Authors: Andrew Morton
For behind the brash image lay a sensitive, intelligent, yet uncertain young woman; a starkly honest girl who wrote a stream of raw, self-exposing lyrics in a composition book with black-and-white marbled covers, songs about being hungry, penniless, hurt, abandoned and unloved; a young woman who loved to read poetry, and who was fascinated by the activities of the Bloomsbury Group, a loose assemblage of British artists and writers influential during the 1920s and 1930s; a contemplative soul who enjoyed the peace of downtown churches, and loved to wander around the Museum of Modern Art and other galleries to gain a greater understanding of the creative process. As Camille observes, ‘This was not some trashy kid who needed to stick her tongue down a doorman’s throat at Studio 54.’ She also noted, however, that Madonna did need time and encouragement if she was to absorb the message that she was no longer just an aspiring run-of-the-mill pop singer, but a star in the making. An evening at the Ritz Club watching Tina Turner strut her stuff across the stage, utterly in command of herself and the audience, gave Madonna an insight into how it could be for her one day. Even so, Camille adds, ‘It took many hours of stroking and building up her ego for her to believe it and own that idea.’
Madonna still had a long journey ahead of her, although by the spring of that year, she was making progress. By now, several session musicians had been signed, although Madonna, perhaps typically, complicated things by having a brief affair with the new drummer, Bob Riley. Since Barbone did not approve of love affairs between band members, Riley was unceremoniously fired. As it happened, that suited Madonna, who had been lobbying for her own candidate for drummer, her old college boyfriend Steve Bray, who was still working in the Music Building.
With Bray on drums, Jon Gordon on lead guitar, John Kaye on bass guitar, John Bonamassa on keyboard and Madonna on vocals, the revamped group made its debut at Max’s Kansas City, followed by gigs at Cartoon Alley, Chase Park and other downtown clubs. Given these modest successes, and even though she was still serving her musical apprenticeship, Madonna was by now taking herself very seriously indeed. On one occasion she shared the billing with an eight-piece combo fronted by Michael Musto, now a
Village Voice
columnist. Even though The Must were the first act on that night, Madonna spent so long on elaborate sound checks that Musto’s band, left without time for practice, had to go on unrehearsed. Nor would she agree to share the dressing room set aside by the management for both performers. As far as she was concerned, only one person had top billing – Madonna. Musto never so much as saw his face in the dressing-room mirror.
Yet even though she was guaranteed regular gigs – and a steady income – Madonna constantly itched to move faster, even beginning to wonder whether she should have signed the record deal offered by Max’s Kansas City. If the wait seemed a long one, it proved to have been worth it, for the longed-for breakthrough came in June 1981 with the signing of a deal with John Roberts and Susan Planer of Media Sound to record a demo tape in their 57th Street studio. This was a real coup: Planer and Roberts were renowned in the music industry, one of their most famous feats being the part they had played in organizing the legendary Woodstock festival. Their recording studio, an old church that had once been home to the Hungarian classical composer Béla Bartók, had been used by innumerable artists, from Frank Sinatra to The Beatles.
Madonna was thrilled with the deal, and honored to be working where musical greats had gone before. The week that she, Camille and the band spent in the church in August 1981 was probably the most creative and happy of their relationship; the experience tamed her impatience, and in breaks from recording she would sit quietly reading or reciting poetry to her friends.
With Jon Gordon and Alec Head producing, and Steve Bray on drums, Madonna laid down four tracks. Typically, the lyrics dealt with her life, particularly her love life. She had written one of them for her lover at that time, Ken Compton, although he drove her crazy by employing her own tactic of playing hard to get. Her relationship with Camille featured in another, in which Madonna lamented her hunger and poverty. She had also written a sheaf of other songs, in one of which she described herself as a bad angel. Few of these songs featured on the demo tape, however; indeed, it took all their time to lay down the first four tracks.
Under Bray’s influence, Madonna was beginning to follow the R and B and disco route, moving away from the punk style of the Gilroy boys. Yet she was learning all the time, absorbing styles and constantly making changes on her own. The notion that Camille Barbone tried to make her sing mainstream rock like Pat Benatar, rather than gritty punk, is wide of the mark – Madonna was, and is, her own woman, and however much her style may be a fusion of other influences, it was not dictated to her, by Camille or anyone else. At the end of an exhilarating week the whole group took off for Fire Island to celebrate the joint birthdays of Camille and Madonna, lazing in the sun and tucking into lobster and salad on the beach.
