As she tucks into the tea, we remark upon the absence of security, entourage
even. "I drive myself in L.A." she puffs. "It's one of the only reasons I like
living here." Emboldened, we proffer the pudding. "I love Christmas pudding",
she coos, maybe just being polite. Whatever, polite is good. Polite is, frankly,
a relief.
Is Los Angeles a necessary evil - the place in the world where you feel least
bothered?
Unfortunately. It's the dullest town, therefore there isn't much going on,
therefore there aren't a lot of paparazzi hanging about. It's the one place I
totally get left alone in. There's so many people who work in the industry here,
it's not shocking to see famous people about, going shopping.
You've been in London a lot over the last couple of years. Does it swing?
I've been there recently, and for ten days it was incredible. I thought after
the Princess Diana thing it would be so great and that I was going to be left
alone so I rented a house in Chelsea. Then I found out that it wasn't that they
were leaving me alone, they just didn't know where I was. And when they found
out and the fans found out, then... then it was a nightmare. Then I wished I was
in a hotel, because at least in a hotel you're so high that you can't hear them
on the street. I would love to live in London but I don't think I could handle
the whole press thing. It's pretty intense. It's more intense even than New
York, where the attention kinda comes and goes. In London it's every day.
There was a brief feeling after the death of the Princess Of Wales that it would
stop. That it would change. Did you believe it would change?
Yeah. Do I think it has? No. Not at all.
Coming out of filming Evita straight into that - the tragic ironies must have
been overwhelming. An iconic woman vocally mistrusted by pockets of the society
she lived in, and yet inspring this enourmous, popular...
...Fandom! Following! Yes, there are a lot of interesting parallels. On the one
hand there seemed to be many people against Princess Diana, outraged by her
behaviour and constantly needing her, but when she died, how astonishing was
that, the revelation of how truly loved she was by some? Which just goes to show
you that meanness is a lot louder than kindness. You know what I mean? Because
there really were a lot of people that loved her and supported her. It's just
that people who didn't screamed the loudest. So that's what you kinda got swept
up in if you were reading the press and stuff.
It caused a big debate about the British character. After being told for years,
not at least by Americans, that we were tight-arsed and very bad at...
...Expressing yourselves. Yes. Well, I mean no. I don't think that at all. I
know some really unhinged English people. But London's great now - I'm good
freinds with Stella McCartney.
The first words on the record are "I traded fame for love / Without a second
thought". You seem very ambivalent about fame and its cost. You're not sure
whether it's been worth it or not.
The ambivalence is true. I'm not going to sit here and say, Oh God, being famous
is the worst thing that ever happened to me, but on the other hand it's a real
cross to bear, the real thorn in my side.I wouldn't trade my life for anything -
I've been blessed with so much. I've had so many privileges - but, being famous,
it's like agony and the ecstacy. You get to meet people and have experiences
that no-one else gets to have. On the other hand, you don't have any anonymity.
What I am very clear about is the place it's had in my life certainly, at the
beginning of my career, what it sort of took the place of. At the end of the
day, though, I'm not gonna stomp all over it and say, This is shit, but I think
I have much better perspective on it all than I've ever had. I realise, and I've
been realising this for years, that the approval, the headiness of being swept
up and being popular and loved by people in universal ways is absolutely no
substitute for truly being loved. But if you have to have a substitute, it's
about the best there is.
There's the line, "Had so many lovers / Who settled for the thrill of basking in
my spotlight". Was that a depressing realisation? Did they really have much of a
choice?
Well it's not to say that they were only attracted to me for that, but I realise
that that was a big part of it. Power is a great aphrodisiac and celebrity is a
great aphrodisiac.
Do you feel disappointed in those people?
No. Not at all.
You once said rejection is a great aphrodisiac.
That too, haha!
You need a lot of aphrodisiacs.
I think everyone does. I'm speaking for everybody. I mean, rejection - doesn't
everybody want the thing they can't have? For fleeting moments of madness,
that's all you want, and then you wake up, pull yourself together and you move
on with your life.
Is the conviction that you'll never find a... well, a soul mate, a haunting one?
It has been. When you think about what I do and the kind of life I lead and the
fact that I'm famous, I don't think it's a lifystyle that's very attractive to
people, unless they like the idea of attracting attention, unless they're really
superficial. You find yourself in a strange position. I come with a lot of
baggage and it takes a strong, courageous person to have a relationship with me.
