Fifteen Years...."Quicker Than A Ray of Light"

Tomorrow, March 2nd, 2013, marks fifteen years since I first heard Madonna’s Ray of Light, a day before its official U.S. release. I do not know if any words can convey how highly anticipated this album was by her fans, nor how much excitement it generated in those early years of internet buzz. In 2012, I honored its fourteenth anniversary with a commemorative post, featuring my memories of that especially bright spot in Madonna’s career as well as YouTube clips of alternate, extended, and instrumental versions of the tracks that comprised her most celebrated record. This year, I thought I would once again employ the services of YouTube to provide further insight into “The Ray of Light Era” and Madonna’s creative process. For those who can relate to my nostalgia, as well as those who have never seen these TV appearances before, here are some of my favorite Madonna interviews, performances, and awards ceremonies from February 1998 through February 1999. That this represents only a portion of the ROL press tour speaks to just how busy Madonna kept herself during the twelve months that would redefine her music career and elevate her legend.

The weekend before the release of Ray of Light, MTV broadcast a slew of videos and vintage TV specials, along with this episode of UltraSound. It featured not only an interview on the set of Madonna's "Frozen" music video but also a fascinating, truly unprecedented look at Madonna in the recording studio.

Shortly after the release of Ray of Light, Madonna made her second of three memorable appearances on her BFF's The Rosie O'Donnell Show. It was the only time she ever performed on the show, but it's Madonna and Rosie's hilarious yoga session that makes this one my favorite episode! 

 

Madonna sat down with Oprah Winfrey for the second time in May 1998 in one of her most relaxed and entertaining interviews. It was the only time she performed on Oprah, delivering the first-ever televised performance of "Ray of Light" and, to date, the ONLY live performance of "Little Star". 

Madonna made her only appearance at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards in 1998. I'm not sure if she was there because Rosie O'Donnell was hosting, because she was now a Mom, or because she was honoring the "tween" market that was digging her new material. I have to admit, that day, I was sorely jealous of the generation born after me: I SO wished Madonna made this appearance when I was still young enough to be a Nickelodeon viewer! 

A classic interview taken on the set of Madonna's iconic "Ray of Light" video, which marked her first collaboration with friend and Swedish film genius Jonas Akerlund. Akerlund would go on to direct her "Music" and "American Life" videos as well as the Grammy-nominated backstage documentary I'm Going To Tell You A Secret and the Grammy-winning The Confessions Tour: Live From London. 

A short but sweet and especially memorable pre-taped message that was broadcast to celebrate Tony Bennett's fifty years in show business during a live-by-request TV concert the legendary crooner performed in 1998. Bennett, a vocal and avowed Madonna fan, had been begging Madonna to record a duet for years. Fingers crossed that that dream collaboration comes true one day!

Click to hear Madonna's message to Tony!

In September 1998, once again, Madonna stole the show at The MTV Video Music Awards. The show opened with what remains her ONLY televised performance of "Shanti/Ashtangi" and ended with superfan Geri Halliwell (making her first post-Spice Girls appearance in the U.S.) handing Madonna the trophy for Video of the Year. Excerpted here are the opening performance of "Shanti" and "Ray of Light", with the latter song featuring Lenny Kravitz and many of the dancers featured in the video. I was quite thrilled to find that two pre-show segments now live on in YouTube Land: a hilarious promo with Ben Stiller and Guy Oseary, and one of Madonna's last sit-down interviews with Kurt Loder. The interview is especially memorable because Madonna reveals that she doesn't know who Jennifer Love Hewett is....which made it particularly awkward when Hewett presented Madonna with an award later that night! 

Madonna made a splash at another awards ceremony shortly after the VMAs, when she gave her only live performance in America of "The Power of Good-Bye" and scooped up a handful of trophies at The 1998 VH1 Fashion & Music Awards. Madonna was being honored for her ever-changing appearance, including a lifetime achievement award from Donatella Versace for her immortal stylishness. So it should come as no surprise that Madonna wore three different outfits over the course of the night. Nor should it come as a surprise that her briefly infamous Hindi-inspired apparel was spoofed when Joan Allen portrayed Madonna the following weekend on Saturday Night Live. 

