The feeling when one of your biggest hits is played, 35 years later, in the biggest blockbuster of the summer.
That’s the kind of puffed-out chest you’d expect Patrick Leonard would be flexing right about now — after “Like a Prayer,” the 1989 smash that he co-wrote and co-produced for Madonna, was featured in an epic sequence in “Deadpool & Wolverine,” the MCU franchise flick that just raked in $205 million for the eighth-best opening of all time.
But Leonard — who also collaborated with the Queen of Pop on such definitive hits such as “Live To Tell,” “Open Your Heart” and “La Isla Bonita” — isn’t hyped up about the hoopla that led Madonna to license the song for the movie after an in-person plea from Deadpool himself, Ryan Reynolds.
“That’s cool,” he shrugged when asked about “Like a Prayer” taking audiences around the world there again in the superhero bromance.
In fact, Leonard won’t be hearing his song, in all its glory, on the big screen. He has not seen — and has no intentions to see — the film.
“What year was that? 1989? So we are coming up on 40 years,” said Leonard, 68. “I would not even venture a guess as to how many thousands of hours of music I’ve written and recorded [since then]. And so if I were to … hold on to anything, it would totally affect what I’m going to do tomorrow, what I’m going to do today.”
Today, Leonard — who has also worked with everyone from Elton John and Fleetwood Mac to Pink Floyd and Leonard Cohen — is all about his own new album, “It All Comes to Down to Mood.” It’s only his second LP — and first since 1997’s instrumental “Rivers.”
But on this eclectic, 16-song set, Leonard is the master of his own musical moods.
“This is the only [album] I’ve ever done where I’m just writing all the songs and singing to myself,” said Leonard. “If I can’t open up in it, I don’t want to do it anymore. And I put more effort into this than I put into anything maybe ever in my life.”
Still, it’s his work with Her Madgesty that has defined Leonard’s career. After he was the musical director and keyboardist on the Jacksons’ 1984 Victory Tour — which was essentially Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” tour — Madonna sought him out to keep everything into the groove on her debut trek.
“And at first I said no,” said Leonard about his offer to be the musical director on 1985’s the Virgin Tour. “And then I met with her, and she said, ‘I won’t push back at all. I’ve never done this. You call the shots.’ So I agreed to do it. And while we were out, we started writing songs.”
That led to their first hit collab, 1986’s “Live to Tell,” which found the Material Girl stretching out into more emotional territory on a ballad for her third No. 1 single.
“The intention of that piece of music was me trying to get a film score,” said Leonard, who always wrote music first before Madonna would add lyrics and other melodic elements. “And she said she’d write the lyrics for the song. And while she was on her way to my house, my managers called [to tell] me this film had hired somebody else.”
But at the time, Madonna had a movie-star spouse in Sean Penn. “And she said, ‘Well, let me hear it, because Sean’s doing a movie [1986’s ‘At Close Range’], and maybe it’ll work for that.’”
A partnership of material magic was formed that also led to Leonard and Madonna collaborating on “Open Your Heart” and “La Isla Bonita” on “True Blue,” her 1986 third studio album — and the best-selling LP of her career.
The music of “La Isla Bonita” was actually supposed to be for the King of Pop, Michael Jackson.
“Quincy [Jones, Jackson’s “Thriller” producer] had asked me to write something with a Latin feel for Michael, and he didn’t like it,” recalled Leonard of his submission for Jackson’s “Bad” album. “So I played it for [Madonna], and we sat in my house and finished it.”
After Madonna’s ’80s reign — which included his personal fave of theirs, “Oh Father,” from 1989’s “Like a Prayer” album — Leonard would also go on to work on 1998’s “Ray of Light,” her Grammy-winning electronica reinvention.
“It’s interesting to hear them … the slightly more ‘Like a Prayer’ way,” said Leonard of “Ray of Light” tunes such as “Frozen” and “Nothing Really Matters” before William Orbit’s production. “There’s no electronica, there’s no nothing. It’s just the songs.”
As for whether he and Madonna will ever live to tune again, Leonard is not ruling it out — or in: “You know, I’d have to cross that bridge when I came to it.”