She can dance, she can sing and she can talk a blue streak. Neil Tennant listens. Photography by Deborah Feingold.
On the day she was born, her parents gave her the same name as her mother, Madonna. An unusual name for a little girl but an eye-catching name for a girl with a sweet, strong voice who wants to be a star and seems to be on the verge of breaking through as a singer, a dancer and, she hopes, an actress. Her album, simply titled Madonna, established an almost permanent residecy on dance club turntables soon after its release last summer, her video for “Burning Up” has had frequent plays on MTV and her single “Holiday” crept into the pop charts. She’s supremely confident that she will triumph wherever she ventures and she has the energy and determination to venture far. Madonna Ciccone from Detroit, Michigan is street wise, fast-talking and articulate. So why not let her do the talking?
“I come from a big Italian family with eight brothers and sisters. I was born in Detroit and then moved to Pontiac - everybody’s families worked in the car factories. I went to three different Catholic schools with uniforms and nuns hitting you over the head with staplers. Very strict and regimented. To my superiors I seemed like a very good girl and I was very good at getting into these situations where I was the hall monitor and I reported people who weren’t behaving. I used to make things up that people didn’t really do but my mother died when I was really young so the nuns forgave me for a lot of things I did because they thought, well, she doesn’t have a motherand her father’s never there. And I knew it, so I milked it for everything I could. From the very start I was a very bad girl.
I had a very musical upbringing. I studied piano for a year but I quit and convinced my father to let me take balletlessons instead. When I got older I learned jazz and tap and modern danceing and all that. My father and mother had a lot of ‘Twist’ records and I did the Limbo to Chunny Checker’s records - you know, you go under the broom - and I listened to Johnny Mathis and Harry Belafonte and Sam Cooke. When I was older I got into pop music, not the Beatles, but things like ‘The Letter’ by the Box Tops and the Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar.’ I love that record. And then there was the whole Motown thing.
I lived in a real intergrated neighborhood. We were one of the only white families in the neighborhood actuallyand all my girlfriends had Motown and black records. And they had yard dances in their back yards. Little 45 turntables and they’d have a stack of records and everybody just danced in the driveway and the back yard.
I really started singing when I was at school in musical theater, you know, My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music. I always had an idea that I wanted to be a performer but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to sing or dance or be an actress or what, so I concentrated on dancing. I always got the lead roles in everything so I thought I might as well go and test it in the big time and, when I was 17, I came to New York.
When I got there I was dancing in modern dance companies for a while but it just wasn’t satisfying enough. I was going to musical theaters and telling them that I could dance and sing because I wanted to use my voice.
The first instrument I learned to play was the drums. I was a drummer in a band called The Breakfast Club with these two crazy brothers, Eddie and Danny Gilroy, who lived in a synagogue in Queens. They had a whole musical studio there with every instrument and Danny was my boyfriend. He went to work every day and I lived there for a year and I taught myself, and they helped me too, how to play instruments. Eventually the more music I understood and played, the more songs I wrote and the more I wanted to be the fromt person of the band. So I got my own band called Emmy and I was the frontperson playing guitar.
Then I fell out with my manager and I didn’t have a rehearsal studio and I didn’t have any musicians because my manager had paid them. I lost everything. All I could do was get a demo tape together to get a record deal. I started working with this real musical wizard, Steve Bray. who helped me write songs and put them on tape.
I was living in the street, in a manner of speaking. Those were the days when those things didn’t bother me, wearing the same clothes for three weeks. Steve had a studio where he rehearsed with bands and I slept there. I started going to clubs because I knew that record company people hung out in the DJ booths - mainly Danceteria. I met this guy, Mark Kamins, who was DJing and he started flirting with me and asked to hear a tape of my music. The next day he played it over the speakers before the club opened and he said, ‘God, this is really good, I’m going to get you a record deal.’ He took me around to record companies and Sire offered me the best deal right away. I made the 12″ single for them, ‘Everybody,’ and all the other stuff happened after that.
When the record got big, all those discos said, well come and do track dates. That’s when you sing live over tapes of the music and you get paid thousands of dollars which didn’t make sense to me because when I was in a band I got paid nothing. So I said, that’s great, but I should make something more visiual out of it. With my dance training I thought, why not make a dance scenario out of it? I went to clubs and picked people whose dancing I really liked and put together a team of dancers and choreographed them myself.
After I’d put out two 12″ disco records and they did fairly well, I thought I must have a manager, I thought, who’s the most successful person in the music industry and who’s his manager? I want him. So seymour Stein of Sire set up a meeting with Freddy De Mann who, at the time, was Michael Jackson’s manager. I went out to L.A to meet him and then he came out to New York and saw a show I did at Studio 54. I was so nervous because Michael Jackson’s so incredible live and I thought, how can I be as good as him? But he lied the show and now he’s my manager.
I want to keep on making great records and to cross over more into the pop charts as I have with ‘Holiday.’ I want to develop as a music artist but also to get involved in other things. I’d like to make more videos and to write music for other people and then I have a great interest in films. I haven’t been in any films yet but I will. I know a lot of casting directors and I’ve already read for several parts. It’ll just happen. I’m doing a small part in a movie called Visionquest. Phil Ramone’s doing the soundtrack, the man who did Flashdance, and I’m doing two of the songs. And in the movie there’s a club that these kids go to and I’m going to be a performer in the club. So that’s my foot in the door!
You’re very ambitious, aren’t you?
Madonna Ciccone laughs, spluttering over a cup of capuccino: “What do you think?
“I worked long and hard for everything I got. I think you get what you deserve.”