Madonna gave her only UK performance of "The Power Of Good-Bye" on this 1998 appearance on Top of the Pops--quite a stark contrast to her TOTP debut singing "Holiday" in 1984! It was one of the last times she ever performed the song live, having scrapped plans to sing it the following December at The 1998 Billboard Music Awards and seemingly barring it from every subsequent tour. Fingers crossed it finds its way into a future setlist, as it remains one of Madonna's most gorgeous and affecting ballads. 

(For those of us in the U.S. blocked from seeing the above performance, here's another live rendition from Fall '98!)

Madonna finally appeared on Larry King Live in January 1999, spending an hour discussing her life and career. The interview got off to an odd start, with King applauding Madonna for being so brave as to release her first album minus a last name (?), but despite a string of familiar questions the rapport between King and The Queen is warm, funny, and ultimately revealing. (Much to my disappointment, it appears only the first half of this interview is on YouTube.)

Had Madonna ever attended The Grammys prior to 1999? She had been nominated for eight Grammys, including Record of the Year for "Like A Prayer" and "Best Long Form Music Video" for her Blond Ambition Tour LaserDisc, the latter being her lone Grammy win for the first sixteen years of her career. I know she didn't show up in 1996 when Bedtime Stories was her first-ever album to be nominated for "Best Pop Vocal Album". But in 1999 Ray of Light would win the award in that category, the first and thus far only Madonna LP to do so. It was also the first and thus far only Madonna album ever to be nominated for "Album of the Year", which it lost to Lauryn Hill's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.  The single "Ray of Light" was Madonna's second of three (thus far) to be nominated for "Record of the Year". It lost in that category, but won the first-ever trophy for "Best Dance Recording", as well as giving Madonna her only win for "Best Short Form Music Video", a category in which she has been nominated four times. That year also marked the first time she ever performed at the Grammys and the last time she ever performed under the direction of her brother, Christopher Ciccone. As outlined in his infamous tell-all Life With My Sister Madonna, Christopher Ciccone had been Madonna's closest and most frequent collaborator from her New York days through directing The Girlie Show, which he acclaimed in his book as the respective peak in both of their careers. After The Girlie Show, however, his collaboration seems to have been limited to directing her only live performance of "Bedtime Story", at The 1995 Brit Awards, and her only live performance of "Nothing Really Matters", at The 1999 Grammy Awards. One hopes that their collaborations won't end there. In addition to that performance and Madonna's triumphant win of the "Best Pop Vocal Album" Grammy, you'll also find a snippet of Madonna's backstage flirtation with Ricky Martin. It came about shortly after Martin's performance that night of "La Copa De La Vida" preceded a Grammy win and instant superstardom. It lead to the collaboration "Cuidado Con Mi Corazon", a Madonna-William Orbit song written as a solo for Madonna but re-worked into a memorable Madonna-Martin duet for Ricky Martin's mega-successful 1999 album Ricky Martin. The final YouTube gem pairs coverage from both Access Hollywood and Entertainment Tonight of Madonna's post-Grammy high. It's Madonna at her giddiest and least reserved, truly as happy as she's ever been on camera. For those of us who had been on the journey with her from the album's release to the Grammys' redemption, it was euphoria as infectious as it was thoroughly deserved.

The Awesome Power of Guys Kissing Guys

I'm pretty sure the first time I ever saw two men kiss, one of them was Mel Gibson. I was ten, and a trashy afternoon show (A Current Affair, or possibly Hard Copy) had an exposé on Mel's first film, Summer City, featuring a same sex kiss. I remember it being shared between he and another guy in the back of a moving car, and when the guys started kissing the broadcast cut to a zoom-in on the entertainment news reporter with one palm on her cheek and a look of stunned disbelief on her face before they cut back to the men laughing and smiling at the end of their brief lip lock. The first "real" male-male kiss I ever saw was in the classic gay comedy Jeffrey. My favorite scene was a passionate first kiss between Steven Weber and Michael T. Weiss. I used to play it over and over, even though it, too, was interrupted by a cutaway: this time to an imaginary quartet of teenagers watching, with the guys getting sick and the girls getting sweet. My own first kiss with another man was coupled with my first sexual experience, so the afterglow of "my first kiss" lasted only as long as it took him to get undressed. That kiss was just a blip on the radar, obliterated in that jarring rush from virginity to promiscuity. All of my early kisses seemed to have been stolen away from me, by cutaways or social commentary or the physiological whallop of having my first intimate experience with a total stranger. Perhaps that's why kissing between men is the real "money shot" in my book. And perhaps future generations of gay youth could have more appreciation for human intimacy if the media was as comfortable showing gays kissing as they are showing gays dying.

