Madonna (26 page)

She went on to say she realized most of the audience couldn't attend, so she brought some home movies to watch. With that she began narrating a film lampooning her insane wedding, complete with an actor playing Sean. It was hysterical. The Super-8 camera first shows Madonna dressed as a bride and then is aimed at “Sean,” who instantly puts his hand up to block the camera. Madonna introduces her family as the camera pans across a group of gaudily dressed Italians, and all of the women—including the grandmother—are clad in crucifixes, bare midriff tops, brassieres over their clothing, rags tied in their hair, ruby red lipstick, and drawn-on beauty marks. The camera next hits a girl dressed as Cyndi Lauper—a la the cover of her album
She's So Unusual
. When the camera hits Sean's family, they all—including the grandmother—hold up their hands to block it. When it comes time to show the ceremony in this mock home movie, the action cuts to footage of an Air Force helicopter maneuver. In Madonna's narration, she says, “Everybody had a great time until the press got there.” Conducting the ceremony is Don Novello as Father Guido Sarducci, but Madonna can't hear a word he is saying, and keeps yelling, “What did you say?” According to her, Sean decides to “turn the other cheek” and she has to take matters into her own hands.
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With that, she pulls out a bazooka and shoots down the helicopter from the
New York Post
.

Returning from the “home movie,” Madonna announced the other guest stars appearing on the show and neatly squelched a running rumor. She said, “I'm not pregnant, and we'll be right back.”
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In the first live skit, Madonna portrays her idol Marilyn Monroe in a reenactment of the actress's final hours. The skit is entitled “The National Inquirer Theatre.” In it Madonna plays Marilyn, costumed in a replica of
The Seven-Year Itch
dress that blew up when Monroe stood on a breezy subway grating. In this version, Marilyn's maid (Joan Cusack) is vacuuming the room, and the vacuum cleaner blows up the dress to cause the same effect. Randy Quaid, who was a regular performer on the show that season, portrayed President John F. Kennedy.

Madonna's other comic skits included one called “Pinklisting,” in which she plays a Joan Collins—like soap opera star who has to kiss an actor she suspects is gay. Another skit found her singing a cha-cha version of the A-Ha song “Take on Me,” as Marika, the star of a Spanish-language variety show called “El Espectacular de Marika.”

Later in the show she portrays a frustrated Princess Diana, visiting the White House. Jon Lovitz plays her bored husband, Prince Charles. In drag as Nancy Reagan, actor Terry Sweeney is a riot portraying the former first lady as a bitchy dipsomaniac. As the skit proceeds, Madonna's Princess Di throws herself at Randy Quaid's stupefied version of President Reagan, as though looking for a father figure.

In her final bit, Madonna is seen as a menaced Tippi Hedrin—like character in a skit called “The Limits of the Imagination.” It is a car phone variation of
Sorry Wrong Number
, and Madonna looks fabulous and Kim Novak-ish with her hair in a French twist.

An excellent showcase for Madonna, the show demonstrated that she did indeed have a great sense of comic timing and could pull off a demanding acting assignment. Some of the skits were less than brilliant in the way they unfolded, and it appeared that the writers didn't know how to end the Marika skit. However, that was not Madonna's problem. Her job was to draw ratings and to kick the season off with a bang. This she did.

Not once, but twice during the broadcast of “Saturday Night Live” that night, they ran advertisements for Madonna's new video cassette,
The Virgin Tour—Live
, which was due to be released November 11. What better way to publicize it?

Having returned to Manhattan, Madonna found herself walking down the same streets she used to walk down when she was a moneyless unknown. However, thanks to the incredible events of the past year, this time around she was hobnobbing in the most elite circles.

On November 14, the Thursday after she hosted “Saturday Night Live,” Madonna was invited to a chic little get-together at Yoko Ono's apartment at the Dakota. Yoko was throwing a bash for Bob Dylan, and she had everyone take off their shoes when they arrived. Madonna complied, but claimed that since she didn't have socks on, she'd feel more comfortable taking off her top than removing her shoes. The guest list included David Bowie and Andy Warhol—who had a hole in his sock. According to Warhol, “She said she was so relieved her husband Sean wasn't with her, so she could really have fun.”
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There was definitely trouble in paradise.

