Madonna (32 page)

Although Madonna had written in the liner notes of
True Blue
that “This album is dedicated to my husband, the coolest guy in the universe,” the year 1987 was nothing but stormy weather for the couple. In March, while her next Top Ten single, “La Isla Bonita,” was hitting the charts, stories that Madonna was having an affair with Nick Kamen were being reported in the tabloids.

That same month, two more of Madonna's men were radioactive on the music charts: Steve Bray and Dan Gilroy. The previous year Bray and Gilroy had joined forces and re-formed Breakfast Club. The new edition included Steve, Dan, Ed Gilroy, and Gary Burke. Burke had been in Madonna's short-lived early eighties band, Emmy.

This new version of Breakfast Club was signed to MCA Records and released a self-titled album and a hit single called “Right on Track.” The album, which featured original songs and a great version of the 1967 hit “Expressway to Your Heart,” did well on the charts, and the video received good exposure on MTV.

That spring, while Madonna was reportedly having an affair with Kamen, Sean was busy filming his latest movie,
Colors
. Madonna insisted that her relationship with Kamen was strictly professional, in spite of his hunky good looks. When Penn was spotted in the West Beach Cafe in Venice, California, with two friends, an unidentified guy and girl, photographer Cesare Bonazza waited outside to snap photos of the trio. An argument ensued, and Bonazza claimed that Sean pulled a gun on him and threatened him.

According to Bonazza, “He [Sean] said, ‘Give me the fucking camera! Give me the fucking thing!' The guy was crazy, lunatic.”
¹⁴⁴
Fearing for his life, the photographer backed off at the sight of the gun. Although he didn't take any more shots once he spotted the weapon, he sold his photos of Sean spitting at him to the tabloids.

On April 2, 1987, the stakes proved a little higher. While on the set of
Colors
, Sean spotted Jeffrey Klein, one of the extras, with a camera, taking his picture. Penn went into a rage and went over and socked the guy. Klein pressed charges, which violated Sean's one-year probation on charges of slugging David Wolinski the previous April 12.

To compound things, on May 25 Sean was arrested for running a red light in L.A. His 1983 Chevrolet Impala was clocked at 55 mph in a 35 mph zone. He failed a sobriety test, registering a blood alcohol content of .011. On June 23, pleading no contest, Sean was sentenced to sixty days in jail. In addition, he was to be on probation for an additional two years. In the ten-minute hearing in Municipal Court, Sean was also ordered to undergo counseling. According to Deputy City Attorney Alice Hand, “Given his history as we know it, through the media and the two incidents, it seemed warranted.”
¹⁵¹
There were no grounds on which Sean could appeal the sentence, but it was anticipated that he would end up with time off for good behavior—as long as he didn't encounter anyone in jail with a camera.

He ended up serving five days, beginning July 7, then was released to fly to Germany to film scenes for
Judgment in Berlin
. He returned to serve twenty-eight more days of the sentence, and he was indeed given the rest of the sentence off for good behavior. His time was served at a tiny jail in the California mountains, the Mono County Jail. While he was there, the unkindest blows came from the headlines of the tabloids, particularly the
National Enquirer
. Their cover stories included
JAILED SEAN PENN TURNS INTO A WIMP
(August 25, 1987) and
AIDS TERROR FOR JAILED SEAN PENN—HE HIDES IN CELL TO AVOID CONS WITH THE DEADLY DISEASE
(September 22, 1987). Even notorious biographer Kitty Kelley got in one of her digs when she told
USA Today
, “This is not Hollywood eccentric. It is rude, obnoxious. He [Sean] is starting to make Frank Sinatra look semi-human.”
¹⁵²

Meanwhile, Madonna's career was soaring even higher. In April her latest single, “La Isla Bonita,” which peaked at Number Four, became her twelfth consecutive Top Ten single. The video that she did to accompany it was rich in religious symbolism and Spanish atmosphere. Madonna is seen in two intercut sequences. In one she is in a New York City apartment, dressed in a white slip, lighting candles at a living room altar, reminiscing about “La Isla Bonita.” In the memory sequence she is seen in an apartment filled with lit candles. In it she wears a bright red flamenco dress, looking as if she is ready for a night onstage in Barcelona. In the end sequence she is in the red flamenco dress on the streets of Manhattan.

