Madonna (15 page)

Although she was still on the ground floor when the year 1983 began, Madonna was on her way to getting where she wanted to be. She had a record contract that called for delivery of her debut album, and she now had the added security of money coming in from Sire/Warner Brothers Records. She was dating Jellybean Benitez, and he was showing her what it was like to be in the big leagues. Before the year was up, she would finish her first million-selling album, film her first major movie role, hit the Top Twenty pop charts, and establish herself in the music business as the hottest newcomer on the horizon.

Objective number one at this make-it-or-break-it juncture was to make certain that the album she was working on would be a hit. Having two Top Ten dance singles was a definite feather in her cap, but Madonna had yet to crack the pop charts, the acknowledged jackpot in the music business.

When Madonna and Reggie Lucas returned to the studio, they had several songs they intended to record. Madonna had written a bright, optimistic song called “Lucky Star,” plus two more compositions: “Think of Me” and “I Know It.” Reggie, who had written the dance hit “Physical Attraction” for Madonna's second “12-inch” single, had another song he had written called “Borderline.” In addition, they decided to rerecord “Ain't No Big Deal,” which she had laid down with Mark Kamins at the beginning of her Sire recording contract. However, everyone agreed that “Ain't No Big Deal,” which was written by Steve Bray, could be spiced up a bit. So, a new version of it was cut for Madonna's debut album, with Reggie producing.

At first, Madonna deferred to Reggie's opinion in the studio about how the songs should sound. But when Reggie's finished cuts started coming out overlaid with too many audio embellishments, she began to question some of his decisions. According to Madonna, the album strayed further and further from the original concept of her demo tapes. “I didn't know if I knew enough to speak out. It wasn't until my first album was three-quarters of the way done that I realized, ‘Hey! I know a lot more about this than I'm allowing myself to speak out about.'”
¹³
Madonna preferred the tracks to be simpler, sparser, so working from the finished product backward, she was finally able to produce the effect she wanted.

Although Madonna was unsatisfied with the way “Lucky Star,” “Burning Up,” “Ain't No Big Deal,” and “Physical Attraction” turned out, she was uncertain as to what to do with them. That's when she first consulted Jellybean about solving the problems. Since remixing hit records was his biggest claim to fame, it seemed logical to ask him for his advice and help.

In Reggie's mind, he had completed his work on the album, so he was already off on another assignment.

“They were putting out the next twelve-inch and they wanted me to mix it,” recalls Jellybean. “So I went to dinner with her and Michael Rosenblatt—the A&R guy at Sire who signed her—and Bobby Shaw at Shun Lee in the East Fifties. That's where they asked me to mix ‘Physical Attraction.'
⁷⁰

“What I was doing was additional production, or co-producing,” explains Benitez. “But I didn't have the power to say, ‘I want co-production credit.' I was just doing it because I wanted the record to sound good. So, I went in and did all these new guitar parts on ‘Lucky Star.' The guitars you hear on ‘Burning Up' and ‘Lucky Star'—on the album—are all new parts that Reggie Lucas didn't do. And, there are new vocal parts. Even though those songs were produced by him, those weren't
only
produced by him, because I went in and did all this additional production—and totally different mixes.”
⁷⁰

Then there is the matter of the song “Ain't No Big Deal,” of which there were three different versions. Everyone liked the song, but no one cared for the versions that Lucas or Kamins came up with. According to Jellybean, “We were gonna work on—not Reggie Lucas's version, not Mark Kamins's version—but the version that Steve Bray and Madonna did together as a demo originally. So, I was going to do all of these overdubs on that. But then, Steve Bray sold the song to an artist called Barracuda on Epic Records and they put out the song.”
⁷⁰

Since “Ain't No Big Deal” was Steve Bray's composition, and Epic was releasing Barracuda's version, Warner Brothers didn't want to have Madonna release the song on her album. This was at the end of April 1983. Recalls Jellybean, “They're rushing to get this album out, and Madonna's like, ‘Oh shit! I need a new song now!”
⁷⁰
That's where the song “Holiday” came into the picture.

