It was summer 2011 in New York and Madonna and William Orbit were hard at work on a song called “Gang Bang”. The studio near Times Square was tucked away behind a soup kitchen. As evening drew in Madonna announced that she had been advised to see a sunset, because she was taking a flight the next day. Orbit understood this to be an instruction from one of her many gurus. The ladders to the studio roof were rusty and vertical: as her small feet scaled them, he became convinced she was going to slip and die on his watch. They could not see the sun through the water tanks of the Manhattan skyline, so they climbed down and headed east instead. Madonna tarried near the theatres of Broadway, hiding behind tourists with her hood up, and singing show-tunes.
They saw the sunset from a traffic island in the middle of Fifth Avenue, but when they returned to the studio Orbit discovered the trip had been a ruse. In his absence, an engineer had got into “Gang Bang” and changed his beats. “Musicians have this skilful, passive-aggressive way of asserting themselves,” he says. “All you had to do, Madonna, was ask me. You know, sometimes, there are looks you never forget? I still remember the look of triumph on her face.” The dynamic between megastars and superproducers is mysterious, but it is surprising to hear that Madonna would go to such lengths to avoid her own getting into a strop.
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