Madonna was “extremely affected” by AIDS crisis

Madonna, who is set to perform a Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday, has been a star for nearly 30 years.

And while she has undergone many incarnations since first arriving on the scene in the early 80s with hits like Borderline and Material Girl, her early connection with gay fans has endured.

‘I saw how people treated them differently,’ she tells The Advocate. ‘I saw the prejudices, and I think probably I got that confused with, intertwined with, you know, maybe things that…ways that people treated me differently.’

Her rise coincided with a harrowing time for the gay community with people dying from AIDS at a horrifying rate.

‘I was extremely affected by it,’ Madonna says. ‘I remember lying on a bed with a friend of mine who was a musician, and he had been diagnosed with this kind of cancer, but nobody knew what it was. He was this beautiful man, and I watched him kind of waste away, and then another gay friend, and then another gay friend, and then another gay friend. They were all artists and all truly special and dear to me.’

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