Years ago, venue owners across New York were probably getting calls from a person with a weird accent pitching a young star named Lady Gaga. Turns out, it might’ve been Gaga herself. During her Hot Ones interview, the pop star looked back at her early days and reminisced on how she’d try to book her own shows, and securing a residency at New York’s Slipper Room with Lady Starlight.
“I made my own outfit… I sewed it myself. I look back at that time so fondly. My whole day was trying to get gigs,” she told host Sean Evans of the Slipper Room show. “I would knock on door after door and say, ‘Can I please play here?’ Or I would call and pretend I was my manager.”
“I would tell people ‘She’s so hot right now.’ Sometimes I would do an accent,” she added. “I would do anything to get booked.”
Dressed in an avant-garde look, Gaga joked that she could only eat with one hand because she was “fashion-impaired.” She also reflected on Mackin Pulsifer, the rock band she sang in as a teenager. “You have to put music in a room to figure out how to be an artist… I learned so much being in that band.”
“It was so funny meeting Bono for the first time and I’m like ‘I used to sing Pride in my rock band growing up.’ You learn everything that came before you and you’re a student of music,” she added.
Gaga also shared that she’s being “more resourceful” in her production for shows these days, as she reminisced on a giant 3D sculpture of herself from an early tour. “I didn’t plan how it would get on and off the stage… That was pretty expensive and a bad decision,” she said. “I definitely now try being more resourceful: making less and not overproducing things. I just want to be more resourceful. I’m growing up!”
She also spoke about her music-making process and her album-curating approach. “It’s about figuring out how I’m going to hone into the sound from song to song to make it feel holistic,” she said. “Always at the end of producing an album, I revisit every single song to hone in on my vision for how it should sound.”
The pop legend is set to release her album, Mayhem, in early March. The album will feature previously released singles “Disease” and “Abracadabra,” along with Grammy-winning duet with Bruno Mars, “Die With a Smile.”
