He helped transform her from a painfully shy teenager to a world superstar \u2013 and as Lady Gaga prepares to launch new album Artpop, he should be basking in glory. But instead, music manager Bob Leone, who also set Lana Del Rey on her path to fame, is broke and homeless, forced to move back in with his frail 88-year-old mother.<\/p>\n
He claims that Gaga, 27, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, left him ruined \u2013 failing to reward him after he helped land her first major record deal.<\/p>\n
And he says his grievances against the flamboyant New York-born singer has been taken up by Del Rey, who has blasted Gaga in a string of sharp-tongued lyrics.<\/p>\n
The jibes, which appear in the lyrics of her new song So Legit, include: \u2018Stefani, you suck, I know you\u2019re selling 20?million. Wish they could have seen you when we booed you off in Williamsburg.\u2019<\/p>\n
Leone says the lyrics reflect Lana\u2019s fury at the way Gaga and her father Joe failed to reward him.
\n\u2018She was very upset at the way I had been treated,\u2019 he said. \u2018We\u2019ve spoken about it. She feels it wasn\u2019t right.\u2019<\/p>\n
Leone, 64, discovered Gaga at the Triad Theatre, Manhattan, in 2000, when he was National Project Director at the Songwriters Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n
The young Stefani, then just 14, attended several of his songwriting workshops. He said: \u2018She was painfully shy back then. When she came to one of my open mic sessions with her mother, she\u2019d just look at the floor and her feet\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u2018I went over to her and said, \u201cStefani, I know why you feel intimidated, as everyone is older in here, but promise me when you come back next week, I want you to get up on stage and hear what you got.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018And she did. That\u2019s when I knew that she was going to be a superstar. Although I never knew she would be this popular and more recognisable than Obama and Oprah\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u2018I asked when she was only 17, \u201cWhat do you want as a creative person, to be known for great songwriting?\u201d She looked me in the eye and without hesitation said, \u201cI want world domination.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
At the time, Leone held showcases at a Manhattan venue, inviting acts from across the US to perform in front of top record company bosses. He put his young starlet Stefani on the bill in front of record executive Wendy Starland.<\/p>\n
Impressed, Starland was keen to pair Stefani with Rob Fusari, who went on to co-produce Gaga\u2019s debut album The Fame. <\/p>\n
The pair recorded a demo and Stefani signed a record deal just months later in September 2006. It was at this point that Leone stopped playing an active role in her career.<\/p>\n
But he claims promises made just before this major breakthrough, in the six months when he was officially working as Gaga\u2019s manager, were never kept, mainly due to the involvement of her father, Joe.
\nLeone said: \u2018She [Gaga] said to her dad he could be her business manager, but she wanted me as her manager as she wanted to sign with a major label.<\/p>\n
\u2018I was happy to then stand aside, glad I could help, but Joe never forgave me for being her manager.<\/p>\n
\u2018He despised me for accepting the offer to manage her. When I asked for a contract, he constantly came up with excuses why not, which went on for a couple of months, but he said, \u201cI give you my word, you\u2019ve been into my house, when you get her the major record deal, you will be fairly compensated.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leone\u2019s row with Gaga\u2019s father reignited in 2010 when, struggling for cash, he decided to auction off a collection of unreleased CDs and recordings that the pair had made when she was a teenager.<\/p>\n
Within hours her legal team had quashed the release and threatened Leone. \u2018Some of this music dated back to when she was 15. I thought it was maybe worth a lot. But as soon as it was made public, their lawyer called me.<\/p>\n
Now broke, Leone reveals he may one day be forced to sell the only letter he has from Gaga in a bid to raise more cash after leaving his Manhattan home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He helped transform her from a painfully shy teenager to a world superstar \u2013 and as Lady Gaga prepares to launch new album Artpop, he should be basking in glory. But instead, music manager Bob Leone, who also set Lana Del Rey on her path to fame, is broke and homeless, forced to move back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[688],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-infotainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}