Madonna (25 page)

Going through her paces at Max’s Kansas City, the club that launched the careers of Blondie, The Talking Heads and The Ramones.

In June 1981 Madonna signed a deal to record a demo tape at the Media Sound studios, New York.
Left to right:
Adam Alter, Madonna, John Roberts, Susan Planer and Madonna’s manager, Camille Barbone.

In her early career Madonna wore anything that came to hand when she appeared on stage, borrowing her manager’s denim jacket and a second-hand frilled top. In the background is guitarist John Kaye.

Madonna’s showcase gig at the trendy Underground Club, November 1981. The club was filled with exotic flowers for the occasion, and numerous record-company executives were invited to see her perform.

A twenty-four-year-old Madonna at the time of her first record release, seen here with Jean-Michel Basquiat, the famous Brooklyn-born artist with whom she was briefly involved. The most troubled of her lovers, and a heroin addict, Basquiat died of an overdose in 1988, aged twenty-seven.

The camera just loves Madonna and she loves the camera. ‘She doesn’t want to
live
off camera, much less talk,’ was Warren Beatty’s famous observation of his one-time lover. There has always been a chameleon quality about her photographic image, so that her look is constantly evolving. Even when she became a star, she was able to sit outside in street cafes, passers-by only half wondering if it was the real Madonna.

For much of her career Madonna has played on her obvious sex appeal, vamping it up for the camera, on and off stage. Her book
Sex
was essentially the summation of her love affair with the lens, a modern-day collection of raunchy pin-ups. These seven rarely seen portraits, taken in her New York days around 1980 and 1981, show the many faces of Madonna: quizzical, haughty, friendly, thoughtful and indifferent, the human face of a young woman who would soon dominate the music scene, blazing a trail around the world as an emblem of the strong, sexually confident woman.