Anyone who has even the most cursory knowledge of Madonna ought to know by now that her mother, Madonna Fortin Ciccone Sr., died when she was just a child (five, to be exact). It’s been mentioned often over the years as the driving force for why she would seek to become the most famous woman in the world, yearning to fill the emotional void her mother left behind through the adoration of millions of people. It’s textbook psychology. Alas, before Madonna could attempt to secure the love of the masses (in addition to a lot of its hate), she had to do the grunt work first—and that meant an overwhelming loneliness during her first years in New York. That is, until she cultivated a circle of “Downtown friends.” At the center of that circle was Martin Burgoyne, who everyone described, essentially, as a delight. Being that Madonna was less prone to that description because of her “crass,” “rough-hewn” ways, Martin was almost like a social greasing agent for those who would otherwise be intimidated by Madonna.
That the two remained close even after she shot to superstardom was a testament to how much the street urchin-turned-pop star really did love him. While others had been cast aside along the way, Martin was an angel-faced charmer Madonna couldn’t possibly ditch. The “meanest” thing she ever did to him was have her A&R man, Michael Rosenblatt, be the one to say that his proposed album artwork for Madonna’s debut wasn’t going to cut it when, in fact, it was Madonna who felt that way because (per Seymour Stein’s account) she believed “it just wasn’t iconic enough.” Which meant Madonna was using “iconic” long before Gen Z started to toss it around to refer to the most mundane of shit. As Madonna went “deeper and deeper” into Hollywoodland after becoming famous, complete with marrying A-list actor Sean Penn, she never strayed too far from Martin or her “New York roots” (by way of Michigan). And yes, Martin and the “Downtown crew” were also invited to her star-studded wedding on August 16, 1985 (also Madonna’s twenty-seventh birthday). Soon after, three of the four key gay male guests—Burgoyne, Keith Haring and Steve Rubell—from the NYC scene would die of AIDS. The fourth guest in question, Andy Warhol, was spared from it by his inherent “asexuality.” Alas, his gallbladder was not.
Although the affair was fraught with drama due to the paparazzi’s infiltration (prompting Penn to famously write in the sand of the private beach near the house where they were to be wed, “FUCK OFF” in large letters so the message to the “chopperazzi” looming overhead would be crystal clear…in case there was somehow any confusion), Warhol of course called it “the most exciting weekend of my life.” What with his tendency to get hard over the presence of top-notch celebrities. He would also note in his diary, “Martin went down to the hairdresser earlier in the day to have his hair done. We rode in a limo out to Malibu and when we saw helicopters in the distance we knew we were at the wedding. Somebody had tipped the reporters off about where the wedding was and about ten helicopters were hovering, it was like Apocalypse Now.” And yes, that phrase could be used to describe the bulk of the 80s for gay men, who were summarily “picked off” by a disease that no one wanted to investigate because of the community it was adversely affecting. The religious right rhetoric that dominated under Ronald Reagan’s reign gave scandalized heteros further license to treat the novel virus as though it was “according punishment” for the gay men “going against God” with their “lifestyle.”
Just a year after Madonna’s wedding to Sean, Burgoyne would die of AIDS on November 30, 1986. It was a particularly somber day, as December 1st was also to mark the twenty-third anniversary of Madonna Sr.’s death. Martin, eerily enough, was twenty-three himself. Nothing more than a baby. His immortalization as a “child” due to dying so young would also crop up in the video for “Open Your Heart,” released in the World AIDS Day month of December, back in 1986. Of course, World AIDS Day wouldn’t officially exist until 1988, after WHO public information officers James W. Bunn and Thomas Netter, working for the Global Programme on AIDS, proposed it. It was a wonder that the day of acknowledgement and awareness actually got the green light “so soon.” But the only reason it did was because of the WHO’s decision to market the focus more on children in “disadvantaged countries” (a euphemism for Africa). Still, at least it was “something” from an official, respected organization. That was more than gay men had gotten out of their governments, especially the U.S. and U.K. ones. It was Bunn who settled on December 1st as a day of observance, because it was after U.S. elections and before the Christmas holiday, which meant the spotlight could briefly be put on something else.
A year before the first World AIDS Day, Madonna held a benefit concert at Madison Square Garden while on her Who’s That Girl Tour outing. It was the first time she would unofficially make “Live To Tell” her AIDS tribute song by dedicating it to the memory of Martin (the show was also a benefit for amFAR [American Foundation for AIDS Research]). And, uncannily enough, Madonna would choose to open the performance with the “Open Your Heart” boy (not the same one from the video itself, but meant to be “the same”) gliding past her on a chair, reaching out to her from the shadows as though to say, “Please help me.” It was an obvious nod to how haunted Madonna felt by being unable to save one of her best friends. The “little boy” that was Martin. The placement of the song after “Where’s The Party” also seemed to be symbolic of how the party quite literally stopped once so many gay men started “disappearing” from the dance floor.
The dark, one-two punch reminder of losing Martin on November 30th and her mother on December 1st was perhaps only slightly mitigated by the “invention” of World AIDS Day. Something that finally addressed an “issue” (to use understatement) that had been ignored and brushed aside by the mainstream for far too long. In what marks both the sixtieth anniversary and the thirty-seventh anniversary of Madonna Sr. and Martin’s deaths, respectively, World AIDS Day undoubtedly holds a continued poignancy in Madonna’s life. And yes, she’s certain to remark upon it in some way or another every December 1st.
With her current tour, The Celebration Tour, landing in Amsterdam during this year’s World AIDS Day, it’s undeniable that her performance of “Live To Tell” (which features numerous hanging screen images of some of the men Madonna knew personally [and many she didn’t] and lost to the disease, Burgoyne included) will take on an especial profundity. It, too, is arranged in the setlist to come after one of Madonna’s signature dance bops, “Holiday,” to drive home the point that a truly somber pall was cast over dance floors across the world when AIDS came to roost and the question, “Where’s The Party” took on a far more existential meaning.
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