Having lost her mother early, Madonna shifted identification to her father. Usually, teenage girls identify with their fathers to gain independence, but this process began early for Madonna. The stories about showing panties were many. She would do gymnastics or even flip up her skirt at the boys. Obviously enough, the young girl was acting out teenage anxiety even before she was a preteen.
Madonna rebelled against her Catholic upbringing since she was five by choosing to wear revealing clothes, going to underground gay nightclubs and rejecting her religious background. She would ignore her stepmother, compete with her siblings, and crave attention from her hardworking father.
Even when she was young, Madonna was well aware of dress, and of costume. When she was at the Catholic elementary school, she was always fascinated by the nuns who wore dark habits. She wanted to know what they were wearing beneath their habits, and so she and a friend climbed up to convent windows to see them undressing.
From an early age, Madonna had to acknowledge the sexual undertow that she felt in Catholic teaching. She didn’t want Joan insisting on dressing all of them in clothes cut from identical patterns. Madonna had her own style, often wearing tight sweaters or short skirts or going to church wearing a coat and nothing on underneath. She had recognized that she wanted to connect sex and spirituality, something that would appear in her work for years to come.
In describing her youth, Madonna saw herself as a “lonely girl who was searching for something. I wasn’t rebellious in a certain way. I cared about being good at something. I didn’t shave my underarms and I didn’t wear make-up like normal girls do. But I studied and I got good grades… I wanted to be somebody.”
High School Life
In 1968, the Ciccone family moved to an affluent suburb of Rochester, at 2036 Oklahoma Street, Rochester Hills. Their house was surrounded by pine trees and poplars, and kids could ride their bike into town.
A blooming teenager
The Ciccone family attended the Saint Andrew’s church where they became regulars there. The children attended the same schools, from Saint Andrew’s elementary to West Junior High.
The move proved to be a significant event in Madonna’s development as a performer. She took tap and jazz lessons and joined in school productions. When she was 12, she joined the school talent show and shocked the audience when she danced to The Who’s “Baba O’Reilly” wearing a fluorescent body stocking. Her father was not impressed in the least.
Madonna discovered that she could get noticed at home by getting good grades in school. She was spurred when her father offered 50 cents for As on their report cards. And with a high IQ over 140, Madonna found it easy to become a straight A student. Her brother, Martin, recalled, “Bitch never had to study, man. Never. Got straight As. I studied all the time but my mind wasn’t on it. I did it because I was supposed to. Madonna did it ‘cause she knew it would get her on to the next phase.”
Madonna began attending Adams High School in 1972 where she joined the cheerleading squad. For a nonconformist, it was surprising that Madonna chose a conventional role in high school. But she joined the cheerleading squad as it provided a physical outlet for her as it combined athletics and choreography. In addition, being a member of the squad lent her a degree of power among her peers.
A cheerleader
A high school classmate of Madonna recalled that when she was in her junior year, “she looked very mainstream. She was part of the ‘Kids Lend a Hand’ program, where older students helped out the younger ones. A lot of those girls were cheerleaders, most of them were very smart. Now it’s about the show-offs, but back then it was those who were smart, pretty and popular. If you weren’t all those things, you never tried out for cheerleading. You didn’t fit, so to speak.”
At school, Madonna was popular and sexually curious. She lost her virginity when she was 15 to a high school heartthrob, Russell Long. Afterwards, she became interested to Nick Twomey, a school football player. Both men have described Madonna as a sensitive yet confused person who was troubled by family relationships. She was often misunderstood at school, with some of her peers seeing her as a slut. But Madonna insisted that she was never promiscuous. She only slept with her steady boyfriends.
Madonna had her first taste of acting when Wyn Cooper, a former date and close friend, made an 8-mm film with her for a high school project. The film featured Madonna and her best friend, Carol Belanger, in bikinis by the swimming pool.
