It's a momentous and emotional day for Madonna and millions of fans around the world. The icon, who turned 65 in August, kicks off her Celebration Tour at the 02 Arena in London tonight (Saturday, October 14); the 84-date trek was delayed by two months after a a terrifying medical crisis landed the performer in the ICU.
That tour itself will serve as a career retrospective to mark 40 years since the 1983 release of her debut, self-titled album. Even casual pop culture devotees are familiar with young Madonna's prophecy to Dick Clark on American Bandstand the following year that she would "rule the world".
Who is Madonna in 2023, anyway? How have the past 40 years in the spotlight changed her — and us? Award-winning journalist Mary Gabriel (author of Ninth Street Women) ponders those fundamental questions in her massive Madonna: A Rebel Life, the most comprehensive and ambitious biography of the performer to date, which hit shelves earlier this week. HELLO! spoke to Mary about Madonna's tour, her milestone 65th birthday, Madonna's life today with her six children, how her epic, visionary tours laid the groundwork for Taylor Swift and Beyonce's massive 2023 treks, and more..
How would you characterize Madonna's feelings about birthdays and getting older?
Holidays, in general, have always been big events in the Ciccone household, Madonna's birthday in particular. Most years, it's an excuse to gather her children and closest friends, and take them someplace special — the South of France, southern Italy, Cuba, Morocco — where she and they can celebrate each other. Getting older? Madonna is a realist. Aging is inescapable. And, in any case, with age comes wisdom and the world certainly needs more of that.
Madonna's mother was just 30 when she passed away. Madonna is now more than twice that age. How has the memory of her mother, her sense of mortality and her definition of motherhood shaped Madonna's later creative output and personal choices?
Childhood heartbreak affects all children differently. Some never recover, but others become little survivors, tough as nails on the outside, though always nursing that primordial wound and trying to fill that gaping hole.
Madonna is the latter. She has been very open through the years about how much her mother's death shaped her as a person and as an artist. It's the source of the darkness in her work. I think her children have helped her move past that pain and find new inspiration. It is no coincidence that some people see her musical rebirth in her album, Ray of Light, which she wrote and produced after the birth of her first child, Lourdes.
As far as her creative output and choices, she says she is always torn between being a mother and being an artist (that is, in fact, the plight of all artist mothers). She has struck a balance by making her children part of her work — they're in the studio, at rehearsals, on tour, and sometimes onstage.
Nicki Minaj told an interviewer that when she worked with Madonna on her MDNA album in 2012, she watched the Ciccone kids come to the studio and Madonna would stop everything to talk to them. "I was just like, that’s the epitome of who I want to be," Minaj said. "If I can balance a family and career, then I win."
Are you a believer in astrology and cosmic coincidences? What do you make of the fact that Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Prince — not to mention Kate Bush! — were all born during the same summer in 1958?
It does seem cosmic, doesn't it?! But, when you think about it historically, those were the children born at the start of a new age in the cultural sense. World War II was a painful memory, Korea was, too, and with the threat of nuclear war hanging over everyone's heads, people began to live like there was no tomorrow.
That mentality became the 1960s' sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. It was a time bursting with possibility, creativity, with liberation (sort of). Those four artists, Madonna, Jackson, Prince, and Bush — young women and young Black men — matured in an era when they believed they actually had a choice about who they could be and that all doors were open to them. It was a thrilling time to be a dreamer, but even more exciting if you had the strength and courage to actualize your dreams, as they did.
As you note in the book, Madonna is the last one standing among those mega-pop icons born that summer. (Kate is still with us, of course.) Other stars from that 1980s pantheon have also passed prematurely: Whitney Houston and George Michael. Is there anything other than luck to which we can attribute her literal survival and staying power?
Madonna is extremely pragmatic. That's her father's influence, but also because she had to work so hard to succeed. Throughout her life, she has also seen too many people die — from AIDS, drugs, and violence.
As willing as she is to take risks in her work, she has played it surprisingly safe personally. She says she only took drugs occasionally, and they were benign substances like pot and Ecstasy. For most of her life, she even barely drank alcohol. Her drugs are work and exercise (of her mind and body). Her primary addiction is learning. Her focus in the past twenty-plus years is her children.
What has the mood been like in her family and inner circle during this crisis? To my mind, this is the most serious brush with death and illness she's ever faced.
I can only imagine that Madonna's crisis caused them all to stop in their tracks and rethink their lives and their priorities. In a funny way, Madonna has seemed immortal. As you said, she has survived the life that has killed many of her peers.
The closest she has come to a debilitating medical condition is when she fell off her horse in 2005. That set her back for a few months (and she came back with her Confessions album and tour, which were unbelievably good). And then, during her Madame X tour, in 2019-2020, she suffered excruciating pain from hip and leg ailments that ultimately caused her to cancel concerts.
I think her fans were shocked and delighted when she announced she would head back out on tour because Madame X had seemed as though it would be her final outing. Now, after this latest health scare, I'm sure some people around her will advise her to slow down, but I'm also sure that those who know her best know that she will take this experience and use it in her work. I can't wait to see what comes out of it creatively.
