Life with My Sister Madonna (2 page)

Each tour, I would watch the dancers quickly fall under Madonna's spell. Getting closer and closer to their perceived paradise of being anointed her close platonic friend and intimate. Then, at the end of the tour, being hurtled out into the cold world once more, never to see her again, except on TV, in a movie, onstage—but only from the audience's perspective.

One dancer on each tour will, however, spend more time with her, will receive special preference, be more intimate with her—and that person is a heterosexual dancer on the tour. On
The Virgin Tour
the dancer Lyndon B. Johnson filled that role. On the
Who's That Girl?
tour, the dancer Shabadu. On the
Blond Ambition
tour, the dancer Oliver Crumes. And on
The Girlie Show,
dancer Michael Gregory.

The die was always cast during auditions, when Madonna inspected a lineup of dancers, much as Catherine the Great was wont to inspect a lineup of potential lovers. In Michael's case, we held the dance auditions in New York and West Hollywood. We took Polaroids of the final ten candidates and videotaped them dancing. Then Madonna and I went home, examined the Polaroids, and viewed the videos together.

Of all the candidates, I found Michael the weakest dancer, the one with the least personality. Yet Madonna fought me and insisted that we hire him. I decided there was no point in trying to thwart her, so he was hired.

Here in London on
The Girlie Show,
he is now her chosen straight man, the boy to whom she turns whenever she is bored by the many gay men on the tour—me included—and to whom she will be maternal, kind, almost loving. It wasn't a question of whether she and her straight man on tour ever make love, just that he is her insurance against the loneliness of the road.

 

A
T FOUR THIRTY,
she has two hours of personal time; her chiropractor gives her a treatment, she has a massage, after which she remains on her massage table, trying to sleep, but fails.

At six thirty, she puts on part of the costume she will be wearing in the show's first number: black, sequined shorts and bra, long black gloves, and the trusty black fishnets she always wears—even under trousers, jeans, or leggings—because she believes they protect her leg muscles. Even though her mind is running a mile a minute, while her hair and makeup are being done, she sits remarkably still, ever the disciplined trouper.

At seven thirty, it's time for her new dresser, Daniel Huber, to finish dressing her. Although Madonna has now elevated me to director, she still tried to persuade me to carry on as her dresser, but I refused. She initially kicked against my refusal, but in the end capitulated. So now she's about to strip naked in front of Daniel Huber. I know she's at her most vulnerable, and that vulnerability will escalate as the show progresses. For although Madonna is notorious for her lack of inhibition, for posing nude for art students, modeling topless for Gaultier—in private, she is far too shy and prudish to allow herself to be seen naked at close quarters by a stranger. Diametrically opposed to her sex-goddess image, I know, but undeniably true.

I've briefed Daniel ahead of time on the requirements for being Madonna's dresser, and strategies for surviving the job without going crazy. So he fully understands that the best policy is to remain silent—no matter what abuse Madonna will inevitably dish out to him—and to talk only when answering the ubiquitous question “How do I look?” to which he is duty-bound to always respond, “Wonderful, Madonna, wonderful.”

Thus armed with my advice, he helps her into the rest of her costume—high, lace-up black patent leather boots and eye mask—then hands her the riding crop she will brandish in the first number, “Erotica.”

At ten to eight, Madonna, the dancers, the band, and I all join hands and form a circle. Madonna leads the prayer: “Dear God, it's the opening night of the tour in London. Please watch over my dancers and my band. I know everyone is nervous, me included. We've worked really long and hard to get here. Please help us make this a great show. I love you all. Go out there and break a leg. Kick some ass. Amen.”

Then it's showtime.

With security leading the way, Madonna and I, and her two backup singers, Niki Harris and Donna De Lory, all hold hands and begin the long walk from the dressing room, down the tunnel, then backstage, singing Stevie Wonder's “For Once in My Life,” while Madonna's manager, dapper Freddy DeMann, with his pencil moustache, chews gum ferociously and follows behind.

