#why is the passion of christ right next to Max and Ruby?! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mtwy · 8 years ago

Photo

SPIN

USA May 1985

Despite the May cover date, SPIN hit newsstands March 25th 1985

She’s a shiny heavenly body, a seductive look and a sexy voice. She’s sleazy, trashy, cheap and completely out of your price range. Fans dress like her, confide in her, pray to her. She’s our lady of Rock N’ Roll. If you desire her, that’s all right, she wants you to. Her nickname’s “Squeeze”. She’s Marilyn Monroe and Joan Crawford incarnate

Interview by Scott Cohen

CONFESSIONS OF A MADONNA

TRASH I like to look the way Ronnie Spector sounded: sexy, hungry, totally trashy. I admire her tonal quality. I don’t have a deep, throaty voice or a womanish voice when I sing. I think my voice sounds innocent and sexual at the same time. That’s why I try to tell people, anyway; but they always misconstrue what I mean when I say “sexual innocence.” They look at me and go “innocence, huh?” They think I’m trash.

SEXCESS I couldn’t be a success without also being a sex symbol. I’m sexy. How can I avoid it? That’s the essence of me. I would have to have a bag over my head and over my body; but then my voice would come across, and it’s sexy.

IDOLS My first pop idol was Nancy Sinatra. Go-go boots, miniskirt, blond hair, fake eyelashes - she was cool.

My first movie idol was Marilyn Monroe. The movie character I identified with most, though, was Holly Golightly; because when I first came to New York, I was going to parties and not fitting in. I loved Brigette Bardot. Especially in Contempt. She kept saying ‘Do you love me? Tell me what is beautiful about me.’ I can relate to that totally because I really care about the way I look. I wanted to look like Brigette Bardot. I wanted to make my hair blonder and wear pointy bras and go out with Roger Vadim. I also wanted to look like Jean Seberg in Joan of Arc.

When I was growing up, I was religious, in a passionate, adolescent way. Jesus Christ as like a movie star, my favorite idol of all.

LOOK-ALIKES If I were a girl and knew me, I’d want to dress like me. If I were a guy, I’d dress either like Gregory Peck, when he was really young, or James Dean. I’d either wear ripped jeans and a t-shirt or a suit and tie.

EATING OUT At one point I was living in New York and eating out of garbage cans. Actually, it was not a garbage can on the street; it was the garbage can in the Music Building on Eighth Avenue where I lived with Steve Bray, the guy I write songs with. (He’s useful Male #2 or #3. Depending on which article you read.)

I had been squatting in a loft, living there illegally, but it burned down. There was no heat or hot water, so I had all these electric space heaters around this little piece of carpeting I slept on. I woke up in the middle of the night surrounded by a ring of fire. One of the heaters had set fire to the rug and it was spreading. I jumped up and dumped water on the fire, which made it spread more. Then my nightgown caught fire. So I took it off, got dressed, grabbed a few things, like underpants and stuff - all my important things like tapes and instruments were already over at the Music Building, three blocks away - and I went over to the Music Building and started sleeping there.

I had a band at the time and was playing places like Max’s and C.B.G.B’s. All the money we made paid for the van that transported our equipment. We shared our rehearsal loft with another band, so they practically paid the rent for us, and all our equipment was in that one room. Steve and I slept between amplifiers. We budgeted what little money we had to about $1 a day. We had credit in all the Korean delis within a five-block radius of the Music Building and with our dollar we’d get some yogurt and peanuts. Then Steve and I would fight over whether we should mix the peanuts with the yogurt. He liked to eat them together and I liked to eat them seperately. When we’d run out of money, I’d pass by the garbage can in the lobby of the Music Building, and if it smelled really good - like if there was a Burger King bag sitting on top that someone had just deposited - I’d open it up, and if I was lucky, there would be french fries that hadn’t been easten. I’m a vegetarian, which is why I didn’t eat the burger.

MONEY The first real money I ever got was $5000 from Sire Records, and the first expensive thing I bought was a Roland synthesizer. The next big money I got was publishing money for writing songs. I would get $1000 for every song I wrote. I wrote most of the songs on my first album, so I got what seemed like a lot of money at the time, and I moved to the East Village and got my first apartment. With the next money I moved to a loft in Soho, which was triple the rent I was paying in the East Village. These were all necessary things. The first most extravagant thing I ever bought — that I felt really guilty about buying — was a color TV. I never had a TV before in the seven years that I had lived in New York. When I grew up I didn’t even have a color TV. So I got a color TV, a VHS machine and a push-button remote control.

