Goddess: Inside Madonna (30 page)

Several weeks later, Jean-Claude Pellerin, Jean Van Lieu, and Patrick Hernandez finally returned from America and turned their attention on their American protégée whom they hoped to groom as the next Edith Piaf.

From the beginning, things were not easy between Madonna and her French hosts. Patrick Hernandez recalls that living with Madonna under the same roof was amusing, because she was charming and adorable. He also remembers how meticulous she was. “She had a little notebook,” he says, “and she would write her thoughts, little poems that became lyrics for song, and pages and pages of her impressions of life in Paris.” Trying to persuade her to follow their advice and do what they considered necessary to become a star was another story, and one that her benefactors considered the antithesis of charming and amusing.

“She was very
sauvage
,” Hernandez says, “and very American. In the beginning, we tried to humor her and didn’t force her to sing or take music lessons, because we believed that if we gave in and let her take dancing lessons, after a while she would do what we wanted her to do and what we brought her over to be, which was a hit singing star.”

After Muriel Van Lieu’s husband returned, she found Madonna a dance class in a studio at Les Halles, once famous for its slaughterhouses and meat markets. The area had been transformed into a cultural center built around the Pompidou, a monstrosity of a building that has pipes and steel girders painted in primary colors that are exposed on the facade in an attempt to create a new trend in architecture. Wandering around Les Halles, Madonna was more intrigued by the long-haired hippies, beggars, and drug addicts who roamed the grounds than she was with her lessons, which turned out to be an intermediate ballet class. Often, she followed groups of tourists and watched the fire-eaters, acrobats, and mimes, who performed for small change that was dropped into their cups or bowler hats. After several weeks, Madonna got bored with Les Halles and came home early, furious. “Obviously,” she told Danièle Pellerin, “there is no one in Paris who can teach me what I need to learn.” Later that evening, Hernandez sat Madonna down and asked her exactly what she wanted to do. “I want to be an actress and dancer,” Madonna replied, “like Juliet Prowse or Ginger Rogers, and not a singer. I refuse to sing!”

The two French producers were naturally worried since Madonna had signed a management agreement with them in return for their financial and professional support. Their immediate reaction was to threaten Madonna that if she didn’t cooperate, they would be forced to stop all support and let her fend for herself. Hernandez tried a different approach. In an effort to convince her to change her mind, he spent several evenings with her at home, listening to music. “I remember once at the apartment,” he says, “we were playing a song by Linda and Paul McCartney, and Madonna and I began singing along and she sang really well. Even Linda didn’t have a voice like Barbra Streisand, and I told her, ‘See, you can sing, you sing as well as Linda, even better.’”

At the time that Madonna was with Patrick Hernandez in Paris, he lived the life of an international star. Every time he went out, limousines were waiting to chauffeur him around, with fans crushing to touch him and get an autograph, boys and girls throwing themselves at him, and crowds of people willing to give him anything he wanted just for the privilege of being in his company. When Madonna saw the attention that Hernandez received and the life of luxury he led because of his one hit record, she began to be less rigid about her refusal to become a singing star. “At the time I was the number one star worldwide,” Hernandez explains, “and Madonna realized what it meant to lead the life of a star. She suddenly realized that it wasn’t such a stupid idea to become a rock or disco singer. I’m still convinced that because of me and because she was young and talented and had so much going for her, that she decided to grab it all and go as far and as fast as possible.” Reluctantly, Madonna agreed to a rigorous schedule of conversational French, music, and singing lessons, but only if she could continue to study dance. This time, her French teacher was an older woman, while her singing coach was a middle-aged man. Eventually, Muriel Van Lieu found her another dancing school that was more advanced and more geared toward musical comedy and jazz. The arrangement between her benefactors and an obedient Madonna lasted only two months.

Despite her commitment to her managers and Patrick Hernandez’s sincerity when it came to helping Madonna, the French press predictably assumed that she was his girlfriend rather than the rock star’s newest discovery whom he had imported from America. On one occasion, when Hernandez was invited to do a photo spread for a glossy magazine, he brought Madonna along on a press junket to Tunisia, organized by a public relations company. According to Hernandez, not only did he pose for the various photographers, but he insisted that they take pictures of Madonna alone as well as of both of them together in preparation for her future career as a singer. Hernandez, who is surprisingly down-to-earth for someone who has enjoyed such success, recalls that although they were having an affair, he never deluded himself that Madonna was either in love with him or particularly faithful. “Let’s just say,” he says with a small smile, “that she was very active and had a healthy appetite. But regardless of our personal relationship, everything I did for her when it came to grooming her for stardom was done out of friendship.”

