Everyone Loves You When You're Dead. Neil Strauss
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Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run blared on vinyl as she danced around her dressing room, wearing a blue bandana around her head in tribute and an unbuttoned studded vest with a black bra underneath. She was at the height of her fame, and consequently had done very few interviews. Fortunately, completely by accident, when I’d met her backstage in Nottingham the previous evening, I passed a crucial test by insisting on a seat to the concert there, which she didn’t want me to see because it was a scaled-down “B show,” as she called it.
LADY GAGA: You’re going to get a good interview because when I met you yesterday, you wanted to see my B show. Are you kidding? We might as well have had sex by now. I mean, you came in my dressing room and said, “Please, I know it’s a B show. I know you’re hard on yourself. But I just want to see it once before I interview you tomorrow.”
Well, good. Because I’m going to start with a hard question.
LADY GAGA: Go ahead.
I have a theory about you.
LADY GAGA: Should I lay down?
You might need to.
LADY GAGA: We don’t have enough couches to lay me down.
Have you ever been to therapy, by the way?
LADY GAGA: No. I’ve like spoken to spiritual guides and things.
But never a straight-up psychiatrist?
LADY GAGA: I’m terrified of therapy because I don’t want it to mess with my creativity.
That’s interesting.
LADY GAGA: What’s worse: being normal or being abnormal? I don’t know.
So the question is: Do you think if you’d never gotten your heart broken five years ago, you wouldn’t have become as successful as you did afterward?
LADY GAGA: No, I wouldn’t. No, I wouldn’t have been as successful without him.11
So here’s the thought . . .
LADY GAGA: You made me cry (wipes tears from her eyes).
Do you think that all that love you directed toward men now goes toward your fans instead?
LADY GAGA: Well, I’ve really never loved anyone like I loved him. Or like I love him. I will say that the relationship really shaped me. It made me into a fighter. But I wouldn’t say that my love for my fans is equated to my attention for men. But I will say that love comes in many different forms. And I sort of resolved that if you can’t have the guy of your dreams, there are other ways to give love. So I guess in some ways you’re kind of right.
Did he contact you at all after you got famous?
LADY GAGA: I don’t want to talk about him.
Okay.
LADY GAGA: I’m sorry. I want to, but he’s too precious to talk about.
I’m surprised. I thought you’d be out of it and over it by now.
LADY GAGA: Out of where?
Emotionally out of it. You seem to still be emotionally attached in some way.12
LADY GAGA: Into what?
In that experience or that relationship.
LADY GAGA: Oh, I love my friends and my past, and it’s made me who I am. I didn’t just like wake up one day and forget how I got here. In fact, I’ll always have one high heel in New York City. I live in Hollywood, but you can’t make me love Hollywood. I’ll never love Hollywood.
Okay, you kind of dodged that, so one last thing: Do you think with that guy, it was obsession or love?
LADY GAGA: Love. But, you know, I don’t really know very much about love. But I suppose if I knew everything about love, I wouldn’t be good at making music, would I?
I don’t know. Some artists make their best music when they’re in love.
LADY GAGA: I’m terrified of babies, though.
Because?
LADY GAGA: I think, creatively, as a woman, you change once you give birth. I’m totally not ready for that.
Did you ever have any resolution with your father after he cut you off during your wild days?
LADY GAGA: It’s just recently that I’ve been healed in a way because my father had this heart surgery that he was supposed to have since I was a kid. The fear of losing the man of my dreams, such as my dad—there’s fucking Freud for you—was terrifying. So the biggest fear of my life passed.
Do you ever feel like you’re fulfilling your dad’s unrealized rock star ambitions?
LADY GAGA: Yeah, sure I do. I love my daddy. My daddy’s everything. I hope I can find a man that will treat me as good as my dad.
[Continued . . .]
Christina Aguilera marched into her publicist’s New York office, loudly smacking chewing gum. She was wearing baggy green army pants, a gold-chain necklace reading Christina, and a faded jean jacket over a navel-exposing T-shirt emblazoned with the word Rockstar. Her lips were glossed too pale, her eyes shadowed too blue. She plopped into a chair and splayed her legs over the armrest. Without stopping the music blaring on her headphones, she ordered, “Could you put Hot 97 on the radio?”
The next stop for the pop princess: a greasy feast at Houston’s restaurant, where she insisted that everyone plunge each tortilla chip into all three dipping sauces—spinach-artichoke, sour cream, and salsa—for optimum flavor.
I’d been assigned to spend a week with this seemingly spoiled-rotten nineteen-year-old for her first Rolling Stone cover story. And only an hour into the experience, I was already regretting it.
How did the photo shoot go?
CHRISTINA AGUILERA: Everyone was like, “She’s going crazy during that Rolling Stone photo shoot.” They’re so afraid that I’m going to be too sexy, you know what I mean.
Sexy in what way?
AGUILERA: I was doing some crazy stuff and my publicist was like, “Christina, don’t do that! Christina, don’t do this!” But I like being a little provocative.
Of course to the record label, you’re not a person, you’re an investment.
AGUILERA: Exactly. She’s like, “I wouldn’t care so much if you didn’t have such a great voice.” She was becoming an alcoholic at the shoot, pulling her hair out and asking for more red wine. She was finally like, “Put your hands on your crotch, I don’t care!”
So what were you doing exactly?
AGUILERA: It was crazy. I had my Walkman on for a couple of poses and I put it right, you know, where my crotch is. And I was looking at the camera kind of full on and strong, and head down a little bit and sassy. Just doing that suggestiveness. It was interesting.