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You write about some of Madonna's enduring — and also fleeting — friendships, from early-NYC pals like Debi Mazar and the late Keith Haring to Sandra Bernhard, Gwyneth Paltrow, Rosie O'Donnell, and others. Now that she's older and with a family of her own, what friends remain, and how have these relationships lasted?
It's always hard to tell from a distance who is closest to Madonna because historically, those people she is closest to are the least visible to the press and public. I found during my many years researching her that the people most willing to talk about her were often those whose involvement with her was minimal. Exceptions, of course, are Rosie O'Donnell and Debi Mazar.
They have known Madonna — in Debi's case, for forty-plus years — and in Rosie's, about thirty. Each of them has children of their own, so I suppose it's easier to maintain their relationships. They can be friends on the level of women, artists, and moms with a shared history.
Madonna is also great friends with fashion designer Stella McCartney (another artist mom). Unfortunately, so many of Madonna's closest male friends have died: Christopher Flynn, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Martin Burgoyne, Herb Ritts, and David Collins. The list is much too long. Why do some friendships last? Love and loyalty. Why do some friendships fade? Madonna's like anyone. People fall out, move on, and grow apart.
Would Madonna ever retire? Why or why not?
If Madonna were an "entertainer" she might be expected to retire. But Madonna is an artist, and artists don't retire because what they do is who they are. She is inseparable from her work and it's impossible to imagine her stopping.
Madonna's hospitalization inspired many media outlets to lay off her a bit, to ease up on negative headlines that speculated about her appearance, possible plastic surgery, and bold social media posts. Reading 40-plus years of media coverage of Madonna, how would you say things have changed — or not — in how she's publicly perceived and written about as an artist, woman, and now mom?
I think you're right that the press has eased up. Maybe her legions of critics took a breath and realized the stature of the person the world nearly lost. But Madonna has had periods in the past where critics — and by that I mean the broad press and now social media — have given her a break. I'm thinking of the period after her first pregnancy, after her marriage to Guy Ritchie and Rocco's birth.
The hiatus has never lasted. Hopefully, this time it will. I hope the media is finally ready to look at the scope of her career, her impact on the world, her contributions to culture, and the courage it has taken for her to remain true to her vision despite decades of bullying. I frankly don't know how she did it. Her intense spirituality and her necessity to create gave her strength.
But I once asked her brother Christopher how she continued in the face of such ugly criticism, and he said quite simply, her fans pulled her through. That was her focus, not the chattering class. I really do hope the harassment ends. It was tiring 40 years ago. Today it just seems lazy.
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What intel were you able to gather about what has been planned for the Celebration tour (setlist, themes, surprises)?
I don't have any inside information, but I can tell you what I'm looking for. I'm sure the performance is set, down to the second. But I'm anxious to see how Madonna incorporates her illness into the show. I don't mean in terms of any new limitations on her movement, but rather how she interprets and celebrates another chance at life.
While her own tour has been postponed by a few months, Madonna inarguably created the template for the epic, visionary tours that are defining this year, particularly Taylor Swift's Eras Tour and Beyoncé's Renaissance Tour. Could you speak a bit more about the influence of the Blonde Ambition Tour and the eight (!) world tours that followed on the modern concert tours of all her pop descendants?
Madonna has been called the architect of the modern pop spectacle. I was reading the other day about the various "acts" in Beyoncé's latest tour. I don't think the younger generation realizes it, but no pop star before Madonna had ever done that. No one before her made a pop concert a theatrical experience.
From the start of her career, she wasn't content to stand at a microphone and sing (in other words, be a good girl!). But it was, as you say, during Blond Ambition that the world got a taste of what a pop concert Madonna-style could be, and it was fabulous. It was pop and classical, it was Broadway and burlesque, it was slapstick and solemn. Add to that the collaboration between Madonna and Jean-Paul Gaultier, which cemented the link between haute couture and pop music.
And then there was the social revolution that she presented on stage. At that time, in the US and the UK, the backlash against gays amid the AIDS crisis was as cruel as it was pervasive. Britain had its own version of "Don't Say, Gay." Madonna defiantly filled her stage with mostly gay and bi men (some HIV-positive) and celebrated them and their talent, and made the world do so, too — even in places where being gay was a crime. Blond Ambition changed everything — how shows could be produced and what shows could say.
Late July marked another milestone birthday: her debut album, Madonna, hit shelves 40 years ago. In your research, what surprised you most — or would surprise readers — about the making of that album and the years leading up to her major label debut?
Most people, especially Madonna's fans, have an idea of her life story; how she came from nothing to basically rule the world. But I don't think people really understand how hard she worked, how many times she allowed herself to fail — even though it cost her everything — because the music or direction she was involved with wasn't right. Far from being the "Material Girl" seeking fortune, what she really sought was her art.
She had nothing, and yet she was willing to risk even that to become the artist she needed to be. It sounds like fiction, but it is true. I was astounded by her courage and her self-confidence. For example, while working with one of the best and biggest producers in the business, the late Reggie Lucas, on her first album, she had the nerve to say she wasn't happy with what he had done. She felt that he was trying to make her something she wasn't, so she asked a friend to help her remix some of the songs. That strength of character is rare for a young artist, and even rarer still for a young woman artist. I can only describe it one way, Madonna had (and still has) balls.
Preorder Madonna: A Rebel Life, on sale October 10, here.
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