Pop diva Madonna performed in Antwerp on Sunday evening. One of her biggest fans is without a doubt Erik Dwarswaard (49) from Veldhoven. He stood at the front of the audience to see if the 65-year-old Madonna is still the same star from his youth. The time when his bedroom was still full of dozens of posters of the American singer.
Super-fan Erik from Veldhoven had to be patient before he could see his idol shine for the ninth time. “The concert was actually supposed to start at half past eight, but she didn’t get on stage until around ten o’clock,” he says. He laughs: “But with Madonna you take that for granted.”
Once he started singing along to the hits, he quickly forgot about it. “It was really great,” he reflects on the concert.
“You notice that Madonna is now a day older.”
Before ordering the tickets, Erik hesitated for a moment. A ticket costs almost 200 euros. “But I thought, maybe it is her last tour. So I had to go and it was more than worth the money,” says Erik.
“You notice that she is a day older,” Erik admits. But the show still struck a chord with him: “The contact with the audience was special, she talked about her illness. That affected everyone.”
“Madonna was the first person I heard say something positive about gays.”
Erik fell under the spell of Madonna around 1985. “We moved from Groningen to Brabant and in the new class I discovered that I liked a boy. At that time you mainly heard scary things about gays and AIDS,” says Erik.
The young Erik himself was not very interested in her music, but Madonna came into his sights when he saw a TV interview with her. “For the first time I heard someone talk positively about gays.”
“It’s strange that you often hear that Madonna is getting too old, but I don’t hear them about Bruce Springsteen.”
Since then, all the money he earned from his paper route went to magazines featuring Madonna and later also to concerts. As a 12-year-old child, he covered his entire room with posters. “I have another one in the stairwell,” he admits.
He still doesn’t get bored of the concerts. In fact, he’s going again in December. “I think it’s great that Bruce Springsteen is loved on stage, but with Madonna you often hear that it’s time to stop.”
“Luckily she doesn’t care about that, so I can continue to enjoy her shows for the time being.”
