Madonna (14 page)

After Bobby informed her that he was very friendly with the club D.J.'s, and that there were weekly gatherings in his office, she became a frequent visitor. These were the people who could make her career happen, and she was going to make sure they got to know her.

“Madonna used to come up to my office and hang out in my room,” Bobby recalls. “On Fridays I used to have a lot of D.J.'s come and listen to records. We used to bring records of all different labels, and imports, and at that time—Warner Brothers' records, too. We used to sit around until seven or eight at night and listen to the records. She used to come over once in a while to hear what we were playing. She was ‘hanging' with the D.J.'s, and she was wearing torn jeans.”
⁶⁹

Shaw claims that he immediately thought Madonna had the makings of a star. “I always knew she was gonna be big. The potential was there, it was whether or not Warner Brothers got behind it,” he recalls. “I just thought that everything that [she] needed to be—to be a star—was there: charisma, the voice, the personality, the stage presence. It was just all there. The prettiness—I mean she was a pretty girl. Something about her—it worked! All of the pieces of the puzzle were there. There were no blank spaces to be filled in later.”
⁶⁹

What Madonna needed now in her career was to further ensconce herself in the circle of dance club D.J.'s. Again she used her naturally flirtatious ways, this time to snag one of the hottest club disc jockeys on the scene as her next boyfriend. Enter: John “Jellybean” Benitez. He was the star disc jockey on the dance floor at the hot Latino disco of the moment, The Funhouse, on West 26th Street. Spinning records in a D.J. booth shaped like the head of a giant clown, Jellybean really knew how to “rock the house.” He could whip the crowd into a dancing frenzy by sequencing the records he played just right. Saturday nights at The Funhouse, with Jellybean at the helm, were HOT.

For Madonna, Jellybean was to become the ultimate “useful boyfriend.” While on his arm, she was suddenly seen at all of the hot industry parties and was introduced to scores of people who could help her with her climb to the top.

“We met in my D.J. booth at The Funhouse,” Jellybean vividly recalls. “Bobby Shaw, who was the dance promotion person for Warner Brothers, brought her by. I mean, most record companies from the New York market would bring by artists to Jellybean. And, when I met Madonna, I was attracted to her right away. We just sort of hit it off…. [We] sort of played games with each other. I thought she was just being friendly with me because she wanted her record played. And, she thought she didn't want to be nice to me because everybody was always nice to me to play their records. So we were just playing little cat-and-mouse games. So, that's what happened.”
⁷⁰
According to Jellybean, their initial meeting was in October or November of 1982.

During this same period, Madonna was still dating Ken on and off. However, she and Jellybean were destined to become steady lovers for almost a year and a half. In addition to his duties spinning records on the weekends at The Funhouse, Jellybean was also gaining a lot of respect in the business for remixing several dance versions of current hits. Among his two biggest remixes were Irene Cara's “What a Feeling (Theme from
Flashdance)
” and “Say Say Say” for Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson.

John's schedule was very hectic, but he began pursuing Madonna. “We were attracted to each other, but we were just playing with each other. I was immediately attracted to her. We exchanged numbers, and started talking to each other on the phone. I was going back and forth to L.A., so I would call from L.A. We kept trying to set up to meet, then make a plan, and ended up canceling it, because I had to be in the studio, and she had to go to Europe or something. We had a big scheduling problem,” he recalls.
⁷⁰

Madonna met Jellybean after “Everybody” was released. He introduced her to many more of the D.J.'s spinning at clubs like The Garage, The Funhouse, and Studio 54. In the early days, their relationship was platonic. “A lot of people bring him tapes and I thought, ‘I won't make him think that I'm playing up to him to help my career,'” she says.
⁶⁸

Madonna was not exactly swept off her feet by Jellybean. “I didn't like him right away,” she recalls. “Like—tacky! He had really long hair and was walking around in really short shorts. I thought he was a girl at first. He has a really pretty face—feminine features. ‘Jellybean'? Who's that? That doesn't have a sex. Then I ran into him again at a show at The Ritz. Vanity was playing with The Time. Then I knew he wasn't a girl. He started dragging me around everywhere, introducing me to all these industry people. I liked the way he held my hand. That changed my mind. He wasn't such a wimp anymore.”
¹

When Reggie Lucas went into the recording studio with Madonna to begin work on the second single, he wanted to change her musical focus. Says Lucas, “I wanted to push her in a pop direction.”
²⁹

The first two songs that Madonna cut with Reggie were her composition “Burning Up” as the A-side for her next twelve-inch single, and a song he had written, called “Physical Attraction” as the B-side. While both cuts had slamming bass lines to appease people on the dance floor, the sound was clearly more out of the rock/pop/dance bag, and had great radio crossover potential.