For a few weeks, their salad days continued. Madonna now had a modest but loyal following in New York, and evidence of her steady progression mounted when she and her band were hired to open for another group, Over Easy, at US Blues, a biker club on Long Island. The band’s leader, Bill Lomuscio, was a close friend of Camille. Before Madonna was hired, Camille gave him a friendly warning, telling him that the new singer was so good that her appearance would spell the end of his time as a headliner at the club. Sure enough, Madonna wowed the hard-to-please audience and Over Easy were left in her shade. The feisty young singer was now on the way up, earning $800 a gig.
Lomuscio bore no hard feelings; in fact, he took over from Adam Alter as joint manager with Camille and raised $10,000 to propel Madonna’s launch into the big time. The plan was to showcase her demo tape to record-company executives, in the hope of securing an album deal and finally clawing back some of the investment in Madonna. As part of this strategy, Barbone set about trying to create a buzz around her protégée. She gave $20 to a trio of breakdancers she spotted in Times Square to spin and groove while Madonna performed at a nearby club, and before each gig she paid teenage girls to dress in Madonna’s charity-shop-chic style. At the same time, she invited music agents to come and watch her girl in action.
Ironically, the goal Camille had been working toward all her life proved in the end to be her downfall. The early signs came in September 1981, when Madonna was asked to renew her management contract. She prevaricated, complaining that her career was not moving fast enough. However, after she was told that a projected showcase gig at the fashionable Underground Club, planned for November, could only go ahead if she was under contract, she finally signed an extension to her contract.
At this time Madonna’s relationship with Camille, always stormy, was beginning to spiral out of control. Both extremely strong-willed, their disagreements became fiercer and more acrimonious, band members often walking out of the room during their catfights. Looking back, Camille admits that she tried to force her stubborn client in directions she did not want to go. Worse still, in trying to cope with the pressures, both emotional and professional, of dealing with a woman she loved, who was on the verge of success, Camille began to drink heavily. Evenings were the worst. During one particularly vicious row, Camille broke her hand when she smashed it into a wall in fury and frustration. After this display of temper, Madonna snarled: ‘You’ve fallen off your pedestal now,’ and stalked off into the night. As Camille candidly admits, ‘I’m a nasty drunk and most of the fights and insanity would ensue then. I have to admit that she could no longer rely on me.’ The woman Madonna had once idolized could no longer command her respect.
To make matters worse, as Camille’s drinking grew heavier, the buzz around Madonna was getting louder. Club managers, college promoters, record scouts were all beating a path to her door. Concerned that Camille was missing opportunities, Madonna started seeing music-industry executives behind her back, further damaging the already frayed relations between them. ‘I was under siege and didn’t know how to handle it,’ admits Camille. ‘I tried to hold her tighter, which was a big mistake.’
A showdown meeting between Madonna and co-manager Bill Lomuscio ended with the nascent star tearfully promising to abide by their contract and to stop pursuing her solo agenda. Inevitably, however, the truce did not last long. Madonna could not resist using her sensuality, street savvy and musical experience to seduce any number of record-company executives into thinking that she was theirs for the taking. They treated her to dinner or concert tickets, while she kept them intrigued and excited, teasing them with the prospect of delivering more.
Much now depended on the crucial gig at the Underground Club in November. Invitations were sent to dozens of movers and shakers in the music business, Madonna appeared in a fashion spread in the influential
Village Voice,
and the club was decked out with exotic flowers for the performance. As a result, she found Curtis Zale’s well-meant but ill-timed donation, just before the gig, of another couple of bags of old clothes for her, not at all in keeping with the rather more hip image she was now trying to convey.
It was well into the early hours of the morning by the time Madonna performed and the only music executive who had stayed long enough to watch her set was Paul Atkinson of Columbia Records. He had listened to her demo tape and was considering whether to offer her a deal, and if so, a single or album deal. After the gig he was still undecided and, like several other executives from rival companies, decided to hold fire until he had seen and heard more material.
The band, meanwhile, went from strength to strength. On New Year’s Eve they won their biggest break to date when they opened for David Johnason of The New York Dolls at a club called My Father’s Place. On stage, Madonna’s act was seductive and sensual, leading her younger sister Paula, who was watching from the wings, to berate Camille Barbone for sexually exploiting her. Fresh from Madonna’s old college, the University of Michigan, Paula had clearly never heard that sex and drugs made rock and roll. The audience, however, liked what they saw. Madonna pranced off the stage, all smiles, ready for her next big date – the New Year’s Eve party hosted by a recently launched television company that broadcast only pop programs and music. The fledgling company was called MTV. She arrived in a limo and David Johnason, who recognized her star potential, escorted her all evening, introducing her to many of the big names on the music scene.