Muriel Van Lieu joined the couple in Sidi Bou Said, a pleasure port where the white masts of hundreds of sailboats were docked in the sapphire blue water of the harbor. A rich man’s paradise where Europeans and Gulf State Arabs came to sun and sail, and also the headquarters of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, it was a cliff-top monastic fortress that had grown around the tomb of a holy man named Sidi Bou Said. Muriel Van Lieu, Madonna, and Patrick Hernandez stayed at the Abou Nawas, a luxury hotel built on the beach. There, around the kidney-shaped swimming pool, Van Lieu saw yet another side of the young woman she had met only months before at the audition in New York. “I came down to the pool to help out with the press,” Muriel Van Lieu says, “and at one point, Madonna was being ignored while Patrick was the center of attention. I was barely aware of what she was doing when all of a sudden I looked up, and there she was. She had climbed onto the high diving board and, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, just dove right into the swimming pool. When she came out of the pool, her T-shirt clung to her breasts, which provoked the response that she needed from the photographers. That’s just one example of how important it was for Madonna to exist, to be the center of attention.”

When Madonna returned to Paris from Tunisia, she began complaining once again that things were moving too slowly. She had been in Europe for nearly a month, and so far, there were no auditions for stage appearances, no record deal, nor any prospect to accompany Patrick on one of his tours. Jean Van Lieu decided that it was too complicated, especially since he was so busy managing Hernandez’s career, television appearances, and foreign sales of his record, to devote his time to a girl who refused to follow his advice. According to Muriel Van Lieu, every step was a battle—to persuade Madonna to keep taking her singing lessons, to convince her that disco was the sound that she should concentrate on for her first record, to encourage her to behave properly when she met other singers or record producers who could potentially help her—until finally her husband lost his temper. “There are millions of kids out there,” he told Madonna, “who would jump at the opportunity that we’re giving you.”

Rather than abandoning Madonna, Patrick Hernandez and Danièle and Jean-Claude Pellerin persuaded Jean Van Lieu to let them take over for a while. “The truth was,” Muriel Van Lieu explains, “that Madonna was very patient. My husband was too busy to devote the kind of time that was necessary to make her a star.”

The relationship between Madonna and Patrick Hernandez was waning, mainly because he was touring the world, traveling to Brazil, New York, Mexico, as well as to other European cities. Away for two or three weeks at a time, he would return to Paris between trips for only several days. There was no doubt that though Madonna appreciated who Hernandez was and what he had accomplished and was always happy to be with him because they had fun together, she began to consider, despite the beautiful surroundings and easy life, that she was wasting her time in Paris. She told Patrick that if she was going to make it the way she knew and felt she could, it was not in Europe but back home in the United States. Still, the Pellerins and even Jean Van Lieu were reluctant to let her go, partly because they had already made a big investment in her, and partly because they still believed that she had the talent and the discipline to become a star.

One evening, in an attempt to make peace among everyone, Patrick Hernandez invited Madonna and the two couples to Brussels, about two hours away by car, for a reconciliation dinner. “We went to a typical four-star restaurant,” Hernandez says, “which serves about ten or so courses, and I made her taste everything. She was sitting next to me, and I was acting like her teacher, describing what each course was, and finally we got to the foie gras and I told her, we’re going to eat this, and with foie gras, there are several drinks that we have, sauterne, which is a sweet wine, or champagne or a bit of
porto
, which is also sweet but heavier than sauterne. She had never had foie gras in her life and naturally she didn’t know which wine to choose, so I told the waiter to bring all three and set the glasses in front of her so she could taste everything. I was acting a little like Professor Henry Higgins to her Liza Doolittle. As the meal progressed, I guess I didn’t pay attention to her for a minute or so because apparently, very quietly, she had asked the waiter to bring her a Coke, which she kept at her feet. She would take a bite of the foie gras and, when no one was looking, quickly washed it down with Coke to kill the taste.” According to Hernandez, Madonna tasted the champagne,
porto
, and sauterne but didn’t like them. “She was never into alcohol or drugs. She exercised, took her dance class, and ate healthy food.”

