Billy Steinberg told Songfacts: "Our demo, if you were to hear it, you'd notice it's influenced by a sort of Smokey Robinson style of singing. Madonna's vocal performance was remarkably true to the original demo, which Tom Kelly sang on in a falsetto. It was August of 1981 that we met at a party at Keith Olsen's house."
#Like a virgin song writer mac#
He produced the first Fleetwood Mac record that included Stevie and Lindsey. If I'm not mistaken, he introduced Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks to Fleetwood Mac. Keith Olsen had already proved to be a successful matchmaker. We met at a party at producer Keith Olsen's house. Tom, Bill and Richard were sort of the guys that producers called when they needed background vocals. Mister, and Bill Champlin from The Sons of Champlin. There were a couple of guys in LA - Richard Page, who later formed the group Mr. He had been in a rock band called Fool's Gold. Steinberg told us how he and Kelly got together: "When we were writing songs like 'Like a Virgin' and 'True Colors,' Tom lived in Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley and he made a living primarily as a background singer, he was a session singer. They released one album, Taking a Cold Look, which came out in 1983. The song's writers, Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly, were a recording duo called I-Ten when they wrote this song. He sort of indulged me and I added a few little parts that ended up being used on the Madonna record." Tom didn't like me to sing because he never liked my singing. We did a demo where Tom sang the song falsetto and I added a few background vocal parts. He went along with it and agreed that that's how the song was working.
I think he was trying to imagine doing a falsetto, almost Motown inspired vocal and I said, 'Yeah, that's it.' I said, 'That's it!' He stopped and went, 'What?' and I said, 'That's it, that's the song.' He couldn't imagine because he had this style of singing that was usually based on that male rock thing. Out of nothing more than utter frustration, Tom started to play the bass line to 'Like a Virgin' and sing the lyric falsetto to this bass line he was playing. Tom had that kind of voice - very high, very powerful range.
Tom had this voice that was not unlike Lou Gramm (from Foreigner). At that time Tom and I were writing rock songs. I didn't want to let it fall by the wayside. Whereas it was him prodding me with 'True Colors' to finish the lyric, with 'Like a Virgin' I was the one prodding him, saying, 'No, no, no, let's not put this one aside because this is a very special lyric.' He'd come up with a few interesting things, but every time we got to the chorus lyric where it said, 'Like a virgin,' it just hit a brick wall - how can you write a tender ballad called 'Like a Virgin'? It just sounded ridiculous. He read those first lyrics and he sat down at the piano and tried to write a sensitive ballad to them. I took that lyric to Tom, he knew what I had gone through. I remember writing that lyric about feeling shiny and new - I made it through the wilderness, somehow I made it through - I made it through this very difficult time. I had been involved in a very emotionally difficult relationship that had finally ended and I had met somebody new. I remember writing the lyrics to 'Like a Virgin' while driving in a red pickup truck that I owned around our dusty desert vineyards. That band had just split up, so I was working out in the vineyards with my dad. I had a rock band called Billy Thermal and we were signed to Planet Records, Richard Perry's label. He was a grape grower in the Coachella Valley and our vineyards were in a little town called Thermal, California. In a Songfacts interview with Billy Steinberg, he told the story of this song: "My father was a farmer.
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