Lady Gaga posts tribute to her 'real true friend' Tony Bennett
Writing that she has been grieving him since his death on July 21 at age 96, Lady Gaga has paid tribute to her friend and musical collaborator Tony Bennett.
“I will miss my friend forever. I will miss singing with him, recording with him, talking with him, being on stage together,” the 13-time Grammy Award-winning pop star and Oscar-nominated actor, 37, wrote in a 400-word Instagram essay early Monday. With Bennett, with whom she recorded two albums of the American standards for which he was known, and performed them together with him in concerts, “I got to live my life in a time warp. … We transported ourselves to another era, modernized the music together, & gave it all new life as a singing duo.”
Beyond being a collaborator, the Queens-born music legend also “was my friend. My real true friend,” she wrote. “Sure he taught me about music, about showbiz life, but he also showed me how to keep my spirits high and my head screwed on straight. … He was an optimist, he believed in quality work AND quality life.” She admired that he “sang jazz with the greatest singers and players in the world,” but also lauded his World War II service as a front-line infantryman and his contributions to the 1960s Civil Rights movement.
“I've been grieving the loss of Tony for a long time,” Lady Gaga wrote. “We had a very long and powerful goodbye. … Losing Tony to Alzheimer’s has been painful but it was also really beautiful. An era of memory loss is such a sacred time in a person[’]s life. There's such a feeling of vulnerability and a desire to preserve dignity. All I wanted was for Tony to remember how much I loved him and how grateful I was to have him in my life. But, as that faded slowly I knew deep down he was sharing with me the most vulnerable moment in his life that he could — being willing to sing with me when his nature was changing so deeply….”
From that experience, she concluded, “…I would say don’t discount your elders, don’t leave them behind when things change. Don’t flinch when you feel sad, just keep going straight ahead, sadness is part of it. Take care of your elders and I promise you will learn something special. Maybe even magical. And pay attention to silence — some of [our] most meaningful exchanges were with no melody at all.”
The two met in 2011 performing at a charitable fundraiser. Shortly after, they recorded “The Lady Is A Tramp” for Bennett’s all-star album “Duets II” (2011). Three years later, they released their collaborative album of American standards, “Cheek to Cheek.” It and its follow-up, 2021’s “Love for Sale,” each won the Grammy Award for best traditional pop vocal album. And the two teamed up for concerts, with Bennett making his last public performances on Aug. 3 and 5, 2021, at Radio City Music Hall, with “One Last Time: An Evening with Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga.”