Madonna (13 page)

The next objective to be obtained was a record deal. Free from Camille's influence, Madonna again enlisted the help of Steve Bray. The two of them pooled their resources and recorded three demo tapes of songs that they had written. The rough cuts were: “Ain't No Big Deal,” “Everybody,” and “Burning Up.”

For a fun night on the town, Madonna and her friends would don their rags-as-riches outfits and hit the hot dance clubs. On Friday nights they'd go to the Roxy, a former roller-skating rink on West 18th Street that became an urban dance spot when roller-disco suddenly fell out of fashion. Other nights it was Danceteria, a four-story something-for-everyone club on West 21st Street. The first level had a dance floor with a small stage for a variety of live presentations. Sometimes the club would feature experimental rock theater pieces like Casino Evil, other nights it would showcase name performers like Nona Hendryx, and more often than not it would play host to unknown acts on their way to stardom, like Sade. The third floor had chairs, booths, and dozens of TV screens for chilling out and socializing, and the fourth floor was a multipurpose area used primarily for invitation-only private events.

However, it was the second floor that Madonna and company would usually frequent. It was a hot dance floor where the D.J. would program nonstop danceable rock and post-disco new wave music. It was a veritable see-and-be-seen, dance-your-ass-off “in” spot. It especially flourished when the flash-in-the-pan punk pad, The Mudd Club, began losing its downtown crowd.

Madonna would often hit the clubs with her girlfriends Debbie and Claudia, looking for some action. They would do all of the latest inner-city dance steps like the Smurf and the Webo (Spanish for “ball shaker”). Their graffiti-artist pal Kano painted each of the three girls' jackets. Emblazoned on the jackets were the words
Webo Gals
, which was what they had nicknamed themselves. Together, they made a cocky trio who were out for a good time. No one suspected that Madonna was about to turn a night of dancing into a brilliant business move.

On the second floor of Danceteria, the primary D.J. was a hot guy on the scene named Mark Kamins. Like so many of the dance floor D. J.'s from this era—like Jellybean Benitez, Shep Pettibone, and Manny Parrish—Mark longed to go beyond spinning other people's records; he wanted to produce and remix records of his own.

Remixed recordings would become a huge segment of Madonna's career. Not only would she be able to sell millions of copies of her albums, with three- and four-minute versions of her songs, but by employing a creative remix producer, she could sell extended five- to ten-minute versions of those same songs on twelve-inch single discs as well.

When Madonna went out for a night of club-hopping, she carried with her a copy of her demo tapes. What she needed the most at this point was the interest of a D.J. who was in the know, who would test-drive her songs on the dance floor. Enter “useful boyfriend” number three: Mark Kamins.

When Madonna, Debbie, and Claudia hit the floor at Danceteria, they made sure that all eyes were upon them. “Going out dancing with my girlfriends in New York clubs, we would dress for provocation,” Madonna recalls.
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From the very start, Mark Kamins couldn't help but notice her. She was one of the girls who stood out in the crowd. “Madonna was special. She had her own style—always with a little bellybutton showing, the net top, and the stockings. When she'd start dancing, there'd be twenty people getting up and dancing with her.”
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Madonna knew exactly what she was up to when she caught Kamins's eye one particular night at Danceteria. “I was flirting with him!” she admits.
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Equipped with a four-track copy of one of her recordings, she had to figure out a way for him to play it on the turntable. Knowing from experience what the crowd at Danceteria was into, she was confident that the song would get a great response. She knew that if Kamins played the song, and she and her troupe of Webo Girls went into their dance, they were certain to cause a commotion on the floor.

In her own inimitable fashion, she went up to the D.J. booth and began to work on Mark. Kamins took the bait, and the rest is history. He quickly became the next stepping stone on her trail to the top. It was Kamins who was to snag her a record deal.