Jellybean had yet to produce a song of his own from start to finish, and he was dying to be in the driver's seat for once. He had a demo tape of “Holiday,” which had been written by Curtis Hudson and Lisa Stevens from the group Pure Energy, and he was convinced that it had the potential to become a huge hit. He had already offered it to two other performers, but he was rejected both times. “I offered it to the A&R guy at Arista Records for Phyllis Hyman,” he recalls. “He thought it was okay, but it didn't blow his mind.”
⁷⁰
He then offered it to former Supreme Mary Wilson, but she was unimpressed with the song as well.

So when “Ain't No Big Deal” was bumped off Madonna's album, Jellybean suggested “Holiday” to her. “When Madonna heard it, she liked it right away. She didn't have much choice, she had to get her album done,” he recalls. Next, he had to convince Warner Brothers: “I played it for them, and they liked it a lot, and gave me a week to produce it.”
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This was Jellybean's big break, and he was determined to put every ounce of energy he could into it. After Madonna cut her vocal parts, he spent four solid days in the recording studio tinkering with the song to try to make it into the hit he instinctively felt it could become.

“I worked like twenty hours a day to finish it,” he recalls. “It was a desire on my part to really accomplish something.”
⁷⁰
Just to make sure he was on the right track, he would run down to The Funhouse to crank the song up full blast on the club's speakers. Finally it was finished, and the fate of the song was out of his hands.

After remixing and sequencing the album, it was time to sit down with the executives at Sire and Warner Bros., to decide if the album was up to everyone's expectations. Everyone loved the album, especially the cut “Lucky Star,” with its resounding bass line and crisp guitar work. And Jellybean's “Holiday” was widely praised. Although it was an underdog cut, produced as filler, the song would ultimately make Jellybean an instant industry star alongside Madonna.

The album
Madonna
was released in July 1983, without the immediate benefit of a third single. Since Madonna was the current darling of the dance clubs, it was decided that the LP and special promotional single would be serviced to discotheque D.J.'s to see what they picked up on.

“The
Madonna
album came out,” recalls Benitez, “and ‘Lucky Star' was supposed to be the first single, and no one liked ‘Holiday.' ‘Yeah, it's okay, but “Lucky Star” is the smash.' In the back of my mind, I'm going, ‘Well, I don't know—I think “Holiday” is a hit.' So, they put out a twelve-inch [D.J.'s-only] promo on ‘Holiday' and ‘Lucky Star.' ‘Lucky Star' was the A-side, and ‘Holiday' was the B-side.”
⁷⁰

Startlingly, it was “Holiday” that grabbed everyone's attention. By October 1983 the album cut of “Holiday” was the Number One dance song in America, according to
Billboard
. That was it: Sire/Warner Bros. Records was forced into rush-releasing “Holiday” as Madonna's third single. Jellybean sees a secret network behind this success: “I knew as soon as D.J.'s saw ‘John “Jellybean” Benitez' on the ‘Holiday' side, that was
it
, because D.J.'s stick together.”
⁷⁰

The week of October 29, 1983, “Holiday” entered
Billboard's
“Hot 100” pop singles chart. By February 1984 the song peaked at Number 16. Mary Wilson, who had turned the song down, recalls, “I was driving down Sunset Boulevard in my car one day with the radio cranked up, and all of a sudden I hear this song called ‘Holiday' come pouring out of the speakers. I couldn't believe that that was the same song I had turned down, and it became Madonna's first huge hit. I still kick myself to this day for having passed on it!”
⁷¹

While she was still working on her debut album Madonna was without a manager. Says Jellybean, “When I first met Madonna, she didn't have a lawyer, or a manager, or an accountant, or a bank account.”
⁷⁰
These were all situations that had to be immediately remedied.

When she went manager shopping, Madonna started at the top. In the world of music and the whole new vista of music videos, the reigning star in 1983 was Michael Jackson. At the time he was managed by Freddy DeMann, who was part of the firm Weisner-DeMann Entertainment.

“One day, I forced myself into his office and began auditioning there and then—in front of him. He was quite dumbfounded by my nerve,” Madonna recalls.
²⁰

After her impromptu audition, DeMann was suitably impressed. “She had that special magic that very few stars have.”
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Bingo! Madonna now had a manager.

