Months before Madonna took off into the stratosphere with “Lucky Star” and other hits from her self-titled debut album — released 40 years ago on July 27, 1983 — the then-24-year-old hopeful had received some clairvoyant reinforcement regarding her future as the Queen of Pop.
“She had actually gone to a psychic, and she told me, ‘Just watch what’s gonna happen,’ ” Paul Pesco — who played guitar on both “Lucky Star” and “Burning Up” — told The Post.
“She told me this in rehearsals one day, and it was like the equivalent of Bette Davis saying, ‘Fasten your seatbelts …’ I mean, she kind of knew it.”
That would give prophetic meaning to “I Know It” — one of five songs that a young Madonna Louise Ciccone of Michigan wrote by herself for an eight-track classic that would get generations of future dance-pop divas into the groove.
Possessing neither the gospel grandeur of an Aretha Franklin or the folky feels of a Joni Mitchell, Madonna — who was set to commemorate the 40th anniversary of her debut with her “Celebration” tour launching on July 15 until the Material Girl, 64, was sidelined by a serious bacterial infection two weeks ago — made her own path, as the mother of a pop reinvention.
After the so-called death of disco as the ’70s twirled to an end, Madonna reclaimed the dance floor in a whole new way.
“We really felt that if we were to combine disco and R&B and new wave, we would have something really cool,” said Michael Rosenblatt, Madonna’s original A&R man at Sire Records. “We invented a format.”
“Madonna had a dance background. Dancing was her baby,” added her longtime publicist Liz Rosenberg, who repped Madge from the beginning of her career, all the way until 2015.
“She wanted to be a dancer. She went to Martha Graham [School] and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. And so, in looking back, you can understand how the dance [music] world embraced her first.”
After moving from Detroit to New York in 1978 — “with her tap shoes and $30,” as Rosenberg describes — Madonna got her big break at the influential club Danceteria, where she met DJ Mark Kamins in 1982.
“I used to go to Danceteria all the time … as a young A&R guy trolling the clubs looking for artists,” said Rosenblatt. “At the time, one of my best friends in life was Mark Kamins. And Mark told me about this girl who kept coming by trying to get him to play her demo.”
After picking a magnetic Madonna out of the crowd on the floor at Danceteria one Saturday night, Rosenblatt had her come by his office two days later to play her demo, which included her self-penned tunes “Everybody” and “Burning Up” as well as the Stephen Bray-written “Ain’t No Big Deal.”
“It wasn’t, like, magic, but what was magic was I had a star sitting in my office just radiating,” he said. “She was a f – – king star … And I always ask any artists I work with, ‘What do you want? What are you looking for?’ The best answer I ever got was from Madonna when she said, ‘I want to rule the world.’ ”
And that global takeover began when Rosenblatt took Madonna to meet Sire Records co-founder Seymour Stein, who was in Lenox Hill Hospital for open-heart surgery at the time. But he made sure that she came prepared with more than her demo.
“I told her, ‘You gotta come by with some ID because I don’t believe your name is Madonna,’ ” recalled Rosenblatt. “And she said, ‘It is! Why don’t you believe me?’ I said, ‘Because it’s just too good to be true. It’s perfect.’ ”
Madonna seized her moment — even if it had to happen by a hospital bed. “She was, like, all in. She was like, ‘This is my chance to get a record deal,’ ” said Rosenblatt. “And Seymour got it.”
A couple weeks later, Madonna signed a deal for three singles — including a $15,000 advance for each — with an option for an album.
Sight unseen, Rosenberg, Madonna’s soon-to-be publicist — who had been working with the likes of Fleetwood Mac at Sire parent company Warner Bros. Records — had a totally different impression of her new artist upon first hearing her demo.
“What I remember very specifically is Michael coming into my office and playing this singer from Detroit who I thought was black,” she said. “And I liked her sound.”
But Rosenberg knew that Madonna was something special when she actually met her budding star for the first time.
“I remember her coming into my office and falling in love with her,” she said. “You know, she was fantastic. She was a lot of fun, and she was very ambitious and knew what she wanted … And I think some of the company was very hard on her — they were much more of a rock ’n’ roll company.”
But Madonna quickly found her tribe in the New York club scene after her debut single “Everybody” — an electro-pop bop produced by Kamins — was released in October 1982.
The singer’s image was not featured on the cover of the single — a shrewd move, made in the nascent days of MTV, so that her race would not be a factor in her getting played on black radio stations.
“A lot of it had to do with Freddy DeMann,” said Rosenblatt of Madonna’s former manager. “Once we got Freddy involved, he was really crucial to that mix at the time [because he] was managing Michael Jackson. So Freddy had a lot of juice in the R&B world.”
But Madonna’s identity wouldn’t remain a mystery for long: Bobby Shaw, then national dance promoter at Warner Bros., took the diva-in-training around to perform at some of the hottest NYC nightspots — most of them attracting predominantly black, Latin and gay crowds.
And, in an early display of her business savvy, Madonna even asked Shaw to attend his weekly meetings with key DJs.
“Let’s face it — she was trying to be a star,” Shaw told The Post. “She worked it. She worked her personality to a T — and sex. It helped … I said, ‘She’s a smart cookie.’ But she did listen to me. And I don’t think she listened to too many people.”
Indeed, it was Shaw who helped Madonna feel right at home at Paradise Garage, the legendary underground club where she shot the low-budget “Everybody” video.
“They said you have $1,000, which is basically for me to go shoot at Danceteria with two shitty cameras,” said director Ed Steinberg, who spent about $3,800 of his own money to upgrade the performance video at Paradise Garage.
Once her full album deal was sealed, Madonna wanted a more experienced producer than Kamins, hand-picking Reggie Lucas, who had worked with female R&B singers such as Stephanie Mills and Phyllis Hyman. And Lucas’ songs “Physical Attraction,” which was the B-side to second single “Burning Up,” and “Borderline,” which would become Madge’s first Top 10 hit, were included on her debut LP.
But the album was still missing something.
Rosenblatt put out the call for a killer track to complete the LP and found “Holiday” through the Fun House DJ John “Jellybean” Benitez, who, after meeting Madonna through Shaw, had begun dating the singer. The tune was written by ex-spouses Curtis Hudson and Lisa Stevens-Crowder for their own group, Pure Energy, but their label had passed on it.
Now, after having been hired to do some remixes for the album, Benitez was about to produce the defining dance anthem from Madonna’s debut.
“I remember calling Quincy Jones just saying, ‘Hey, I’m doing this record. Any advice you can give?’ ” Benitez recalled. “And he said basically, ‘Trust your instincts. Go make something that you’re gonna play.’”
And after “Everybody” and “Burning Up” failed to make the Billboard Hot 100, “Holiday” would become Madonna’s breakthrough hit on that chart, reaching No. 16 in January 1984.
Forty years later, photographer Gary Heery — who shot the “Madonna” album cover just a few weeks before the LP’s release at his SoHo studio — told The Post he’s proud to have been part of the birth of a pop legend.
“It does get called the iconic image of her,” Heery said of his famous black-and-white portrait. “She had a great street look. And the album was great, wasn’t it?”
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