Producer and frequent Gaga collaborator, Fernando Garibay, gave an interview with The Hollywood Reporter this week. He discusses the process of creating Born This Way, Madonna comparisons, and the extreme measures taken to prevent leaks. Check out some highlights from the article below:
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.
THR: The album is on track to sell a million copies, how do you wrap your head around that?
Garibay: Imagine if this was 1998 through 2004, we’re probably looking at maybe five to six million copies. It’s where we’re at with the economy and the state of the music business, so if we could even get to a million, it’s like, “Wow, what a place to be.”
THR: She’s credited as a co-writer on most songs from Born This Way, what percentage of the songwriting would you say she’s responsible for?
Garibay: She doesn’t need anyone to write a hit song. A lot of times, it’s 100% her. She’s generous enough to give the producers who worked on this album a percentage of the songwriting for the production and whatever contributions we gave in arrangement or a few lyrical suggestions here and there.
You can read the full interview over at Hollywood Reporter.
