The Kid from Fame

Given that we’re meeting to discuss an album entitled The Fame, the venue for Hot Press’s encounter with Lady GaGa couldn’t be more appropriate. It’s shortly after 9pm on a Dublin Saturday night, and we’re sitting in a brightly-lit dressing room backstage at Tubridy Tonight. There’s a small crowd of paparazzi hanging around outside, and William Shatner and La Toya Jackson are occupying the adjoining rooms.

A star, star, burning bright, the 22-year-old New Yorker – real name Joanne Stefani Germanotta – is wearing a gold party frock, long black latex gloves, and some mad thing in her blonde hair (it’s too big to be a ribbon and too small to be a hat). She’s heavily plastered in make-up and her fake lashes almost completely obscure her eyeballs.
She’s pretty hot stuff – in more ways than one. Critics are already describing her as the next Madonna/Blondie. Cynics, on the other hand, are carping that she’s more like Britney/Christina with intellectual pretensions.
Love her or laugh at her, right now The Fame – which features songs with titles such as ‘Paparazzi’, ‘Money Honey’ and ‘I Like It Rough’ – is doing exactly what it says on the tin, and making Lady GaGa one of the most ubiquitous stars of the moment. Frothy and frocky, the music combines disco, electro-pop and rock with a splash of burlesque and a hint of decadence. In less than an hour, she’ll be performing her worldwide No.1 single ‘Just Dance’ on live television. Right now, though, Lady GaGa is all mine.
Actually, not quite. Her two female assistants decline my polite invitation to vacate the room. “We’re going to stay,” one of them firmly informs me. “Sorry, that’s just the way it’s gonna be!”

Olaf Tyransen: Hey, how you doing?
Lady GaGa: Life is beautiful right now.
Do you know there’s some paparazzi waiting outside?
There are? The Irish paparazzi? Oh my goodness! I thought they only existed in two cities in the world – London and Los Angeles. The magic Ls!
What? There’s none in New York?
You know, I haven’t been to New York since we went No.1 so I do not know. For me, I can’t judge that as of right now. But the paparazzi in New York, I think, are busy working on politics and stuff. They don’t bother with silly blonde pop stars.
You grew up in Yonkers, didn’t you?
No – Manhattan.
Oh, your Wikipedia entry is wrong then.
Well, I certainly did not write that Wikipedia entry!
Apologies! I do know you went to quite an exclusive high school [Convent of the Sacred Heart]. Was your background very privileged?
Uh... no. My school had some very high profile young women in it [the school alumni include the Hilton sisters, Caroline Kennedy, etc –OT]. But I should say that I feel that I was quite privileged growing up, that I did get to go to an incredible school and had piano lessons and had a very good family. My mom and dad are Italian-Americans – first in their generation to go to college. Entrepreneurs who worked from the ground up and earned every dollar that they made. I’m very lucky to have such inspiring and hard-working parents.
Were they musical?
My father was in some cover bands – as a singer and musician – and used to go down the shore and obsess over Bruce Springsteen. He used to pretend to be John Belushi with his buddy, and they would do Blues Brothers at different bars. My mom did theatre when she was younger. So I come from a family that was in the arts – my dad painted as well – but they ended up doing more technology, telecommunications stuff. Like I said, they were the first to go to college, so I guess it was just kind of like the family’s way to go out into the world and make a name for the family.
Were you in Manhattan on 9/11?
Yes [puts hand to mouth in shock]. Do you know that you are the very first out of hundreds [of interviewers] to ask me that? Unreal... [shakes head].
Do you want to talk about it?
That morning, for whatever reason, gym class was suspended. So we had two free periods in the morning and me and my girlfriends were doing girlfriend things as usual – getting breakfast at Jackson Hole around the corner and eating in the comfy chairs outside the chapel.
And we walked upstairs and someone said, “Orianne’s mother called” – Orianne was my best friend – “and a plane has hit one of the towers.” And I remember that we thought it was a helicopter. Because every once in a while something knocks into a skyscraper in New York because they’re so damn tall. And I remember that all of a sudden the... ether of the whole building started to change, and we were called into the classrooms to watch the television. And I just remember walking in and watching both... The first tower had already gone down, and I watched the second go down – and it was just smoke. And then we all just ran to the roof as the teachers screamed down the hallways, “Don’t go up there!” We ran to the roof to see if it was true.
You could see it from the roof?
