Madonna, New York and London

[XXL]

I've always found Madonna's relationship with both cities so fascinating in different ways, different times

For people who've spent their all lives in those two cities and maybe were in their teens or twenties in the early 80s, do you think NY and London have changed significantly and in what ways for the better and/or the worse?

Do you think the changes in atmosphere and cultural/social vibe have had an effect on both cities also from an aesthetic point of view and if they have, in what ways? Does Madonna's late 70s/early 80's Manhattan still exist or not anymore? Or maybe only in part?

From 02:20

Mark Goodman: Do you think there's a difference between American audiences and English audiences in ear and sensibility?

Madonna: Yes

Mark Goodman: What would that be?

Madonna: I think England's a really depressed country so they're a lot hungrier for different things and music is really important to them. If you're not a musician or an athlete there's really not that much to do for the youth in England. Seriously. Both music and fashion are so important to them. It's a really interesting place for Americans, a completely different attitude and lots of different ways to dispose your energies.

Mark Goodman: Do you have fashion influences? You like Vivienne Westwood?

Madonna: Yes, she's one of my fav designers. World's End. Whenever I go to England that's where I buy all my clothes.

Madonna’s first trip to London in 1982, with her friend, dancer Martin Burgoyne, was financed by their bartending jobs at New York’s East Village bar Lucky Strike. “We used to rob the cash register blind!” she says matter-of-factly. When they had saved enough to hit London, “we went out to some nightclubs, and I met Boy George in the [Vivienne Westwood] World’s End stuff. He was just this force to be reckoned with, and I was very intimidated,” Madonna remembers. “He was really mean to me… he’s still mean to me!” Nevertheless, Madonna “found the whole thing quite heady.

I couldn’t believe how seriously everybody took their looks and fashion and stuff – it was all very exciting and, yes, influential to a certain extent.”

But by the time Madonna returned a year later, she was riding the crest of her first success, and her relationship with the country unraveled. “Once I became famous I couldn’t stand London, because the press was so horrible to me,” she explains. “I didn’t understand the whole mentality of the tabloids; I thought, God, they’re so vicious. And this place was really different 20 years ago. Everything was closed up. The streets were dead on Sundays. There were no good restaurants. It was a very, very, very different place, and I had absolutely no inkling that I would have the life I have here [now].”

2009 Sunday Times CULTURE supplement interview

There is a part of Madonna that is still motivated by the cross-fertilisation and experimentalism of early-1980s New York.

Physically, she left it long ago. Artistically, she’s still there, in her own imagination at least: zooming around taking on influences and collaborators, draining them dry, moving on, a cultural magpie. The budgets, and the headlines, have got bigger; the spirit, she argues, remains.

“The city will never be the same,” she says. “It was an amazing time, an amazing convergence of pop culture and art. To think I used to have dinner on a regular basis with Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. That was like an everyday thing. It was a much more informative part of my life than most of the parts people choose to focus on. I got to do gigs at places like CBGB before I got put underneath the microscope, and that was helpful to me, as an artist, and also to give me a sense of confidence about myself — regardless of the subsequent beatings I would take.”

[LSD]

On New York City, May 2008 Vanity Fair

"It's not the exciting place it used to be. It still has great energy; I still put my finger in the socket. But it doesn't feel alive, cracking with that synergy between the art world and music world and fashion world that was happening in the 80s. A lot of people died."

[FurnStar]

I think New York has lost it's "feel" that it had in the 80s. It was a very exciting place, yet quite a dangerous seedy place. There was a lot of crime going on back in the day, and the subways were notoriously dangerous and full of graffiti. Madonna's admitted that before she was famous and she was living in New York in the late 70s/early 80s that she was raped one night whilst walking down the street, and her apartment was broken into twice, oh and she was held up at gunpoint. Whilst those things could still happen today in New York I think it's a lot less likely. I think today New York is a lot safer, and less seedy and more tourist friendly than it was in the 80s...but I think it's also dulled down a bit and lost it's "essence" that a young artist like Madonna probably strived on when she was living there in the 80s.

[Guest Rachelle of London]

London has become too gentrified now. Areas which Madonna used to frequent before she hit it big are now areas filled with yuppies. It's hard now to be in London and spot an actual Londoner. I've noticed a radical change in the city in the past 5 years. So many lobster restaurants whilst pubs and pie and mash shops are disappearing at a rapid rate.

I can see why M liked it here. There's a grit and realness which you would find in NYC aswell. As bases for Madonna I think the two work.

[Apples388]

London is dead, and so is New York.

