On the long bus ride from Houston to Austin, the green flatlands float past the window and Madonna settles down for an interview. She is wearing a Kelly green knit skirt, which is peeled down over her belly, and a Paisley shirt knotted above her waist. Her streaked blond hair is twisted into a bun and held in place by a big red bow. Her lips are painted bright red and exaggerated. Her voice is a little raw and raspy.
FATHER. My father is first-generation Italian. He was the youngest of six boys. My grandparents came from Italy on the boat. They went to Pennsylvania, a town right outside of Pittsburgh, because the steel mills are there and there was a lot of work. They lived in sort of an Italian ghetto-type neighborhood, and my grandfather got a job in a steel mill. My grandmother and grandfather spoke no English at all. They are dead now, but when I was a little girl I would see them all the time. They weren't very educated, and I think in a way they represented an old life-style that my father really didn't want to have anything to do with. It's not that he was ashamed, really, but he wanted to be better. I think he was the only one of all my grandparents' children who got a college education. He got an engineering degree and moved to Michigan because of the automotive industry. I think he wanted to be upwardly mobile and go into the educated, prosperous America. I think he wanted us to have a better life than he did when he was growing up.
He was in the Air Force, and one of his best friends was my mother's oldest brother. Of course he met my mother, and he fell in love with her immediately. She was very beautiful. I look like her. I have my father's eyes but I have my mother's smile and a lot of her facial structure. She was French Canadian but she was born in Bay City. The reason I was born in Bay City is that we were at my grandmother's house. I'm the third oldest child and the oldest girl. There were six of us. Then my mother died and my father remarried three years later, and he had children with my stepmother.
My father was very strong. I don't agree with some of his values but he did have integrity, and if he told us not to do something he didn't do it either. A lot of parents tell their kids not to smoke cigarettes and they smoke cigarettes. Or they give you some idea of sexual modesty -- but my father lived that way. He believed that making love to someone is a very sacred thing and it shouldn't hap- pen until after you are married. He stuck by those beliefs, and that represented a very strong person to me. He was my role model.
I was my father's favorite. I knew how to wrap him around my finger. I knew there was another way to go besides saying, "No, I'm not going to do it," and I employed those techniques. I was a very good student. I got all A's. My father rewarded us for good grades. He gave us quarters and 50 cents for every A we got. I was really competitive, and my brothers and sisters hated me for it. I made the most money off of every report card.