Yeah. From the roof of my school you could see clear downtown – and it was just black. And I remember I couldn’t reach my mother for, like, four hours. She worked across the street from the World Trade Centre. And the lines were just a mess. Eventually my father called and told me, “I spoke to her – she’s fine, she’s walking home.” But it was very sad because we walked from the school, across the park through the ‘Imagine John Lennon’ memorial. I asked my dad, I remember, if we could go past there when it happened. I used to go there every morning. And as we were walking, there were these very young men in trade jackets covered in soot. Completely covered in soot but with streams of water demarcating tears in their clothing and on their faces. It was the most terrifying moment of my life, easily.
Has that experience fed into your music at all?
I have written music that was inspired by that day, but I wouldn’t say that my current album is terribly focused on September 11th [smiles]. And to be perfectly fair, I think that one needs to earn that kind of... permission from the public to be able to speak about those kinds of things. John Lennon, for example, had earned and cemented his image as an icon in the world when he said, “Give peace a chance.” It’s like you have to earn the ability to talk about politics, and I don’t think that someone in their underwear, covered in sequins and feather eyelashes should sing about September 11th.
Could it not be argued that your upbeat party vibe is a reaction to that terrible event?
Well, the New York street revival is surely in full force now as I begin to tell the story of the neighbourhood that nobody knew about. I think that what my record speaks to more than September 11th – which, arguably, you could say is the mark of the beginning of this incredible depression that we’re in now – is that I reckon with ideas about fame and money and how they make young people feel. And I offer a way to sort of make friends with all of these things as opposed to allowing them to poison us and rule our lives in the very ugly way that society says they do. The record’s really fun.
And yet you seem so serious!
I’m quite serious about my record, but the record itself doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s a good time. It’s full of joy. It’s a celebration. It’s all of the things back in the ‘70s and the ‘80s that the party used to be. It was art and fashion and fun – and it was okay to be that way.
I’m just going to throw a couple of names at you...
Sure.
Grace Jones.
I just met her a few days ago. She is the most incredible, like, Aztec warrior of a woman. I washed her feet.
How did that come about?
She was bleeding. I said, “Grace, you’re fucking bleeding!” and she was, like, “I know I’m fucking bleeding, darling!” And I said, “Just a minute...” and I just began to [mimes spitting into a hanky and rubbing feet]. And I told her I felt like Mary Magdalene.
Madonna?
I haven’t met Madonna.
There are lots of obvious comparisons between yourself and Madonna...
We certainly have a lot in common. She’s somebody that I certainly danced around in my room to with my mother when I was growing up. And she’s an inspirational Italian-American woman who was political and religious and all of those amazing things.
The Scissor Sisters... actually, you could be their cousin!
I love them! Thank you! I’m a big fan. I passed out at one of their concerts in Coney Island a few years ago.
Was that during your legendary drug period?
During my ‘white’ period? Yes. That was during my Bowie period that everybody so gracefully missed out on. Those moments of my life are quite fragmented so I couldn’t even tell you. But I love the Scissor Sisters. I only wish that they had been more successful in America, because Americans could’ve used a little tits on the radio.
You went to the same school as Paris Hilton. I’m aware you didn’t know her very well, but I’m just wondering what you think of her rise to fame?
[Lady Ga Ga visibly freezes and one of her assistants interrupts: “She doesn’t answer questions like that regarding other artists. So could you ask another one? Sorry!”].
But Paris Hilton isn’t an artist... oh, alright. You’ve mentioned Donatella Versace in many of your interviews...
Oh, I love her! We’ve been in contact with one another. I adore her and speak quite frequently about how I mirror her image in my fashion, and admire her. And we’ve been speaking about me putting in for some Versace clothes [laughs].
Do you get a lot of free clothes in this gig?
We do, but I feel kind of bad because I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to what I wear. And as grateful as I am for all of the free things that I’m sent, I don’t wear 79 per cent of it, because it just isn’t my vision.
You studied briefly at the Tisch School... is that how you pronounce it?
Yeah. The Tits School. That’s where I was! [laughs]
Hot Press actually has an association there. The students make music videos for Irish bands as part of a competition we run every year.
Tisch has just a wonderful programme. It was actually my dream school that I wanted to get into. I got in when I was 17. I was so terribly excited, and I studied art history and writing and music and theatre and... just amazing. But it wasn’t the programme for me. But I don’t know that any programme really would have been the programme for me because I was sort of resolved to this idea and philosophy that you’re better off learning about art on your own. And that you really can’t pay for it. You’ve gotta... Like, the school is terribly expensive. And I told my father and mother, I’m like, “You’re paying for me to learn about art... just let me go wait tables and learn about it on my own.” And they were like... “Whatever!”