Personally, I think all the YouTube videos of men engaged in physical intimacy with each other is way more beneficial to society than all the YouTube videos of straight guys saying "It gets better". I know, I know, not all of the people who make those videos are straight, and I’m not saying that they don’t save lives, because they do. But they wouldn’t have saved my life as a young person, for public service announcements are to a cynical teenager about as impactful as giving a lollipop to a grieving child. But those of us who would have been immune to PSAs still deserve to have videos that make us feel liberated, proud, and excited for the future, too. That’s why I’m so thrilled that YouTube is packed with videos of men making out with other men.

Many of these clips are excerpted from gay porn films, and speak to my longstanding belief that porn can be used to better the lives of the very audience it’s supposed to be kept away from: teenagers. In high school, the first gay porn film I ever saw was a sleazy VHS compilation called Between Jocks that arrived in the mail on Christmas Eve, making it easy to pretend that one of my family members’ gifts had arrived and therefore should not be opened. The first hardcore porn feature I ever saw was Jim Steel’s Solicitor, one of the prominent starring roles for a young Zak Spears. It is the story of a straight, womanizing lawyer who is lusted after by his gay assistant before eventually realizing that his mistreatment of women comes from suppressed homosexual desires. I loved the movie because I loved the image that Zak Spears represented, an image not too far from my Bruce Willis ideal yet without that pesky heterosexuality that seemed to come along with all the guys I found myself most inclined to desire.

What disappointed me about Solicitor, and many of the hardcore films I was originally introduced to, was that they did little to turn on the part of me that longed for gay romance. Solicitor came close, as the storyline ends with the lawyer and his assistant falling in love and the final shot is them cuddling in bed. It was my favorite scene in the movie, because the sex scenes, while titillating, were focused on a power play between whichever two men were presently having sex. I preferred the fleeting moments of tenderness, a desire which lead me to the films of the Bel Ami Studio and their emphasis on foreplay and affection and the innocence of two men discovering one another.

I have always felt that the Bel Ami movies, particularly the softcore edits, are quality introductions to gay sex for teenagers. Most of them will learn about gay sex via porn anyway, or be left to their own experimentation. Both of these options could potentially be degrading experiences and set a young man up for a skewed perspective of gay sex for the rest of his adult life. I'm NOT saying porn should be distributed to minors, but sex should be filmed with some awareness of the psyche of underage viewers. I don't think that exposure to onscreen sex is worse than exposure to onscreen violence, but I think it is infinitely more likely to influence the viewers' subsequent behavior.

In 2013, such outlandish ideas have become less necessary. Flooding YouTube are dozens of clips of intimate moments excerpted from gay porn films—the kissing, the caressing, the rubbing, the undressing, the moments of warmth that make foreplay exciting and special in ways that close-ups of penetration can hardly ever touch upon. (One talented YouTube user devotes an entire channel to original video compilations of kissing excerpts from gay hardcore.) However, it bothers me that so many of these scenes are “Age Restricted”. I question if this designation is based on the pornographic origins of this footage, or if mainstream society still equates two men kissing passionately with a straight couple engaged in full-on intercourse. Regardless, it’s great that it’s out there, because it’s not just young people who are in need of sexual role models. Adults can benefit from this footage, too—not only those deeply embedded in the closet, but those who are out and need positive depictions of gay intimacy because they don’t have enough of it in their own life. After all, being out of the closet is a different fulfillment from being in someone's arms.