Elsewhere, however, matters were coming to a head. The fact that her showcase performance at the Underground Club had not immediately yielded results was, in Madonna’s eyes, a further sign of the weakness of her management team. How much longer must she wait? By now she was being actively, if secretly, courted by agents like Rob Prince of the powerful William Morris agency. He suggested that she should privately discuss her future with music attorney Jay Kramer, who then represented Billy Joel, among other big names. As a result, in February 1982 Camille and Bill found themselves invited to a meeting with the high-powered attorney, ostensibly to discuss Madonna’s future. The night before, Madonna had called her manager and said, ‘You’re a bitch, I’m a bitch. We work well together and we can still work together.’ Little did Camille realize that Madonna was offering her a job, albeit as her publicity manager. Even less did she realize that the brief call was to be their last conversation.
The legal meeting lasted precisely five minutes. While Madonna sat silently on a sofa, Kramer told Camille and her partner that the singer no longer required their services. When Camille protested that Madonna had a legally binding contract, he told her that they were terminating it. Stunned, Bill and Camille walked out, resolved to take legal action against their mutinous client. This led to an endless series of legal wrangles, drawn out over the years, that has left Madonna’s songs from this period, the so-called ‘Gotham Tapes’, in limbo with regard to copyright and ownership issues. A decade later, Barbone secured a modest settlement from her former client.
For Camille, the emotional fallout was, if anything, even more catastrophic, akin to experiencing a sudden death or a brutal divorce. ‘It was like the breakup of a love affair,’ recalls Camille. ‘We were a team, a marriage that in better circumstances would have thrived.’ She suffered a nervous breakdown, withdrew from the music industry, went to cooking school, and then spent a year working in a nursing home because ‘I needed people to say “thank you.’” Camille, who is now a non-drinker, found that she couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing Madonna’s voice, open a newspaper without reading a story about her, or walk down the street without seeing her picture on a billboard. ‘I just about went out of my mind,’ she admits. ‘I felt like I was the only person on the planet feeling these things. It was scary.’
At the time of the split, however, it seemed that Madonna was the biggest loser. Prince did not end up managing her after all, so she was almost back to square one, with no manager, no income, no record deal and now no band. In addition, she faced the prospect of a lawsuit for walking out on her contract with Barbone and Lomuscio. However damaging or exhausting the personal conflict with Camille, she was risking much and gaining little. Her natural – indeed, ingrained – impatience to move on, doubtless contributed to her decision to drop her managers, coupled with the fact that she had begun to suspect Barbone no longer had the money to back up all the promises she had made. Even so, she had once again traded security for uncertainty, with only the vaguest prospect of success to buoy her.
That said, the Madonna of 1982 was a very different proposition from the rather jumpy, uncertain young woman who had first arrived in Camille Barbone’s office. Sassy and savvy, Madonna had proved, in Camille’s phrase, ‘a quick study,’ not only learning the ins and outs of the music business, but also filling up her little black book with useful contacts. In addition, she felt deeply that other creative artists and performers of her generation, many of them friends, had been moving forward in their careers while she had been marking time. By now she was well established as a member of New York’s in-crowd of young artists, singers and performers who all seemed to be going places. The clubs were both their meeting place and their collective office, where they went to dance, have fun and to network. Just as CBGBs and Max’s had spawned stars of the seventies and early eighties like Blondie, Talking Heads and Television, now the new places to be seen at were Danceteria, the Roxy and the Mudd Club. The British singer Sade worked behind the bar of the Danceteria, while the graffiti artist Keith Haring, whose paintings would sell in the future for hundreds of thousands of dollars, was a coatcheck boy there, sleeping on subway trains by day and working in the club at night. On any one night the place would be filled with emerging artists and musicians; the Beastie Boys, LL Cool J, Grandmaster Flash, and makeup artist Debi Mazar (now a Hollywood actress), could be found dancing, drinking and trying to get noticed. Congregating over at the Mudd Club were black graffiti artists like Michael Stewart, Lenny McGurr (aka Futura 2000), Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose tag or signature ‘Samo’, shorthand for ‘same old bullshit; would one day see his art worth millions, and rap artist Fred Brathwaite (aka Fab Five Freddie).