Lady Gaga reunited for a pair of farewell shows in August, titled “One Last Time: An Evening with Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga,” and, in a recent 60 Minutes interview, she recalled the moment Bennett, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016, remembered who she was.
“Whoa, Lady Gaga,” the legendary 95-year-old crooner shouted as she entered the stage, but as Gaga revealed on Sunday’s episode 60 Minutes, it was the first time he remembered her name in a while.
“That’s the first time Tony said my name in a long time. I had to keep it together ’cause we had a sold out show and I have a job to do,” she recalled. “But I’ll tell you when I walked out on that stage and he said, ‘It’s Lady Gaga,’ my friend saw me, and it was very special.”
Gaga insisted that when dealing with someone who has Alzheimer’s “there is a way to communicate and there’s a way to touch the magic inside of them that’s still there.”
The 35-year-old performer added, “I think it’s up to us to ask ourselves what are the ways we can push through what we’re feeling so we can best communicate with them and receive our love, because it’s still there.”
“With Tony in particular, a lot of it was me making sure that I navigate his needs in any given moment,” she continued, noting that “to be honest, that’s jazz too……we’re singing different notes in every song almost every time. We improvise all the time… Once you learn [the music that was written at the time] you can play with it, but you have to listen to each other.”
Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett’s last album together, Love for Sale, is out now.
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