Have you ever actually waited tables?
Oh my gosh! I mean, talk about my ‘white’ period, that’s all I did for, like, five years. I actually waited tables since I was 15.
What do you mean when you say “white period”?
I mean that in jest, because you had said Bowie. As in Bowie’s [thin] white [duke] period. But I waited tables since I was 15. I worked as a hostess during high school; it was my way of making money so that I could go to dance clubs and go see music and stuff at night-time on the weekends without having to ask my father for money. Because, “Daddy, can I go to the movies?” “Well, the movie’s only $6 so here you go!” You know, it’s like I could never really get all the way downtown and grab a couple of drinks, so I decided to get my own job so that I could be a free independent woman. And I did the same thing in college. I worked three different jobs. I did an internship for a bit at Famous Music.
You were writing for Interscope when you were 20, weren’t you?
Uh-uh. I was 21. I had gotten dropped from Def Jam and I began to write a lot. And I got approached by Interscope as an artist. And while the paperwork was still going on, they became also interested in me as a writer. And I had written some songs with [Moroccan producer] RedOne that were played for Akon. And he got very excited for me and hired me as a writer. So it sort of happened simultaneously. They were interested in me as an artist, but I began my initial relationship with them as a writer, and began to work on other projects. And I was sort of known as, like, the quirky girl from New York City who had a very strange light and sensibility about her. That Akon and Vincent Herbert and Jimmy Iovine thought could be a star.
Do you have a long-term plan? Are you looking a few years ahead or just riding out the moment?
I guess the plan is that I’m just never going to stop.
Is it all about the records or are there other things planned?
Certainly I want to direct music videos, and I want to have an art exhibit, and I want to make clothes, and all kinds of things. But it’s always hard for me to talk about that, because I feel like it’s sort of like very typical of artists to speak quite carelessly about their “empires.” I don’t look at myself like an empire. I wanna make real honest work. So if I do a clothing line, I’m not gonna do it on the side or while I’m on the road. I’m gonna stop, sit down and make a clothing line properly.
John Updike, who died earlier this week, once said that, “Celebrity is a mask that eats the face.” Given the theme of The Fame, what are your thoughts on that?
He also said that a true New Yorker secretly believes that anyone living in any other part of the world is secretly joking. He also wrote that. Actually, tell me that quote again.
“Celebrity is a mask that eats the face.”
Oh! [gasps in astonishment]. Are you going to see my show tomorrow? I’m gonna cry right now [eyes water up]. You have to see my show... There are three art films in my show. Gosh! I didn’t even think of the Updike reference. This is when you know that you’ve got that intuition about culture. And he just died.
I’m not following you...
I did these three art films. I call them Crevette. ‘Crevette’ means ‘shrimp’ in French. I named them that because – it might be quite silly of me – but shrimp are small and decadent and tasty. Which is what I intend for my little 57-second films to be. And in these particular films, which I show throughout the performance... it’s called Who Shot Candy Warhol? And the first film is called Pop Ate My Heart. And the second film is called Pop Ate My Brain. And the third is called Pop Ate My Face – in which I am sitting helplessly in a white room with a strange man holding a yellow rubber gun with pink blood all over my heart, and a pantyhose that distorts the image of my true identity. And it’s just so... it’s just so fucking funny that you asked me that.
I was sent by the ghost of John Updike!
You were! You were! I mean, it’s just so funny that you asked me that. And in the film I profusely am asked by this strange man, “What is your real name? Tell me your real name!” And I say, “I don’t understand the question.”
Sounds very Warholian.
Yes it is. I would’ve liked to have been his girl muse.
What do you think of Damien Hirst?
I love Damien Hirst. Actually, I find his work to be incredibly mesmerising. Although a bit unhealthy at times. Someone asked me the other day of a likely British gentleman caller, and I said I really liked Damien Hirst, but I would prefer that my children not grow up surrounded by cows in formaldehyde. But I do love Damien Hirst. I like the ‘death of God’ nature of what he does. He asks us to look at quite organic and natural things, and once you measure the distance and the temporal reaction of the, “Oh my God, there’s parasites eating away at a carcass!” there’s a fear that grows and an intense genuine shock that breeds something that has nothing to do with feeling natural. And I appreciate that so very much.
Given your Italian background, I presume you’re a Catholic?
Yes, very much. I believe in God.
Does Hirst’s ‘death of God’ theme not offend your religious sensibilities?
