FEATURE:
A Pop Revolution
IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna on stage during the Blond Ambition Tour at Wembley Stadium, London on 20th July, 1990/PHOTO CREDIT: Peter Still/Redferns
Madonna’s Blond Ambition Tour at Thirty
___________
IT is impossible to do full service…
IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna during the Blond Ambition Tour at Feyenoord Stadion, De Kuip, Rotterdam, Holland on 24th July, 1990
to Madonna’s Blond Ambition Tour of 1990. From its globe-straddling schedule to the controversy it stirred at the Vatican, through to the iconic songs and costumes, it was not only the best concert tour of the 1990s…it completely transformed the Pop concert in general! Starting on 13th April and running through to 5th August – with a few cancelled gigs -, the tour was set over three legs and comprised nine gigs in Asia; thirty-two in North America, and sixteen in Europe – a staggering fifty-seven-date extravaganza! I was only six when the tour started, so my recollections of the coverage are pretty much non-existence. As someone who was exposed to Madonna’s music when at primary school, I look back now, nearly thirty years after the Blond Ambition Tour started, and it is eye-watering. I have been checking out a few of the various tour posters – the one for London is quite risqué! -, and thinking about where we are now. Madonna has taken to social media the past few weeks whilst we are in lockdown and, whilst some of her messages have been quite odd – her sitting in a bath talking about us all being equal was a highlight! -, it is great she is still recording and touring. Whilst her recent tour to promote Madame X is not as iconic as her Blond Ambition Tour, she still puts her everything into shows! Just think about the songs that people were treated to back in 1990!
A set-list from a show she performed in Japan showed she performed seventeen songs - starting with Express Yourself, ending with Keep It Together. Whilst the tour was designed to capatlise on the success of her 1989 smash, Like a Prayer, and 1990’s I’m Breathless – the soundtrack (which contained Vogue) to 1990’s Dick Tracy, where she appeared as a character called Breathless Mahoney -, there are hits from further back. In fact, Dick Tracy was not released in the U.S. until June 1990; the I’m Breathless soundtrack arrived on 22nd May, but Vogue was released on 20th March. The Blond Ambition Tour was Madonna’s fourth but, as she was supporting her most successful album to date, it was her biggest, most-anticipated tour. Pepsi sponsored the tour but, after the controversy the Like a Prayer video stirred (with images of burning crosses), and the fact Pepsi cancelled an advertising deal with Madonna at the same time, the Vatican condemned the Blond Ambition Tour and asked people to boycott Pepsi. Rather than just produce a stage show that comprised some hits and not much else, Madonna divided her Blond Ambition Tour into five sections. There was a Metropolis section, inspired by the film of the same name; a Religious section that was made up of religious themes; Dick Tracy (based on cabaret and the film of the same name); Art Deco, which was inspired by early Hollywood films which used the works of the Polish artist, Tamara de Lempicka; the fifth section was an encore.
IN THIS PHOTO: On the Blond Ambition Tour, Madonna unveiled the iconic cone bra by Jean Paul Gaultier/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
It was an ambitious and hefty undertaking, and the tour required a lot of hands. One of the most important members of the creative entourage was the French fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier. He was responsible for those memorable outfits – the famous conical bra/top is one of the defining outfits/images of that 1990 tour. It is unsurprising that the tour garnered huge reviews and massive audiences. In 1990, Madonna was the biggest Pop artist in the world – perhaps Michael Jackson was her closest rival. After Like a Prayer’s influence and impact – both good and bad – and the newly-arrived Vogue, this was a moment when Madonna became the confirmed Queen of Pop. Because of the sexual and Catholic imagery, the tour received some controversial backlash. There was condemnation from religious communities and organisations, in addition to protests – three Italian dates were cancelled. Toronto’s police were alerted to so-called lewd and indecent performances; especially Madonna’s routine for Like a Virgin – I am not sure what people were expecting; it shows how prudish some were back then! Although, to be fair, Madonna and her male dancers simulated masturbation during that song, it was all part of the spectacle – the Pop icon pushing boundaries and producing a memorable show! The fantastic Like a Virgin appeared at the start of the Religious section – albeit a slowed and more seductive version that is on the Like a Virgin album of 1984.
For Like a Prayer, Madonna shifted from the Gaultier corset and red velvet bed of Like a Virgin to a black robe and votive candles on the stage; her dancers were dressed like priests and nuns – Papa Don’t Preach, as you’d imagine, closed the Religious portion. Not only was the scope, sets and routines radical and groundbreaking – can you think of a Pop show since that has reached as far and deep?! -, but the sheer range of sounds and textures must have blown people away. The Dick Tracy act was less commercial and familiar, but no less artistic, theatrical and sense-altering. As I said, I am not going to be able to do full justice to all the movements and moments that defined the Blond Ambition Tour, one can have a look at the performances on YouTube…and go have a look at the mass of articles dedicated to it. Last year, the folks at NME published a feature that spotlighted a worldwide monster of a tour:
“Watch a pop show now, and you may well take the sheer scale of production for granted. From Troye Sivan rising onto the stage of Hammersmith Apollo while reclined on the sofa of a full living room set, to Lorde performing ‘Melodrama’ inside a floating box with a rotating cast of characters within, pop’s motto has become go big, or go home. When Olly Alexander gyrated steamily behind a floodlit curtain on Years & Years recent ‘Sanctify’ tour (the group were supported, no less, by London vogue house Kiki House of Tea) the nods to Madonna were clear and deliberate. ‘Like A Prayer’ – and the genius of the Blond Ambition tour – led the way to all of this bold, visual expression, making room in the pop landscape for artists with ambitious, conceptual ideas that provoke discussion and nimbly tread the line between euphoria and danger.
