Hogg and Pease

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Lady Gaga Producer on the Making of 'Born This Way,' the 'Extreme' Measures to Keep It From Leaking and More

It was Interscope Geffen A&M chairman Jimmy Iovine who first played matchmaker between Lady Gaga and producer Fernando Garibay four years ago. “Jimmy was, like, ‘Just meet with her and see what happens,’” recalls the Mexico-raised Garibay, now Gaga’s official musical director on her albums and beyond. Then 21, she arrived at what he describes as “the ghetto of Hollywood” in a two-piece and fishnets, they hit it off, a friendship flourished and the rest is history.

But perhaps it’s most gratifying for Garibay, who pieced together the record practically in motion, while accompanying Gaga on her massive worldwide tour. How did they do it? Garibay provided an intimate look at the Gaga process days after Born This Way’s May 23 release.

The Hollywood Reporter: A lot has been written of the mobile recording units you used while Gaga was on the road, how many set-ups did you have and how did you maintain consistency?

Fernando Garibay: Basically, she's constantly working, so we have to keep up. If she has an idea, we need to be there to capture those moments, so we had every setup possible — we had laptops where we could go backstage and record something on the spot and we had a bigger set up in the studio bus. When we needed to isolate vocals, we’d record in there, it felt more quiet. Then eventually when we actually made a stop somewhere for several days, we'd go into a real studio and flesh out these ideas. It reminded me of those documentaries with mega bands from the '70s like Pink Floyd, who would record in these big studio sessions. It felt like that. It felt like we were creating something really special.