I have those moments when it seems impossible. The moments of thinking, Oh
forget it.
The song Nothing Really Matters must be about Lourdes. Are you trying to say
that this is the first love of your life that has no side to it?
It has no side. She doesn't know about me being famous. She hasn't got a clue.
And it's completely unconditional love, which I've never known because I grew up
without a mother [Madonna Ciccone Snr died of breast cancer when her daughter
was 6]. I mean I did have my father, but I think that the love that you got from
a mother is quite different. It's had a huge impact on me, as I suppose it has
on everyone who has children. But definetly, when you have children you have to
step outside of yourself. You can't sit around feeling sorry for yourself, or
feeling like you're a victim in any way, shape or form. You really look at life
from a totally different perspective.
How is she coming along?
She kisses everything. She kisses dogs, she kisses strange people on the
playground. She says "dog" a lot, and "No". She's very good at saying no.
You seemed to name her in the hope that she'd be some sort of healing influence.
Absolutely. A healing influence on my life. Lourdes was a place that my mother
had a connection to. People were always sending her holy water from there. She
always wanted to go there but never did.
For someone who must be fairly certain that everyone she has a conversation with
has already seen her naked, Madonna wears it well. Madonna, it is fair to say,
has been a fruity. In her widely execrated Sex book, she wrote - and the prudish
can change channels now - "Sometimes I stick my finger in my pussy and wiggle it
around the dark wetness and feel what a cock or a tongue must feel when I'm
sitting on it." Perhaps we didn't need to know this, but we all read it anyway.
Madonna's relationship with the idea of intimacy is a unique one. Inside her
Erotica album [an oddly coy record: its one "fuck" was bleeped] she is depicted
licking her armpit, elsewhere bound and gagged and sucking a toe. The effect is
strangewise distancing.
Equally, we can marvel at the woman that picked up lover Carlos Leon while
jogging in Central Park, sympathise with the survivor of the media madness [and
boose and fights] that enveloped her marriage with Sean Penn and feel her
desperate would-be mother portrayed in ex-boyfriend Dennis Rodman's
[imaginative, she maintains] autobiography, but empathy is in short supply.
Madonna, as we have come to think we know her, puts up barriers even as she
sultrily beckons.
Remarkably, Ray Of Light blows all that out of the water. Mer Girl ends the
album, but was one of the first things recorded for it, a one-take vocal
whispered quietly while William Orbit's portentous track bubbles delicately
about her. Madonna mourns her mother and depicts herself fleeing head-long from
her past. "I ran to the cemetery", she intones, "and held my breath. And thought
about your death." Bingo, and at least, real intimacy.
"She stepped out of the vocal booth, and everybody was rooted to the spot",
recalls Orbit. "It was just one of those moments. Really spooky."
Have you done analysis?
Yes.
Do you still do it?
Yes.
Do you find it more or less helpful than before?
I go back and forth. Sometimes I think there's nothing new I'm going to figure
out. Or that we're retreading the same old territory and I'll get fed up. And
then a light bulb will turn on about something and I'll have an epiphany. I
don't always go. I just go when I think I need to.
Is it not tremendously expensive?
It is in this town. Lawyers and shrinks... I'm in the wrong business.
What's your earliest memory?
[What seems an interminable pause - actually, 29 seconds]
I've got loads of memories from childhood, but I'm not sure which came first...
Falling asleep between my parents bed... Stepping in a can of paint when my
father was painting the fence... Sticking my finger in a cigarette lighter to
see if it really was hot like my father told me.
Is that what you've been doing ever since - sticking your hand in a flame to see
if it's hot?
[Ruefully]
Yes... But I have a very vivid memory of that. I remember my father kept
saying, Look that's really hot. See how red it is? So don't put your finger in
it. I was thinking, But how do I know if it's really hot if I don't put my
finger in it? So I did and I got absolutely no sympathy. Nothings changed, ha
ha!
What's the most hurtful thing that's ever been written about you?
Oh God, I'm sure there's plenty of things that I don't know about.
[Long pause, she places her arms awkwardly between her knees]
. I suppose the worst thing was people accusing me of having a baby for
attention. That was pretty ridiculous. I phase it out.