Cooper recalled that “It’s a silly little film with eggs at the center of it.” It showed Madonna facing the camera, taking a raw egg and cracking it above her head, and letting it drip into her mouth. The egg drips down her chin between her breasts. The next scene showed Madonna lying down on the deck with Carol cracking a raw egg onto Madonna’s stomach. And then suddenly, the egg is fried on the stomach.
Cooper explained, “For that shot Carol went into the house and fried an egg. I spliced the film together with scotch tape. Suddenly a fried egg is sitting there. Carol puts salt and pepper on it and eats the egg off Madonna’s stomach. I painted the closing credits across a urinal and got a friend to stand to the side and slowly piss it off. I’m very proud of it. I got an A for it in film class!”
That was the first time Madonna appeared in a film, and it focused on her navel which would become her logo. After the film, Madonna and Cooper became more interested in the arts.
When she was 15, Madonna had grown tired of cheerleading. Her peers noticed a significant change in her, and this change was spurred by ballet. Madonna became interested in ballet because it was rigorous and demanding; she joined an evening ballet class in a studio on Main Street. There she met Christopher Flynn, thirty years older than her, who became her mentor and dance teacher, and the second most important man in her life.
One of the Crowd
Flynn was responsible for adding some color to Madonna’s life after he introduced her to the world of concerts and art galleries in Detroit. He wanted her to exert complete dedication to her craft while at the same time broadening her influences by encouraging her to read and to take interest in fine art.
“Madonna was a blank page, believe me, and she wanted desperately to be filled in. She had a thirst for learning… that would not be denied,” Flynn said.
Flynn took her young protégé dancing in gay clubs, making her aware of gay culture in downtown Detroit. In the early 1970s it was taboo, but Madonna found her freedom and release there. It was a different kind of experience, and for the first time, she felt as though she had belonged to a place. It was exhilarating, after experiencing “like such a misfit” at school. And because she was an aggressive woman, the opposite sex saw her as a strange girl, thus avoided asking her out. This only added to feelings of inadequacy, which disappeared after finding herself in gay clubs.
Flynn would always take Madonna to Menjo’s, a ritzy supper club where Al Capone used to bring his mistress but became one of the gay night spots in 1974. Randy Frank, a cofounder, recalled that Madonna frequented the club and “act all crazy and giddy and dance around. She was the center of attention. She didn’t drink, she was just the life of the party.”
Madonna was drawn to the club’s energy, and she still frequented the place even after she left Detroit. Richard Hojna, a barman at the club, recalled that Madonna “was just a little girl from Rochester. That was before she was ‘Madonna.’ She liked to party, but none of us thought she’d be anyone special. She was just one of the crowd.”
Chapter 3 – A Work Of Art
Madonna has told Sebastien Foucan, a dancer on her Confessions Tour, “I am the work of art. I am the art.” Madonna did not speak in relation to her provocative media image. A lot of people were fixated by this image, but there was another side to Madonna that they overlooked. While some artists hire their producers and give them all the work and go home by the end of the day, Madonna was different. She was involved in the whole creative process, acting as collaborator and producer.
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sp; But Madonna, like most artists, began at the bottom and slowly climbed to the top. She was a woman full of dreams, and she knew how she would achieve them, even if it meant struggling as a dancer and facing an unknown future alone in New York in search of her dreams.
A Career in Dance
Madonna graduated from Adams High School a semester earlier than her peers. Supported by Flynn, she won a dance scholarship to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She was still tutored by Flynn after he had taken up a professorship in the dance department.
Madonna won a scholarship to the University of Michigan
Madonna was a typical dance student in that she was very driven, but right from the start, she had made herself unique, different from other students. She wanted to follow her own rules, and would come to class chewing gum and wearing a cut-up leotard held together by safety pins. One of her classmates said, “it was a punk look but really it was childish, a little girl desperate for attention.”
Like her attitude at home, Madonna was fiercely competitive with other students and would get disappointed if she wasn’t the best.