“It was just a tape she was working on. That was ‘Everybody,' and she brought it up to the booth, and I listened to it, played it, and got a great reaction,” he recalls. “It was a great song and she had a great voice. And plus, I knew she wasn't signed [to a recording contract]. And, she had that quality about herself—so there was an aura that was surrounding her even at that stage.”
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The song, “Everybody,” was a simple repetitive cut set to a strong progressive dance beat. Set off by Madonna's high-pitched girlish vocals, the lyrics are all about entreating everybody within earshot to get up on their feet, to dance and sing, and do their own thing.

Needless to say, the crowd of dancers—led by Madonna and her friends—all went crazy when “Everybody” was played. It had a fresh sound to it, which immediately grabbed everybody's attention. Overwhelmed by the reaction, Mark Kamins and Madonna made a pact right then and there. If he could get her a record deal, he wanted to be the producer of her first album. She immediately agreed to his plan. After all, she had nothing to lose and everything to gain. A few days later Kamins and Madonna went into the studio and made a new recording of “Everybody,” which was polished up enough to submit to a record label.

It was early 1982, and Mike Rosenblatt was the man in charge of finding new acts for Sire Records, which is a small “custom label” distributed by Warner Brothers. A friend of Mark's, Mike agreed to meet with him and Madonna and to take a listen to “Everybody” and the other demo tapes. Rosenblatt remembers the meeting and how he was instantly impressed with what he heard and what he saw: “She had her ‘look' together, her image was all there, maybe a little more raggedy than today. She had a great tape, but what's more she had that intangible certain something.”
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Seymour Stein, the president of Sire Records, was flat on his back in a hospital the week that Mike Rosenblatt met with Mark and Madonna. In fact, he was lying there, recovering from an attack of endocarditis, when Rosenblatt phoned him, raving about a hot new female singer he had just been introduced to. Although Stein was hospitalized, he was still conducting his day-to-day business on the phone. Rosenblatt arranged for a meeting between Seymour and Madonna that very day.

“From what I'd heard I wanted to meet her immediately…. I signed the contract there right in the hospital…. I was excited to meet Madonna.”
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According to Stein, “When she walked into the room, she filled it with her exuberance and determination. It hit me right away. I could tell right then she had the drive to match her talent.”
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The record company president met Mark and Madonna dressed in a bathrobe he had brought from home.

The original deal that Madonna was signed to at Sire was not a guaranteed album deal. In fact, she was only signed to the dance division of Sire, contracted to do two twelve-inch dance singles, which could be edited down and pressed into 45s for potential pop radio play. If the two releases did well, she had a shot at more, and possibly an album.

Madonna was thrilled to have her foot in the door at a major record label. However, there were still obstacles to overcome before she actually landed an album deal. Madonna remembers doing most of the work necessary to land a record deal. Once the deal was done, she had to change the record company's perception that she was just another flash-in-the-pan girl singer. According to her, “Warner Brothers is a hierarchy of old men and it was a chauvinistic environment to be working in because I was treated like this sexy little girl…. It wouldn't have happened to Michael Jackson or Prince.”
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With the go ahead from Seymour Stein, and money up front, Madonna and her producer Mark Kamins went into the recording studio to begin recording the first single. Not only was Madonna on trial, but Mark was as well.

“Seymour believed in me,” says Kamins in regard to his chance at producing Madonna in the studio. “So he said, ‘Okay, give it a shot,' ‘Everybody' was actually a B-side. There was an A-side called ‘Ain't No Big Deal.' ‘Everybody' was supposed to be the B-side, but it came out so great!”
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What ended up happening was that Kamins produced a five-minute fifty-six-second twelve-inch single version of “Everybody,” which was released with a nine-minute twenty-three-second “dub version” of the same song, which became the B-side. The Mark Kamins-produced recording of “Ain't No Big Deal” ended up scrapped, and he still has a remixed version of that song which has never been released. Sire Records released “Everybody” in April of 1982. Although it didn't become a pop hit, it almost instantly became a huge dance hit, garnering consistent play on the dance floors across the country.

