Peter, Madonna and the stick figure
As we’re putting the finishing touches to the first of a two part interview with Peter Morse, the lighting director of the most famous Madonna world tours (Who’s that girl, Blond Ambition, Girlie Show and Drowned World), that will be online tomorrow here on MadonnaTribe, here’s another interesting preview of what Peter told us about the first time he ever met Madonna.
MadonnaTribe: Do you remember the first time you met Madonna and you were asked to work with her? It’s quite a long time ago…
Peter Morse: Interestingly (laughs)… it’s a good story. She had not done a tour yet, she had just released her first album and she was very hot and Freddy De Mann who was managing her at the time had seen the lighting I had done for other artists, one in particular was Kim Carnes who did the song “Bette Davis Eyes”, and called me into meet with her and we sat and we were talking and her first idea was a theatre tour.
She was rather definite about what she had in mind and I had some ideas for a set and she had no set designer and she liked my ideas she said: “Can you draw them for me” And I said “Well I’m not an artist but I will go to someone and have my ideas drawn and I’ll bring them back to you”. So I did that and we sat and looked at the drawings and it was not a particularly good day for her, she was in the recording studio having some problems and she looked at the drawings with me and she said: “Well but where am I in these drawings?” And I said ” well you’re here” and she said “Draw me” and I said “I’m not an artist”.
She then said: “Well you’ve got to draw something so I can see what you’re talking about”. So I drew a rather terrible stick figure (laughs) ‘cos I’m not an artist. And she was very upset about that. And in the end that first tour I didn’t do. She was upset with me. So I didn’t do her first tour [The Virgin Tour]… What happened really was that the drawings I presented were based on a theatre tour and of course it was not very long it became an arena tour. And of course the ideas we had discussed were too small for that. So basically I wasn’t hired (laughs).
Two years lated Freddy came to me and said that they wanted me for the “Who’s That Girl” tour. I was hired and basically stayed with her ever since…
Coming Up tomorrow on MadonnaTribe.com