Madonna respected Reggie's decisions and got along well with him in the recording studio. “He's a good producer, very open and sensitive,” she says.
¹⁴

Released in March of 1983, “Burning Up”/“Physical Attraction” bolted up the dance charts to Number Three. With that, Sire/Warner knew that Madonna was on her way to the top, and they gave her and Reggie the green light to proceed with the production of the album.

Like her first twelve-inch single, the record was marketed with racially nebulous sleeve art. This time around the sleeve was designed and drawn by her artist friend Martin Burgoyne. The cover of the dance single of “Burning Up”/“Physical Attraction” features a grid of twenty postage stamp—sized portraits of Madonna in every color of the rainbow, including blue and green. On the back is a pointillist portrait of the singer, which further obscures her real skin color. From the look of it, she could easily be Puerto Rican or even mulatto.

During that era, Michael Jackson and Prince were the only black faces seen on MTV, and there was a huge controversy about it from the black sector of the music industry. Regardless, it was time for Madonna to expose her face to the public, and let the chips fall where they would.

It was a confusing situation that worked both for and against her. In some states, D.J.'s wouldn't play her music because they thought she was black, while other stations wouldn't give her air time because she would be taking time away from black artists.

When her second single began to take off in the clubs, Madonna and her dancers would lip sync to her recordings on Friday and Saturday nights in clubs from New York to Fort Lauderdale. This was a common way of breaking new dance records, with special live performances at clubs like Twelve West, Xenon, and Studio 54.

It was Bobby Shaw who was responsible for planning and booking Madonna's performances at the start of her recording career. “I was getting her all the club dates in the beginning,” he recalls. “We did New York clubs a lot, and we did Fort Lauderdale and south Florida. I remember we played the Copa in Key West once on a rainy night. There must have been only twenty-five people there! We did three songs—'Burning Up,' ‘Physical Attraction,' and ‘Everybody.' It was great! It was me, Madonna, her two dancers—Erika and Bags. Her brother Christopher would come along sometimes. It was like a little family—'Dance and sing—get up and do your thing!' It was fun.”
⁶⁹

This time around, Sire/Warner Bros. Records realized that stardom was potentially in the cards for Madonna, so they went all out and produced a beautiful video for “Burning Up.” With direction by Steve Baron and camera work by King Bagot, this video was very much responsible for cementing the initial Madonna “look.” One of the most notable accessories she is seen wearing are the little black rubber bracelets that she became famous for the world over. Warner hired a jewelry designer who called herself Maripol as the stylist for the shoot. The rubber bracelets were actually typewriter drive belts, which Madonna wore up and down her arms.

The video opens with a series of colorful close-ups: Madonna's eye, a bouquet of daisies, Madonna's red lips, a brilliant orange goldfish, Madonna's milky white throat, and finally Madonna spinning around like a whirling dervish. Interspersed throughout are scenes of Madonna in a short white dress, sitting in the middle of a street while singing the song about “Burning Up” with sexual desire.

Visually, one of the most impressive aspects of the video is the high contrast of the dramatic colors: Madonna's skin is a warm peach color; her lips are bright cherry red; the laser beams shooting through the screen are a bright green; and Madonna's newly bleached hair is yellow gold. The look of the video and its star is fantastic. Although the production was simple—compared to Madonna's more recent video offerings—”Burning Up” is one of her most appealing videos.

Near the end of the action in the video, it looks like Madonna—who is wallowing in the street in the middle of the night—is going to be hit by a car driven by a handsome guy. However, at the end of the song, Madonna is driving the car—and she has gotten rid of the guy. Leave it to Madonna to ditch the guy—and get to keep his car. This is truly a case of art imitating life.