At the university, she lived at the Stockbridge Hall dorm on campus. Her roommate, Whitley Setrakian, described her as “brilliant, articulate, and very, very thin.”
Madonna was only too happy to submit to the discipline of dance. She attended two 90-minute technique classes a day and 2 hours of rehearsal for college performances. She wanted Professor Flynn’s approval, who wanted her to achieve a sylph-like body image, and so she would go on a diet of popcorn to achieve it. He was known for having his students weigh in at the start of classes; if any of them weigh over 115 pounds, he would tell them to shed the extra weight.
Madonna at the University of Michigan
Despite the grueling schedule and her classes being “draining and demanding,” Madonna still had energy to go clubbing with her roommate Whitley, and some other friends. They would go to Ruvia and Blue Frogge and they would take over the dance floor. It was at the Blue Frogge that Madonna met Steve Bray, a musician and drummer. They would become collaborators in the future, but then they were just dating.
As a dancer, Madonna became interested in all forms of dance. When clubbing, she would combine street dance, modern dance, jazz and ballet. It was liberating to dance. She recalled, “The dance floor was quite a magical place for me. The freedom that I always feel when I’m dancing, that feeling of inhabiting your body, letting yourself go, expressing yourself through music. I always have thought of it as a magical place.”
In 1977, Madonna won a scholarship to dance with the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater for 6 weeks in New York. Now 19, Madonna found herself in company of dancers as good as she was. The thought was overwhelming, but she was determined to become the best.
Madonna also had a rare opportunity to perform with choreographer Pearl Lang in 1978. She made an impression on the choreographer when she danced with other students at the local Power Arts Center. Lang’s recognition of Madonna’s talent was enough to spur the latter to move to New York to further her dance career. After two years at the university, Madonna decided to drop out, a move that Flynn supported. Of course, her father was opposed, thinking that her dropping out was a waste of her scholarship. He believed that if she finished her degree, she would have more opportunities.
One night, father and daughter had an argument where Madonna screamed, “Stop trying to run my life for me!” and threw a plate of spaghetti at the wall in anger. Tony was upset. Madonna apologized for her behavior, but it was the start of a rift that would take years to heal.
New York, New York
Madonna arrived in New York in 1978 with big dreams. But it wasn’t until four years later before she cut her first record deal. Being new to her surroundings, she must break the city to make it hers. And that alone would take so much time.
Madonna recalled, “It was the first time I’d ever taken a plane, the first time I’d ever gotten a taxi cab. I came here with $35 in my pocket. It was the bravest thing I’d ever done.”
In the meantime, she lived with a college friend before moving into a place in Hell’s Kitchen on the west side of New York. She continued dancing and attending the annual American Festival of Dance in Durham, North Carolina. There she met Pearl Lang once again.
Madonna danced for Pearl Lang, pictured here
Lang recounted, “Madonna asked me outright, ‘D’you think you need a dancer in your company?’ I’d never have dreamed of doing that when I was young. I told her, ‘We always need an understudy.’ And she said, ‘I’d like to do that.’”
In New York, Lang became busy at the American Dance Center. She remembered, “In November, the door opened to the class and there was Madonna. I used her for about two years.”
Lang’s approach to dancing was flexible, usually working on complex moves with dancers until they got it. Ever the determined girl, Madonna was able to cope up with it. Lang said, “She did what she was asked. The work itself was technically very difficult, but she made it.”
Madonna finally joined the company and was given a dancing part in I Never Saw Another Butterfly. Still young and very thin, Madonna made a graceful performance. She also brought out Lang’s motherly instincts.
Lang recalled, “I got her a job at the Russian Tea Room, checking hats and coats, because I thought she was losing weight and needed one decent meal a day. I’m sorry to say but I’m pretty sure that was the one decent meal she was getting.”
Aside from serving at the Russian Tea Room, Madonna also had other odd jobs, including waitressing at Dunkin’ Donuts and Burger King and nude art modeling. She was posing naked, but thought of it as art photography and thus “legit.”