BELLY BUTTONS My favorite button is my belly button. I have the most perfect belly button: an inny, and there’s no lint in it. I never wore a jewel in my belly, but if I did it would be a ruby or an emerald, but not a diamond. When I stick my finger in my belly button, I feel a nerve in the center of my body shoot up my spine. If 100 belly buttons were lined up against a wall, I could definitely pick out which one is mine.

CRUCIFIXES Crucifixes are sexy because there’s a naked man on them. When I was a little girl, we had crucifixes all over the house, as a reminder that Jesus Christ died on the cross for us. Crucifixes are something left over from my childhood, like a security blanket. I liked the way they look and what they symbolized, even before they were fashionable. I buy mine in Spanish bodegas, where they have rosaries in lots of colors. I have a really long one that looks white in the light, but glows in the dark. Every new-wave designer has crucifixes in their line. Calvin Klein doesn’t, but he’s Mr. Mainstream. Girls who buy Calvin Klein jeans don’t wear crucifixes.

BRAS I have to wear a bra. I’m the only one in my family with breasts. Bras that open in the front are best and torpedo bras are the sexiest. On my Like A Virgin record cover and in all the photographs, like when I did the MTV show, I’m in my bustier. Bustiers are very restricting. They have ribs that make you feel you’re suffocating and zip up the back. They’re tight and squeeze you in. I wear them because they’re very 19th centuryish. They have that really svelte look. I like the way it makes my body look. It’s very sexual. I have about five of them. I go to a regular lingerie store and get the basic nylon bustier, with no frills, and have it customized with lace or tulle. I wish I was flat-chested and didn’t have to wear a bra. It’s one extra piece of clothing to worry about.

RETURNING CALLS I used to call different management companies, agencies, A&R people, club owners, you name it, and no one ever returned my calls. If someone did, ten-to-one it was some horny old man who was in charge of listening to tapes and when he’d hear my voice, he’d want me to come in and bring the tapes, and then he’d put the make on me. Now when I call people they come right to the phone. Everyone except John Peters, the big Hollywood producer who did Flashdance and my movie Visionquest. He’s a real schemer—wheeling and dealing all the time — and the only one who doesn’t call me back.

SISTER MADONNA If I wasn’t doing what I’m doing, I would be a nun. The reason I’m not a nun is because you can’t take your own name. How could I change my name? I have the most holy name a woman can have. But if I had to change my name, I’d use my confirmation name, Veronica. I chose her because she wiped the face of Jesus, which I thought was really dramatic.

PHYSICAL ATTRACTIONS I dig skin, lips and Latin men. I’m attracted to bums. When I went to Paris, I hung out with Algerians and Vietnamese guys who didn’t have jobs, who just drove around on motorcycles and terrorized people. I’ve always been attracted to people like that, because they’re rebels and they’re irresponsible and challenge the norm. I try to rehabilitate them. I’m just trying to be the mother I never had.

VIRGINITY I wouldn’t like to sleep with a guy who was a virgin. I’d have to teach him stuff and I don’t have the patience. I’d rather deal with experience. When I say virgin, like in my song, I’m not thinking about sexual virgin. I mean newness. Even after I made love for the first time, I still felt I was a virgin. I didn’t lose my virginity until I knew what I was doing.

MONOGOMY The longest monogomous relationship I’ve had was 2 1/4 years, right before Jellybean, with someone who never wants to see me again. He’s the guy trying to run me over in my “Burning Up” video. It wasn’t just because I was seeing someone else. Our relationship was deteriorating anyway. But I’ve had my heart broken, too. All my boyfriends hurt me in their way, by lots of things, but I’m not telling you.

STEPPED ON MEN All those men I stepped all over to get to the top, everyone of them would take me back because they still love me and I still love them. I wish I was a million different people so I could stay with each boyfriend while moving on to another one. I learn more, want more, and suddenly-that person isn’t enough. The problem is, after you start to love someone, you start to hurt them. I get interested in somebody else and I latch on to that interest to get me through the other one. It’s awfully painful, but then I have this new guy to look forward to. Records The first song I remember hearing was “The Twist” by Chubby Checker. The first record I ever bought was either “Incense & Peppermint” or “Give Me a Ticket for an Airplane.” I don’t remember if there was music playing when I lost my virginity, but the best music to make love to nowadays is anything funky or soulful, like the Gap Band, Prince or the Isley Brothers. The best music to wake up to is “Moments in Love” by Art of Noise and the best music at the moment to workout to is anything by Prince, Lime, Bronski Beat or Bruce Springsteen. My first album was a total aerobics record. I make records with aerobics in mind. When I’m mad or have a fight with my boyfriend or hate my record company, I work out.

