The Making of 'Madonna'

The 30th anniversary of Madonna's debut LP has generated a number of remembrances (mine's HERE). But none more interesting than Rolling Stone's "oral history," featuring the people who made "Madonna" happen. Some highlights ...

Producer Reggie Lucas:

Most of the people around Madonna at the corporate level did not get her and for the most part did not like her. You could see them recoil from her bohemianism. Everybody thought she was crazy and gross. I would never say she was a punk rocker, but she used to wear little boys' shorts, and white t-shirts with holes in them, and then she had little ring things in her ears. She wasn't the weirdest person I'd ever met, you know? I'd worked with Sun Ra! So after hanging out with the Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Madonna didn't seem particularly avant-garde.  

(Lucas gave a separate interview HERE in which he finally laments the fact that he was never properly credited for his huge role in the creation of Madonna's sound, producing six of the album's eight tracks.)

Sire Records founder Seymour Stein:

I told her, "The first night out of the hospital, let's go out to dinner, you, me and Mark." But I forgot about it. I get back to the office, I get a call, it's Madonna. She says, "Where are we going tonight?" I said, "Oh my god, the Talking Heads are in town, I'm going to see them at Forest Hills." She said, "We'll go together!" I introduced them to Chris [Frantz], Tina [Weymouth], Jerry [Harrison] and David [Byrne]. David gave me a thumbs-up sign. He was impressed. 

Sire A&R man Michael Rosenblatt:

My line was "Seymour, she's going to be bigger than Olivia Newton-John!"

Art Director Carin Goldberg:

When I heard the name Madonna, my eyes just sort of rolled back in my head. I thought, "Just what we need, another gimmicky one-name girl singer who will have one album.'"

 Read it all HERE.