Christopher Ciccone, who dished about his sister Madonna, dies at 63

WASHINGTON - Madonna’s younger brother Christopher Ciccone, who devoted himself to his celebrity sister but who later, after feeling cast aside, wrote a memoir chronicling experiences that he described as “abuse”, died on Oct 4. He was 63.

The cause was cancer, said Ciccone’s representative Brad Taylor in a statement. He did not specify where Ciccone died.

After years, when it seemed that the siblings had shifted between chilly distance and bitter feuding, Madonna published a statement on social media on Oct 6 that praised Ciccone, fondly recalling the years of their closeness and describing a reconciliation before his death.

“We soared the highest heights together and floundered in the lowest lows,” she wrote. “Somehow, we always found each other again.”

Ciccone (pronounced chick-OH-neigh) was with Madonna from just about the beginning: He choreographed the music video of Everybody, her debut single in 1982. He was there as a backup dancer during her early club dates, and he endured her shouting as he went along for a ride to dizzying heights of celebrity.

“In many ways, Christopher was the most important and steadfast member of Madonna’s early inner circle,” said author Mary Gabriel, who wrote the singer’s biography Madonna: A Rebel Life, in an email.

The 1991 documentary Madonna: Truth or Dare, which chronicled Blond Ambition, features a scene in which Ciccone notifies Madonna that the Toronto police intended to arrest her if she were to grope herself onstage, as she had done at other shows.

The moment is brief but seems to reveal a complicated dynamic. “You shouldn’t have told me, Chris,” Madonna says over her shoulder as she walks away. Later, before going onstage, she strikes a more plaintive note: “Chris, don’t let them take me”.

In 2001, Madonna appointed a different director, Jamie King, for next world tour Drowned World. A falling-out between her and Ciccone ensued.

“She was my family,” he later recalled to The Guardian. “I wasn’t close to my other brothers and sisters, I moved out when I was 18 and moved to New York.” He felt, he continued, suddenly alone.

In 2008, he became - to use the term of New York Times critic Alexandra Jacobs - one of many Madonnagraphers, writing Life with My Sister Madonna. The book reached No. 2 on the Times’ nonfiction bestseller list.

Ciccone seemed caught between the gossipy imperatives of a tell-all and lingering admiration for his sister. “I am truly proud that Madonna is my sister and always will be,” read the concluding lines of his introduction.

Yet, he went on to call her “Machiavellian”, describe numerous forms of demeaning treatment and share unflattering stories about her boyfriends and husbands Sean Penn, Warren Beatty and Guy Ritchie.

In an interview in 2008 with Page Six, the gossip section of The New York Post, Ciccone described Madonna’s failed attempts to stop the publication of the book. “I took pleasure in watching her squirm,” he said. “Like, do you see how it feels?”

The Post called the book “scathing, entertaining” but it was panned elsewhere including by The Guardian in a parody by critic John Crace, who described Ciccone as having “no sense of self and even less insight”.

Madonna’s representative Liz Rosenberg said the star had not read the book but found its publication “very upsetting”.

Ciccone insisted Madonna would read the book, but in an interview in 2009 with The Guardian, he speculated: “She probably thinks of it as a desperate attempt for attention and money”.

Christopher Gerard Ciccone was born in Pontiac, Michigan, in the Detroit area on Nov 22, 1960.

He studied dance and anthropology while attending college at Western Michigan University and Oakland University, another Michigan school. He left dancing jobs twice to aid Madonna as she got her career started in New York City in the early 1980s.

In 2016, Ciccone married Ray Thacker, an actor. In addition to Thacker and Madonna, he is survived by three more siblings, Martin, Paula and Melanie, as well as two half-siblings, Jennifer and Mario. His stepmother Joan Gustafson died in September.

After living in Miami, Los Angeles and London, Ciccone moved to Michigan’s Lower Peninsula to be close to his family.

Ciccone wrote in his memoir that he had initially hoped his book would be a way to “define myself and separate from my sister at last”. By the time he finished, however, he said he had gained “perspective” and accepted that “one aspect of my life will never change: I was born my mother’s son, but I will die my sister’s brother.” NYTIMES