Lady Gaga is all about sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll yada, yada, yada… but the more interesting part of a new biography is how she credits boredom for the genesis of her outrageous on-stage persona.
During a performance as more mundane Stefani Germanotta, (her real name), the singer became irritated when her audience seemed bored and was talking over her music.
Gaga finally had enough; she pulled off her skirt and shirt and sat at the piano in a bra, pants, fishnet stockings and white shoes.
Suddenly she had everyone’s attention.
“That’s when I made a real decision about the kind of pop artist I wanted to be,” she says.
She says she was even arrested at a Chicago gig for revealing too much flesh on stage.
“There’s a huge festival with people doing cocaine and marijuana and he’s busting me?” she said.
Gotta’ love that Midwestern sense of morality.
The details of her life on the way to the top are contained in a new biography.
Lady Gaga learned early that sex sells.
This one seems designed to establish a back story for the Lady Gaga mystique; lots of sex — bisexual of course — drugs and music. Oh, and one dead aunt who lives in her head.
Gaga won two Grammys last week and gave a knock-out performance with Elton John, cementing herself as a pop diva. But it wasn’t always that way.
During the early days after she dropped out of New York University’s music program, Gaga made the rounds of Lower East Side clubs trying to establish her cred as a serious artist.
According to her, that meant trying to be Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol at the same time.
Cocaine became her drug of choice. “My cocaine soundtrack was always the Cure. I would lock myself in my room and listen to ‘Never Enough’ on repeat while I did bags and bags of cocaine.
Funny thing is cocaine is really expensive, especially powdered cocaine, as opposed to crack, the cheap street stuff.
As such, she doesn’t explain where a struggling artist would get the money for bags and bags of cocaine. But no matter. It’s only a detail.
Germanotta credits New Jersey record producer Rob Fusari for her stage name. She says he told her she reminded him of legendary Queen lead singer, Freddie Mercury. Quite a compliment.
A mistyped text from Rob said Lady Gaga instead of Radio Ga Ga, and the persona was born.
Rob tells it a little differently. “We were working one day in the studio, and Queen’s “Radio Ga Ga” came on, and I was like you are so “Radio Ga Ga” … so ‘Gaga’ became her nickname.”
The song, written by Queen drummer Roger Taylor in the early ’80s, was actually a slam on the superficiality of television, notably MTV and music videos, and the increasing emphasis on visuals over virtuosity in music.
Rob would know that.
In any event, Fusari shopped her to music labels and landed a deal with Interscope Records in 2007. A year later, Gaga moved to LA, where she undoubtedly fell into the clutches of Interscope’s dark genius Jimmy Iovine.
Iovine has always been a big fan of staging and scantily clad singers. He dreamed up the Pussy Cat Dolls and tarted up more than one singer.
So, say what you will, the Lady Gaga persona has his fingerprints all over it, too.
In the relationship department, she’s flamed out with both boys and girls. They’re too jealous, it seems, of her sexual freedom.
Her closest companion remains her dead aunt – and she dedicated last year’s Fame Ball tour to her. “I never met her – but she’s been one of the most important figures in my life.”
Gaga credits the aunt with steering her away from drugs.
“I realized my father’s sister Joanne, who’d died at 19, had instilled her spirit in me. She was a painter and a poet – and I had a spiritual vision I had to finish her business.”
Thus, a legend is born.