With Sean in the slammer, and Madonna about to release the film that was originally entitled
Slammer
, their lives couldn't have been more different. What was happening during the summer of 1987 would pull them even farther apart. Sean hated the publicity and attention he was receiving, while Madonna clearly wanted more. Speaking about himself, Sean admitted up front, “I like to drink and I like to brawl.”
¹⁵²
Madonna had other things on her mind. Without hesitation she proclaimed, “I don't want people to forget my name. I want everyone to know it. I want everything there is in life and love. I want to reach everyone.”
²⁸

Madonna was about to get her wish.

   I've always known this was going to happen to

   me…. My success was something

   that was meant to be.
¹⁵³
—Madonna

 

A
lthough she found Sean's behavior upsetting, Madonna had her hands full with her own career. She had worked too hard to get where she was to let her husband's surly behavior get in her way. This was going to be the summer she first utilized her multimedia blitz technique to its maximum potential. In the summer of 1987, Madonna was ubiquitous. She mounted a massive summer concert tour, dubbed the “Who's That Girl? Tour”; released the soundtrack album,
Who's That Girl?
; and launched the
Who's That Girl?
movie. There was also a new music video for the song “Who's That Girl?” and ultimately a concert video entitled “Ciao Italia.” Just in case anyone didn't know who “that girl” was, they only had to consult the cover of any number of magazines to find out it was Madonna!

In fact, when Madonna appeared on the cover of the July 1987
Cosmopolitan
, she was the first celebrity “Cosmo girl” since Elizabeth Taylor in 1969. According to
Cosmopolitan's
progressive editor-in-chief, Helen Gurley Brown, she was perfect Cosmo girl material because she started with nothing and she's very frank. In the cover story, Madonna told
Cosmopolitan
readers that she was really quite a down-to-earth girl. “I like washing dishes,” she claimed. “I have this cleaning impulse sometimes. I think I got it from my mother.”
²⁶

Although that statement makes it sound as if Madonna's home life with Sean was charming and homey, in reality they were going through some of their rockiest times. Madonna's publicist Liz Rosenberg denied that divorce was in the air, but admitted at the time, “All I can say is Madonna and Sean are definitely having problems, and they are taking time to work things out.”
¹⁵⁴

Madonna's Who's That Girl? concert tour presented new challenges. She didn't just want to do a rock tour, she wanted to make it into a true spectacle. “I swore after my last tour I wasn't going to do another,” she said. “That whole living-out-of-a-suitcase business. I don't know how Bruce Springsteen does it—I could never go out for a year. I told my manager the only way I would do the tour is if I could make it interesting for myself.”
⁸¹

According to Liz Rosenberg, “Madonna's idea was to do a Broadway show—in a stadium.”
¹⁵⁵
To accomplish this she assembled a cast, which included Chris Finch, a previously unknown thirteen-year-old boy who was hired to expand upon the role of the kid in the “Open Your Heart” video. She then hired three backup singers, including Niki Harris, and two additional male dancers, including Shabba Doo (a/k/a Adolfo Quinones).

Marlene Stewart designed Madonna's stage costumes around ideas the singer herself had. Shabba Doo, who had appeared in several break-dancing movies, including
Breakin
, choreographed the show. And Madonna's girlfriend, Debi M. (Mazur), did the hair and makeup. Debi, who has since gone on to an acting career of her own, is the one who is responsible for Madonna's look at this time, right down to the shape of her lipstick line and the drawn-on beauty mark.

“There's obviously been a transition in terms of her look,” Marlene Stewart explained at that time.
¹⁵⁵
“She has drastically changed her style, and this tour is great, because it is a compilation of all of her personas.”
¹⁵⁶

The plan was to have Madonna evolve to a new phase of her image. It was a conscious effort to break with the past. “What's really important is that she doesn't wear any jewelry at all on this tour,” Stewart pointed out. Since “jewelry used to be her statement,” they instead concentrated more on her face and silhouette.”
¹⁵⁶

Madonna was deeply involved in every aspect of the show, including the images that were projected on the screen behind her, the pacing of the show, and the costumes. The images were controversial, the pacing was nonstop, and the costumes were extreme.

