A few weeks ago, the Internet spit up some footage of a pre-fame
Lady Gaga, the 23-year-old breakout pop star from Manhattan whose
outrageous wardrobe and weirdo live performances have made her a
cultural phenomenon to suburban tweens and Marc Jacobs alike.
The videos, captured on Jan. 20, 2006, depict a slightly younger,
entirely more normal-looking Lady Gaga, then still known as Stefani
Germanotta, performing with her rock group, the Stefani Germanotta
Band, at the Greenwich Village venue the Bitter End—quite a
different gal than the scantily clad platinum blonde we saw on the
Oct. 3 Saturday Night Live fake cat-fighting with Madonna in
thigh-high black boots and trying to smooch cast member Andy
Samberg in a dress made of oversize bubbles!
More from the Observer:
Which
Online Shopping Site Is Right for You?
Do Singers
Have to Be Stick Thin to Succeed?
In the old footage, Ms. Germanotta has long
brown hair and is wearing a gray tank top, black leggings and
crinkly white boots while banging on a Yamaha keyboard—backed by a
trio of skinny, scruffy male musicians of the same age from
N.Y.U.—jam-band style, including a soulful cover of the
reggae-esque Led Zeppelin tune, “D’yer Mak’er.”
“We used to rehearse at this really dingy practice space on the
Lower East Side, like, under some grocery store, where you’d have
to enter through those metal doors on the sidewalk, and she had
this huge keyboard that she’d wheel down the street from her
apartment on Rivington and Suffolk,” said Calvin Pia, Ms.
Germonatta’s former guitarist, who now plays in the indie rock band
Akudama, when the Transom tracked him down.
“She was very bubbly, very eccentric, very driven,” Mr. Pia
continued, although he admitted he has been a bit shocked by the
emergent Lady Gaga persona. “The high art thing? I did not see any
hints of that!”
“After shows, her dad would say to me, ‘You gotta hit those drums
harder!’” further recalled Ms. Germanotta’s former drummer, Alex
Beckmann, now of the Brooklyn-based band Mem. “He was cool.”
Mr. Pia and Mr. Beckmann said the Stefani Germanotta band fizzled
out in mid-2006 when the two young men started getting busier with
school and Ms. Germanotta started getting busier with the music
industry, landing with producer Rob Fusari, who nicknamed her Gaga
shortly thereafter.
Mr. Pia, Mr. Beckmann and Stefanie Germanotta Band bassist Eli
Silverman, who’s now a Web designer living in New Orleans, are all
still friends. (Akudama and Mem are playing a show together on
Thursday, Oct. 8, at the Bowery Poetry Club.)
But none has heard from Ms. Germanotta since the group split.
“I tried calling her once when she started blowing up,” Mr. Pia
said, “but her number had changed.”
More from the Observer:
Which
Online Shopping Site Is Right for You?
Do Singers
Have to Be Stick Thin to Succeed?
Lady Gaga's Former Band Mates: She Didn't Always Have this Persona
user
- Let’s talk: Comment (2) | Blog
- Email to a Friend
- Print this Page
Syndication:
From the Community…
Comments 1-2 of 2
-
Posted by Wed Nov 11, 2009 12:45am PST
Report Abuseguess she let the fame get to her head.
(pun intended)
-
Posted by Wed Nov 11, 2009 12:46am PST
Report Abuseguess she let the fame get to her head.
(pun intended)
Comments 1-2 of 2
leave your comment
You must sign in to post a comment