Madonna (39 page)

The emotions this milestone stirred up were based on memories of her mother: “When I turned thirty, which was the age my mother was when she died, I just flipped because I kept thinking I'm now outliving my mother,” she said.
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A lot of the somberness of
Like a Prayer
stemmed directly out of what was going on around her while she was composing the diary-like lyrics. At the time she was in New York doing
Speed-the-Plow
, the inspirations and introspective moods of the play stirred up her feelings of frustration and despair. She was in a marriage that wasn't working, she was trapped in a play that she had grown to hate.

A lot of these fears that Madonna sings about on
Like a Prayer
were those of “little Nonnie,” the confused Catholic girl she was as a child. Her ambivalence about the role the church played in her life became an underlying issue confronted in her writing. “The theme of Catholicism runs rampant through my album,” she explained. “It's me struggling with the mystery and magic that surrounds it.”
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Perhaps the most true to life song on the album is “Till Death Do Us Part.” It focuses on her disastrous marriage to self-destructive Sean. “Like most of the songs on my album, it's very much drawn from my life, factually speaking, but it's fictionalized, too.”
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At the time she was very mixed up emotionally about her divorce. On one hand, she loved Sean. On the other hand, their marriage was impossible to deal with. Assessing the blame, Madonna claimed that it was outside pressure that broke them up.

When she was recording this fourth album, Madonna again turned to Patrick Leonard and Steve Bray as co-writers and co-producers. However, the most surprising inclusion on this album's team was a new collaborator: Prince. Together they came up with a swirling bilingual love song.

Ever since their brief meeting in 1985, Madonna and Prince had remained friends. Several times they spoke of writing together. At one point in 1988 the pair even considered writing a musical together. Madonna flew up to his recording studio in Minneapolis, and she and Prince kicked around several ideas to get a feel for working together. They worked on several different songs, but none were ever completed. Several days later, Madonna's schedule demanded that she leave Minnesota, but the pair vowed to keep in contact.

Time passed, and other things occupied her mind, like her Broadway debut in
Speed-the-Plow
. But while she was in that show, Prince came to New York to see her perform. When he came backstage, he handed her a rough mix of one of the songs that they had worked on the year before. It was called “Love Song,” and when she heard the tape, she immediately loved what he had done with the song. Although they both wanted to find the time to get together to collaborate, the pair ended up sending tapes back and forth until the project was completed. The finished product, the Madonna/Prince duet, “Love Song,” is one of the highlights of the
Like a Prayer
album.

Much of the music on the
Like a Prayer
album is reminiscent of styles and specific songs of the sixties. “Dear Jessie” sounds like something from
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
. The bizarre “Act of Contrition,” with its backward voice tracks, sounds as if it was inspired by John Lennon and Yoko Ono's audio experiments on the Beatles'
White Album
. And “Promise to Try” sounds like something that depressed folk singer Janis Ian might come up with.

Madonna's songs up until this album tended to be a reflection of her current life and experiences. This album has more to do with her musical influences. The songs “Keep It Together” and “Express Yourself,” for instance, are her tributes to the group Sly and the Family Stone. “Oh Father” is her ode to Simon and Garfunkel, who she loved to listen to when she was growing up. In fact, the overall emotional context of the album is drawn from what she went through when she was growing up.

The song that most reflected the Madonna everyone had come to know and be shocked by was “Express Yourself.” According to her, “The message of the song is that people should always say what it is they want.”
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It is January of 1989, and the highly popular Madonna has recorded a new album that is a mixture of personalized ballads and celebratory dance tunes. So where's the controversy? She wrote a song about her divorce, the death of her mom, and the fact that she still doesn't see eye-to-eye with her dad. Big deal. Where's the scandal? Here's where the plot begins to thicken.

