Becoming Madonna

The following programme contains strong language and sexual images.

..and single, Holiday, and...

Hi, this is Madonna on Countdown and here's my-

I have to say, "Hi, this is Madonna?"

Yeah. Well, whatever you...

Hi, I'm Madonna? Yeah.

Hi, I'm Madonna on Countdown,

and this is my new single and video, Holiday.

I've always felt like

such an outsider, like such a misfit,

like such a weirdo.

What do I say? And I felt a freak.

And I felt like I could never fit in with...

the prom queens and the cheerleaders and the perfect girls.

I was really down on myself.

Does the name which you've grown up with mean anything to you?

It means a great deal to me.

It's my mother's name, and I love my mother, so there's a link.

And she died, of course. Yeah.

Come here, brother. This is my brother, Christopher.

He dances with me.

She was our mother's namesake,

and her name was Madonna.

I mean, it either crushes you

or it elevates you to something else.

Her ambition was there,

and it's what drove her to go through a whole lot of suffering

to get where she was going.

I mean, she did not have an easy life.

There was this star

just fucking radiating, who was looking for a deal.

She said, "I want to rule the world."

What does this mean? Does that mean "good."

OK.

I think she's awesome, man. She's great.

You can really dance to her music.

Madonna sells more than 75,000 records a day.

Not bad for a 25-year-old girl from Michigan.

Madonna, the sultry singer who has parlayed a trampy,

trashy style, is about to be exposed, literally.

I kept seeing myself through macho heterosexual eyes.

I suddenly thought,

"That's not the only way that I have to be."

Being a female in American

culture is that you are supposed to be a whore,

but you're not supposed to say you're a whore.

She was ruthless... ..in a good way.

I mean, look what it got her.

Most people wanna call me trash and a slut

because I'm open about what I'm doing.

I don't wanna have any sense of shame about it,

and I don't wanna have any sense of regret.

Why should I?

# THE DAMNED: Neat Neat Neat #

Part of the reason I sort of shot out like a cannon

out of Michigan and like, left home at such an early age was because...

I had to feel independent.

But I was going to be somebody and I was going to make something out of my life,

and I was not gonna spend the rest of my life

in the boring Midwestern suburbs.

When I came to New York, it was the first time I'd ever taken a plane.

It was the first time I'd ever gotten in a taxicab.

I'd never been to a big city like that before.

New York's really overwhelming when you're 17.

I came here not knowing anyone, with $35 in my pocket.

It was the bravest thing I've ever done,

and my goal was to conquer the city.

OK.

OK, here we go.

Originally, I'd come to New York as a dancer.

You know, I danced in a lot of companies

while I was living in New York,

but it wasn't fulfilling enough for me.

Most of the kids in my ballet classes,

they were these really, like, spoiled little bratty girls.

They didn't know anything about music or art.

They were really boring to me.

And I found myself rebelling.

And I cut my hair really short,

greased it so it'd be sticking all up,

and I'd rip up all my tights

and make a big cut down the middle of my leotard,

and put safety pins all the way up it.

Just anything to, like, stand out

from them and say, "I'm not like you, OK?"

And that's when I started exploring other territories

and really quitting, like, going to my dance classes every day.

I'm gonna come in, walk in the door and say, "Oh, it was a rough day at work."

And I started hanging out with people in the art world

and the sort of the downtown Lower East Side scene and musicians.

But it wasn't, um...

It wasn't that planned out.

# Let the sunshine

# Let the sunshine in

# The sunshine in. #

I think what was most spectacular about the time

was the diversity of the music.

# PYLON: Danger #

It was a big mish mash of things.

# Disorganised... # You had discos going on,

you had dance starting.

The punk scene was just gigantic.

# Danger... #

There were a ton of clubs.

There was CBGB's, there was the Mudd Club,

there was Max's Kansas City, the Bitter End, the Bottom Line.

You could see live music from eight o'clock at night

'till four in the morning.

The times in mainstream America

were very, very conservative.

On top, you had Reagan running for president,

and they would say the Moral Majority.

I can only add to that, my friends,

that I continue to look at the scriptures today

for fulfilment and for guidance.

But underneath, you had all this creativity.

Music was just exploding.

Afrika Bambaataa would be hanging out

with the Beastie Boys and David Byrne from Talking Heads.

It's all, like, new wave,

and who didn't fit really any mould.

But that scene, that existed because

New York was a shithole,

and they could afford to live with no money.

Last year, major crimes on New York's subways

rose 17% over the previous year.

Nearly 5,000 robberies,

24 rapes, 20 murders, 600 aggravated assaults.

I lived in this place with all these prostitutes.

I was often mistaken for a prostitute

when I went down the street.

I never thought I would get used to seeing people laying on the street,

living their life publicly on a sidewalk.

I was in shock.

I met Madonna at a May Day party.

We interacted a little, and then we were in the bathroom

'cause she needed help with something,

and she said, "Aren't you going to kiss me?" (LAUGHS)

And so I did.

She had come with somebody, and we left together.

I don't know what happened to that poor fellow.

She knew I was living in this former synagogue,

which was in bad disrepair.

And after a while, she moved in.

My brother, Ed, and I always had bands.

Right outside our bedroom,

we had the drums and the guitar, it was just a big studio space.

Madonna just loved that.

They had a band already,

and it was called The Breakfast Club.

He went off to work every day with his brother,

and I kind of stayed there and used

their studio all day long until they came back to practice.

See, I kept wanting to play in their band and they kept saying,

"No, you know, there's no opening, sorry."

So, for a year, I just locked myself away

and taught myself to play drums and guitar and piano.

So, I had enough knowledge to write music,

and then the songs just started coming, you know, like crazy.

And then the drummer quit.

Then they finally let me be in their band.

She had a real good sense of rhythm,

and I guess that was 'cause of the dance background.

Yeah, you couldn't help but be impressed.

She was not a big person, but she could hit powerfully.

In that year and a half,

she wrote so many songs.

Every few days, she'd come up with some new song

about her experience and what she was feeling,

and the separation anxiety from being away from home.

"Letter From Daddy" was one that she wrote.

# Oh boy, I got a letter today

# From my daddy And here's what he had to say

# Baby, won't you please Come home...

She was disappointed that he was disappointed

in her leaving home, coming to New York.

And she had a line in that song,

"You loved the dream you had for me."

# Daddy, I'm afraid to come home

# I said, Daddy, I'm afraid to come home. #

It was hard to blame her father for being worried.

I mean, she came to New York with nothing.

Just her wits.

Oh, man.

From age to age, you gather a people to yourself...

My father and mother were very religious

and very Catholic.

..of the body and blood of your son,

our Lord, Jesus Christ...

Ten Commandments and sacraments, etcetera.

My father was a first-generation immigrant.

His presents came over on the boat from Italy,

and are real disciplinarian, very strict.

Very old fashioned,

traditional, macho, Italian world.

The girls got all the lectures, and we were told about modesty.

We had curfews and we had to dress a certain way,

and we had to behave a certain way, and my brothers...

could do whatever they wanted.

When we got home from school, we changed our clothes,