As cameras flashed and schoolgirls lining the airport’s arrivals lounge screamed and jumped up and down with joy, Donna De Lory’s jaw dropped at the cacophony of noise.
It was 1987, and Madonna had hand-picked the 21-year-old performer to join her on her Who’s That Girl tour – her first stadium tour – to be her backing singer and dancer. It was a decision that would change Donna’s life forever.
They had just landed in Japan, and Madonna’s tour manager Eric Barrett beckoned her over.
“He leaned over and he was like, ‘Kid, this is the biggest it ever gets’,” recalls Donna, now 58.
“All of a sudden being catapulted into this world, for me it was overwhelming.
“Madonna was surrounded by security and it was like two rivers of people and cameras on either side. I’d never experienced things coming at me, we were all crying and she was just so cool.”
That sense of cool has barely faded in the intervening decades and this week, as Madonna announced her 40th anniversary tour, tickets sold out in minutes and new dates were added within hours.
But Donna is one of the few who know what life on the road with the Queen of Pop is truly like... exhilarating and exhausting in equal measure.
Madonna worked her crew hard, setting high standards for her energetic shows that meant Donna and her co-backing vocalist and dancer Niki Haris spent hours and hours rehearsing.
“We couldn’t quite understand why – we’d run through it three times already. Madonna would tell us, ‘Well, you just don’t know what’s going to happen out there. There could be rain, there could be wind, there could be costumes breaking. You have to be on automatic so you can make the right decisions in the moment’.”
It was lucky they had dedicated so much time to practising, because storms left the stage at Nishinomiya Stadium in Osaka drenched and sent the blinds of the set swinging wildly.
Despite the weather, Donna was living her dream in front of 80,000 fans. “We had so much adrenaline. What a peak experience for someone that age, to have so much energy and so much excitement and experiencing everything for the first time,” she recalls.
Madonna, who they called “M”, played just as hard as she worked, and in those early years of touring she, Donna and Niki would go out dancing for hours after their high-octane shows.
“We’d get back to the hotel and get dressed up, and it would be like, ‘where are we going?!’” she adds. “It was so much fun. We weren’t into drugs and drinking, it was all about the dancing.
“We all had a lot of hormones! It was raging hormones, being young and female with no inhibitions and boundaries, we were celebrating our freedom as women.”
Even threats of arrest from the more conservative countries they performed in were brushed off.
“We’d laugh about it, ‘let’s get arrested! We want to make history!’ We were on top of the world, we were invincible. We’d fly into town and everyone knew we were there.”
While Donna and Niki, who still perform together in LA, were sleeping off their heavy nights, Madonna would be working out with the same steely zeal with which she approached rehearsals.
“I kept saying, ‘I want to run with you’, and she’s like, ‘OK, come on, show up.’ And one time I did, and it was just like, ‘oh my God’. I couldn’t keep up!”
It wasn’t just Madonna’s focus on exercise that Donna admired. “She had the most fabulous clothes. And I would feel like I needed to dress like her. I had to tell myself, ‘Donna, she’s rich, and you’re not’.”
Donna spent her first paycheck on outfits by Jean Paul Gaultier, who had worked with Madonna to create the iconic cone bra for her Blond Ambition era.
“I was into a lot of the same things she was,” says Donna. “But that was rough: getting off the tour having always been in the limelight. The great parties, always being popular, and then you get back to your little apartment and you’ve got your $10,000 in the bank, but you’re trying to keep up that lifestyle.
“It was always a shocker, coming off those tours and being like, ‘OK, now what?’”
Donna used her downtime to start her own solo career, with Madonna’s support.
“She knew how hard it was – she’d been there and back. I’d say, ‘Oh my God, these club dates are so hard’. And she would say, ‘Do you know how long I did that for?’
She was so supportive. She’d say, ‘You’ve got to work hard and hang in there. If you want it bad enough, you’re gonna get it’.”
And it was Madonna who Donna turned to when she found out she was pregnant with her daughter, now 19, as a single mother. Madonna had recently welcomed daughter Lourdes with Carlos Leon, but their relationship ended when their girl was just seven months old.
“She was one of the first people that I wrote to, I didn’t know what to do,” says Donna. “She wrote back and just said, ‘This is a miracle. You’re blessed’.
“She just gave me so much encouragement. It showed me I could be as strong as her, that I could also have a kid and still do my music, that I can have a fulfilling life.
“I wished I’d saved that note. Those few words she gave me when I was in that really vulnerable time were just profound for me.”
Donna now makes her own music at home in LA, but still has a soft spot for the old songs. Open Your Heart, which netted Madonna her fifth No1 US single, was co-written by Donna’s boyfriend of the time, Gardner Cole, and pitched to Madonna with his vocals.
She initially turned down the track, until Donna re-recorded it, and Madonna picked it as a track for her third studio album, True Blue. That demo, which earned Donna $50 in 1986, led to her audition for the Who’s That Girl tour and the rest is pop history.
Her last collaboration with Madge was Live Earth in London’s Wembley Stadium in 2007, but she wouldn’t rule out another reunion.
So what if she and Niki got another call out of the blue to join “M” on this year’s tour?
“You never know,” she smiles. “I know a lot of people would be very happy. We would have so much fun.”
- Stream Donna’s new single Om Gate Gate Paragate at www.donnadelory.com and follow her on Instagram, YouTube and Spotify.
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