In the past five years the two top soda pop manufacturers, Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola, had learned that an effective way to reach the youth of America and the rest of the world was to sign sizzling hot recording stars to do television commercials publicizing the cola of their choice. It had worked brilliantly with Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston—why shouldn't it work with Madonna? Madonna's hit songs and videos had been about love, devotion, and searching for the latest party. She ought to make an excellent spokesperson to reach teenage consumers. So ran the thoughts of executives at Pepsi-Cola when they began pursuing Madonna for their 1989 celebrity commercials.

In December 1988, Coca-Cola announced that it had signed George Michael to sell its pop to the public, and the gears started to turn. On January 25, 1989, following eight months of negotiations, Pepsi announced that they had signed Madonna to a year-long endorsement contract, for which they would pay Her Virginness $5 million. In return, Madonna would appear in a series of television commercials and Pepsi would sponsor the singer's next concert tour, tentatively slated for later that year.

Pepsi was undaunted by Madonna's image in the tabloids. “Her appeal is in her music and her acting. That's where people's interests are,” announced Pepsi spokesman Tod MacKenzie.
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The truly unique aspect of Pepsi's deal with Madonna was its sheer marketing brilliance. The plan was clever, tasteful, and right on target, to begin with. When controversy emerged it only placed a huge magnifying glass over the whole campaign. The by-product was a hundred times more publicity than they could have ever hoped for.

As originally outlined, Pepsi's projected plan went something like this: 1. January 25, Madonna signs her contract, and the next morning the deal becomes front page news in
USA Today
. 2. February 22, Pepsi unveils a commercial on the Grammy Awards telecast announcing the forthcoming March 2 debut of Madonna's Pepsi commercial. The upcoming event is heralded as the satellite premiere of the song “Like a Prayer.” 3. A 30-second version of the commercial will air through the summer. 4. March 3, MTV debuts Madonna's own music video version of “Like a Prayer,” getting a month-long exclusive on the clip. 5. March 21, the “Like a Prayer” video and singles hit the stores—and both become instant hits. 6. Madonna tapes a second commercial for Pepsi, which announces her upcoming tour. 7. Madonna goes on tour, which features Pepsi logos on everything. 8. Everyone makes a fortune.

What happened in reality is even crazier yet. Madonna had already met with Pepsi representatives to come up with the concept for the commercial. As planned, Pepsi paid her over $5 million for use of the song in the commercial, and production began immediately.

The director that Pepsi hired to execute the tightly scheduled video/commercial presentation was Joe Pytka, who had masterminded the landmark Michael Jackson ads for the company. According to Pytka, when he first drove to Madonna's Hollywood hills house to discuss the commercial, she had no idea that she was expected to perform in it. “Michael Jackson had always used a special sound system for his singing, so I asked Madonna where hers was. She said, ‘What singing?' “
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Joe claims that she was also startled when he asked her to dance in the ad. But he felt that dancing was important for the ad because it's one of the main things that the public associates with Madonna. When Joe hired an outside choreographer, and Madonna saw the steps he was teaching the other dancers, she immediately insisted on doing her own dance.

Unlike Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston, Madonna refused to insert the word
Pepsi
in her song for the commercial. “I wouldn't put Pepsi in any of my songs—Pepsi is Pepsi, and I'm me,” she explained. “I do consider it a challenge to make a commercial that has some sort of artistic value.”
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When the Grammy Awards telecast rolled around, the planned “teaser” ad ran. In the ad, an Australian Aborigine is seen trekking for miles across the outback to get to a television in time to see the world debut of the forthcoming Madonna Pepsi commercial.

A commercial for a commercial? You bet. When you're dealing with Madonna, the first thing you have to do is throw out all the rules.

On March 2, as planned, Madonna's Pepsi ad ran on the Number One TV program in America, “The Cosby Show.” It worked smoothly with the sitcom's wholesome family image. Elaborately produced, the ad presented Madonna in a sentimental setting that somehow successfully mixed Catholic Church imagery and Pepsi-Cola into the same two-minute clip.