She should give Berlin or even Barcelona a go really.

[jacket]

She should move to Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

[Nonoka]

NYC, or more specifically Manhattan, is a prime example of gentrification, with both the plus and minus sides. If you look at the safety records from the 80's and compare it to now, you'll be blown away, it's like a different city. It definitely has become a very safe place as opposed to the crime-ridden place it was 20 or 25 years ago. Needless to say it has become immensely cleaner and much more inviting for visitors as well. Developments are booming all over Manhattan as well, entire districts which were absolutely run down, abandoned shitholes 20 years ago have become lively inviting places. The area around what is now the Highline Park is an example for this.

But as everyone else already said, these things just don't come without the cost of losing other things unique to the city. I'm not a local at all so I can't give a specific account, but it doesn't take a lot to realize that national and global brands gradually replace many local stores and restaurants and the city's unique flair, at least in this aspect, is in danger of fading away. Not to mention Manhattan's costs of living have been soaring to extremely high rates in the past years and will most likely continue to do so. NYC is experiencing lots of residential developments, but then again, at least 90% of them are only meant for the richest of the rich and do absolutely nothing to the city but bumping up the costs of living even further.

Bottom line: NYC has always been a double-edged sword. In the 70's and 80's it definitely had an unique flair and cultural vibe which has been partially lost by now, and, to answer your question @ XXL, the gritty Manhattan Madonna got to know only barely exists by now. Then again, you can walk all the way from Downtown to Midtown and wander through all the streets and, most likely, still be perfectly fine, something you would have never dared to do in the 80's. If the advantages of today's NYC are worth the transformation it has been going through the last few years, that's up to you to decide. Personally, I do, but there are just as many reasons to think the opposite.

One thing I'm certain about is that no matter what, NYC was always be an amazing city, a 5-second glance at its skyline is enough to reasurre this. It will still always be a special place, in one way or another.

[jonski43]

I think both cities have changed dramatically. Both scenes were really vibrant in the early eighties. It was a different time before mass marketing really kicked in in the late eighties. 85 was like the last year before the music scene started to get slicker.

In the UK, you see the New Romantic scene flourishing in response to the grim reality that was seventies Britain (strikes, powercuts etc) that led to a big recession and mass unemployment in the early eighties. Bands like Duran Duran, Soft Cell, Wham!, Bananarama were all just young kids experimenting with music. They were raw and built a following over time. It was such an exciting time to be part of. London was a place where you could live cheaply but that's all but disappearing now.

Now the music scene is so manufactured with artists hot-housed from the first sign of talent and rather than try and make their way, artists just try and get on a talent show. The art world is all about having the right PR agent. Together big business has killed the organic process of people discovering artists by word of mouth.

Both New York and London have benefitted from gentrification and are much nicer, safer places to live but with the improvement, you lose the struggling artists and all the shady people that are part of that world.

However, some other place will emerge as a creative force. I think Barcelona and Berlin are also too gentrified now. It will be some random city where a group of people come together. Who knows!

But yes, the London and New York of that period are gone for now.

[Nonoka]

London is dead, and so is New York.

She should give Berlin or even Barcelona a go really.

That's a massively overblown statement. Berlin for example might still have that rawer feeling, but don't think for a second that it's not undergoing the massive changes London and NYC are / have been going through. In some aspects it already feels like a different city than only, say, 7 or 8 years ago. Gentrification will catch on in every large city in this world, sooner or later. It's really just like the globalisation, a process of our modern 21st century world which ultimately will affect every place, with all the positives and negatives.

[Nightshade]

That's a massively overblown statement. Berlin for example might still have that rawer feeling, but don't think for a second that it's not undergoing the massive changes London and NYC are / have been going through. In some aspects it already feels like a different city than only, say, 7 or 8 years ago. Gentrification will catch on in every large city in this world, sooner or later. It's really just like the globalisation, a process of our modern 21st century world which ultimately will affect every place, with all the positives and negatives.

I agree. Even though Seattle isn't a major world metropolis like those cities, it too is undergoing a change. A sort of homogenization as technology jobs bring in a certain crowd and drive out the more artistic or bohemian influences. A part of the reason I left.

[LikeAPrayer]

Both have become gentrified and frankly somewhat sterile.

But to Madonna, anything is probably better than living permanently in Los Angeles again. She spent a lot of time there too, but somehow never developed an affinity for it.

[iasonas]

Artists thrive in places that struggle, in ruins. Struggle brings inspiration. Also, affordability is very important for artists.