Although the song “Burning Up” didn't become a pop hit, the video caused somewhat of a minor visual stir on MTV. It represented America's first look at the girl who was destined to rival “Dynasty”'s Alexis as the dominatrix of the airwaves.

According to Madonna, the handsome guy driving the car in the “Burning Up” video is none other than her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend Ken. Madonna has described Ken as the man with whom she's had the longest monogamous relationship. The word
monogamous
should be read as
ongoing
, because Madonna slept around with other people during the two and a half years she claims to so dearly cherish with Ken. “I've had my heart broken, too,” says the multimedia love goddess, “All my boyfriends hurt me in their way.”
¹⁵

Explaining her love-them-and-leave-them tactics, Madonna says, “All those men I stepped over to get to the top, every one of them would take me back because they still love me and I still love them.”
¹⁵

Now that her album deal was locked into place, Madonna began to feel more confidently in control. More than ever she was resolute about when her affairs of the heart began—and ended. “Most of the fights I have with boyfriends are over how I'm not paying enough attention to them or I'm always off doing things for my career.”
¹⁵

Madonna never pulls any punches. Although she uses people for her ultimate benefit, she rarely pretends that the rules of the game are any more complicated than that. According to her, “I think most people who meet me know that that's the kind of person I am. It comes down to doing what you have to do for your career. I think most people who are attracted to me understand that, and they just have to take that under consideration.”
⁹
As Tina Turner put it so eloquently: “What's love got to do with it?”

“I think that a lot of people do feel exploited by her,” says Jellybean. “But then again, everyone's got so many expectations about a relationship with her. She's very intense immediately with somebody, very friendly. Perhaps people feel, This is what our relationship is about,' and then if there is any cooling of that, it's taken as a rejection.”
⁷⁰

Although Mark Kamins was still smarting from being dumped from Madonna's debut album project, he says, “She's a star, and you get where you have to go. She's got a good heart… deep, deep down there.” When asked if he felt any lasting animosity toward her, he replied, “No, none at all.”
⁶⁶

Says Steve Bray, “She's extraordinarily talented, and a friend. But with her—being polite and ladylike gets left behind.”
²⁹

Even Camille Barbone proclaims, “I don't hate her. I miss her.”
⁶³

As 1982 ended, the door closed on Madonna's life as a struggling unknown with more drive than talent. She was at least finished with the struggling part.

Does she ever think back to those days of digging through waste-baskets for food? “I think about that a lot,” says Madonna, looking back on her days as a street waif, living off the money, favors, and kindness of others. Withstanding the elements taught her to take what she could get, and how to climb, claw, and manipulate her way toward whatever it is that she ultimately wants. “I never had any money and I never had any help, and probably having to deal with all that and having to struggle to survive has made me as tough as I am.”
⁶¹

For Madonna, her era as a “Boy Toy” was far from over. Boys just continued to be more and more important in what they could do for her. She was soon to graduate from mere “Boy Toy” to full-fledged “Material Girl.”

I know exactly what

I want If that makes me

a bitch, okay!
¹²
—Madonna

 

N
ew York City in the late seventies and early eighties, when young Madonna Ciccone and a thousand other would-be stars arrived in the city, was a hotbed of creative activity. For anyone young, ambitious, and open, the environment was permissive and exciting. For the first time in years, Manhattan was “where it was at” in the music industry. It wasn't Detroit's Motown sound, Philadelphia's inner-city soul, Nashville's country twang, or any other city's music that was happening then. During this era, New York seemed like the
only
place to be. Manhattan was where the new acts were being discovered, signed, launched, and promoted, at places like the Pyramid, CBGB's, the Mudd Club, Max's Kansas City, and Danceteria. There were music industry parties at Studio 54, Flamingo, Paradise Garage, Xenon, Magique, the Roxy, and several other clubs around town, almost any night of the week. If you knew someone, and you were on the A-list, you had it made. This was the permissive era before AIDS, and
everyone
was doing
everything
. Sex and drugs and rock and roll still ruled the day, and there was a sense of
anything goes
in the air.