I don’t really follow Lady Gaga with much attention. I’ve seen interviews with her where I was impressed by how well spoken, normal and down-to-earth she sounded despite her wholly manufactured persona. I’ve also read countless interviews where I’ve rolled my eyes at all the ridiculous statements she was making to get headlines, which of course she did. There’s a sharp sweetness about her, like she’s genuine in her affection for her “little monsters” but if you get in the way while she’s collecting more she’ll cut you.

There are several biographies of Gaga out, according to my quick research at Amazon and Star has advance details from a new one that’s out later this month called Poker Face: The Rise and Rise of Lady Gaga. The most interesting part to me was a former female assistant’s claim that Gaga hates to sleep alone and would beg her to cuddle up in bed with her every night. The assistant would even end up showering with her the next day. She doesn’t seem to suggest there was anything sexual going on, although with Gaga it’s entirely likely. The assistant and her husband, who worked as Gaga’s manger, went on the record with their full names. They say that Gaga is a perfectionist and a taskmaster who regularly fires people over minor issues:

Gaga’s busy love life is proof of a secret lingering pain, Callahan writes: Her brash persona hides the fact that she is terrified of being alone. After a 2009 breakup with stylist Matthew “Dada” Williams, she even hired Angela [her ex manager David Ciemny’s wife] tp accompany her on the road – and to sleep in bed at night!

“She was tell me… ‘Ok, Ange, you and Dave can go in the back of the bus from 10 o’clock to midnight,” Angela says. But then it was back to cuddling with Gaga, even if they were staying at a hotel. “I would say, ‘Gaga, I have a husband to go home to. I’ll be in the room next door.’ And she’d call and text me: ‘I miss you, Ange, can you come back?’… So I would.”

“We literally… would do our makeup together every morning and get ready for bed together at night,” Angela says. And they’d even shower together to save prep time!

But despite that closeness, Gaga was still Angela’s boss, and she often caught heat for simple mistakes. When she was slammed for accidentally bringing a pair of used nylons to an appearance, Angela says, it was the last straw. She quit.

According to her husband, David, Angela was one of the lucky ones. In his 18-month tenure with Gaga, Ciemny says, he watched her fire more than 150 people. “Everything had to be perfect,” he says, and when it wasn’t, someone had to go.

[From Star Magazine, print edition, September 13, 2010]

There’s more in Star’s piece, which you should pick up if you’re interested. The book is out on September 14th and you can preorder it at Amazon. This guy Lüc that Gaga has been seen with is an old boyfriend from NY that she’s always had a thing for and the article goes into that. I read this with some skepticism, though, because as much as it’s critical of Gaga it also plays into her whole image. It’s hard to believe that she’s not in on these stories that paint her as a difficult diva with tumultuous relationships with both men and women. She wants people to talk about her. It almost doesn’t matter how critical we are, as long as we’re paying attention.