The show began with Chris Finch playing the role of the little boy trying to sneak into the peep show. However, this time around Madonna was behind a scrim with her chair, pasties, and nipple tassels. Projecting a huge silhouette, the band hit the first chords of “Open Your Heart.” When it came time to sing “True Blue,” Madonna changed into a flouncy fifties-style dress in blue, with the backup singers behind her, as she had done in the European video of that same song.

Singing “Papa Don't Preach,” she added a black leather jacket to the same outfit, as several images of authority figures were projected on the huge screen behind her. These included Ronald Reagan and the Pope. The final image projected on the screen were the words SAFE SEX in huge letters.

For “White Heat,” which was done complete with the James Cagney monologue from the movie of the same name, it was a gangster theme. Dancing with an identically dressed Shabba Doo, Madonna wore a fedora and gold lame jacket. As part of the intricate choreography, both Madonna and Shabba grabbed at their crotches—a public action previously reserved for vulgar men. There is no question that Madonna has balls—so she may as well pretend to rearrange them onstage.

The costumes Madonna wore during this tour were designed for quick changes. She kept the basic “Open Your Heart” bodysuit on at all times and just switched her tops, pants, or skirts. When she went into “Causing a Commotion,” a gold lame jacket was added to the bodysuit—with the black tassels still dangling from the pasties. Her most bizarre costume change happened in a replica of a British cast-iron phone booth that was brought onstage. Emerging from it, Madonna looked like Edith Prickly, the nerdy Andrea Martin character from “SCTV.” She wore rhinestone harlequin glasses, a fuchsia Mad Hatter's hat, and a billowy pink hoopskirt laden with trinkets like fuzzy dashboard dice, cloth flowers, kewpie dolls, and even a plastic lobster. Marlene Stewart explained it as being “solidly encrusted with material objects—toy watches, ashtrays, coins, paper money, plastic fruit.”
¹⁵⁶

While wearing that get-up, Madonna did a medley of three of her sexiest songs about seduction—”Dress You Up,” “Material Girl,” and “Like a Virgin”—parodying the overtly sexy image that she usually projected. When she bent over to “moon” the audience, her lifted skirt revealed panties with the word
KISS
in big letters on her ass. Dancing with two male dancers, at one point the trio goose-stepped with an upraised left arm—Nazi-style.

For the number “Into the Groove,” Madonna wore another jacket decorated with colorful items, including a large letter
U
on one side, a Campbell's soup can on the other side, and the word
DANCE
on the back, so when she spun around, it formed a pictograph sentence: “U Can Dance.” For “La Isla Bonita,” Madonna changed to a layered red skirt and bolero jacket.

Being able to change her costumes onstage made for a seamless ninety-minute show of nonstop Madonna music. She danced up a storm, sold out arenas, and created a commotion wherever in the world she took the show.

Unencumbered by the presence of Sean or the pretense of a phobia against publicity, Madonna soared on this tour. It must have felt like a massive weight was taken off her shoulders not to have him around all of the time. Mounting the show was hard work, but it turned out to be a roaring success for her.

Originally, the group Club Nouveau, who appear on the
Who's That Girl?
soundtrack, were set as her opening act. A week before the tour began, the group backed out, and were replaced by Level 42. According to Jay King, Club Nouveau member and manager, “Madonna is big enough that she doesn't need us and we're big enough that we don't need her.”
¹⁵⁷
Jay King might have considered the two million people they would have played to had they remained on the tour. It is thinking like his that has kept his group a mere footnote in the music world. With the exception of their hit revival of Bill Withers's “Lean on Me,” their career has been a case of Club
Who
?

The tour opened on June 14 in Japan at Osaka Stadium. It played there on Sunday and Monday nights, and then moved east for three nights at Tokyo's Korakuen Stadium, June 20—22. All five dates sold out almost immediately, and scalpers were commanding up to $700 per ticket. The only real mishap that occurred in Japan was a torrential rainstorm that made it necessary to cancel the opening night concert in Tokyo. Several of the 35,000 people who stood in the rain waiting for the show to start refused to leave the stadium and a riot nearly broke out. Unfortunately there was no leeway to reschedule the canceled date.