Authors: Andrew Morton
With all the unfairness and self-indulgence of youth exacerbated by her highly developed sense of the melodramatic, Madonna came to view herself as the Cinderella of the Ciccones, forced to sweep and dust and care for her younger siblings while her older brothers ducked their responsibilities and her friends played in the sunshine. Years later, she was to claim, in an interview with Carrie Fisher for
Rolling Stone
magazine, that although her father never hit her, Joan Ciccone frequently slapped her around, on one occasion, when she was about twelve, giving her a bloody nose that forced her to miss church because the blood had stained her dress. To this and other complaints was added the fact that, allegedly, her stepmother would not allow her to wear tampons, viewing this form of sanitary protection as virtually equivalent to sexual intercourse, and so to be used only after marriage. If true, these are serious charges, but others seem to have been prompted simply by the usual gripes of adolescence. When Joan made identical dresses for the three elder girls using the same McCall’s pattern and the same bolt of material she had bought at the local Kmart, Madonna resented the lack of individuality. Certainly Mrs Ciccone hotly disputes her stepdaughter’s more serious claims, incredulous at the idea that she would hit her, or have been so blinkered about sanitary protection. This was, after all, the same woman who had tried to teach Madonna the facts of life one day as they stood by the kitchen sink, only to watch the girl run from the room in horror.
Conversely, what is not in doubt is that whenever her stepmother or father suggested anything, Madonna would complain or disobey almost as a matter of principle. It was an attitude that could lead to some preposterous situations. For instance, even though she had an obvious flair for performing, Madonna railed against taking piano lessons, years later telling Neil Tennant how she preferred to hide in a ditch near the teacher’s home rather than attend the sessions. For a young woman who would, a few short years later, spend hour after painstaking hour learning to play the guitar and the drums, this was a remarkable example of cutting off your creative nose to spite your parental face.
Eventually she switched to dance classes, learning tap, jazz, ballroom dancing and baton twirling, thereby not only ensuring her place on the Adams High cheerleading squad, but also forming the basis of her future career. Virtually every Saturday she was at dance class, or taking part in local dance contests. Perhaps ironically, and whether Madonna would like to acknowledge it or not, her ‘Wicked Stepmother’ was with her every dance step of the way, encouraging her, praising her successes, and consoling her in her disappointments. Joan took her to lessons, and was in the audience when Madonna took part in competitions. ‘For all the grief she put up with, Mrs Ciccone was a real cheerleader for Madonna,’ recalls Ruth Dupack Young. ‘She was desperate to be a dancer and if she didn’t win a competition she was very disappointed. Mrs Ciccone was always there to lift her spirits.’ Nor could Ruth resist adding her own tribute to Joan: ‘She is a good person who never let anyone forget Madonna’s mother. When visitors came to the house she would show them pictures of Tony’s first wife. She was very open about it.’
That, however, is not Madonna’s recollection of her stepmother, whatever the difference between the truth and her own concept of reality. ‘I never think of my stepmother as my mother. Just as a woman who raised me, a dominant female in my life,’ she once said. ‘I went through adolescence kind of ignoring her … I always consider myself an absolutely motherless child and I’m sure that has something to do with my openness.’
At times, this simmering kitchen-sink drama would spill over on to the public stage, as happened during one of Madonna’s early dance routines. In 1970 she graduated from Saint Andrew’s to West Junior High public school. For weeks Madonna, by then thirteen, and her fellow classmates had been practicing their routines for a talent contest in front of an audience of parents and faculty. While Ruth Dupack and another friend, Nancy Baron, choreographed a gymnastics routine, Madonna rehearsed a solo dance number in which she came on stage dressed as a private eye. Wearing a long trenchcoat and a wide-brimmed hat she danced to the theme music from Secret Agent, a popular TV show. Her three-minute routine ended dramatically with the sound of gunshots ripping through the auditorium.
