Bitter Candy

Notes from a local stagehand who worked on Madonna’s recent concert at Petco Park:

“We were 50 feet away, in the tunnel, and they made us turn the other way, toward the loading dock, so we ¬ wouldn’t be able to see Madonna getting into her SUV.”

It was the stagehand’s job to convert Petco’s visitors’ locker room into a green room for Madonna and her crew. With the help of some drapes and gray pipe, the room was divided into three zones: the main area, a mini office, and a masseuse room.

“She brought some couches and love seats that really weren’t all that great.… We also had to cover up any televisions that were hanging in the dressing room. All we did was wrap them in black drape, which is no different than just turning them off. You could still tell they were hanging televisions.”

Other items that the singer required to be present in the green room were a strategically placed Kabbalah book on the coffee table, a movie-director’s chair with Madonna’s name on the back (“After Madonna went on stage, one of the crew went up to the director’s chair to sniff [it]”), and a 16th-century-style portrait of herself hanging on the wall.

“It was one of those poses where you face the other way, kind of looking back, and you see the ass crack a little and some side boob. Her hair was still brunette, and she had some kind of partial body wrap.”

The stagehand says there was something of a close call when they were dismantling the set the day after the show.

“During breakdown, someone f*cked up and three of the steel cross-braces fell about five feet away from me. If one had hit my head, I could have easily died. Something also fell when they were setting up [her stage] in L.A. The point is, stagehands continually risk their lives for her…and for only $12.50 an hour, and for the seriously back-breaking work and [the risk] that is undertaken at every show, it just pisses me off that this woman thinks we are unworthy of looking at her.”