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Total live
in overdrive >>
Madonna’s right-hand woman Niki Haris comes front and centre
Mirror: Do
you do a lot of benefit concerts? Niki Haris:
I do a lot of different benefits, like AIDS benefits, but Ovaries in
Overdrive means something special, mainly because my sister passed away
from something that was eventually diagnosed as ovarian cancer. She
was only 36 years old. M: Is it
something you worry about? NH: Hey,
I never thought I would make it to 40. Every year I’m going to
the gynecologist, going, “Is it going to be me next?” My aunt
passed from cancer, my sister passed from cancer, my grandmother passed
from cancer. If I could keep my eye on my womb all the time I would. M: Tell
me about “Total Love.” NH: This was a song that I wrote just after my dad passed on last year. I broke my legs in ’95 and I had operations in ’95, ’96 and ’97. I was learning how to walk again, thinking I would never dance again. It was a golf cart accident. I went over a mountain in Catalina and basically they wanted to take my leg off. And my father was like, “If all else fails, even if you can’t dance again, you can always sing.” And then as I got stronger, I realized, “I’m going to dance again.” So that’s what “Total Love” is about. I felt like no matter what happens, my legs could break, but I’ve got a love around me so big it doesn’t matter. I’ve got a total love.
Material girlfriend M: Did you
always secretly want to be centre stage? NH: I don’t
care where I’m standing or where the mic is placed on stage—if
I’m on stage, I’m gonna sing. I don’t have my ego attached
to it too much. My dad was a black man doing jazz music in the ’40s
and ’50s. He couldn’t vote, he had to go play for these people
and couldn’t even eat with them. He did it for the love of music,
and he was detached from the outcome, from what his career was gonna
look like. And he told me, “If you’re doing this music, do
it because you love it. The gift will come, but you can’t be attached
to what the gift is gonna look like.” M: How did
you first hook with La M? NH: I was
in Vegas with the Righteous Brothers. I was singing for anybody, paying
my rent. Madonna’s people called me to audition. I didn’t
really know who Madonna was at that point in time, back in ’86.
There were like 200 girls there, and I was like, I’m not trying
to sit up here waiting with all these girls. I went up to Madonna and
I was like, “Listen, I got a plane ticket, I got a show tonight
in Vegas, let me go first because just in case I don’t get the
gig, I need to go catch my flight.” She looked at me like I was
crazy, but I guess she thought, this girl’s got some gumption,
and so she let me go first and she then said, “Tell everybody else
to go home.” We’ve been cool ever since. M: How would
you describe your relationship with Madonna? NH: The crazy child, the dearest friend, the bitter enemy, all of the above. It runs the gamut from “I love you” to “I don’t want to see you no more.” The overview for me is that we’ve become women together. It’s been joyful, it’s been painful. The journey is the destination. We’re still on the journey. I don’t know what the future holds for us. I think the biggest moment is the moment still to come. : With Robin Gorn, Spaïcy, Luisa Pepe and more at Ovaries in Overdrive, at le Swimming on Thursday, Mar. 7, 9pm, $10
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If
you’ve ever seen a Madonna video, heard a Madonna song or been
to a Madonna concert, you know Niki Haris. That’s because, for
over 15 years, this multi-talented singer/dancer has provided soul to
Madonna tracks like “Like a Prayer” and danced her ass off,
most recently on Madonna’s Drowned World tour.