When we arrive at the back of the stage, Niki and Donna take their positions with the band. Madonna and I continue down a narrow access tunnel that leads under the stage, from where she will make her first entrance.

Madonna and I wait there alone, holding hands. She is not shaking now. She is calm in the extreme, secure in the knowledge that she knows every dance step, every lyric by heart. She is confident, in control, with little self-doubt, aware that once she is on the stage, in front of her audience, she will be where she belongs, doing what she does best.

I kiss her on the cheek and say, “You look amazing. You're going to be great. I can feel it. There's nothing to worry about. Everything is going to be perfect.”

She nods wordlessly, her eyes suddenly big and almost childlike. Before she takes her place onstage, out of habit I hold out my palm and she spits her Ricola cough drop straight into it.

Then she gives me an elated, slightly frightened smile that says, “Here we go,” takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders, and steels herself to face her audience.

The lights go up, and a burst of screaming hits us. An intense jolt of electricity bolts from the seventy-five-thousand-strong audience onto the stage and crashes over us like shock waves, powerful and exhilarating.

Circus music booms through the stadium. Onstage, in front of a red velvet curtain, dancer Carrie Ann Inaba, naked except for a red G-string, slithers down a forty-foot pole, while a blue satinclad clown—the leitmotif of the show—watches onstage.

I am now standing in the pit, the five-foot gap between the front-row seats and the stage. As Carrie Ann reaches stage level, then slides below, the curtain goes up to reveal Madonna on a smoke-filled stage, singing “Erotica.” Her close-cropped blond hair glitters in the limelight and she cracks the whip.

Her dancing is elegant, fluid, a tribute to the early training we both shared. And her body is a work of art, thanks to the daily two-and-a-half-hour gym regimen she follows when she's not on tour. Her yoga classes, too, are responsible for her perfect tone and muscle definition, her queenly posture, her poise. In a yoga class, of course, all her competitive instincts come to the fore. Whether it is yoga or friendships or Kabbalah, my sister always has to be the best, the greatest—the one woman who can wrap her leg around her body twenty-five times and stand on one finger.

Madonna's competitive spirit, of course, is part of what made her—well, Madonna. That, and her intelligence, her capacity to learn, her superlative memory, her unrivaled charm, and her talent for live performance, which—as I watched her in
The Girlie Show
—takes my breath away. I marvel at her connection with the audience, the vivacity and precision of her performance, the grace of her hand gestures, the artful turn of her head, exactly as we rehearsed them together.

For the next number, “Vogue,” Daniel has added a black sequined headdress to her outfit, part Erté, partly Zizi Jeanmaire. The passionate interest Madonna and I both share in the icons of the past has heavily influenced the content and the vibe of
The Girlie Show
, and in particular
The Virgin Tour
scene in which she parodies Marlene Dietrich.

Throughout our time living and hanging out together in downtown Manhattan, and when I lived with Madonna in Los Angeles—initially in the home she shared with her first husband, my then brother-in-law, Sean Penn, and later in the one she sometimes shared with Warren Beatty—we used to stay up until all hours watching old movies together. Dietrich's movies—especially
The Blue Angel
and
Morocco
—were particular favorites, but we also loved Louise Brooks in
Pandora's Box
, Joan Crawford's
Mildred Pierce
, Claudette Colbert in
It Happened One Night
, and Judy Holliday in
Born Yesterday
.

Madonna's hitherto unrealized dream is to become a great movie star. I wish her well, but secretly believe that the only part that she is truly capable of playing is that of herself, Madonna. A part that she has created and curated. And what a part it is: cross Shirley Temple with Bettie Page, Elizabeth I with Lucille Ball, Bette Davis with Doris Day, and you have a flavor of the artist known as Madonna.

 

T
HE MOMENT THERE
is a brief interlude between songs during
The Girlie Show
and Madonna goes offstage, I run backstage to her dressing room. If she was calm before the performance, during the interval she is always extremely nervous and jumpy. While she re-touches her makeup and sprays herself with Annick Goutal's Gardenia Passion, her favorite perfume, I give her a heightened version of my standard pep talk:

“You look fantastic. Your voice is strong. And your moves were terrific.”