“They put ‘Everybody' out [as] the first single,” explains Kamins. “It went to Number Three on the dance charts. It was about [Number] 102 on the pop charts. That's when they went and picked a new producer!”
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Mark was totally miffed, and things suddenly became complicated. Madonna envisioned herself going big places in a huge hurry, and she didn't feel that Kamins was the person to take her there. So, she dropped him like a hot potato.

Mark had gotten Madonna the record deal that he had promised to obtain for her, but instead of letting him produce the album as she had agreed to do, she canned him after the first single. That, however, wasn't the half of it. There were actually three different people fighting over the chance to produce Madonna's next single. The stakes included an even larger piece of the pie, because if the follow-up single became a success, the lucky producer would almost assuredly end up producing the whole album. Since “Everybody” had become a Top Ten dance hit and had sold respectably well, Sire was already openly talking about the album deal to follow as though it were fact.

What Madonna failed to tell Kamins was that she had also promised the album production assignment to Steve Bray. Needless to say, both Kamins and Bray found themselves in total shock when she blew them both off and chose one of the Warner Records house producers, Reggie Lucas, for the album honors.

According to her, “In my mind I thought, ‘Okay, Mark can produce the album and Steve can play the instruments.' “
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Madonna didn't trust Steve enough with the album's production because of his inexperience. Although his feelings were hurt, Bray took it on the chin, and while he was disappointed, he didn't let it affect their friendship.

“The relationship's too old to have something like that stand in its way,” Bray says in retrospect. “Exploited? Some people say that, but that's resentment of someone who's got the drive. It seems like you're leaving people behind or you're stepping on them, and the fact is that you're moving and they're not. She doesn't try to be that polite. She doesn't care if she ruffles someone's feathers.”
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One of the interesting things about the first twelve-inch single released by Madonna was the marketing. Since the sound of “Everybody” was aimed at the “urban contemporary” crowd—which was mainly black and Puerto Rican—Madonna's identity as a white girl was masqueraded for the record-buying public. The picture sleeve for the initial dance single featured a colorful photo montage of inner-city black kids in New York street scenes. For all that the unsuspecting record buyer knew, “Madonna” could have been a band, a soloist, or even a studio group. In this way, if black radio stations started playing “Everybody” first, no one would know if Madonna was black or white.

Oddly enough, there was a video of “Everybody” produced by Sire Records, directed by Ed Steinberg, which almost no one has seen. To this day it remains in a vault somewhere at Warner Bros. Records, with only a few seconds of it surfacing in 1990 as part of an MTV documentary on Madonna. The video of “Everybody” was more of a home movie than the big budget production music videos eventually became. It was a simple live performance of Madonna and two dancers, filmed onstage at the black gay disco, Paradise Garage. “The Garage,” as it was known in underground circles, was actually located in a converted garage at the corner of King and Varick streets in lower Manhattan.

MTV had just begun broadcasting in November of 1981, but Madonna did not have a big enough name in rock circles for them to even consider programming her. To MTV, she was just a one-shot dance artist.

The person responsible for getting Madonna introduced to all the right people at the dance clubs was an energetic and well-respected man named Bobby Shaw. At the time he was the national dance promoter for Warner Bros. Records. His job was to take acetate pressings of soon-to-be-released dance records around to the hot clubs and get the D.J.'s interested in playing his company's product.

Originally Shaw was introduced to Madonna by Mark Kamins and Mike Rosenblatt. Bobby immediately liked Madonna, and when he was promoting “Everybody” to the club D.J.'s, Madonna gladly accompanied him on his rounds, and he personally introduced her to the people who spin the records. That bit of extra promotion could make all the difference in the world as to whether a record got played or not, and if so—how often it got played.

Madonna was more than willing to go that extra mile to learn the business and do whatever it took to make sure that her record was heard. When Bobby was taking her around from club to club, she was always asking him questions about how the whole promotion end of the record business worked. “She's a smart girl,” Shaw proclaims. “She's charismatic—that's what's really won her. She has the charisma, man—people want to see her. She has a mystique about her—people want to know. She works it—period!”
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