had decided that she first wanted to see Dornoch Cathedral. So, fifteen minutes after landing, her small entourage began the drive to Dornoch.

  The cathedral was founded in 1224 by St. Gilbert de Moravia, then bishop of the diocese. It boasts a magnificent stained-glass window, unveiled in his memory by Prince Charles in 1989. While small compared with most cathedrals, it dominates the surrounding buildings in the ancient royal borough. As soon as Madonna walked into the stately cathedral, she was awestruck by its beauty. Transfixed, she stood in the center of the church in the soft sunshine that poured in through colorful stained glass. All was peace and serenity in this place. Maybe too quiet, even.

  She couldn’t resist. What singer could? Without warning, Madonna opened her mouth to see how her voice would resonate when enhanced by the acoustics of a 776-year-old cathedral. Her personal assistant, a local resident who just happened to be praying in the cathedral, three male Spanish tourists and Guy, were the only people present to witness the impromptu performance. As Madonna sang “Ave Maria,” her voice breaking the stillness of the hallowed place and soaring to the rafters, it probably never sounded better.

  “Yes,” she said with a satisfied grin. “I think this will do just fine.” She then walked over to Guy and melted into his arms. “Think we can make out in here?” she asked, coyly.

  “Better not,” he warned her, a wide grin playing on his face.

  “Oh, then, we simply must.” She kissed his hair, his eyes and then his lips, passionately.

  After the cathedral visit, it was off to Skibo Castle. Once there, Madonna had to agree with Guy’s assessment of the sprawling, tranquil estate. It was truly breathtaking, the ideal romantic location for a wedding. It wasn’t difficult, Madonna would later say, for her to actually visualize how it had once been so long ago when Andrew Carnegie entertained the affluent and beautiful on this great estate, at this great castle. As soon as she walked onto the grounds, she was quickly transported into the past. Later, Madonna admitted to one friend that she couldn’t help but note Guy’s almost tender understanding of history — and of nature and its beauty — in his selection of the austere and majestic Skibo Castle, the ambience of which was wholly masculine, yet vastly sensitive. “For him to pick this place,” she marveled, “well, the idea of it — that it was his choice, not mine — it really speaks to me. And it leaves me breathless.”