1987:
August 16: Madonna (in London for the Who’s That Girl tour) celebrates her 29th birthday today at the Groucho Club. On hand were actor John Hurt, Lady Helen Windsor (daughter of the Duke of Kent and first cousin of Queen Elizabeth II) and singer Boy George. Also, present was Pat Leonard and his 3 and half year old daughter Jessie. He will tell a British magazine later in 1989:
“Madonna and Jessie have been friends since she was born. Madonna’s a godmother almost. They play and dance. In fact, in London at Madonna’s birthday party they danced for about 2 hours together. In fact, she got her drunk on champagne – I could kill her. Ha ha!” He will also say of the song “Dear Jessie” – “The music was very playful and it sounded like a child and Madonna came up with ‘pink elephants and lemonade’. I was saying it’s got a very Beatles-like attitude like “Dear Prudence” (an old hippy-esque Beatles song) and she said, “Dear Jessie.” Jessie now listens to the album and proudly announces, “It’s my song.” <— I suspect the “pink elephants” reference may be Madonna’s mea culpa that she got Jessie drunk. (thanks to Danny86 for the magazine scan – not sure what magazine it was but I think it was British)
September 22: Prince returns to Minneapolis today from a trip he took to NYC and Paris. He has just finished a screenplay for a film called Graffiti Bridge that he wants Madonna to co-star in with him. A few weeks later, she arrives in Minneapolis to discuss possible collaborations. After studying the script, she calls it “a piece of shit” and tells a flabbergasted Prince that she’s not interested in doing it. (paraphrased from Dance Music Sex Romance: Prince: The First Decade By Per Nilsen)
LATER: In an interview with Rolling Stone (03/23/89), Madonna says:
Prince and I didn’t really finish anything though. We started a bunch of stuff then we would go on to the next thing. We just tried to start as many things as we could. We worked for a few days; then I had to leave to do some other things. I decided that I didn’t want to do a musical with him at that time.
Meanwhile, I went and did Speed-the-Plow on Broadway. He came to see the play and brought me a rough mix of one of the songs we’d worked on. I thought it was just fabulous. I’d sort of forgotten about it. So I called him up and said I loved it and that after I was finished with the play, I wanted to get together with him and work on it for my album. As it turned out, we did it in a very funny way. We sent tapes to each other back and forth between L.A. and Minnesota. Then we would talk on the phone, and he would play stuff for me over the line. I loved working that way.
But “Love Song” does have a spirituality about it, the kind that exists between two people. It’s really about that push and pull of a relationship.
In another interview in 1989 (scan courtesy Danny86, but magazine unknown), Madonna will also say this about Prince and “Love Song”:
Originally, we were going to do a musical together and we were going to write the music for it – that didn’t really pan out. We just kept getting together. He seemed to fight the idea of just writing songs for a record together because he’s done that with so many people. He came to see me in the play I did last summer in NY and he, just for the hell of it, put together a tape of some of the rough things that we’d done in all our meetings that we’d had. “Love Song” was one of the songs and I just said, “You know, this is crazy, it’s such a great song – why not put it on the record? It seemed to relate to all the other songs because it’s about a relationship that’s a love/hate relationship. So he agreed to it and we kind of sent the tapes back and forth to each other and we’d keep building it. It was like he would write a sentence and I would add on to it and then send it back to him and he would continue the story, basically. It was fun. I played the keyboards myself and because I don’t know that much, it kind of came out strange and interesting.
There will also be rumors later that Prince registered a song called “By Alien Means” in 1988 that was a product of these meetings with Madonna but no hard evidence ever comes to light to prove them.
November 26: Sean Penn shows up at her NYC apartment drunk after disappearing for 4 days expecting to spend Thanksgiving with her. Madonna claims this is the final straw in regards to their marriage. (NY Daily News)
December 4: Madonna files for divorce (the first time) in Los Angeles Superior Court today.
December 16: Madonna reconciles with Sean Penn.
December 20: In an interview with the L.A. Times published today, Madonna says she’s been wearing “all black” lately to reflect a starker, more dramatic state of mind. This look will carry over to her next role she’s currently filming in The Bloodhounds of Broadway.
1988:
January-February: Pat Leonard will tell a British magazine that Madonna and he wrote the bulk of their songs for this album in a 2 week time period. It is likely around this time because Madonna will tell Songtalk magazine in 1989 that she wrote “Cherish” just before she left for NYC to start rehearsing for Speed the Plow:
Pat Leonard to the British magazine: “Everything is very quick. We wrote ‘Like A Prayer’, ‘Spanish Eyes’, ‘Til Death Do Us Part’, ‘Dear Jessie’, ‘Promise to Try’ and ‘Cherish’ in a two week period. I was working on another album at the time [probably Marilyn Martin - see details below], so she’d just come in on Saturdays or days off. Nothing took more than 4 hours ever. She sits on the couch, takes a pad out and writes the lyrics and sings it and we’re done.” He also says a track they will do for this album is left off the LP, “Supernatural”: Pat says, “It’s almost a novelty piece. The lyrics are about sleeping with someone who’s dead in a spiritual sense. It’s about sleeping with a ghost. It’s a real kind of weird funk tune with a very strange groove.”
