While being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at New York's Waldorf Astoria hotel Monday night, Madonna made reference both to the Talmud and an old synagogue where she spent time in her youth. Both were influential, she said, in her growth as an artist.
"There's a saying in the Talmud," she began, "for every blade of grass there is an angel that watches over it, saying, 'Grow, grow.'" The pop icon compared her own journey to stardom and success with this aphorism, and noted some of the people she encountered during her life who pushed her to succeed and grow - among them, a childhood ballet teacher and her current manager, Guy Oseari.
She also referred to an old friend who lived at one time in an abandoned synagogue. He taught her how to play guitar, and when he went out to work, she practiced the chords he taught her in the synagogue's basement. It was in that synagogue, she related, that she wrote her first song, "Tell the Truth." She felt possessed by some kind of magic writing that song in those days, and has felt so possessed ever since.
