A-Line: Celebrity StyleThe Secret Life of Lady Gaga
In the May issue of Esquire, one of Lady Gaga's old friends, DJ Brendan Sullivan, gives the world an inside look at how the pop star achieved her meteoric rise to fame. According to Sullivan, Gaga didn't ask anyone to like her. She told them to. And he has plenty more to say.
Sullivan reveals that Lady Gaga was a struggling artist who worked as a go-go dancer in New York, loved Bruce Springsteen, designed her own costumes, and had a plan for world domination even before she became a tabloid favorite.
Read on to hear more of Sullivan's observations and insights into the character that is Lady Gaga.
"Gaga was always famous. Before she ever released a record, you could walk into a club or a party with her and skip the line. We'd be browsing in a bookshop and everyone's eyes would wander above the paperback in their hands. She is barely five feet tall and she speaks in a tiny voice, but she knew how to get attention."
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"Her music is about doing, and it's about possibility. It's exciting. You can hear her belief that there's much more to come -- sex, love, money, fame, exhibitionism, success. She said back then that she would always write songs, but that her early outpouring was just a training ground that would help her become a music producer. Once she told me that she wanted to be the 'grandmother of pop music,' bringing up new bands, nurturing their talents, watching them grow."
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"Lady Gaga is a student of fame, and the fame she studies most is her own -- being famous seems to both amuse and fascinate her. 'I was always the star in my own life. [But] when I met him, he became the star,' Gaga once wrote to me of a hard-to-impress guy she used to date. 'I wrote the songs to impress him, but the songs will ultimately be the thing that pulls me away.'"
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"The difference between Lady Gaga and every other young singer is that most of the others ask the world, 'Do you like the way I sing? Will you buy my record and come to my show?' Gaga tells the world, 'I am famous. I was famous before even I had heard of me.' She didn't dream of fame. She announced it."
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