On November 29, in an attempt to erase some of the bad publicity that they had both been receiving, Madonna and Sean visited the Cornell Medical Center at New York Hospital to distribute Christmas presents to kids who wouldn't be traveling home for the holidays. Upon the Penns' insistence, there was no press—or photographers—allowed.

That fall it came time to return to the recording studio to begin work on her next album. Instead of looking to an outside producer, Madonna decided to co-produce the album herself. All the songs slated for the album were co-written by her, with the exception of “Papa Don't Preach,” which was written by Brian Elliot, with “additional lyrics by Madonna.” She recorded four cuts with Steve Bray, five cuts with Pat Leonard, and one cut with both of them. Nine of the ten songs ultimately made the album.

She also contacted several of the musicians that she had used before and trusted. One was keyboardist Fred Zarr. When she first landed a recording deal with Sire, Mark Kamins brought Fred into the sessions to play keyboard on the song “Everybody.” Zarr vividly recalls the first time he ever laid eyes on Madonna. “When she walked into the room, I could feel the energy,” he claims. “I looked up when she walked into the room. I just felt her walking in. I'll never forget that first time, meeting her.”
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After she dismissed Kamins from the project, she wanted to continue to work with Fred on the album's additional cuts. Says Zarr, “Madonna liked working with me, and she introduced me to Reggie and wanted me to be used. All the songs that he produced I worked on. I did some of the keyboards, not all of them, on each song that he did. I remain friendly with Reggie to this day, as a result of Madonna's introducing us.”
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Fred remembers that Reggie and Madonna didn't have the same strong rapport: “He really didn't get along too well with Madonna. They had some personality differences.”
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Zarr had known and worked with Jellybean Benitez for several years, so when it came time to record “Holiday,” he was brought in on that session as well.

After the first album was completed and released, Madonna maintained contact with Fred Zarr. “We had tried to write [songs together] once; she had come to the house. She's been here two times, I guess. Then when she did ‘Like a Virgin,' and she was working at the Power Station with Nile Rodgers, I was working with somebody else, and I ran into her. A couple of years later, she called me up one day and said, ‘Fred! It's Madonna! I want you to come do some “Zarrisms.”‘ So, I got to do ‘Papa Don't Preach,' ‘True Blue,' and ‘Jimmy Jimmy.' I was also on ‘Spotlight,' which wasn't put on that album, it was on a later album. It was originally going on that album.”
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Madonna produced four songs with Steve Bray at the recording studio that Bray had constructed in his Brooklyn apartment. “I did the intro to ‘Papa Don't Preach,' which I wasn't credited with, unfortunately,” says Zarr. “What happened was, I was at Steve Bray's studio—he produced it with her, and he had an Emulator II synthesizer. At the time it was brand-new; I had never heard it before, or played it before. It had a string sound that was incredible, and, as we were working on the string part—that ‘da ta da da da' part—and they were rewinding the tape, I was doodling around, as I always do, and I came up with this intro. Madonna really liked it. I was just playing. Madonna said, ‘I like that! What is that?' So, we put it on the beginning of the song. But, that was actually my intro—it's classic—it's the signature of the song. I'll never forget hearing her a few years after that in concert, and as soon as the audience heard the first two notes, they went nuts. Every time you heard that on the radio, you just knew—there it is. I'm proud of that.”
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All four of the songs co-produced with Bray for the
True Blue
album were totally different in style and approach. “True Blue” was obviously a love song about the devotion that Madonna was trying to express to Sean. “Jimmy Jimmy” was a frivolous but fun pop song out of the Motown-ish “Jimmy Mack”/”Nathan Jones” mold. “Spotlight” was a typical Madonna look-at-me dance number, and “Papa Don't Preach” was a brilliant statement song about teenage pregnancy.