Than there was the speculation that Carlos Leon had been chosen as some sort of
sperm donor.
[Coldly]
Rather than my lover, yes. Though that was probably more hurtful to him than
me. They're keen, with me, to ignore the possibility that it might have
something to do with love or feeling and make it all seem planned or manipulated
or calculated, which is a notion that a lot of people seem to have about me. But
falling in love or having a baby, I'd have thought that was one of the more
basic human things that anyone can relate to, and some people didn't even want
to let me have that. But that's OK, because I have my beautiful baby and they
don't.
And Carlos hasn't been paid off in order to stay away?
Absolutely not. He's with her right now. She's absolutely daddy's little girl.
Are you ever embarassed by old album covers?
They're a map of my life. But I do look at old photographs of myself and think,
Someone should have arrested me, someone should have stopped me from doing my
hair that way.
What was your cruellest fashion error?
All errors are cruel. They're all great and they're all crap. Everyone's down on
the '80s right now, but I thought the '80s was fabulous and I'm sure Boy George
would agree with me.
It was quite an unpretentious decade, in the sense that it's pretensions were
completely transparent. To hear some people talk, all it was was plastic music
for a cocaine-addled generation.
[Cracks up]
Oh yeah! And what's going on now? Nothing's changed. Right now everyone's into
the '70s, revisiting the '70s wether it's in music or movies and fashion.When we
get further away from the '80s we'll do the same thing. It'll be celebrated and
analysed and perhaps appreciated.
You were drumming in The Breakfast Club in 1979, in New York. Did you used to go
to Studio 54?
Ooh, that's centuries ago, but what a cool era, what a cool club. The people
there... I came in at the end of it so I missed Andy Warhol, Sterling Saint-
Jaques [legendary New York club face], Liza Minnelli. For me the Danceteria and
The Mudd Club were coming into their town.
There's a sense in a lot of your music of the dancefloor being a magical place.
The dancefloor was quite a magical place for me. I started off wanting to be a
dancer, so that had a lot to do with it. The freedom that I always feel when I'm
dancing, that feeling of inhabiting your body, letting yourself go, expressing
yourself through music. I always thought of it as a magical place... even if
you're not taking ecstasy.
Though people will take ecstasy to Ray Of Light.
But ecstasy's been around for a hundred years. It was around when I was going to
clubs. What's the big deal?
No, it's still a big deal. In Britain ecstasy didn't really happen until 1987,
1988 and it changed everything.
[Regards Q as if studying Primitive Man]
You guys are still taking ecstasy, not Special K? 'Cos ketamine is the big drug
over here now. You're in the K Hole, swimming out of your body, and don't
imagine you're gonna get up in the morning. I think the whole record would sound
great on drugs. It'll make you feel like you're in the K Hole. It whips you in a
frenzy. I took some remixes to Liquid in Miami and the DJ's were just going mad
for it. You can definetly imagine what it would be like to be high and listening
to it. But I have to get there on my own. [Cod-angelic] I have a child now, I
can't do that sort of thing.
The In Bed With Madonna film turned out to be the definitive piece of negative
publicity, but no one had gambled like that before. There seemed to be no fear
of appearing...
Unattractive?
Selfish...
Narcissistic...
...All those things. And you didn't care who saw it.
But what's the point of making a documentary if you're not going to show those
sides? Then it wouldn't be a documentary, right? Let's face it, the life of a...
of whatever-you-wanna-call-me... on the road, you've got to see all of that.
It's a real slice of life. It's of an era, of a time, and it's true of the
insanity of performing and the insanity of performing and the insanity of
travelling with this bunch of dysfunctional people. Even in a movie, how can you
be sympathetic towards a fictional character if you don't see their warts?
That's an awful lot of warts, though.
I don't think there were that many. I look at that movie and I think, My God how
petulant was I? And, Oh God, What a brat! But I'm not horrified by it. That's
where I was and I've grown up a lot since.
Who are the Madonna fans now?
I haven't a clue.
What are the best Madonna records?
Like A Prayer
is pretty much up there. And I really like
Bedtime Stories
. I don't think a lot of people "got" that record.
It was better than Erotica. You hobbled yourself there, trying to make a concept
album.
