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Madonna doesn’t like to reflect on the past – she’s always been determined to keep moving forward, her US publicist Liz Rosenberg once told me.
So her first greatest hits Celebration tour – which kicks off at London’s O2 Arena on Saturday, 40 years after the release of her first, self-titled album – marks a departure for the Material Girl. At the age of 65, the restlessly creative global pop icon is finally honouring her past.
She’s scheduled to play an exhausting 78 shows, winding through Europe and North America to finish in Mexico City on April 24 next year.
Dates had to be postponed when Madonna was hospitalised in June with a serious bacterial infection. Those close to her feared she had been overworking but, for her, success means never taking anything for granted.
Interviewing her friends, musicians and ex-lovers for my biography, I was struck by her fearlessness, combined with singular focus and self-belief.
Madonna’s hairdresser L’nor Wolin recalls working with her and director Mary Lambert on the Like A Virgin video shoot in Venice. L’nor sat in a gondola as Lambert filmed with a hand-held camera.
She recalled: “My job is to tell Madonna when the bridges are coming. She is standing up and dancing and lip-synching. I shout ‘Duck!’ two split seconds before she’s gonna get beheaded. She leaves it to the last second…She has no fear.”
Madonna also has a deep-thinking inner life that drives her. Growing up in Detroit, she was a cheerleader in high school yet by 16 had drifted away into ballet and bohemianism.
School friend Kim Drayton says: “There was a real transformation. She was in the thespian society and didn’t shave her armpits. Everyone was like, ‘Oh, what happened?’ She was popular as a cheerleader, then became very individual and was kind of stand-offish.”
Ex-boyfriend Wyn Cooper remembers Madonna as “a free spirit” but also someone who took herself seriously: “She wasn’t overly charismatic, you’d never have guessed she’d become a world famous pop star. That’s why it was so surprising when she became big.”
It was as if Madonna’s stage persona fermented privately inside – fed by a diet of Hollywood musicals, Motown and offbeat poetry – until she found the right outlet.
Her first manager Camille Barbone said: “An element that was so important to her success was that women didn’t resent her.
She studied dance at the University of Michigan and moved to New York in 1979, signing a record deal with Sire, part of Warner Records. Launching on the early 80s pop scene with streetwise choreography that attracted an army of wannabes, she used her magnetism as a live performer.
“Normally when women see their boyfriends riveted on a girl there’s resentment, but the girls were riveted too. She was open and honest in her songwriting. No frills.” The stage is where Madonna feels most comfortable. From her first The Virgin tour in 1985, she built her audience through live shows.
She has kept herself relevant with constant reinvention, from early days crucifix earrings and tousled hair via sculpted muscles on the 1990 Blond Ambition tour, to the disco leotard and diamante cross in 2006’s Confessions. Image changes are not just cosmetic – each tour is linked to an album that marks a shift in her life.
While recording 1989’s Like A Prayer, Madonna was breaking up with Sean Penn – it became known as her divorce album. And co-producer Steve Bray, recalling her hit Express Yourself, compares the star to Daenerys Targaryen in Game Of Thrones, emerging from the fire: “In love you get burned, but it doesn’t destroy you.”
Backing singer Niki Haris says on Blond Ambition, Madonna was like a warrior: “Cone bras, bustiers, platforms…anything she could do to make it bad, she went for it.”
The show was about her Catholic upbringing, fusing sexuality and spirituality. For the Like A Prayer section, the set was a church and Madonna “insisted that the Greek pillars be real,” says lighting designer Peter Morse. “She had 40ft aluminium castings rise up hydraulically from the floor. Nothing was phoney or fake.”
Madonna remains culturally important because she taps into the zeitgeist, drawing on her experience as a woman and mother, with a laser-sharp eye for detail.
As she has matured, her shows have evolved. Because her mother died of cancer when Madonna was five, much of her music has been about trying to escape death. She admitted: “I’ve always been aware of my own mortality. I’ve always had that feeling of, ‘What is the point of living and life?’”
That altered when she became a mum and realised that “we’re here to share, to give”. In a recent Instagram post to mark the birthday of twin daughters Stella and Estere she wrote: “In a way…we are all displaced children, looking for connection. Looking for love.”
- Lucy O’Brien is author of Madonna: Like An Icon (Corgi, £10.99). Visit expressbookshop.com or call 020 3176 3832
