In fact, she never called Joan mother. Madonna was the oldest girl of eight children and that is the reason she caught most of the responsibility. Madonna remembers: "As the oldest girl in my family, I felt like all my adolescence was spent taking care of babies. I think that's when I really thought about how I wanted to get away from all that. I saw myself as the quintessential Cinderella." And about his father Madonna says: "If we didn't have school homework then father find us something do to around the house - he was very adamant about us being productive." And also, "If my father hadn't been so strict I wouldn't be who I am today." When Madonna was small, she loved to hum along to songs on the radio as she helped with the housework. She remembers: "There was always music in our house, either records or the radio or someone singing on the bathtub." Soon her father wanted her to take piano lessons, because most of the family played an musical instrument and his father was really big on that. This was not to be, Madonna was her father's favorite and persuaded him to let her take dance lessons instead!
SCHOOL YEAR AGE
Madonna was 12 years old, when she entered the local Catholic high school [Saint Andrews, Saint Fredericks, Academie Du Sacre Coeur]. It was oppressive and she recalls "they would hit you across the back with a stapler if you were disobedient".
It was at this school though that she learnt a great deal from classes in tap, jazz dancing, Baton twirling and Gymnastics. It was here that she started to display the extrovert Madonna which hitherto only her family had experienced. "I wanted to do everything everybody told me I couldn't do, I couldn't wear make up, I couldn't wear nylons, I couldn't cut my hair, I couldn't go on dates, I couldn't even go to the movies with my friends".
She craved attention by wearing odd socks, appearing in a friend's home movie with a fried egg on her stomach. She also appeared in a local talent contest where she danced to a record by 'The Who' wearing only a bikini and body paint. As said before, she wanted to do everything she was told she shouldn't or couldn't. She'd roll up her uniform skirt until it was short, She'd go into the bathroom and put make-up and nylon stockings on.
She was incredibly flirtatious. Apart from being a flirtatious rebel, Madonna was very good at her schoolwork. Madonna remembers "I was really competitive in school with my grades and stuff coz my father used to give us rewards if we got "A" on our report cards. It wasn't so much that I was interested in learning ..my father gave us 25 cents for every "A" that we got so I wanted to earn the most amount of money." Not so surprisingly Madonna shone in the school's theatre department, where she was given the lead role in several of their productions. After Madonna left school she attended the University of Michigan on a dance scholarship, where she studied under ballet school owner, Chris Flynn. She recalls "I really loved him. He was my mentor, my father, my imaginary lover, everything."
THE EARLY YEARS
Pretty soon after studying some time in the university of Michigan Madonna wanted to go to New York to chase her dreams. Everyone was against the idea but her dance teacher said, "Go for it!" - and luckily for us she did! So there she was, finally in New York, standing in the middle of Times Square (on arriving in the big city she had asked the taxi driver to take her to 'the middle of everything'), with just thirty five dollars, a satchel full of tights, dance shoes under one arm and a giant doll under the other. Madonna remembers: "When I came to New York it was the first time I'd ever taken a plane, the first time I've ever gotten a taxi-cab, the first time for everything. And I came here with 35 dollars in my pocket. It was the bravest thing I'd ever done. My goal was to conquer the city and I feel I have." And also "Although I took to New York straight away I was really lonely.
I would take whatever I could in a taxi-cab to wherever I was going to next. I'd take a big breath, grit my teeth, blink back my tears and say, "I'm gonna do it- I have to do it because there's nowhere else for me to go".
This was the start of hard times for Madonna. She lived in terrible house, cuz Madonna hadn't money for better. She remembers: "When my father first came to visit me, he was mortified. The place was crawling with cockroaches. There was winos in the hallways, and the entire place smelled like stale beer" Then she won a scholarship at the Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre, where she spent two years working hard at her classes during the day and even harder at night, holding down a succession of part-time jobs in fast food restaurants to make a little extra money. Sometimes she also visited a club called the "Blue Froggie", the bar where she first met Steve Bray. Who was a talented musician but his relationship with Madonna was more on the physical plane. After a while Madonna realized that the way to the top for her was not going to be through pure modern dance. It wasn't the competition that put her off but the lack of work opportunities. There were too many people going after too few jobs. She started auditioning for theatre and musical parts and ended up being whisked away to Paris, where she was to take part in a revue backing the lead singer Patrick Hernadez. Hernadez's management realized they had something special on their hands with Madonna, but were too slow to do anything about it and when she complained they would give her more money - they didn't. So it was goodbye to Paris and hello again to New York. Madonna returned to New York with a fiery determination to succeed in the music industry. She moved in again with Dan Gilroy, an old boyfriend. He and some friends that they had met while at dance school, had got a group together called 'The Breakfast Band' - they needed a drummer, so Madonna filled the gap. She then persuaded Dan to write some songs for her to sing as the group's lead singer. After she had been with them a few months she realized that they were getting nowhere and so went off alone to form her own band with herself as the lead singer. During the following few months they played a succession of dodgy New York clubs to establish a name for themselves on the music circuit. It wasn't easy. The band went through many changes of it's membership and name. At the time the clubs were more interested in Punk and New Wave stuff but Madonna plugged away at it. She was offered the occasional bit of modeling work and a part in a shortm(60 min) 'art' film called 'A Certain Sacrifice'.
THE BREAKTHROUGH
Madonna finally got a deal with Gotham Records, worth one hundred dollars a week. Steve Bray went with her as drummer and songwriter. She kept at it and eventually got a record deal with 'Sire Records' for only $5000 and released her first single 'Everybody'. When it was first played on the radio and in clubs, many fans mistook Madonna for an Afro-American disco diva.