So here are a few favorite videos of such intimacy, between men of various ages and ethnicities and degrees of undress. All of them, if only for fleeting seconds, engage in passionate behavior that gives me an affirmation that simply cannot be beat. One of them is the beautiful, beloved, and dearly departed Peter Kozma, known to millions as Arpad Miklos. He brought an almost unmatched warmth to his love scenes in adult films, and in turn made his gay audience feel good about themselves in a way that goes far beyond libidinous pleasure. On February 3rd, the same night I conceived of this post, Peter/Arpad committed suicide. I discovered the news on February 6th, and, instead of publishing this piece as planned, I paid tribute to the man who left a unique and invaluable mark on my life. I have kept his scenes in this post, for despite the nature of this tragedy, I remain convinced that suicide can be prevented by injecting male-male intimacy into the bloodstream of mainstream society. I endorse, celebrate, and encourage sexual expression in all its forms, something that I hope is evident in all of my written work. But NOTHING warms my heart and raises my pulse like passionate kissing: when it comes to the almighty power of making out, it just DOESN’T get better. 

PS.

As a stalwart opponent of gender division, I do NOT intend for my celebration of male-male coupling to be an affront to intimacy between women! I cannot vouch for the effects of female-female kissing scenes as I can for male-male, not least of all as most of the porn excerpts on YouTube seem catered to a straight (male) audience. But I hope this fantastic compilation will adequately serve as my tip of the hat to the extraordinary beauty of sapphic passion. ;)

Queen of the Small Screen: Bette Davis on TV

There’s something about Bette Davis that always feels very present. Even when you’re watching a movie made in the early years of sound cinema, she feels way ahead of her time and far more accessible to future audiences than any of her co-stars. This comes through in all of the work she did on the big screen, but also in much of the work that she did for television, either as an actress or as a major star. In honor of Bette Davis Day 2012, I offer twelve examples from 1957-1987 of JUST what I’m talking about!

All of these clips are taken from my YouTube channel, but I don’t own the rights to any of them, so please don’t tell on me! I’m not making any ad money with these clips and frankly I wouldn’t dare: I’m doing this to honor Miss Davis, not to profit off of her. None of this footage is available on DVD, and until it is, I hope it can remain in a place where my fellow fans can enjoy it as I do.

Happy Bette Davis Day 2012!

General Electric Theater: “With Malice Toward One”

The First Lady of the American Screen headlines this crackerjack episode of General Electric Theater about an aspiring author who is determined not to let a high-minded professor crush her dreams..no matter to what lengths she must go to stop him. Broadcast on March 10th, 1957, “With Malice Toward One” was written for television by Hagar Wilde from a story by Vivian Fletcher and helmed by Golden Age TV director Jules Bricken.

Telephone Time: “Stranded”

Miss Bette Davis gives a memorable dramatic performance in “Stranded”, a suspenseful episode of the anthology TV series Telephone Time that was broadcast on May 9th, 1957 and based on a true story. Although Bette Davis was not fond of the finished product, her fans will cherish this most accurate portrayal of what Bette Davis might have been like as a schoolteacher forced to protect her children against the forces of nature! This chestnut of TVs Golden Age was helmed by Allen H. Miner, who also directed Bette Davis and then-husband Gary Merrill in the pilot Paula, which became the Studio 57 episode “The Starmaker”.

Suspicion: “Fraction of a Second”

The outstanding 4/21/58 episode of the anthology series Suspicion, "Fraction of a Second", is based on a short story by Daphne du Maurier and stars The First Lady of the American Screen in one of her most memorable TV performances as a woman who steps outside of her house to see her daughter off to school and returns to find a very different home inside....

Studio 57: “The Starmaker”

Miss Bette Davis and her fourth husband and All About Eve co-star Gary Merrill made their fourth and final appearance before the cameras together in this rare piece of TV history that was originally conceived as a pilot for a proposed series called Paula. In the semi-autobiography Mother Goddam, written by Whitney Stine with the aid of Miss Davis, Bette dismisses the pilot for Paula as proof that her career had sunk to an unbearable low. But for fans of the palpable onscreen/offscreen chemistry of Miss Davis and Mr. Merrill, this pilot is a gem. The show that would have been Paula was re-titled “The Starmaker” before it aired as an episode on the anthology series Studio 57 in March of 1958, and I hope that you will all relive the sparks that flew between The Merrills onscreen and find out how the masterful Bette could elevate seemingly inconsequential material to an empowering characterization.

Hollywood Palace: Appearing with Olivia De Havilland!