When Madonna's debut album was released, Freddy DeMann was listed on the album credits as her manager. He was to become instrumental in making certain the record company put their big guns behind his new client. Piece by piece, Madonna's patchwork career quilt was becoming a well-oiled machine.

Several things had set Jellybean apart from other dance club D.J.'s. Besides spinning records at the hottest club where records were broken in, he was the only D.J. in town who had the vision to market himself to the public. One of the things he did was to hire a publicist to make his name a household word. The publicist he hired was David Salidor, who has worked with such acts as Run-DMC, Seduction, and Debbie Gibson.

According to Salidor, “As people got to know Jellybean's name, he suddenly found himself invited to all of the hot industry events. At several of the press activities that I accompanied him to, Madonna would be his date. From the beginning of my work with Jellybean, I would spend every Saturday night in the D.J. booth of The Funhouse staging photo opportunities and bringing down industry bigwigs to press the flesh. On any given Saturday night, there would be a string of celebrities networking with Jellybean, including Quincy Jones, Penny Marshall, Paul Simon, Bill Medley, Billy Joel, and Pat Benatar. It was there that I first met Madonna. My initial impression of her was that she was someone who was definitely going to succeed in this business, because of her perseverance and drive. She was going to make it, the only question was when. Here was someone who excelled at making a statement wherever she went, because of the way she dressed, the way she spoke, and the way she carried herself. She was totally original. No one else presented themselves quite the way she did.”
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Salidor immediately spotted Madonna's aggressive side. She rarely made casual conversation, and there was an objective to every one of her questions. “Madonna was someone who was fixated on succeeding,” David recalls. “None of us knew how she was going to do it—but there was no question that come hell or high water she was going to become a star. She was willing to go farther than anyone else to make it, and none of us who hung out with her realized just how far she would take it. From the start she would begin asking me how a publicist worked. She was especially eager to find out how a successful publicity campaign was mounted and executed. She later took the knowledge and applied it to her own career. I remember one night at Sigma Sound Studios, when John was remixing a song for the group the English Beat and Madonna was at his side. I had made arrangements to come down to take some publicity photos of John with the group to service the trades—
Cash Box
and
Billboard
magazines. Originally the photos were just going to be shots of John and the English Beat, but by the time we took the pictures—Madonna had also worked her way into the photos.”
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she obviously learned very quickly how to turn a casual evening into a publicity opportunity.

It wasn't long before Madonna's lifestyle started to change as well. “The first real money I ever got was $5,000 from Sire Records,” she explains, “and the first expensive thing I bought was a Roland synthesizer.”
¹⁵

After the first five grand, she received money from the song publisher for the tracks she'd written on her first album—a thousand dollars for each song. With money in hand, she rented her first apartment in the East Village. As the money continued to roll in, she eventually moved to a much more expensive loft in the trendy neighborhood south of Houston Street known as SoHo.

With Freddy DeMann behind her, several new opportunities were presented to Madonna. One of the first doors opened into fresh territory was the one to the movies, and one of the first people she met in that arena was film producer Jon Peters. Their initial interview ultimately ended up snagging Madonna her first appearance in a major movie:
Vision Quest
. Although her role in the film was a musical performance without dialogue, she was able to cut her teeth in front of the cameras.

Jon Peters was looking for a real singer to play the role she landed in
Vision Quest
. “They wanted someone with a lot of style already,” Madonna recalls.
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According to her, “I just sing in it. I sing: I perform in a nightclub that the lead actor and actress come into. They dance a slow dance to a song. I have three songs, but I don't know what they're going to cut out of it.”
¹

Madonna's part in
Vision Quest
was filmed in Spokane, Washington, in November 1983. She complained about the filming process: “It was very cold, lonely, and boring.”
¹⁷
However, through Jon she was introduced to Peters's ex-girlfriend and business partner, Barbra Streisand. Madonna had dinner with Peters and Streisand in Los Angeles and recalls that Streisand genuinely cared about her as a person and a singer.