The commercial, entitled “Make a Wish,” opens on Madonna, lounging in her den, watching a black and white home movie of her eighth birthday party. She is wearing a shoulderless pants suit, several crucifixes around her neck, and is holding a can of Pepsi-Cola in her left hand. Her hair is shoulder-length, dark brown, with a large white streak in it. Suddenly the images change, and it is the actress playing eight-year-old Madonna who is watching the screen, and it is adult Madonna in black and white up on the wide-screen projection TV. The little girl watches the image up on the screen—a vision of what one day she will become.

On the video screen, adult Madonna is shown dancing in the streets, while eight-year-old Madonna and thirty-year-old Madonna examine each other's worlds. The little girl is shown touring the house that she will one day grow up to live in, and the adult Madonna tours her past—including a trip back to a Catholic schoolgirl's classroom. At one point she is seen dancing in the school hallway while a class of uniformed eight-year-olds walk to class. It is an image of Madonna being at thirty what she only dreamed of becoming when she was eight.

While the gospel sound of the song “Like a Prayer” plays, Madonna dances up the aisle of a black church and joins the choir. Cutting back to the present, the time-traveling little girl walks into her adult bedroom only to find the same doll that she received for her eighth birthday. In that split-second, the little girl realizes that both she and the doll have a wondrous future ahead of them.

Suddenly the time travel is over for both of them, and the eight-year-old is back on the screen—holding a glass spiral-twist Pepsi bottle from the sixties, and thirty-year-old Madonna looks on in approval with her eighties can of Pepsi in her hand. Both images toast each other with a Pepsi, and the adult Madonna says to her childhood image on the screen, “Make a wish.” With that, the little girl blows out the candles on the birthday cake, and the Pepsi logo comes up on the screen with the words
A Generation Ahead
below it.

It was a clever spot. However, it was only to be broadcast once.

When the commercial ran that night in March, it was shown in forty countries around the world, giving it an estimated viewership of 250 million people. Not only was it the first time a hit record had debuted in an advertisement, but it was the first time a TV commercial had been given a special around-the-world satellite premiere.

So far, everything was going according to plan. However, the very next day, when Madonna's own version of “Like a Prayer” made its “heavy rotation” debut on MTV, all hell broke loose.

In Madonna's video she witnesses a murder, runs into a church in a brown slip, kisses a statue of a saint, makes love with a black man on a church pew, dances in front of burning crosses, sings with a church choir, and shows bleeding stigmata on both palms as though she had survived a crucifixion. Only Madonna could pull this video off—it is stormy, mysterious, tragic, violent, dark, and exciting.

Prior to its airing, Madonna explained the difference between the Pepsi ad and her own video presentation: “The treatment for the video is a lot more controversial. It's probably going to touch a lot of nerves in a lot of people. And the treatment for the commercial is… I mean, it's a commercial. It's very, very sweet. It's very sentimental.”
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Madonna knew that she wanted to shake people up with her own “Like a Prayer” video, especially since the G-rated version was going to be highly visible on network television.

When it had come to choosing a director to bring her vision to life, Madonna decided that Mary Lambert would be the right visionary to do the job. She explains, “Mary Lambert got involved as the director, and she came up with a story that incorporated more of the religious symbolism I originally wrote into the song.”
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According to Madonna, it was Mary who made the video so cohesive.

Although gospel recording star Andre Crouch and his choir were used on the recording of “Like a Prayer,” when he heard that the video was going to entail burning crosses and potentially sacrilegious images, he wasn't interested in being involved. Instead, actors and singers auditioned to appear in the video, including members of the Friendly Friendship Baptist Church Choir in L. A. Actor and singer Bobby Glenn was a member of the choir who was used in the music video of “Like a Prayer.” A background singer for Diana Ross since the seventies, Glenn auditioned for the part in a cattle call.

“I got the job,” Glenn recalls. “Madonna wasn't at the audition. But what they did was they took different groups in and then they videoed it, and they showed her videos of the different groups, and I learned later that she saw me on one of the videos and wanted me to do it. Then we went down for the rehearsal. The rehearsal was at Solar [Studios] in Hollywood, and that was the very first rehearsal that we had with Madonna. That was really the only rehearsal.”
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