Film legends and lifelong friends Bette Davis & Olivia De Havilland appeared on the November 7th, 1964 episode of Hollywood Palace to promote what would be their final film together, Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, and to perform a dramatic reading that is truly unforgettable. The performance is a stunner, but be sure to watch what comes right after, when Bette and Olivia spoof Miss D’s larger-than-life image with guest host Gene Barry!

I’ve Got A Secret: Appearing with Olivia De Havilland!

Screen legends Bette Davis and Olivia De Havilland guested together on TV legend Steve Allen's I've Got A Secret on March 1st, 1965 to promote their soon-to-be-classic new film, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte.  In the first segment, comedian Barbara Heller proves to be the secret of Miss Davis and Miss de Havilland from a panel that includes Buddy Hackett and Betsy Palmer. In the second segment, Bette makes one of her rare TV musical performances singing the Oscar-nominated "Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte", which became a Top 10 hit for singer Patti Page.

Hollywood Palace: Hosted By Bette Davis!

Bette Davis made her second of three appearances on the vaudeville-inspired 60s TV show Hollywood Palace on February 20, 1965. In addition to opening the show with a live rendition of her current record, “To Be Single”, and serving as hostess of the evening’s festivities, Miss Davis co-starred with the legendary actor/vaudevillian Bert Lahr in a skit called “Jealousy”, which Miss Davis had previously starred in in 1952 as part of her Broadway comeback, Two's Company. Enjoy this rare one-two punch of singing and sketch comedy from The First Lady Of The American Screen!

Milton Katselas’s Strangers: The Story of a Mother and a Daughter

The First Lady of the American Screen, Bette Davis, cemented her additional contributions to the television medium when she earned the 1979 Best Actress Emmy Award (Prime Time, Limited Series or Special) for her work opposite Gena Rowlands in the made-for-TV classic Strangers: The Story of A Mother And Daughter. Rarely been seen since its May 1979 broadcast, it marks a vital point in the career of Hollywood's greatest actress as it is one of the high points of Miss Davis's "Silver Age", when she was afforded rich roles in some of the most acclaimed television productions of the 70s and 80s. Three decades after its broadcast and two decades after Bette's passing, "Strangers" remains a superb and resonant human drama, deservedly comparable to Ingmar Bergman's Autumn Sonata and the James L. Brooks Best Picture winner Terms of Endearment.

Jackie Cooper’s White Mama

In the last years of her life, Bette Davis spoke lovingly of her Emmy-nominated performance in White Mama, a favorite of her latter-day films, and considered it part of her “Silver Age” of television films in the late 1970s and early 1980s. During this period, Miss Davis felt that she was being given some of her best roles since her Warner Bros. Golden Age. This period produced a small but ever-watchable cluster of films which gave Bette a platform to expand the horizons of women’s possibilities on film over the age of seventy, all the while introducing a new generation to her mastery of the acting craft.

George Schaefer’s Right of Way

All-time Hollywood icons Bette Davis and James Stewart united for the one and only time in what would be the last film before Miss Davis had her debilitating stroke. The story of a woman coming to terms with her parents’ decision to take their lives together, Right of Way was deemed too controversial for its intended network television broadcast and instead became a successful original HBO movie, earning Cable ACE Award nominations for both leads in the Best Actress and Best Actor categories. Broadcast exactly fifty years after Bette’s first top-billing Warner Bros. star vehicle, the less esteemed Ex-Lady, Right of Way is also a treat for fans of the equally immortal James Stewart. This priceless pairing is afforded a worthy film thanks to writer Richard Lees, director George Schaefer, and co-star Melinda Dillon, who plays the adult daughter of Davis and Stewart.

Good Morning America: The 1981 David Hartman Interview!

Bette Davis was interviewed for by David Hartman in May 1981 for a five-part segment on Good Morning America. In my book, it is tied with Bette’s classic 1971 appearance on The Dick Cavett Show as possibly her best TV interview, thanks to her warm rapport with Hartman and a non-stop barrage of classic Bette moments. The timeless appeal of this interview is aided by the fact that it aired just as the Kim Carnes classic "Bette Davis Eyes" was climbing to the #1 position on the Billboard chart: it would spend nine weeks there before eventually winning Grammys for "Record of the Year" and "Song of the Year".

The Late Show With Joan Rivers: The OTHER Bette And Joan!