Absolutely. I bit off more than I could chew. Bedtime Stories had better songs
though the feel was similar.
[Affects chat show wimper]
But this record is my favourite record of all.
Despite the occasional hoot of laughter and slow, spreading smile [directed into
the middle distance, rather than at you] we have stumbled upon a surprisingly
earnest version of Madonna. Flippancies are sometimes engaged, oftener shot down
in flames. The crinkled eyes are thrillingly familiar, but very good at doing
"suspicious".
Madonna's current favourite words are "mystic" and "spiritual". From the hare
krishna garb to her current listening - dominated by Talvin Singh's Anokha club
compilation Soundz Of The Asian Underground - she is looking East, with a beats-
enhanced Sanskrit prayer, Shanti / Ashtangi, taking pride of place on Ray Of
Light. Like the title track, and the churning, underwater Skin, it wouldn't
sound out of place booming out of bulging speakers at London's Little Goa,
Return To The Source. Instructively, she intends to perform a smattering of cub
dates in the States and Europe later in the year.
"Passion and sexuality and religion all bleed into one for me", Madonna once
told Q, and we are no strangers to the inventive theology of she who fondled a
sexy black Christ in her Like A Prayer video.
The mystic talk may seem incongruous from the one-time personification of
feckless '80s fun - and her personal cocktail of Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism
is certainly convenient - but hey, this is Los Angeles, where Madame Raza's
Psychic Help enjoys lucrative Beverly Hills shopfrontage on Wilshire Boulevard
and shady guru Deepak Chopra's influence is everywhere, represented here by
Madonna's red wristband. And after all, she doesn't talk any more shit than The
Verve.
Is it best with religion to spread your bets?
Absolutely. I do believe that all paths lead to God. It's a shame that we end up
having religious wars because so many of the messages are the same. The whole
idea of karma and "do unto others", it's all the same. It really is.
There's a prevalence of water images on this record: Swim, Mer Girl, Drowned
World...
Well water is a very healing element, as you know.
Er...
Well, there's water in birth and there's water in baptism and when you go into
the bath or in the ocean there's a feeling of cleansing, a feeling of starting
all over again. Being new, being healed. That's sort of what's going on in my
life and I'm exploring that element in my songwriting.
Swim's all about redemption, but why are you so concerned with it? Have you been
that bad?
Well it's not just about me. It's imploring others to seek redemption too.
Because it's definetly a response to what's going on in the world as well.
What specifically?
[With heavy sarcasm]
You mean besides Galliano's next collection? Well, let's see. Lots of things
concern me. I suppose the main thing is people's obsession with negativity.
People are so bitter and envious of other people doing well. People used to talk
to one another and be a lot more resourceful and creative. But television and
computers, this instant society we live in, has taken that ability away from
most people. There are too many people resigned to their lot in life.
Why are you thinking this way now?
Well, maybe the same horrible horrors have always been happening in the world.
Maybe I'm just paying more attention. It just seems to me that there's more
extreme bahaviour as we approach the year 2000. People seem to be divided into
two camps - between people that are searching for something to anchor the
spiritually, people who are trying to evolve their own conciousness and figure
out the bigger meaning for life, rather than, OK, I'm here to make lots of money
and have a good time and that's it. On the other hand, I feel like I'm always
reading about teenagers killing themselves or parents killing their children.
Have you ever known black despair?
Puh-lease! I'm the Queen Of Despair! Read the lyrics to my songs! I felt despair
many times in my life, but I have very good survival mechanisms. No matter how
bad it gets there's something that stops me seeing life as completely hopeless.
I still indulge myself in lots of melancholy.
How do yu get over that?
Sometimes I write. I spend time with people that I know will get me out of it.
My daughter, or friends that will tell me what a wanker I'm being.
Can you imagine how dark is must have been for Michael Hutchence?
I know, I thought about that too. I don't know what the real story is. It's just
tragic, so tragic. I can't imagine getting to that place. I've tried to imagine
but I can't. It's like trying to imagine what death is, you can't. If you have a
child I would think, no matter what, you could try and hang on for them. But I
don't know, I wasn't in his shoes.
Two weeks later, a London flat, and Sheffield Wednesday are murdering Newcastle
on Match Of The Day. The phone rings, "It's Madonna," barks Madonna.