She stops trembling, takes a gulp of Evian.

And strides back onstage.

Part of what I said to my sister was true, part was slightly bullshit. Her moves are, indeed, terrific. Her voice, however, is another matter. My sister's unwillingness to submit to the drudgery of regular singing lessons is a by-product of the supreme self-confidence with which she was born. That self-confidence has overridden any lack of training. She's a showman—some may have better voices, but she is the living embodiment of the fact that discipline, vision, ambition, determination, drive, and, of course, self-confidence are what make a superstar. Her legendary self-confidence also seems to be a family trait that I've inherited: I relish testing myself and I always embrace a challenge. Although I've been a designer, an artist, and am now a director, I have eschewed any formal training in these disciplines. Moreover, like my sister, I rarely submit to authority and prefer to plunge into a career and learn as I go along.

Until now, our strategy has worked for both of us, but now Madonna is starting to realize that the lack of a strict regimen of vocal training means that her voice is too thin for the demands she now places on it. One of her solutions is to hire Donna to be one of her backup singers, as her voice mirrors and supports Madonna's. In contrast, Niki is on hand to provide the soul. Most of the time, Donna and Niki compete over who gets to sing which harmony, who is closest to Madonna, and who gets the most attention from her.

Niki has a better voice than Madonna. Her voice is fully trained, and Madonna fights to keep her at bay because Niki is fully capable of drowning her out and often does. When that happens, Madonna sometimes orders Niki's mike to be switched off.

Once or twice, Madonna has even raised the possibility of firing Niki. Not that she would ever do it herself. A remarkable chink in my sister's dominatrix-style armor is that—although she makes a big show of screaming orders to her underlings during rehearsal, on the road, and, in particular, when she is playing to the cameras as in
Truth or Dare
—she is utterly terrified of confrontation, avoids it at all costs, can never bring herself to fire anyone face-to-face, and always delegates that task to one of her minions, usually me.

 

M
ADONNA IS SINGING
“Holiday” now and, transformed by her blond Afro wig and sequined clothes, is every inch the seventies disco queen, skipping around the stage, joyful, euphoric, completely relaxed and happy. For the first time tonight, I catch her eye and wink. She winks back at me. A few moments later, she throws me a quick, triumphant smile, a tacit acknowledgment that all our work together has paid off, and that
The Girlie Show
is a success. I smile back, elated by our complicity. She ends the show on “Everybody”—her first hit and the first song she ever cowrote—the audience goes wild, and the stadium floor heaves with the dancing crowds.

Madonna exits the stage. After a few minutes, a performer in the blue satin Pierrot costume and sad-clown mask reappears. This time—although the audience won't know it until she removes her mask—Madonna is playing the clown.

As children, we were rarely taken to the circus, but as adults, Madonna and I loved seeing Cirque du Soleil in Battery Park, Manhattan. We both loved the Cirque du Soleil because of the sexy, bizarre, and fresh way in which they approached the concept of the circus. The Cirque went on to become a great inspiration on our future work together and, in particular, on
The Girlie Show
. There is, however, something of an irony in my sister dressing as a clown, because she is the world's worst joke teller. I cringe whenever she attempts to tell a joke, either in private or in public, because she always botches the punch line.

I understand that her basic inability to be truly funny stems from the childhood loss of our mother. For even in the midst of the upbeat
Girlie Show,
amid the worship of the crowd, the intoxication of the night, the sad clown eyes betray a profound truth about my sister. Like me, somewhere deep inside—because we lost our mother when we were so young—no matter how far Madonna climbs, how famous she becomes, how wealthy, and how loved, her soul will always be pervaded by a secret sadness. Just listen to some of the lyrics she has written during her twenty-five-year career, for such songs as “Oh Father” and “Live to Tell,” to name a few.