In the same article, Steve Bray will also add: “I come up with some ideas and send them to her on a cassette and she’ll check them out and then we’ll get together and work on the arrangement on the ones she’s chosen. I’ve always kind of made the ribcage or skeleton of the song already – she’s there for the last things like the eyebrows and the haircut, I guess.” Bray will tell the interviewer that he and Madonna wrote 4 songs for this album and two did not make the final cut: “Love Attack” and “First is a Kiss” – the latter is a “safe sex song.” The tracks didn’t make the record because they didn’t fit the mood. Bray says, “She’s very much into a confessional attitude. It’s like a musical National Enquirer episode, that’s what I’m calling it. It’s behind the scenes, definitely, in Madonna’s psyche.” Bray also denies Madonna planned to write such an album. “She writes in a stream of mood, really. This album, she needed to do it. I’m sure of it. I’m sure it was a kind of cathartic thing to do.” He contrast her mood with when they wrote True Blue together: “she was very in love, it was obvious. If she’s in love, she’ll write love songs. If she’s not in love, she definitely won’t be writing love songs. That’s why the love songs we recorded aren’t on the LP. She didn’t feel that they were real enough for her at the time.” (thanks for that scan, Danny86)
Note: “Possessive Love” (Madonna/Pat Leonard/Jai Winding): This track was originally recorded by Madonna in 1988 but was also given to Atlantic singer Marilyn Martin. It was released by Atlantic as a single but did not do very well. Madonna’s original remains unreleased. Martin sang back-up vocals on “Cherish.”
Martin recorded her version of “Possessive Love” in 1987 (with Donna Delory on backing vocals) and the track appeared on her Atlantic sophomore album This Is Serious which was released in March 1988. This song was track 1 of the album and was featured as a single release. The album did not sell and she was subsequently dropped by her label.
February 23: Madonna begins rehearsals for Speed the Plow in NYC.
March: Pat Leonard gives an interview in Musician magazine this month (for their May 1988 issue) in which he says that he and Madonna have laid the groundwork for the next album.
“We’ve written eight new songs so far. And they range from a string quartet to a shuffle. There’s a couple of gospel things that we decided to experiment with. And some things that sound very Manhattan Transfer. There’s one that’s very harmonically dense and much more jazz-oriented than anything you’ve heard from her before. So I think the new album is going to be quite different.”
May-August: Madonna will tell Songtalk magazine in 1989 that she wrote “Oh Father” during the time she was in the play:
Interviewer: I love the beginning of “Promise to Try,” which is just you and an acoustic piano.
Madonna: Yeah, isn’t it pretty.
Interviewer: Yeah. That song and “Oh Father” seem to be companion songs.
Madonna: They are. Yeah, they absolutely are.
Interviewer: Did you write them at the same time?
Madonna: No. We did “Promise to Try” first. Pat and I. Once again, he just sat down and started playing. And I started singing. And we built it from there. We’d start stuff and we’d come back to it. With “Oh Father” he wrote the tracks, and I was doing the play in New York (Speed the Plow). He came to New York and I was in a very, very dark state of mind. We got together in this really dingy, awful little studio in the garment district in New York. It was grotesquely dirty and cramped, and that’s what came out of me.
In another interview in 1989, Madonna will say this of “Oh Father”:
Lots of times, Pat Leonard will come up with a piece of music like ‘Oh Father’ – we did very little to change it musically – he just throws the music at me and I just listen to it over and over again. And somehow, the music suggests words to me and I just start writing words down. Other times, I will come to Pat with an idea for a song, either lyrically or emotionally, and say “let’s do something like this” or I’ll have a melody line in my head which I will sing to him and he will sort of pound out the chords. It takes a lot longer to do it that way because I don’t play an instrument but ultimately, it’s a lot more personal. Then with Steve Bray it’s the same thing. Sometimes he’ll come up with a track and he’ll have a verse and chorus but he won’t have a bridge so we’ll write the bridge – musically – together. (thanks for the scan Danny86)
July: In an interview with Fame magazine (for their December 1988 issue) was done (in part) this month:
Q: Then you’re not thinking of abandoning music to pursue an acting career?
M: Of course not. I’m just letting my creative juices take me where they will. There’s a writer’s strike going on right now and there aren’t a lot of great movies available to do so that just works out fine for me because I haven’t done a record in at least two years. I mean, I’ve had records out but it’s all from my album and I didn’t write the stuff over the past year. I’m going into the studio to record some stuff that’s really different. As long as I can write songs, I’ll make records. When I get tired of that, when it gets old or I don’t have anything to say, then I won’t do it.
September 2: The Miami Herald says today that Madonna will begin recording her new album next week.