A rain break in shooting for the video of Frozen, one of Ray Of Light's lowering
ballads [bearing the unmistakable, primary-coloured imprint of Madonna's
longtime co-songwriter, Pat Leonard and an enourmous, gothic string score
courtesy arranger du jour Craig Armstrong], has occasioned the call. Along with
Nothing Really Matters and Power Of Good-Bye, Frozen is Madonna fans' Madonna,
testament to her "reining in" of William Orbit's more tangential instincts.
"He'll tell you I'm a taskmaster," predicts Madonna, "that I like to crack the
whip."
For his part, Orbit is impressed by his new boss's musical control-taking and
recording wisdom. "She kept on telling me, Don't gild the lily. And the other
thing she'd say," he adds ruefully, "just as I was ready to crawl home
exhausted, was, You can sleep when you're dead."
"In the studio she's totally sleeves-rolled-up," continues the soundscaper. "You
think of her as a performer, a pop icon, this force of entertainment. You don't
perceive Madonna as a great producer, but that's exactly what she is."
What Madonna describes as the more "tripped-out, ambient shit" from the Orbit
sessions will emerge on a future "remix odyssey" record, putatively titled
Veronica Electronica.
Are you pissed off by the assumption that your producers do most of the work?
Or, come to that, that Maverick is a plaything that you have little day-to-day
involvment in?
I don't think about it very much. You know, the people that know, know, and
that's all that matters. The Prodigy know and everyone who comes to my label
knows and everyone who works on my records knows what's going on. The people
that make assumptions like that are being chauvinistic. [Smirks] I'm quite used
to people saying things that aren't entirely accurate.
Your singing used to be criticised as "squeaky". No-one could say that about
this record.
I found my voice in doing Evita, because I had to study extensively with a vocal
coach. And I found range and parts of my voice that I never knew I had. I'd only
been using this much of it. It's a good find, by the way.
Do you still drum? Do you see a kit set up in a studio and think, I'll have a
go?
I have secret desires to. I've accidentally walked in on a band playing like a
Holiday Inn or something and thought, I can play better drums than that.One of
these days. If I go on tour and we're doing rehearsals, you can believe I'll be
sitting behind the drums when everyone's gone and there^s someone sweeping the
floor.
Is it a reflection of the way you've changed or the way that everyone else has
changed, that no-one's horrified by you any more? "Madonna reveals part of her
own body shock," that wouldn't make many headlines these days.
[Grins]
I don't think there's anything left to reveal is there?
Maybe not but you don't have to. You won.
I guess I won. If in the middle of all that chaos some positive message got out,
then I won. But it's not terribly much fun, being a rebel or being a pioneer, I
have to say, because you become a target for everyone's fears. You have to be
incredibly resilient and there were times when I wished that I hadn't been so
outspoken, because it was so exhausting to constantly have to defend myself.
Looking back on it, it was a great education for me and it was very liberating
for me, because when you're not popular in any sense of the word and everyone
seems to have turned on you, you kind of have a freedom to do whatever you want,
whenever you want, because you don't have to please everyone. Let's face it, all
the stuff I've been going on about for years, people have learned to accept it.
Nowadays it doesn't sound so outrageous, that's how we are, every decade we
become more open to ideas. Homosexuality is no longer a debate in pop culture,
but even ten years ago it was considered terribly outrageous. We've come a long
way. But I've changed too, so it's both.
So you belive in progress, despite the evidence?
[Huffily]
Of course I believe in progress. That's why we're here - to transform ourselves
and other people. It's the nature of our species to progress.
You seem to be pretty happy with where you are. Are there any ambitions that
still niggle at you?
I'd like to learn how to paint. I love painting and I'm always in awe of people
that can do it. People say I should just do it, but I think, No, because what if
I suck? I'd be so disappointed.
With a click and a whirr, Madonna disappears into the ether. Thousand of miles
away, she waits for the rain to stop falling on the desert so that she can get
on with her job. You reflect on a rather powerful observation made by William
Orbit.
"Madonna's on this journey," he reflects, "and if you're smart you'll get on
board for the ride. But it doesn't matter if you do or you don't, because she's
going to get there anyway."
And in case you were wondering, she ate the Christmas pudding.
