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Record Mirror

UK May 19th 1984

By Graham K.

Clubland Mourns! Hang on to your hats, nightpeople - Doyenne of post-midnight dance developments, Madonna, has some bad news. The brand new Queen of disco, only recently elevated to that heady throne, is set to abdicate - about to desert her home from home - and break a million hearts en route.....

“I’m not going to clubs half as much as I used to. I like to get to bed early now - I don’t want to stay up and party.”

Whaaat? No more intoxicating choreographed delight? No more sensuous swaying till dawn? No more regal demonstrations at the Funhouse? 

“No! All that music like Freeez - Yuk! It doesn’t have any feeling and that’s all they play at the Funhouse. It’s all Jellybean [Madonna’s sometimes paramour] ever plays - he decides, he gives the crowd their taste. I used to like it at the Funhouse but I don’t go there anymore - it’s much too commercial. All that electro stuff gets on my nerves - it doesn’t have any longevity, it won’t be remembered.”

What on earth will you do if discos no longer hold their former appeal?

“Oh, I go to the movies practically every day.....and I read a lot too.”

Madonna forsaking loud music and dark corners for the printed page and the silver screen? This is too much!

“But I do like things to be a bit sick. That film ‘The Nightporter’ with Drik Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling....Oh my God!....what an incredible movie. And ‘Salo’.....absolutely sick! And Roman Polanski - he’s made a lot of really sick movies!”

Sickness and sleaze has replaced dancin’ an’ romancin’?

“Not sleaze! But I do like realness. The ‘Nightporter’ touches on a subject people don’t like to talk about - that people are drawn to things that cause them pain - they want it. I’m drawn to those kind of things.”

So you’re obssessive?

“Uh huh. But I’m not going to tell you about them! There’s just a few......”

But they take up a lot of your waking hours?

“Yes!”

Do books ffed those obsessions? “Yes, but I do go through phases - I just read Roman Polanski’s biography, that was lovely and juicy. I like stories - that Edie Sedgwick book, it’s not just about a person, it’s a period of time, an era.”

Are you in love with the sixties?

“Well, all the music from that time, that Motown stuff - The Supremes, the Miracles, Martha Reeves, the Shirelles, the Ronettes - they’re the quintessential pop songs. I also liked the Archies, Gary Puckett and psycheldelic stuff like Strawberry Alarm Clock. Those clothes, too - the gowns, the shark skin suits - no-one in showbiz dresses that good now.”

Not Boy George?

“Yuk! That makes me sick....”

Duran?

“No!”

Is there anyone?

“Mmmmmm.....Billy Idol.” (gasp! - style ed.)

Who are the real dapper dressers, then, Madonna?

“It always comes from the street - people who aren’t in showbiz at all. Latin and black kids from the Lower East Side and the Bronx. Despite the music the kids at the Roxy and the Funhouse, they’ve got the most style. I like clothes you can move about in - I don’t like it when someone looks as if they’re glued into their outfit.”

So the Funhouse still rules in questions of satorial correctness?

“Sure, it’s cute - I like athletic sportswear. I’ve gone all through that with my Puerto Rican boyfriends. I read all the fashion magazines and I follow designers like Westwood and Jean-Paul Gaultier. I don’t have much time to go shopping, though, and half the stuff I want I can’t get in New York, “she says, enviously eyeing my Katherine Hamnett T-Shirt. We came to an arrangement later.........

Despite the upcoming release of “Borderline” from her much plundered debut LP, the gal Madonna has just completed a brand new set of ditties to wow us this autumn before she sets sail on a gen-u-ine big band tour. Our snatched meeting takes place amid the bustle of the mix-down, a charming Nile Rodgers (yes, the Chic Nile Rodgers!) bidding us a fond greeting before wrestling with Madonna’s muse. Said waxing is due to be titled ‘Like a Virgin’. She seems a trifle excited........

“It’s much harder, much more aggressive than the first record. The songs on that were pretty weak and I went to England during the recording so I wasn’t around for a lot of it - I wasn’t in control. On this one I’ve chosen all the songs and I want them all to be hits - no filler! That’s why I’ve done outside songs as well as six of my own - a lot of groups are stubborn about that but I want every song to be really strong. We’ve done a version of the Rose Royce hit ‘Love Don’t Live Here Anymore’ with live strings - it’s great.”

Has the recording been eventful?

“Oh yeah - last week one of my idols came down - Diana Ross. She’d been recording downstairs and she and Nile are real good friends. Her kids really like my stuff so she brought a bottle of champagne and toasted my success - I was so flattered. You hear so much about celebrities being horrible then you meet them and they’re not that way at all. I met Barbra Streisand and she was the same - enthusiaastic and encouraging.”