September 25: Madonna returns: Madonna’s three-month run in David Mamet’s Broadway play “Speed The Plow” ended in August and she’s ready to dive back into music. She’s starting work on a new album in Los Angeles with co-producer Pat Leonard. The album may be released early next year. (Orange County Register)
September 29: According to Liz Smith, Madonna is locked up in an L.A. recording studio with her producer, Pat Leonard; they are working on her next album (still not titled) which will come out in January or February.
LATER: Madonna will tell Songtalk that “Act of Contrition” was purely conceived in the recording studio on a whim:
Interviewer: “Act of Contrition,” the closing track of Like a Prayer, has backwards masking and other mysterious elements. Did he [Prince] have anything to do with that one as well? The credits only say, “Produced by the powers that be.”
Madonna: Yeah, he [Prince] did. He played guitar on it. He also played guitar on “Keep it Together.”
Interviewer: I noticed on “Act of Contrition” that you have the choir from “Like a Prayer” reversed on that.
Madonna: Yeah, we turned the tape and played everything backwards.
Interviewer: Your idea?
Madonna: Yeah. And then, of course, the whole thing, the saying of the prayer (on “Act of Contrition”) and everything, that was totally conceived of in the studio, in the control room. Pat put out a microphone, and I just started fooling around; and that was free-form, too. Whatever was on my head. It’s totally unedited.
October 11: Madonna cut some tracks of her new record at D&D Recording in NY with Kieran Walsh doing the engineering chores. She is completing the album in Los Angeles. (Manila Standard)
December 16: Madonna has a new album, titled Like A Prayer, coming out in February. (The Freelance Star)
mid-December: Madonna will work with Mary Lambert on the video to “Like A Prayer” – the first single for the album.
Madonna later says of the video:
“Well, originally, when I recorded the song, I would play it over and over again, trying to get a visual sense of what sort of story or fantasy it evoked in me. I kept imagining this story about a girl who was madly in love with a black man, set in the South, with this forbidden interracial love affair. And the guy she’s in love with sings in a choir. So she’s obsessed with him and goes to church all the time. And then it turned into a bigger story, which was about racism and bigotry. I wanted to put something in about Ku Klux Klan, use burning crosses… but then Mississippi Burning came out [released December 9, 1988] and I realized I was hitting the nail on the head a little too hard. Too obvious. So I thought I should take a slightly different approach. My original idea was much sadder. Kind of: this is reality, and reality sucks.
Then 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. The whole album has a lot of religious imagery in it. The video still has the sadness, but it’s got a hopeful ending. I mean, I had these ideas about me running away with the black guy and both of us getting shot in the back by the KKK. Completely insane. So Mary made it more palatable.”
1989:
January: People Weekly reports Madonna has filed for divorce from Sean Penn and that she may provide a musical response with a track called “Till Death Do Us Part” on her upcoming album.
January 25: Madonna signs an unprecendented $5 million deal with Pepsi-Cola for a series of TV commercials and sponsorship of her next world tour. Joe Pytka directs the first commercial. Madonna later tells Rolling Stone (who interviews her today) that is currently overseeing editing of the “Like A Prayer” video – among other things.
February 18: The blitz-tied to the March 21 release of her new album-officially begins March 2 with the splashy worldwide premiere of her already ballyhooed 2-minute Pepsi commercial. (A teaser for the spot will air during Wednesday’s Grammy telecast on CBS)
Bob Merlis, Warner Bros. Records vice president and national publicity director, says:
“I want to emphasize that the record company is not the handmaiden of the corporate sponsor,” Merlis said. “Our release plans have not been affected by their involvement. We’re incredibly glad for the exposure this will afford, but the single was decided on before they were ever involved. That is not a means to get out the music.”
Not to be overshadowed by all this, Merlis and manager Freddy DeMann hope, is the star and her music.
Added Merlis: “The irony is that the album is very human, shows her as a real person with foibles and emotions. She’s not a god, and that comes across-believe it or not-in the Pepsi commercial.”
Boasted DeMann: “It’s the best album she’s ever done, the first time she’s really opened up to the world, taken her deepest thoughts and translated them for the world.” (Los Angeles Times)
March 2: The “Make A Wish” Pepsi commercial premieres on The Cosby Show tonight to a worldwide audience of 250 million. It is the first time an artist uses a new song (“Like A Prayer”) in a promotional campaign before its official release.
March 3: The video for “Like A Prayer” debuts worldwide on MTV. Mass controversy ensues almost immediately.
March 18: Carole Robinson, director of program publicity for MTV and VH-1 says the “Like A Prayer” video is one of the station’s most requested videos. (Billboard)
March 21: The album is released.
June 21, 1989: Madonna’s appeal has a look and a sound. Now, it also smells. A patchouli aroma envelops the new Madonna mystique. The east Indian oil was used to scent the packaging for her “Like a Prayer” album, which has sold 5.8 million copies since its March release.
No comments:
Post a Comment