Fred confesses, “I never was crazy about that song ‘Jimmy Jimmy.' I didn't like ‘True Blue' either. Who knew it was going to be the title cut!”
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Zarr says working with Madonna was much more exciting and creative than recording sessions he has done with other artists. “It was really interesting working with her, because she always knew what she wanted, and she's real demanding. She used to just let me kind of do my thing, and then she'd say, ‘Oh, I like that,' or ‘I don't like that.' But, she'd just run the tape and let me play a lot. It was really Madonna who liked that intro the most on ‘Papa Don't Preach.' It was her idea to actually do it, because there was no intro on the tune before.”
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The songs that Madonna recorded on the West Coast with Pat Leonard co-producing had their own unique flavor as well. “White Heat,” which was dedicated to actor James Cagney (the star of the movie of the same name), was a tribute to 1930s gangster movies. However, in this song, it is love that is the valued object of desire instead of money derived from bootlegging liquor. “La Isla Bonita” is a seductive Caribbean flavored tune that Madonna's character Marika might have sung. “Love Makes the World Go Round” is her salute to the peace songs of the sixties, similar to The Beatles' “All You Need Is Love.” For high drama, Madonna and Pat came up with the stunning song “Live to Tell,” which was the theme song for Sean's still forthcoming film
At Close Range
. The final song on the album, “Where's the Party?” was produced by Madonna with Leonard and Bray together. It was to become the album's “get down, get funky, get loose” dance tune.

Regarding Madonna's working relationship with Pat and Steve, Fred Zarr observed that they perfectly complemented each other. According to him, “Madonna is smart, and she doesn't think that she can do it all herself, but she is a driving force. She has talented people around her who she can work with, that she feels comfortable with. Steve is really good to work with. I enjoyed working with him. He's very talented, and they've made a good team. I think they work real well together. And, Madonna is very smart. She finds people who she can work with, like Steve and Pat Leonard. She knows a good thing.”
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It was a calculated risk taking on the responsibility of co-producing her own album, with two people who were for the most part unproven as producers. However, Madonna's sense of direction and musical intuition proved successful. According to Zarr, Madonna seemed much more relaxed and confident on the sessions for this particular album than she had been in the beginning of her career. Her discomfort on her first two albums had caused her to argue with Reggie Lucas and to “give attitude” with Nile Rodgers.

“I know that during the
Like a Virgin
album, a lot of people thought she was pretty nasty,” says Fred Zarr. “My relationship with her was one that started when she didn't even have enough money to get home from the studio. I used to drop her off at home. She didn't have enough money to take a cab. I liked her then, when she was broke, and we got along then, so I think I have that kind of perception about her. I just know her for who she is. She's been to my house, and I took her for a ride on my motorcycle, and we got along real well. She was very direct as far as, ‘I don't want that.' If I played something, and I really liked it, and she said, ‘I don't want that,' she didn't want that, and it wasn't going in, and that was it. She was very direct. It wasn't insulting, I mean, it was her record. A lot of people think she's bitchy. In the relationship I had with her, I didn't find that.”
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It was a mutually beneficial relationship. “I like to think that I helped,” Fred states with honesty. “It changed my life, you could say. It changed my life in that, after working with her, I got so many calls to do keyboard work that I got real busy. It was really a turning point in my career, so I thank her for that.”
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Fred Zarr's work with Madonna occurred in October and November of 1985, at a time when there was a lot of activity in and around the Madonna camp. Sean had just been sentenced in Nashville for beating up cameramen, and several days later Zarr decided to bring his camera to Steve Bray's to snap a couple of shots of Madonna.

Fred Zarr recalls his own camera conflict with Sean Penn. “He came to pick her up from the studio a few times,” says Zarr of Penn. “I met him when I was working over at Steve's studio. Sean would come to pick her up, and he was real quiet. I had brought my camera, because I realized that I had never taken a picture of Madonna, and I had worked with her all this time. And so, he showed up, and he was telling the story about how he was in
People
magazine because he had just punched somebody recently who took his picture. So I asked him, ‘Is it OK if I get a picture of Madonna?' I don't know why I asked him. And Madonna said, ‘You don't have to ask him! You can take a picture.'”
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