Times Online writer, Dan Cairns has a new interview with Madonna and she opens up about her friendship with Michael Jackson. Cairns met up with the Queen of Pop to discuss Celebration, the two-disc, 36-track greatest-hits collection. Cairns says that this will mark Madonna’s final contractual obligation with her record label before she "skips off into the $120m embrace of Live Nation, the American concert promoters." Here are some excerpts:
Madonna on her early career ambitions in New York
Again, it was New York that finetooled that drive into the unstoppable force it still is today. “That was when I knew,” she says, “that that’s what I was going to do — be a singer and a songwriter and an entertainer, and I don’t care if I have to starve, and live in a room with five guys, and wash in a sink; this is what I’m going to do. And because I lived a pretty dismal life and I didn’t care, well, if you’re living a dismal life and you don’t care and you’re enjoying it, then that must be proof that you’ve committed to something.”
Madonna on her friendship with Michael Jackson
Of the Jackson collaboration, she says: “We spent a chunk of time together, and became friends, but it never happened. I wrote a bunch of words and presented them to him, and he didn’t want to go there. He didn’t want to be provocative. And I said, ‘Well, why come to me?’ I mean, that’s like asking Quentin Tarantino to not put any violence in his films. I felt like he was too inhibited, too shy. Well, I’m shy too. When you’re writing with somebody, you immediately become shy, because, unless you’re already good friends, you can’t be honest and say, ‘That’s the shittest thing I’ve ever heard.’ You’re afraid to say that you don’t like something because you don’t want to hurt their feelings, or you’re afraid your ideas are shit; and if you reveal those cards, they’re not going to want to work with you.”
Madonna on Michael Jackson's death
“The first thing that came into my head,” she continues, referring now to Jackson’s death, “was the word ‘abandoned’. I feel like we all abandoned him and put him in a box and labelled him as a strange person. And it used to pain me to see people go write such horrible things about him, accuse him of being a child molester, and all these things that nobody had any proof of — because, you know, I’ve had plenty of things I’ve been accused of. When I adopted David, I was accused of kidnapping him, for God’s sakes; and it’s very hurtful, and people love to jump on bandwagons. The lynch-mob mentality is pretty scary.”
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