WOUND was an independent contemporary art and fashion magazine from the United Kingdom.
Issue 5 (Winter, 2008)[]
- Article by Nix, photography by Jonny Storey
The Famous Lady Gaga Changing The World of Pop One Sequin At A Time
On a cold, grey London morning a tiny girl steps out of a huge black car. Out comes neon sky high heels, teeny ripped denim shorts and the only thing I can see of her face behind the black balaclava, it seems that only her face feels the cold, is a thick blonde fringe and enormous sunglasses. She removes the glasses and underneath is a rather sweet but slightly tough looking young girl. Her New York drawl is soothing but direct, she never struggles to find a word, when she speaks you listen. Her incredible self assurance and confidence belie her 22 years but never descends to arrogance. This, along with her unyielding passion and believe in her work, is a formidable combination and it is no surprise that she has become a pop force to be reckoned with.
- Why Lady Gaga?
- It's from the Queen record Radio Gaga. I was in the studio one day with my producer and I was performing for him, playing the piano and doing all these exaggereated hand movements and singing, and he was like; 'you're so gaga! You're so theatrical when you perform, you're like Freddie Mercury!' So he started calling me that all the time and it became my nickname. Then I added Lady, if anything it's more about the irony of putting lady next to gaga, whatever language you speak gaga means crazy and it just really fits who I am.
- How have you found 'Making it' as a new artist?
- Well, it's the first released album, I've been writing the record for 2 years but I've beeng gigging in New York for 7 or 8 years. There were times when it was difficult. I was signed to Def Jam records then I was dropped after 4 months, then I got back into performing, carrying my piano with me down the street, playing at bars, coffee houses - it was an artistic test but I had a lot of nerve and I still do. I don't know where it comes from but I'm just very fearless, I was born a performer and I'm quite honestly not in it for the money. I'm in it for the work, I really enjoying playing out all the time and I've enjoyed watching the room grow from 20 to 200 and from 200 to 400. I've been playing in clubs since I was 14. Then when I was 18 I started playing rock and roll type bars. I make pop music and having to play that in rock and roll bars is very daunting. They're full of guys with long hair, cigarettes and Black Sabbath t-shirts, with Iron Maiden tattooed on their shoulder, and there was me playing pop music, spinning beats. A whole string of things happened, at first I was playing music that was a bit more ... I don't want to say safe as my lyrics have always been quite twisted but it was a bit more girly, you know? Piano, voice. Then I started to make beats on my laptop and I called it "The Plastic Gaga' band like Plastic Ono as I'm a big fan of Yoko Ono, as a performing artist. So I would put my laptop on the piano and I would play with that and they would listen but sometimes it would be really late, it would be like 2 am, everybody's drunk, everybody's laughing. I remember one night, I was really frustrated because I wanted to play a slow song and nobody would shutup. Everybody was talking and shouting, nobody was fucking listening. So I took off all my clothes and stood there in my underwear and said; 'are you all listening now?' And everybody started to cheer and said 'yeah, we're listening' then I played my music and they loved it. It became my thing that there was a sense of humour to what we were doing but it was still very serious. I have never wanted to brush pop under the table, which is what so many people do on the lower east side, they think it's low brow. No one will admit to it or they give you this whole like artistic, dramatised, masturbatory comment about what they do but it's still pop music. I wanted to be the pop artist in the world where pop was wretched and no one wanted to say that pop was what they were doing. That became what people loved about me. That I was the pop underground, I was the only girl with enough balls to really just do what I wanted to do. So many people were criticising pop but I make pop music and you guys all show up to watch me!
- How did you become Gaga?
- I was really into theatre and I went to college early, I got into the school or arts, I studied theatre and music but I really didn't like the school. It was like a sausage factory. It was about making everybody good at lots of things rather than being amazing one thing and sucking at all the others which is what I'm kind of into. I'd rather be fantastic at one thing and clueless about the other. What was happening was I would go to musical auditions and they would say 'you're too pop'. Or I would be playing shows and people from record labels would be there because they heard about the girl with her panties (giggles) on Rivington Street but they would say 'you're awesome but you're a bit too theatre'. So I was like, I'm losing either way here for whatever reason. And I really didn't care because at the end of the day I really believed in what I was doing. So instead of trying to be theatre or trying to be pop I decided to do something that married the two worlds and something that I really loved.
Then I discovered Bowie and started to listen to more theatrical metal like Heavy Metal Kids and really focusing on shows like Iron Maiden and just thinking about the theatrics of performance, that's when I really discovered myself. That's when Lady Gaga happened
- Do you think of Gaga as your alter ego?
- It's actually funny, I was watching an interview a few days ago that Klaus Nomi did and he was talking about how his persona was his way of being cool because when he was himself nobody took any notice of him. I feel like I have the reverse affect in my life, I went to a very conformist conservative Catholic school [Incomplete] whole life and in high school I was alway made fun of for dressing up at school. I was always dramatic, always in a play or a musical or […] or in a coffee shop performance. My mum […] me to really dress like a lady, I'd always […] hair and red lips. And the girls at school be like; 'What are you, a dyke? It's only here why are you dressed up?' We had uniform so my only way to express mysel wear crazy socks or shoes and do my hair crazy. So when I started working with my producer, he would say to me, 'that girl righ the one with her fingers deep in the keys, who did a crazy move with her mouth and the end of the piano. That girl is really interesting, that's you. At first I was sc[...] of it. It took me a long time to be able te myself on stage because I look fucking really do. I'm not present, I'm in another in a way Gaga is more who I am now. It clearly gives me permission to do things that […] the people don't get to do and I use it. I'm […] with my artistry. I really know what I'm ca[…] of in terms of expression.
- When are you not Gaga?
- When I have sex. Don't call me Gaga when you're in my bed. (laughs) Gaga is really just who I am. I don't have a boyfriend, I don't have lots of friends. I love my work. I'm married to my work [...] it's all day, I'm a total control freak, I'm [...] bossy and I really don't care about anything but my work. And I think very highly of what I [...] a world that think very low of pop so I've tried to work extra hard because I'm trying to really change the way that people look at my generation of music. Because I don't make underground records that are passing for pop music, I make pop records that underground kids like listening to and aren't ashamed to raise the flag for [...] bit reversed for me.
- You said that you wanted to change the world one sequin at a time, but what would Gaga's world be?
- For real? (she lifts up her wrist to an [...] boom tattoo and is silent for the time since she arrived.) That's my ideal world. I grew up right by the Imagine memorial, I used to go there every day on the way to school. To me (John Lennon) had the most lucid dream, about the perfect world... but I don't really usually ever talk about those things because I write songs about New York and underwear, money, sex and drugs. So until I prove myself as an artist it's hard to speak about world peace. I got this (the tattoo) when I was 19 when I was having this real fucking love affair with The Beatles and John and I was listening to Double Fantasy, the record that he did with Yoko One. That's part of what I [...] I say one sequin at a time, there's a humour to [...] records, you know? I take myself and my work very seriously but it doesn't always need to be that serious. We don't always need to be writing records that we want to slit our wrists when we're done, you know? Let's go to a party, let's have a good time and let's celebrate art and fashion.