Madonna by Betty

A brilliant sketch by my great friend Betty done around 1987 of Madonna's Island Magazine cover.

Over and Over (Live) - May 03, 1985 - Dallas, Texas.

Photo: Neil Preston

Hurry up, I just can't wait

I gotta do it now I can't be late
I know I'm not afraid I gotta get out the door
If I don't do it now I won't get anymore
You try to criticize my drive
If I lose I don't feel paralyzed
It's not the game it's how you play

And if I fall, I get up again now.

Over and Over - one of the greatest Madonna songs, sung live below in Dallas on her Virgin Tour on May 03, 1985. The complete live performance is so wonderful and a quarter of a century later, I'm so impressed on a completely different level than I was at 14 years old with Her Raw Talent. A fantastic live singer (credit she rarely - if ever, receives), she hits each mark (that she's designated), shes in perpetual motion (like a hummingbird) - the woman doesn't stop. And the song. A brilliant songwriter (were we the only ones that saw it earlier?). After all she has done, there are still cynics. Yes, you heard it correctly. However, a few years later - "Madonna stakes her claim as the pop poet of lower-middle-class America." (David Sigerson, July 7, 1986, Madonna: Her Aim is True, Rolling Stone).

Eat cock, Dylan.

Over and Over. So honest, so great, so inspirational, so Madonna. I scanned my insane brain to think of another woman in the entertainment business that had done what Madonna did in The Virgin Tour prior - and really I can say nobody. She set a new standard and expectation of what performing is. From the beginning of this show - with Dress You Up until she runs back to fetch her fur after Material Girl - every smile, every wink, every kick is choreographed and here with Over and Over - she is, once again, perfection.

13 years later, she would receive her first 'real' Grammy Award.

Over and Over always made me wonder - do you know specifically what you want before you get it or are you just passionate about something and keep working and something will come? I think the latter.

This was all inspired by my fantastic friend of 25 years and how in touch she is with life (oh, those pisceans). So, without further ado - uncut and unedited - intro and all, Over and Over, live from Dallas.

Hello Dallas!

When the planet Eucharis passes between Venus and Jupiter, it stills the winds of adversity within me and I become a veritable sea of tranquility.

"I felt like I had been possessed by some magic and luckily for me, I have been miraculously and continuously possessed by some kind of magic." Madonna 2008

What the years 1988 and 1989 possibly mean for Our Lady.

"Just Like a Dream, You Are Not What You Seem" - Like a Prayer

In the midst of her Saturn Return, we discover that underneath The Artiste, in all her glorious artifice, is the natural woman showcased in Lee Friedlander's 1979 photographs. Perhaps, what we also have is a ritualistic pagan who called upon September's Muse to guide her. We hear, more often than not, that Madonna is The Muse, and yes she is for many - but who guides her?

With Like a Prayer, we get that once in a lifetime gift from a Goddess. Truth. If we do take the Saturn Return into consideration, then with Like a Prayer, lyrically we have Madonna shedding or purging her past but at the same time gaining the vision of where she will be going. According to astrologers, with Saturn Return, the 30th birthday indicates a major rite of passage because it marks the true beginning of adulthood, self-evaluation, independence, ambition, and self actualization. Madonna's 30 year mark on planet Earth was 1988 when the album was written, although released to mortals in 1989.

Woven throughout the Like a Prayer album, we have tremendous lyrical associations with mythology, history, sacred symbols and objects. Everything from the muse, the midnight hour, magic lanterns, luck, elephants, candles, tears, leprechauns, flying, mermaids, death, marriage, divorce, resurrection, angels, cupid, fairies, wishes, dreams, power, feet, hair, transformation, and even on the song that didn't make the final cut, we have Supernatural - all about the incubus.

It was my impression upon the release of Like a Prayer, and even more so 21 years later, that Madonna was at her most dynamic female - a universal woman - Eve. Some call it Wiccan, Pagan, or witch but really Catholicism plucked all its rituals from the Pagans. So, who's zoomin' who? From our perspective, with what she has chosen to share, it's all completely organic and really the Kabbalah seems perfectly natural in her personal evolution.

Madonna has alluded to magic throughout her career, beginning with her sacrilegious habit of adorning herself in crucifixes, amulets, stars, clovers, hearts and other voodoo. In the La Isla Bonita video kneeling at her altar while lighting incense and clutching a rosary, she transforms herself from a high up blue recluse into a fire red flamenco dancer that descends among the plebeians, casts her spell and then dances off into unknown territory. In the Like a Prayer video she makes the Saint Martin statue come to life. In Secret, we see a Santería baptismal ceremony with more altars, candles and a sunflower submerged in water - long believed to deliver true love.

Since her career began it has been drenched with Pagan rituals, and Madonna has been the inspirational seductress, with millions under her spell. For me, there has always been something very bruja about Madonna. My first thought at 13 years old when I saw the 7" 45 of Borderline in 1984 was, "ooh - she looks like a sexy witch". I always imagined there was a cauldron underneath her hands in this photo:

Let's not forget the original pressing of the Like a Prayer album was scented with patchouli, a long time traditional ingredient in love potions.

I melt your heart as I melt this wax...

Madonna, Clara Bow, Elinor Glyn, Gloria Swanson, Marilyn Monroe, and 'It'.

Being obsessed with the 1920's, 50's and the 80's with the spillover into each new decade...usually the first 2 to 3 years, as a teenager, I thoroughly investigated the first two decades of the aforementioned. Around 1986, I discovered Clara Bow and 'It' - I've been enamored ever since. As I was writing this post, I was listening to my 1920's Radio Network. Coincidentally, Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians Memory Lane (1924) played.

Novelist and scriptwriter Elinor Glyn, who was born and died while the sun was in Libra, wrote a novel called "It" in 1927.  She coined the term It and gave many confusing and sometimes contradictory explanations for what "It" meant, but she always said that "It" did not mean "sex appeal" and anyone who said it did was vulgarizing her concept. Nonetheless, it was as a euphemism for "sex appeal" that "It" entered the language in the 1920s.  From this we get the concept of Clara Bow's film It.

Screen Cap from the film It:

In David Stenn's Clara Bow biography Running Wild (1988), he spoke of Madonna's continuing interest in playing silent film star Clara Bow on the big screen. Unfortunately, this never happened.

Smoldering Clara circa 1928:

Madonna by Steven Meisel in Bow-esque pose in 1991:

Monroe as Clara Bow photographed by Richard Avedon in 1958:

 

Here is a clip of Clara in Mantrap (1926) - the film that inspired both Monroe and Madonna.





Elinor also wrote Beyond the Rocks, which starred that other glamour silent film queen, Gloria Swanson.  Beyond the Rocks had been long lost, then found and restored in the Netherlands in 2005. Here we have a dapper Rudolph Valentino and a Swanson looking most vampish, groovy and cool.  It is one of my favorite silents starring Gloria.  Elinor is also credited with personally revamping Gloria from a giggly starlet into an elegant movie queen.





Prince's Around The World in a Day record cover featuring Clara:

   

Miss October 1992 - Vanity Fair & Miss April 1967 - Playboy.

Madonna Ciccone - Miss October 1992 Vanity Fair



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Gwen Wong - Miss April 1967 Playboy