No, not at all. What a scary world it would be if we didn’t have people that challenged all of these institutions. I’m a religious woman, but I don’t pretend for a minute to be necessarily enthralled in the institution of the Church. But I’m a decidedly spiritual and religious woman, yes. I don’t think you need to follow the letter of the law in order to be religious.
I respect a lot of Catholic traditions, but... Damien Hirst is right. It’s modern. And while Damien Hirst’s school of thought will always continue to modernise – and ten years from now he will say, “I was wrong – no, this is what it is!” We have so many institutions that for thousands of years never modernised and never said, “Oh, we were wrong – no, this is what it is!” So I tend to respect the opinions of artists more than I would respect the opinions of religious authorities, governmental authorities, papers and things and tablets that have been unchanging since BC Anno Domini thousands of eons of centuries. Artists admit when they’re wrong.
I should probably ask you about Obama.
Yes! How exciting! Can you believe what we’ve done? I don’t think Americans even realise yet this tremendous thing that we’ve just accomplished.
Was that your first ever vote?
No, my second. I’m 22. I broke out into intense hives when John Kerry lost to Bush.
Did you play any awareness events or fundraisers for Obama?
No, I didn’t. But just before the inauguration, I did something with Pepsi. Where I did this very sweet little ‘Dear Mr. President’ letter where I begged him to give me no reason to write a protest song, because I hate writing songs that aren’t about dancing and singing and having a good time.
It strikes me that there’s a lot more depth to you than you let on in your music.
Maybe you didn’t listen to my record carefully enough [laughs]. The intention when it comes to pop art is for people to argue about whether or not it’s valid. And if you really listen to the lyrics of The Fame, in my opinion it’s an incredibly brilliant reckoning about what the commercial idea of fame does to us as young people, and what the young artist Warholian concept of fame can do to save them from that.
Warhol once proclaimed that in the future everybody will be famous for 15 minutes. Is that what you’re talking about?
I’m talking about the idea that you can self-proclaim fame on your own. “I am famous!” “No, you’re not!” “Yes, I am!”
What? Standing in front of a bedroom mirror singing into a hairbrush?
Did you just say that? [Looks over at assistants] Did he just say that? You have got to see my films!
[Assistant: “You’ve really freaked her out! He’s from the future!”]
You’re from the future!! It’s quite scary. In my second film, I’m brushing my hair in front of a mirror talking about how pop ate my heart and then he swallowed my brain and what’s left for me to live for... but my fame.
And are you enjoying your newfound fame?
It’s very funny the way that this all happened. I have been doing this forever, right? And I quite honestly go into those intense artistic creative caves, or I work for like weeks at a time and barely see a soul on the earth except for my assistant, my choreographer, the inside of a studio and a set. So I did these music videos where I was up for, like, 72 hours straight – you know, like James Bond being tortured in the middle of Vietnam – I mean just, like, crazy. And then I emerged in a hallucinatory state and they said, “You’re number one all over the world!” And I’m like, “Oh... fabulous!” I’d been working so hard, I didn’t even realise I was number one.
Have people started to look at you funny?
On my way to the airport, the day my second video had been done, I was followed by paparazzi getting on the plane. Then in London it was like massacre. So I just really don’t know. Right now, London is... it’s the apocalypse. I imagine that LA is not the same way. And in New York, like I said, the journalists just don’t fucking care about pop music.
But I know that because I’ve got a song called ‘Paparazzi’ on my record, that everybody must think that as I’m chased helplessly around the city by cameras that I must be beaming and doing backflips. But quite honestly I’m terrified of their ability to degrade and trample upon all of the most beautiful and artistic dreams that I’ve been working on my whole life. And unfortunately they are my subject matter so I have to be nice to them [smiles]. It doesn’t frighten me on a physical level, but it frightens me on an intellectual level. Just their capability to destroy my work. Because they can, and you know they can.
There is this perception that once you’ve put your head over the parapet and into the public eye, people somehow own you and have a right to know everything about your life.
I don’t know that it’s the public’s innate right to know everything about my life, but I do think that the nature of making music is being private in public. So I could let you know as little or as much as I’d like in my actual work, but I am quite a spitfire when it comes to journalists asking me how I like to be made love to and things like that.
Damn! There goes my final question!
You know what I’m saying! Those sorts of questions to me are the very thing that shoot my art in the face. Because they immediately become paramount to the actual record, and because I am blond, and because I write about fame and money and pornography, and I perform it in my underwear, I’m already begging the world to fucking take what I do seriously. Whereas if it was thirty years ago, I would just be another one of Andy Warhol’s muses. It wasn’t so outrageous then to do what I do now. In fact, I wouldn’t have been very controversial at all.