[slam3000]

I always dreamed of

Artists thrive in places that struggle, in ruins. Struggle brings inspiration. Also, affordability is very important for artists.

Yes, most definitely. When I moved to London 24 years ago, you could still find places for £35/40 a week. And I used to hang out with people that squatted too. But cheap, or free accommodation is unheard of now. The thing that I really notice when I go round the city, and something that Madonna has alluded to, is how much of the space is now devoted to leisure. There are cafes, restaurants and high end shops popping all over the place, even areas that used to be dead. It's all very 'nice', but in most cases ends up feeling quite soulless and homogenised.

I now live in Shoreditch which has become a blueprint for urban gentrification, and although that's brought a lot of positive changes to what was once a near post-industrial wasteland, it's certainly a lot less fun and interesting. Indeed, one of the area's gay dive bars,The Joiners Arms - a place i-D Magazine once described as 'the Studio 54 of the noughties' - announced this month that it's not going to have its lease renewed so the building can be demolished to make way for luxury flats. That kinda says it all, really.

[nick00]

I always saw M as someone who developed into the person she is because of the very dynamic time that she lived in NYC. M was like a human sponge soaking in the punk, bohemian, artsy, gay, hip & hop scenes that coalesced together in the very vibrant street & club culture of downtown.

Manhattan's gentrification has been overwhelming since Giuliani but there still are very vibrant & interesting "scenes" in Queens, Brooklyn, & The Bronx.

[Mad_On_Her]

I don't get the love and obsession people have for these cities. when I was a bit younger I loved new York, now I couldn't imagine going there again. Polluted, congested etc. People are great there. London has always been a shit hole and Madonna knows it the only reason she "fell in love with it" was because she wanted to impress and keep Guy

[Guest Rachelle of London]

I don't get the love and obsession people have for these cities. when I was a bit younger I loved new York, now I couldn't imagine going there again. Polluted, congested etc. People are great there. London has always been a shit hole and Madonna knows it the only reason she "fell in love with it" was because she wanted to impress and keep Guy

Madonna lived in London 3 years before she even met Guy.

[Guest Pud Whacker]

she was always best in Los Angeles.

[Mad_On_Her]

Madonna didn't live in London for the 3 years before she met Guy. They had a long distance relationship for over a year before Madonna moved over.

[Guest Rachelle of London]

Madonna didn't live in London for the 3 years before she met Guy. They had a long distance relationship for over a year before Madonna moved over.

Madonna had residence in London (Tregunter Road in Chelsea) since she recorded Evita. She was out there recording the soundtrack. She even dated a Londoner (Andy Bird) before she even met Guy. Of course she lived in other places but to state she only stayed in London because of Guy is stupid, the woman was there a lot of the time basically from 1996.

[Apples388]

she was always best in Los Angeles.

Sorry but I agree with this.

The Biggest Star That Ever Lived = L.A.DONNA

[acko]

I've always said LA.DONNA was LIFE.

[LSD]

The Biggest Star That Ever Lived = L.A.DONNA

[Jazzy Jan]

I think Madonna's heart will always be in New York, even though she also loves London.

[DIRTY PIG]

London is dead to people of a certain age.

[karbatal]

I think that people should look for creativity in hidden places, and that happens everywhere, you don't have to go to London or NY to find incredibly interesting people who do all kind of great things.

[Flip The Switch]

"Paris and London...baby you can keep"

I guess she tried to like the city because of Guy/family. She's a fun city girl. That's why she's a truly New Yorker.

[Guest Rachelle of London]

MiamiDonna is my fave! The Coco Grove mansion was flawless!!!!!

[Apples388]

Well I'm a former Londoner myself and one of the reasons I left London was the gentrification process. It just became unsustainable to live there. I now live 75 minutes away where I enjoy a much better quality of life whilst London is still at my fingertips.

But I digress.

The art scene in London has become pretty stagnant over the past few years and it's no coincidence really. If you're not a Russian oligarch or some Middle Eastern sheikh, good luck having semi-decent quality of life.

I enjoyed Madonna's London days but it was very obvious that her love affair with London was always going to be a short-lived one and part of the package of compromising for her family rather than her genuinely wanting to live here.

[MerGirl]

I enjoyed reading this thread. Very interesting!

[XXL]

On New York City, May 2008 Vanity Fair

"It's not the exciting place it used to be. It still has great energy; I still put my finger in the socket. But it doesn't feel alive, cracking with that synergy between the art world and music world and fashion world that was happening in the 80s. A lot of people died."

I'd forgotten about this other interview on this subject, thanks for posting it