BAD PRESS I get so much bad press because people associate a girl who’s successful with a bimbo or an airhead. Sexy boys never get bad press. Do you think they’d bug Prince if he pulled out his dick on stage? If I ever did something like that, I’m the slut of the year.

FIGHTS Most of the fights I have with boyfriends are over how I’m not paying enough attention to them or I’m always off doing things for my career. Of course, I disagree. I have a lot of shit to do right now. I’m always surrounded by people. I have a very visible career. I got to go out West and audition guys to be in my videos and I got to kiss guys in my movies. But I always say it’s the quality of time and not the quantity of time. If you spend the time that you do have together not fighting, you might enjoy each other.

LITTLE MADONNA I was never a Girl Scout, but I was a Campfire Girl and a Brownie. Campfire Girls had the cooler uniform. I was never good at being part of an organization. When I was a Brownie, I ate all the cookies. When I was a Campfire Girl, I’d camp out with the boys and get into trouble.

FANTASY PHOTO Of all the great photographs in history, I’d most like to have been in one of me having dinner with John Kennedy, with Marilyn Monroe sitting next to him, singing “Happy Birthday.”

Madonna’s First Movie Young director Stephen Lewicki was throwing out old resumes and head shots when one fell from the basket. As he stooped to pick it up, he noticed, behind the unimpressive photograph, the last page of a handwritten resume that gave the same birthday as his, August 16. He re-read the letter, reconsidered the urgently hopeful face, and hired Madonna Cicconi to star in his first movie. That was just over five years ago and “star” might be stretching exaggeration, compared to where Madonna has since taken her career. A Certain Sacrifice is an hour-long melodrama of surprising intensity and value, shot, unfortunately, on Super 8mm, then edited on one-inch video to further visually obscure it In the movie. 20-year-old Madonna plays Bruna, a post-punk drifter, who meets a refugee from the suburbs in Washington Square’s fountain. The two become lovers and ultimately avengers of their own love’s desecration. Sleazy Raymond Hall rapes Brune in a coffee shop toilet but is hunted down and kidnapped by the lovers and Bruna’s former “family” of sex-slaves. In one of the massive, cathedral-like arches under the Brooklyn Bridge, Hall is executed in an eerie human sacrifice. Before shooting the rape scene, Lewicki instructed Charles Kurtz. who plays Hall, to tear Madonna’s shirt off when raping her, without telling Madonna beforehand. This heightens the intensity of the scene, which is played to perfection. Lewicki concedes to having had a mild, unconsummated crush on her and recounts one afternoon spent in Battery Park when he ate blueberry yogurt out of her ear. “That woman has more sensuality in her ear than most woman have anywhere on their bodies.” he says wistfully. But he was more concerned with her as an important element in his movie. In his opinion she is a good actress. Not another Garbo, except perhaps in mystique, but gifted. She really does want to act more than make music, he feels. Asked to sum her up, after much thought he concludes simply: “ambitious,” and tells how she seemed happy only when the center of attention, especially on camera. In the letter/resume she sent him, she wrote how drama class was an oasis in an otherwise mostly despised schooling. “For one hour every day all of the megalomaniacs and egotists would meet to compete for roles and argue about interpretation. I secretly adored each moment, when all eyes were on me, and I could practice being charming or sophisticated, so I would be prepared for the outside world.” One anecdote provides a revealing insight: apparently Madonna had already met her leading man, Jeremy Pattnosh, a couple of years earlier on a park bench, but he didn’t remember. Just before filming a key love scene with Pattnosh, she reminded him. Lewicki had already turned on the camera and so recorded it, though not the conversation. When he reviewed the silent footage, he saw a side of Madonna that “you never see, she doesn’t allow you to see. A tremendous vulnerability. She seems to have a tremendous need for approval.” Recently, Madonna, her fashion coordinator, Maripol, and her ex-boyfriend Jellybean went to Lewicki’s apartment to see the movie, which she claimed she liked. She talked constantly when she wasn’t on screen. As she was leaving, she stopped in the doorway and turned to Lewicki. “Well Stephen, f*ck you.” “What do you mean?” he asked. “Well we’ve always had an adversarial relationship and I wanted to keep it up.” Then she disappeared into the New York night, taking her entourage, mysteries and secrets with her.

#1985 #spin #magazines #thevirginera

0 notes