Bette Davis comments on her mistreatment at the 1987 Academy Awards and reflects on everything from her massive stroke to her favorite films in this positively classic sit-down with Joan Rivers. This is the star whom I fell in love with in the 80s at her most ageless. Despite her jarring post-stroke appearance, here Bette is sharp, witty, and continuing to prove why she was arguably the most consistently appealing talk show guest of the 20^th century.  

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MISS DAVIS!!! WE LOVE YOU ETERNALLY!!!! XOXOXOX

Happy 'Ray of Light' Day To You All!

Has it really been FOURTEEN years since the release of Madonna's 13th album?!

The iconic cover of Madonna's most celebrated album. 

Hearing your favorite artist’s new album for the first time is always an incredible experience, because you can only ever have it once. From then on, the album becomes a part of their greater body of work. If it lives up to why they are your favorite artist in the first place, then it becomes a part of you as well. Ray of Light became a part of me on March 2^nd, 1998, and is still a part of me now. Although “my favorite Madonna album” is presently Confessions on a Dance Floor, I do not argue that Ray of Light is very likely her greatest contribution, thus far, to recorded music.

The months leading up to its release were almost unbearably exciting. Early rumors that we would all be treated to new Madonna music in time for Christmas 1997 were shot down when her fan club newsletter revealed that the new Madonna album would be delayed because she was working on “something special”. It had been three and a half years since Madonna put out a new studio album, which was unheard of for her. In between she’d made Evita and become a Mom. Her whole life changed in the wake of those two massive milestones, and her public exposure reached a new peak. But while her cultural importance was at its most tangible, the media continued to question her ability to command a listening audience. Despite six U.S. Top 10 singles from 1994 through 1997, Entertainment Weekly published a story in early 1998 suggesting that her relevance as an artist had all but vanquished in the wake of other female artists’ staggering success. They were not the only ones making that suggestion in the American and British media. Thus it was a particularly thrilling day for fans when Ray of Light debuted at #2 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums with sales of more than 370,000 copies—setting a record for best first-week sales by a female artist in the SoundScan era.  

Like most fans, I'll never forget the first time I heard Ray of Light. It was March 2^nd, 1998, and I’d purchased a copy from a record store owner who begged me not to tell anyone about the early sale for fear that Warner Bros would hunt her down and shut her down. I never did, until now, and only now do I reveal it out of gratitude: how thankful I’ll always be to her for allowing me to experience that album one day before the rest of America. After listening to it, I felt like I’d studied Madonna’s soul under a microscope. The artistic fulfillment rocked me, and I refused to listen to any other music for the next two weeks of my life—even the decade and a half of Madonna recordings that I could never go a day without hearing seemed irrelevant in the glorious wake of Ray of Light.

In celebration of Madonna’s most stunning album, here is a YouTube assortment of alternate versions of its thirteen tracks: it’s Ray of Light on the other side of the mirror. I’ve also linked “Has to Be”, arguably the finest recording ever cut from a Madonna record. Lastly, a beloved, unreleased track, reportedly co-written by Babyface, which was omitted from the LP but has warmed millions of hearts, including my own, since leaking a decade ago: “Like A Flower”.

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"No Substitute For Love" (Unreleased version of "Drowned World")

"Swim" (Unreleased Radio Edit)

"Ray of Light" (Extended Demo Version)

"Candy Perfume Girl" (Live from Michigan on The Drowned World Tour, 2001)

"Skin" (Unreleased Remix)

"Nothing Really Matters" (Club 69/Dan-O-Rama Remix Video)

"Sky Fits Heaven" (Live From Barcelona on The Drowned World Tour, 2001)

"Shanti/Ashtangi" (Instrumental)

"Frozen" (Live From Lisbon on The Re-Invention Tour, 2004)

"The Power of Good-Bye"...In Reverse!

(This replaces the demo version of the song, which was, sadly, pulled from YouTube.)

"To Have And Not To Hold" (Unreleased Early Version)

"Little Star" (On "Oprah" In May 1998: The ONLY Live Performance EVER!)

"Mer Girl" (Video Footage for The Drowned World Tour, 2001)

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"Has To Be" (B-Side To "Ray of Light" & Japanese Bonus Track)

"Like A Flower" (Unreleased Track From Recording Sessions with Babyface)