Patrick Leonard auditioned as a keyboard player on The Jacksons’ Victory Tour and wound up serving as its musical director.
Leonard kept in touch with Michael Jackson, who was working on an album when producer Quincy Jones asked Leonard to write a song that sounded like Sade.
When he heard Leonard’s demo, Jones passed.
“Ah, I just don’t think it’s for Michael,” Jones told Leonard, according to Out Magazine.
Leonard offered it to Madonna, for whom he played keyboards for at Live Aid and served as her musical director on The Virgin Tour.
“She said, ‘Oh, I like this, let’s work on it,’” Leonard said.
The result was “La Isla Bonita,” one of five songs Leonard and Madonna collaborated on for her 1986 album True Blue.
Madonna revised the lyrics and the pair reworked the song.
“I may have been on the way to the studio and seen an exit ramp for San Pedro,” Madonna told Rolling Stone as quoted by Smooth Radio, referring to the song’s first line.
“La Isla Bonita” was the fifth single off True Blue to reach the top 10, peaking at No. 4 on The Billboard Hot 100. Madonna became the second female artist to produce five top 10 singles from one album, following Janet Jackson with Control.
The hit helped turn True Blue into a blockbuster that went seven times platinum and sold 25 million copies worldwide. It’s Madonna’s biggest-selling studio album to date.
It also strengthened the partnership between Leonard and Madonna, who collaborated on projects like 1987’s Who’s That Girl and 1989’s Like a Prayer. Leonard also wrote the music for I Am Because We Are, Madonna’s 2008 documentary about AIDS orphans in Malawi.
“But I think, maybe it’s a bit of a mid-western notion, you make hay while the sun shines,” Leonard told Music Business Worldwide. “If it’s working, you keep doing it.”