All went as planned during rehearsals, with Madonna’s drama teacher suitably impressed by the inventive routine, unaware that the young dancer had a surprise in store. On the night of the performance Madonna’s act went perfectly until the finale. Then, as the sound of gunfire echoed around the auditorium, she whipped off her trenchcoat, revealing that all she was wearing underneath was a black leotard. This impromptu ‘flashing’ display provoked gasps from the audience, and led to a furious Tony Ciccone grounding her for two weeks. Naturally she did not win any awards that night – the top prize went to Ruth Dupack and Nancy Baron for their gymnastics routine. But whatever the intention behind her small, defiant act, she did set tongues wagging. As parents drifted out of the hall there was an undeniable sense that Madonna was seen as a rather ‘fast’ and ‘forward’ teenager. ‘People were saying: “My goodness, what behavior from a thirteen-year-old,”’ Ruth admits.
If this incident seems a curious one, it has its roots not in the myths surrounding Madonna’s supposed promiscuity, but in her childish craving for love and attention. Yet just as her skimpy school clothes were a sign of rebellion against her stepmother, so her behavior on the dance floor that night won notice from her father, however angry he may have been, attention that she felt she did not receive at home. This, far more than her burgeoning sexual awareness, was the overriding motive behind the last-minute alteration to her dance routine.
Unfortunately, her reputation as one of the ‘hot babes’ of West Junior High rather preceded her when, in 1972, she followed her brothers Tony and Martin to the coed Adams High School, Rochester, a sprawling complex a few miles north of the world-famous Meadowbrook outdoor music theater and the main campus of Oakland University. Close to several golf courses and shopping malls, it has the feel of a country club. This is not altogether surprising, since its student body is largely drawn from among the well-heeled sons and daughters of predominantly white middle-class families, in a catchment area where today the average home sells for a shade under $200,000. This is middle-class, middle-income, Middle America; and a far cry from the impression given by Madonna in some of her early interviews that her school was in the midst of an inner-city black ghetto. In fact, during her four years at Adams High, there was only one black student at the school. As to the ‘ghetto,’ among her fellow students were Cindy Kresge, one of the heirs to the Kmart billions, and the Caratos brothers, later to hit the headlines for their Mafia activities.
Although one of the youngest in her class, the fact that her brothers were already at the school ensured that Madonna was known to many of the older students. Sharp-witted, friendly and vivacious, she fitted in well. In her freshman year not only did she get through a series of auditions to make the junior cheerleading squad, but she was also awarded a plaque in a school ceremony for being one of the top ten academic achievers in her year. A member of the French Club and the school choir, she took a full part in school life, volunteering for the Help-a-Kid program and working as a lifeguard at the local swimming club. ‘She was creative academically,’ recalls Lucinda Axler, who was also on the cheerleading squad. ‘A real cut up in class. She got into trouble for being out of line but she enjoyed life, she was a happy personality. Madonna always had chutzpah, courage and gumption.’
She drew the most attention, however, in her cheerleader outfit at football games. ‘She was very good, very showy,’ Lucinda adds. ‘She knew how to draw attention to herself. She had a big mouth and had the moves too.’ From the first, Madonna dared to be different, suggesting to her squad that they build a dance routine around a song by the rock band Uriah Heep, rather than the rather hokey tunes that were then in vogue. Their routine proved a great success: not only did the spectators go wild but, more important, the senior cheerleading squad was left feeling deeply envious.
Thus it came to be accepted by her contemporaries that Madonna had a certain edge, that she always tried a little harder to stand out. Another of her fellow cheerleaders, Carol Stier, remembers that when the two of them went shopping in the Rochester malls, Madonna always chose jeans and other clothes that were in some way unusual. Not conforming, it seems, was part and parcel of her personality. To Carol, it was clear that ‘it was important for her to be in the public eye. She did a very good job of being the one who people would talk to and about.’
Nonetheless, on the surface she was a typical Midwest teenager, joining the other girls in the school bathrooms as they tried on each other’s makeup, gossiping about boys, hanging out at Las Pumas, a doughnut-and-coffee shop, or the local McDonald’s. She even won the annual hula-hoop contest. And, like the other cheerleaders, she was becoming more interested in those strange yet fascinating creatures known as boys. ‘Her interests? Like the rest of us – boys,’ remembers Lucinda Axler. As for boyfriends, ‘She had her share. If Madonna wanted a guy she got their attention. She could capture their hearts.’