Have you done the rounds of the fame and party circuit?

“Some. I don’t really like those things. Last week I was invited to a dinner with Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones but those things are really kinda boring. It’s more interesting to keep a low profile, not show up at everything.”

When you do go out is it limousines from door to door?

“No - I still ride the subway every day - I guess I think I’m not that noticeable yet. I have a lot of young girl fans and they’ll start squealing on the trains. People come up and say ‘you look just like Madonna’ and I’ll go ‘thank you’ - or they’ll say, ‘are you Madonna?’ and I’ll say, ‘yes’. Then they’ll go, ‘no you’re not’ and I’ll say ‘OK, I’m not’....it tends to go on like that. It’s still important to stay in touch with the street. My friends are still the same people and I still go to the same little divey restaurants in the East Village I used to go to. Last time I went a girl did come up and start snapping pictures - that really made me sick.”

So it’s getting harder to cling to normality?

“Yeah, And I know it’s gonna get weirder and weirder.”

Are you determined to concentrate solely on music?

“Well, when I was little I wanted to be a nun. Then I discovered boys when I was about nine. My father told me to stay away from them which made me even more interested. I also always wanted to be a movie star and I’ve studied acting which is a natural progression for anyone who’s been on stage a lot. And videos. If they’re good, are like a short form of cinema. Then there was writing. I wrote a lot of short stories and poems, and at one point I actually decided I wanted to write. But when I started a novel I did about 30 pages and just stopped!”

Is it possible to master everything?

“It’s certainly possible to spend time on things and do them well - and master them. The thing is the public never wants you to be good at more than one thing - They’ll slpa you down. It’s not bad to want to experiment.”

And will this experimentation earn Big Bucks?

“Money’s not important. I never think I want to make millions and millions of dollars, but I don’t want to have to worry about it. The more money you have the more problems you have. I went from making no money to making comparatively a lot and all I’ve had is problems. Life was simpler when I had no money, when I just barely survived....”

Record Mirror

UK March 24th 1984

by Simon Hills

Have a good look while you can.......This is your last chance to see Madonna appearing like this.

“I’m getting tired of being compared to Marilyn Monroe. I still wear lots of jewelry, but I’m tired of wearing all that stuff as well because Cyndi Lauper’s doing it now.”

“What I’m doing now is I’m letting my hair grow out, and it’s going back to its natural colour, which is actually dark. But I still think I’m going to look pretty wild and eclectic.”

Madonna’s crashed into the charts again with “Lucky Star”, but like her last single “Holiday” the song is actually quite old. It’s taken a long time for her record company Warner Bros. to capitalize on the singles.

It’s something that the disco singer reckons has a lot to do with good old male chauvinism.

“Actually it has been hard making it as a woman. I had to do everything on my own, and it was very hard to convince people that I was worth a record deal. After that I had the same problem trying to convince the record company that I had more to offer than a one-off girl singer.”

“Warner Bros. is a hierarchy of old men, and it’s a chauvinistic environment to be working in because I’m treated like the sexy little girl, I have had to prove them wrong, which has meant not only proving myself to my fans, but to my record company as well. That is something that happens when you are a girl. It wouldn’t have happened to Prince or Michael Jackson.”

Now Madonna is working on a new album in New York with Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers - who produced Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’. Her DJ Boyfriend will only work on one track because he’s got his own work and is a technician, rather than a musician, says Madonna.

Record Mirror

UK January 7th 1984

By Simon Hills in New York

It was love at first sight. But Madonna and Jellybean were both being far too cool to admit it.

The rising disco singer first met DJ John ‘Jellybean’ Benitez when she was taking her demo tape around the New York clubs. However it was only much later when he produced her ‘Holiday’ single, which is now released in Britain, that true live flourished.

‘I know that record companies wouldn’t listen to my demo tape, so I started taking it round the clubs and giving it to DJ’s.” says Madonna.

“At the time I started hanging out at the Danceteria - I love hanging out in clubs and dancing, and my dream was to make a record that I would want to go into a club and dance to myself. I met the DJ in the Danceteria, and he thought it was really great, and everyone danced to it. He was an ex-A&R guy and knew a lot of other guys in the business and I ended up signing to Sire and made my first album.

“I met Jellybean when my first record came out. After ‘Everybody’ was released he took me round to all the DJ’s in the major clubs - the Garage, the Funhouse, Studio 54 and those places were playing my records.

“he liked me but nothing really happened in the beginning - we were both a bit cool. A lot of people bring him tapes and stuff, and I thought I’m not going to play up to that, I won’t make him think that I’m playing up to him to help my career.