One particular experience affected Madonna’s dance career and left her feeling vulnerable. One late night after returning from a rehearsal, Madonna was in a run-down part of town when suddenly a heavyset black man grabbed her at knifepoint and took her to the roof of a tenement where he forced her to perform oral sex. When it was finished, the man left her crying there. Madonna didn’t move for a while, afraid that the man was still on the stairs. Eventually, she made it down the building and went home. She didn’t report the incident to the police and later recalled that “the episode was a taste of my weakness, it showed me that I still could not save myself in spite of all the strong-girl show. I could never forget it.”
Madonna didn’t talk much about the incident at that time but the trauma of that experience was deep. It even led to the dissolution of her dreams. The effects of the incident became evident when she began losing concentration in classes, telling Lang that dancing gave her a back pain. Eventually she had a falling out with Lang and she stopped attending her classes.
In 1979, Madonna met and developed a relationship with aspiring musician Dan Gilroy who had formed The Breakfast Club with his brother. Their affair was put on hold after Madonna got a job performing with the Patrick Hernandez disco revue in Paris. Once in France, Jean van Lieu and Jean-Claude Pellerin, Hernandez’s Belgian producers, looked after Madonna, whom they wanted to turn into a funky Piaf-style showgirl.
Madonna enjoyed her social life very much but her career was dwindling. She also complained at the lack of activity and so she decided to go back home. She was cast in the movie A Certain Sacrifice where she played the character of Bruna, a New Wave dominatrix who hangs with her S&M tribe until she meets a nice boy. The movie didn’t make it big and didn’t finish shooting until after Madonna became famous. What’s interesting about Madonna’s role in the film is that it foreshadowed the virgin/whore dichotomy that she would later explore.
In 1980, Madonna turned her attention to music. She moved in with Gilroy and his brother and joined their band. She was a good drummer, and sometimes she would run out front to sing. The band spent hours rehearsing, and Madonna did her part by working hard and learning how to play the guitar and to piece together songs. This was a new direction for her, and she thought that a career in rock music might be her
niche.
The band, consisting of the Gilroy brothers, Madonna, and her dancer friend Angie Smit on bass, performed a few gigs but there was no chemistry, partly owing to the fact that Madonna wasn’t comfortable sharing the spotlight with another attractive female.
Smit was replaced by Mike Monahan and drummer Gary Burke took Madonna’s place; she became the lead singer. Again, the band lacked chemistry, with the Gilroy brothers doing all the writing of songs and choreographing the moves. During a heated discussion, Dan Gilroy exclaimed, “You’re all naked ambition and no talent!”
The Breakfast Club: Angie Smit, Ed Gilroy, Madonna and Dan Gilroy
It was painful to hear it. Madonna left the band with Monahan and Burke and formed Madonna & The Sky, but it, too, was doomed to fail. Burke was frustrated by his day job and Madonna’s criticism which led to him dropping out. Her band was saved when Steve Bray, an old friend from Michigan, moved to New York and was looking for work. He replaced Burke as the band’s drummer. The band was renamed The Millionaires, and then Emmy.
After a few months, Madonna boldly announced that the name of the band would be Madonna. Bray thought it sounded too Catholic.
Chapter 4 – On The Way To Stardom
In 1981, Madonna met the person who’d bring changes to her life. Her band was rehearsing at the 10th floor of the Music Building on West 39th Street. Gotham Records, a recording studio, also had offices in the building, and it was owned by Italian-American Camille Barbone. Madonna wanted to impress her.
Madonna and Camille first met in the elevator, when Madonna said to Camille, as though they know each other, “Did you do it yet?” Nevertheless, Camille was amused, and recalled, “She did that a lot – used non sequiturs to get people’s attention. Was she alluding to sex? I don’t know. She was always very flirtatious with me. She knew I was a gay woman. She’d work it.”
Modern Divas Boxed Set Page 2