Her former school sweetheart Nick Twomey, whom she singled out as her top choice when she made a list of the boys she found most attractive, noticed the changes in Madonna when he arrived at Adams High after spending his early teens at a different school. ‘I remember seeing her again and she was flirtatious off the charts,’ he says. ‘She did what she had to do to get recognized by the boys but I don’t think she was running around sleeping with everybody. That’s more myth.’
On one occasion she arranged to stay over at her friend Ruth Dupack’s house, the two of them planning to spend the night in a tent in the backyard. It wasn’t long before Madonna and Ruth sneaked off and walked a mile to a party at a boy’s house. ‘I was pretty nervous but it seemed to have been planned by her,’ Ruth remembers. ‘She and I once dated the same boy. But boyfriends never lasted long, she went from one to another.’
Her vitality and physical awareness, her need to attract attention and her lengthening list of admirers soon inspired rumors about her sexual behavior. ‘Madonna always had a reputation of being one of those girls, you know, kinda fast,’ recalls Lia Gaggino, the class valedictorian and now a pediatrician. Her reputation as a ‘nympho’ was one Madonna was well aware of at the time, and resents to this day. ‘I was necking with boys like everybody else,’ she says. ‘So I didn’t understand where it all came from. I would hear words like “slut” that I hear now.’ Once she was confronted outside school by a girl student who, after a few harsh words, slapped her full in the face. The jealous teenager, doubtless mindful of the other girl’s reputation, however ill founded, had thought Madonna was making moves on her boyfriend.
In fact her first serious sexual experience was as conventional as it was prosaic: cheerleader makes out with football jock in the back of his car (a blue 1966 Cadillac, for the curious). After dating for six months, Madonna, then fifteen, and her boyfriend, school sports hero Russell Long, went all the way at his parents’ house. ‘I was so nervous I couldn’t get her bra strap undone,’ recalls the gallant Mr Long, now a trucker for UPS. They continued dating for several months afterwards, Madonna sometimes worrying her boyfriend by wondering aloud whether she should tell her father just what she had been getting up to.
Although still obsessed with winning her father’s favor, Madonna had changed. No longer was she the little girl eager to please, but a questioning, irreverent teenager. Tony Ciccone’s stern authority no longer commanded her as once it had. Neither, for that matter did the Catholic Church. It was a period of vast social upheaval, much of it fueled by the actions and opinions of the young. Beneath the surface normality of high-school life in Midwest America in the early 1970s, there were tensions that reflected the temper of the times, and the mood of a troubled land in which, for many, long hair represented rebellion and a rejection of the old order. As President Nixon fought for his political life during the Watergate hearings, young men, soldiers not much older than the teenagers at Adams High, could be seen on the evening TV news fighting forlornly in Vietnam, in a hopeless war now entering its death throes. Closer to home, books and articles by feminists like Germaine Greer and Gloria Steinem were winning the hearts and minds of a generation of women. The resonance of all this resistance, protest, sometimes outright rebellion, was felt even in the heartlands of America. ‘I remember when Nixon pulled the troops out of Vietnam [in 1973], all the male students breathed a huge sigh of relief,’ Nick Twomey admits. ‘The fear of going there was almost tangible.’
Like many other teenagers, Madonna was embarking on her own journey of discovery. For her, however, it was a quest for self-knowledge, for although the churning issues of the day were at the edge of her consciousness, central to her emotional being was still her fractious relationship with her father, and her unresolved feelings about her mother’s death. Below her personal radar, but moving inexorably into range, was that great imponderable, destiny.
Early in the morning of Easter Sunday 1970, a long-haired student named John Michael Tebelak was stopped by a uniformed policeman in the nave of Saint Paul’s Cathedral in Pittsburgh and frisked for drugs. He was already in a pensive mood following the service he had just attended, and which he described as ‘devoid of feeling’; in the sermon, Tebelak felt, the speaker had been trying figuratively to roll away the rock that sealed Christ’s tomb, rather than celebrate His rebirth. The hostility of the policeman and the dismal religious experience proved life changing. When he returned to Carnegie Mellon College, John Michael, a fine-arts student, asked if he could write a musical based on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew as part of his graduate thesis.