As the Christmas season approached, the chestnut trees that line the Champs-Élysées were decorated with strands of delicate white lights, while the windows of the stores along the grand avenue were surrounded by garlands and glittering displays. In the Parc Monceau, a layer of fine powdered snow covered the grass, and several of the pine trees had been decorated by Madonna along with others from the neighborhood, who actually put empty gift-wrapped packages underneath in the spirit of the season. Parisians know how to celebrate Christmas, and even for those who don’t recognize it as a religious holiday, it is an occasion for families and friends to get together for a classic gourmet meal. Madonna was homesick. It wasn’t a yearning to be back in New York as much as it was a desire to see her family to spend the holidays with them in Michigan. On the night before Christmas Eve, in another gesture of warmth and friendship, Muriel and Jean Van Lieu invited Madonna along with Patrick Hernandez and the Pellerins to dinner at Fauchon’s, a chic Paris restaurant that was as famous for its clientele as it was for its take-out dishes. Madonna seemed sullen and uncomfortable. People came over to Patrick to ask for his autograph, while the maître d’hôtel sent over a complimentary bottle of champagne. Typical of festive dinners during the Christmas season in Paris, the group discussed and dissected the menu and took what seemed to Madonna an eternity before choices were made. Suddenly, just as the first course was being served, Madonna jumped up from the table. “If this is a career, it doesn’t interest me. All you do is talk and eat, and I don’t like to eat, I have to pay attention to my health and my figure, and you stay out all night, and I don’t like that either. Frankly, I’m better off back in New York scrounging around for a meal instead of tasting gastronomic delicacies in Paris or Brussels.” And with that, she took a taxi and went back to the apartment.

When the others returned home, she was perfectly calm. She wanted to spend Christmas with her family. Would they give her a round-trip ticket? That way, they would be assured that she would come back to Paris after the holidays. “The truth was that we all felt it was better for Madonna to leave,” Muriel Van Lieu admits. “We had been discussing the idea of telling her to go home because we knew that Jean was too involved with Patrick to give her the kind of attention she deserved. Our intention was that when he was free to focus on Madonna, we would contact her in New York and get her back over to Paris.”

Madonna took nothing with her when she left France except her diary and the clothes on her back. Whatever the Pellerins and the Van Lieus had bought her while she was there she left in a small valise in her room.

All contact with Madonna ceased after she left Paris and returned to the United States, supposedly just for Christmas, but as it turned out, forever. Even Patrick Hernandez never heard from her again. “People who met her after she was famous, in New York or London, who knew me,” Hernandez says, “always mentioned me, and Madonna always sent her best but nothing else.”

In 1991, when Madonna was in France on tour, she was invited to be on TF-1, the privately owned television station, to do a talk show to promote the show. The producers suggested that Patrick Hernandez appear on the show as well, not only to sing his hit, “Born to Be Alive,” but to evoke memories about Madonna during the time she lived with him in Paris. Word came back to Hernandez that Madonna refused to appear with him.

“In other words,” Hernandez says, “at the time, she considered that she didn’t need the image of Patrick Hernandez with her. When she finally made it, she was determined to give the impression that her style of music was hers alone, and she didn’t particularly want anyone comparing her to me or to anyone else, and certainly she didn’t want anyone saying that she was derivative of so-and-so. . . . Then, there is the other possibility that she had no respect for me because, unlike her, I wasn’t that ambitious to keep plugging away to have successive number one hits. I think she considered me to be a has-been perhaps. Or maybe she resented me because I was the one who forced her to sing disco music, something she resisted when she was with me in Paris and what she eventually did and got famous for afterwards in New York. What surprised me years later when she was already a star was that she was singing songs exactly like the ones I wanted her to do, the ones that she had vehemently refused to do, which were disco dance music. Her videos and stage shows are much more variety shows than straight videos, and I believe she learned that from me. Anyway, I found that very sad since I’m a sensitive guy, and things like that deeply disturb me, when people forget friendship and loyalty and aren’t generous. If she wanted to see me far from the cameras, it would take her about fifteen seconds to get my telephone number here in France. She could have called.”