Goddess: Inside Madonna (51 page)

I
n April 2001 the French magazine
Madame Figaro
once again asked me to do an article on Madonna, this time on her Drowned World tour that was scheduled to arrive in Europe at the beginning of the summer. The request was made and several months passed without any reply as to whether I could have an interview with the singer alone or if I would be part of a group if she decided to have one press conference for the print media.

On June 26, 2001, Madonna appeared in Paris for the first of four concerts at Bercy, a stadium that regularly hosts rock stars, political meetings, and sporting events. My request to interview Madonna was denied by her French handlers and, in fact, Madonna refused all press and radio interviews as well as all television appearances in the City of Light. French journalists made the trip to Barcelona, the city that preceded Paris on the tour, to see the show and join their Spanish colleagues in a welcoming press conference there.

By the time Madonna arrived in the French capital, local newspapers and magazines were filled with reviews of her Drowned World tour. Some of the articles concentrated on the star’s efficiency and organization that resulted in one hundred tons of equipment being safely transported overseas in two Boeing 747s, while other journalists respectfully cited the songs that she performed and offered a review of each costume and every set. Still others focused their attention and accolades on Mirwais, the French musician and arranger, a guitarist who was once a member of the new wave group Taxi Girl, who is credited with the success of the star’s latest album,
Music
. A few reporters wrote about Madonna’s trip to Sachsenhausen, the Nazi concentration camp, while she was performing in Berlin, quoting from
Bild
, a German tabloid, which photographed the star, dressed all in black, posing under the sign at the entrance, which reads,
“Arbeit macht frei
,” or “Work makes you free.”

When the concert began in Paris, an elevated platform lowers Madonna onto the stage. She is wearing black boots with chains, a tartan plaid skirt—a nod to her new husband—and a black T-shirt with
mother
written on the front and
fucker
on the back, a nod to her fans lest they believe that the once-provocative star has become only a staid wife and mother. The muscles in her arms bulged, her medium-length blond hair with a hint of black roots moved loosely around her face, a white bandage was wrapped around her right arm that had a diamond cuff at the wrist, while on the fourth finger of her left hand, there was a wide gold wedding band.

Sitting in the audience on opening night at Bercy and watching the frenzy of the fans who came from all over Europe to see her, stomping and swaying, singing and screaming, in their seats and in the aisles, I suddenly realized how easy it is to be crushed during an event of that size, as has happened all too many times during soccer matches throughout Europe. The heat inside Bercy was oppressive, something that Madonna would comment on during her show. “Don’t you fine French people believe in air-conditioning?” she drawled in an ersatz Southern accent that dripped with irony. At one point during the show, she looked frighteningly frail, and sitting close enough to the stage to see her face, I noticed that her expression was contorted into one of complete and total exhaustion from the heat. At forty-two years old, Madonna nonetheless displayed incredible stamina, since dozens of young people fainted during the show and were pulled out of the pit, a small area reserved for a standing-room-only crowd, by burly security guards. The enthusiasm of the audience continued when the one-hour-and-forty-minute spectacle ended. As I sat in my car in the middle of an impossible traffic jam trying to leave the stadium, surrounded by a cacophony of sound blaring from car radios, different clips of Madonna’s music, I realized that despite an eight-year hiatus from the tour circuit and a somewhat minimalist performance that seemed to be calculated down to the last millisecond, Madonna had by no means relinquished her place in the hearts of her fans.

On June 25, accompanied by her husband, Guy Ritchie, and her two children, Lourdes and Rocco, Madonna arrived at the Crillon in Paris, one of the most magnificent hotels in the city, overlooking the Place de la Concorde. A friend who works at the Crillon told me that Lourdes is an articulate and poised little girl who is wise beyond her years. Excited to be back in Paris, already an old haunt for a six-year-old who had made several visits there alone with her mother before they became a family of four, she announced that she wanted to return to the Louvre to see the
Mona Lisa
and to shop along the Faubourg St.-Honoré, where the summer sales had just begun. At ten months, it was Rocco’s first trip, and as he was carried through the cavernous marble lobby by his father, according to my friend, he appeared to be a happy and complacent baby, smiling readily and oblivious to the curious crowds and hordes of paparazzi who had gathered to welcome his mother. Guy Ritchie also seemed to be taking all the chaos in his stride as he dutifully followed his petite wife to their $10,000-a-night suite. Several other staff members who were also waiting to welcome the group remarked that “Monsieur Madonna,” as they called him, was completely consumed by his new role as father. Holding Rocco as they got off the elevator, he reached for Lourdes’s hand to walk the long corridor that led to their corner suite. Observers had the distinct impression that there was an unspoken understanding between the couple, that while Madonna was proud and happy to have her family with her, her first priority was the show. She was all business. She questioned the staff about the double-paned windows, black-out shades, and the security guards who were on twenty-four-hour duty throughout the hotel. Above all, she wanted the management’s assurance that she would be able to sleep without being disturbed by the noise in the street and that she was protected from overzealous fans who might try to penetrate the family’s living quarters.

This tour was a pivotal moment in Madonna’s career and there was no doubt that critics and fans were waiting to see how married life and motherhood had either inspired her to new heights of creativity or had tamed her once-unquenchable ambition to seduce the world. As it turned out, and as she has always done in the past, Madonna didn’t disappoint them. She provided enough material so that her fans would remember—as if it were possible to forget—what had made her a star in the first place. And she even gave them a bit more. Typical of Madonna’s innate talent to communicate with the millions who hang on her every word and gesture, she made us all understand that she had gone beyond what we might have expected of her, only to emerge as a consummate performer who could finally separate the private person from the public personality.

Ask two people their opinion of Madonna and you’ll get five different answers. As the hour approached for her appearance on stage and with an absence of Madonna on the popular television and radio talk shows, on-air personalities began speculating on who was the real Madonna, encouraging debate from the audience. Some ardent fans addressed the issue of Madonna’s sexuality, insisting that she is gay and that it is only her Catholicism that forces her to go through the motions of love affairs with men and her two forays into matrimony. Others argued that she is exactly as she presents herself to her public, an uninhibited and liberated woman who has always done what she pleased at the moment it pleased her, while the more cynical responded that her sexuality is less important than her determination and her extraordinary discipline that has allowed her to achieve the financial and professional success that she enjoys. A couple of fans observed that still, no one has ever seen a photograph of the wedding gown she wore on December 22, 2000, when she married Guy Ritchie at Skibo Castle in Scotland.

What struck me after I saw her show was that after twenty years in the public consciousness, with Madonna keeping her longings a well-guarded secret from her fans, and her true personality a mystery from the press, with this latest offensive on the international stage, she has finally provided, if not an answer, then at least a substantial clue as to who she is and what she values above everything else at this point in her life.