“As with everything that involves something that is a hot button – the [masturbation] simulation on stage, stuff like that – you’re always gonna have people who root for it, and others who aren’t enthused,” Luis says. “If it fits, then do it regardless – it’s expression.”
“I think it was a great forerunner for what we have now,” Ian concludes. “Blond Ambition definitely raised the bar, and where Madonna led at that time, people had to follow“.
In 2017, Rolling Stone covered their favourite live shows of the past fifty years. Madonna’s Blond Ambition was a huge step up from her previous tours:
“As Madonna’s career was taking off in the mid-Eighties, most of her tours were relatively straightforward affairs, based around her singing and dancing. But for the stadium blowouts that supported her 1989 classic, Like a Prayer, she wanted to up her game. In the process, she reinvented the pop megatour itself. “I really put a lot of myself into it,” she said. “It’s much more theatrical than anything I’ve ever done.” That year, Madonna had caused a nationwide controversy with the video for “Like a Prayer,” which daringly mixed sexual and religious imagery. Blond Ambition extended that provocation and upped the spectacle.
The show opened with Madonna climbing down a staircase into a factory world inspired by German expressionist filmmaker Fritz Lang. She sang in a giant cathedral for “Like a Prayer” and under a beauty-shop hair dryer in “Material Girl.” And, most infamously, she simulated masturbation while wearing a cone-shaped bustier on a crimson bed during “Like a Virgin.” “The Blond Ambition Tour was what really catapulted her into the stratosphere,” says Vincent Paterson, the tour’s co-director and choreographer.
Madonna took a hands-on approach to the show, working with her brother, painter Christopher Ciccone, to design sets, and creating the costumes with fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier. “I tried to make the show accommodate my own short attention span,” she said. “We put the songs together so there was an emotional arc in the show. I basically thought of vignettes for every song.”
Starting out in Japan in April 1990 and hitting the U.S. the following month, the tour grossed almost $63 million. But it didn’t go off without any complications: Madonna had to ditch the blond-ponytail hair extensions she wore early in the tour because they kept getting caught in her headset microphone. And in Toronto, the masturbation sequence almost got her and her dancers arrested in what became a bonding moment for her entire crew.
Madonna’s close relationship with her collaborators would be a major theme in the blockbuster 1991 tour documentary Truth or Dare, especially in memorable scenes where she invited her backup dancers into her bed. Today, Blond Ambition’s over-the-top intimacy is a staple of live pop music, from Lady Gaga to Miley Cyrus. In 1990, it was a revolution. “It was a kind of turning point,” says Darryl Jones, who played bass on the tour. “A lot of young girls were watching.”
I am not suggesting tours prior to 1990 lacked theatre and fashion allure, but the Blond Ambition Tour changed the face of pop-culture, not only because of the sets and different sections, but because of the weight and breadth of material Madonna has to wrestle with. In 2008, Lucy O'Brien noted that the singer had previously explored "conceptual musical theatre as concert" with her Who's That Girl World Tour, but it wasn't until Blond Ambition that "art, spectacle and dance really came together". Perceptions regarding what a Pop tour was and could be were forever changed after Blond Ambition. Madonna knew that she was breaking rules: that was the point of the show. Making bold statements about cross-dressing, religion and sexuality, Madonna wanted to give fans an experience rather than a formulaic and ordinary show. Some critics noted how Madonna seems to have redesigned the Pop tour, whilst others observed how one of the most famous women on the planet managed to live up to her promise and hope, and she delivered something beyond expectation. There are elements of Madonna and Blond Ambition in modern Pop artists, whether it is Rhianna and Ariana Grande’s more sexual, whips-and-chains approach; artists who are keeping Pop exciting, raw and honest. I am going to wrap the feature up soon, but I want to bring in an article from People (from 2015), who listed reasons why, twenty-five years after Blond Ambition arrived, it is hugely memorable – I have selected a few choice points:
“2. It has full-on acts
The fact that Madonna divided her performances into five thematic categories – Metropolis, Religious, Dick Tracy, Art Deco and Encore – suggests not only a level of creative planning unusual for concerts at the time but also the sheer volume of material Madonna had to work with – and at only 31 years old, no less.
IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna in a fur-trimmed corset dress on her Blond Ambition tour/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
3. It made a ton of money.
In the first two hours that tickets went on sale, a total of 482,832 were purchased, for a grand total of $14,237,000. By the end of the tour, Madonna had generated more than $62 million – that’s $113 million adjusted for inflation.
4. It helped cement the link between pop costumes and couture.
In addition to the vast majority of Blond Ambition’s many stage costumes, Madonna’s bullet bra was designed by haute couture legend Jean Paul Gaultier. In 2012, one of these very bras sold at a Christie’s auction for $52,000.
8. It featured Madonna at her most perfectionist, for better or worse.
And according to the New York Times review of the concert, that meant the concert was more “live” than live. “Madonna has become so perfectionistic, and so athletic in her dancing, that she would clearly rather lip-sync than risk a wrong note,” the review notes. “With tickets priced at $30, concertgoers might expect a more live concert”.
When Blond Ambition turns thirty on 13th April – the start of it -, I hope Madonna herself will nod back to a time in her life when she was on top of the world and created a masterful tour. It is equally impressive that, in her sixties, she is still able to produce these fantastic live shows and get the press talking. It seems odd, as I said, to talk about a massive worldwide tour when musicians everywhere have to gig from home, but I could not overlook an important anniversary. Even though I am not the biggest Madonna fan, I have always loved her work and have so much respect for the Blond Ambition Tour. It is an event that, in my opinion, has not really…
BEEN topped since.