“after that I had to remix ‘Physical Attraction’ and I was aware of the work he was doing. My album was almost finished and I decided to get Jellybean to produce one of the cuts - and he turned into my producer and my boyfriend. Everything happened at the same time.”

Now the pair share an enormous loft in New York’s fashionable SoHo area. Enormous, in fact, is an understatement.

Madonna and I are chatting over a fresh orange juice at opposite ends of a small table in the wooden floored flat, which is about twice the length of a school classroom. The table is the only piece of furniture and it overlooks the street below.

Various people bellow up to attract her attention six floors down. The doorbaells don’t work in the converted warehouse, and when they are functioning, they get vandalised.

Madonna sits and talks quickly and precisely with her head in her hands. every now and then she has to take a phone call and bursts into life, running and slipping down the length of the vast apartment. This is the centre of the Madonna/Jellybean partnership, Jellybean doing his famous DJ work down at the Funhouse, and Madonna concentrating on music and now films.

It’s a far cry from when she first arrived in the Big Apple from Detroit.

“Although I took to New York straight away I was really lonely,” she say “ I didn’t know anyone, I didn’t have any money and I didn’t have anywhere to stay. you’re really confined, you’re a small fish in a big sea instead of a big fish in a little pond.

“I was getting lost on the subway trains all the time and things like that. You really have to gear yourself to your work, that’s your focal point and that’s your secuirty. Slowly I got to know it and became secure, and now it’s odd to think how scared I was in the beginning.”

Madonna’s work intially was as a dancer, taking her into a Broadway musical because she could sing as well. From there she got picked up by a management copany and went to spend six months in Paris, but that got blown out when she realised that there were other artists who were breaking, who would obviously get more attention than her.

Back in New York again, she settled down to learning every instrument in the book, and ended up drumming for a garage band. She quit when she decided she wanted to be at the front, and eventually decided to chuck it all in and make a demo tape single with the help of an old friend from Detroit she came across by mistake. The tape was taken to clubs, and that brings us back to the beginning of the story.

So why should Madonna have been so successful? ‘Holiday’ has shot up the charts in America and she’s had some acclaim here, although ‘holiday’ still has to prove itself.

“I think I’m one of the first disco personalities,” she says. “A lot of it is rather cold dance music, there’s no personality to it, and the people are really forgettable. That’s the difference wth British music. I think. There’s a group and with it there’s fashion, there’s a look, there’s something for people to attach it to. It seems there’s more coherence.

“There’s already a big British invasion here because of that, I think, especially as there’s a bit of a glut right now as all the big people choose to put their records out and it doesn’t leave room for anything fresh.

“Being brought up in Detroit and having older brothers who played soul music, it was my main influence, of course, I never listened to heavy metal or rock music. So my sound is the result of the kind of music I always liked.

I’m approaching it from a very single point of view because I’, not an incredible musician. I want to keep it that way, I want to be direct.”

Jellybean has been an influence as well, of course. Down at his club Funhouse, he mixes everything behind a pounding bass drim which dominates the huge club.

Everyone goes there to dance. There aren’t groups of people drinking or trying to pick up. Dancing is king. People gyrate in front of the mirrors which are set up on all pillars supporting the huge warehouse on New York’s West Side. The more confident are up on stage doing their thing, and if anyone’s really hot on the dance floor, a small group will stand round and watch.

Disco is not Madonna’s only talent. The singer has trained as an actress and a dancer, and has recently worked on a film about a wrestler who comes to the city to make it big.

“It’s a small part I have as a singer in a club where the boy goes with this girl,” says Madonna. “Each song is symbolic. One is from the girls point of view, as she’s not really attached to this guy. There’s a slow song where they dance together, which is the nearest they get to being really together and there’s one from the guy’s point of view where he knows he can’t have her and she’s leaving.

“The film is a coming of age movie. The boy’s working out training for the Olympics and at the ame time he’s trying to fit in. In the end he wins the big fight, but looses the girl.

“It doesn’t sound much, but it’s really a very good movie.”

Isn’t Madonna in danger of losing out by tring to do too much? So many people who have crossed from one medium to the other have had a job making it in either field.

“You can cross over - Judy Garland did it,” she exclaims. “I don’t see how it’s not possible. If Sissy Spacek can be a country singer, why can’t I be an actress?

“I don’t see it as being so diverse, expecially with video becoming so strong. Certain things are central to any performer and one of those aspects is being able to watch them. After you’ve done an album you often have to wait around for six months until it’s promoted, so I might as well act in that time.

“There aren’t any rules that say you can’t. Music is very important to me, but the thought that I can only make records for the rest of my life fills me with horror. I think people who are talented at something are good at a lot of different things.”