Life With My Sister Madonna by Christopher Ciccone

JetBlackDragonfly

5 days ago

2 min read

"Some readers may say that my dark side caused me to write this book, others that my sisters did. The younger brother of Madonna, Christopher Ciccone, was at her side at every stage of her career. Who could be closer than a brother who directed her live concerts, designed the stage, handled the dancers, dressed her, and held her hand before she went on stage?

Joining Madonna's dance class as a teen, he moved in with her as she tried to become a dancer in New York. It's a myth she arrived with only $35, but it was a humble beginning, living with only a mattress on the floor. He became a background dancer for her early hits and videos in 1984 after she hustled DJs to play her tracks and fell into the Downtown art scene of Basquiat and Warhol, wearing Maripol and Fiorucci. The early concerts were awful, with an uncool audience hardly applauding. In 1985, she began The Virgin Tour and met Sean Penn, and three years later they began a tumultuous marriage; Sean hated paparazzi, she courted them. Two years later, the Who's That Girl tour jumped from 15,000 people to 80,000. In 1993, he designed and directed The Girlie Show tour, and in 1990, the Blonde Ambition tour, as well as being her dresser and managing the peace. I was in the Toronto audience the night she was almost shut down and charged with obscenity, included in the documentary Truth or Dare, a fiction he calls a travesty of reality. Her manner imperious, she often demands "this is not a democracy", and "because I felt like it", so above everything and everyone she thinks she can say whatever she wants. Downplay insecurity, cover up, and go on the defensive. He was not hired for the Drowned World tour—he rejected her imposed conditions, she did not pay for his work. The type of tricks a sister can play on a brother, including calling him nicknames she knows he hates, effectively shutting him out. They stopped speaking and he continued to direct music videos, open restaurants, and design houses.

An artistic talent in his own right, this memoir of Christopher is as much a biography of Madonna. This fractured their relationship, and he asserts she blacklisted him in Hollywood. Ciccone's close friends remained Hollywood stars and Italian designers, all of whom have felt Madonna's capricious temperament. This reveals what we might suspect about living with the superstar, without vitriol or malice; a balanced portrait, and as close as we are likely to get. They made up before he died of pancreatic cancer in 2024.

2008 / Hardcover / 344 pages