‘Screaming’: Lady Gaga crashes Rolling Stones recording session

Rolling Stones’ frontman Mick Jagger thought Lady Gaga was just coming to observe their recording session. He was wrong.

Mick Jagger may be a little under Lady Gaga’s thumb. The Rolling Stones frontman has shared how Gaga crashed the recording sessions for their acclaimed new record Hackney Diamonds.

Gaga was working at the same Los Angeles studios when she popped her head in to say hi as Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood were recording the epic Sweet Sounds of Heaven, one of the highlights of the new album which is being hailed as their best in four decades.

Jagger thought Gaga was hanging around to observe but she marched into the room and fronted the rock’n’roll legend with a wordless demand to sing on the track.

“I thought she would just be watching in the control room,” Jagger told MOJO.

“But she walked in the live room, starts looking at me and I think I know what she wants to do. So we give her the headphones and the iPad with the lyric sheet and she started singing.”

Lady Gaga and Mick Jagger performed together at the Prudential Center in 2012. Picture: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

The seven minute honky tonk gospel track, which also features Stevie Wonder on piano, has been favourably compared to Stones classics including Gimme Shelter and You Can’t Always Get What You Want.

Her gospel rock wailing on Sweet Sounds of Heaven has fans and critics praising it as being up there with backing singer Merry Clayton’s iconic singing on Gimme Shelter which Gaga performed with the Stones at a 2012 concert in New Jersey.

Jagger said he and Gaga got “slightly competitive with the screaming” during extra recording sessions to get their parts “really tight.”

Gaga said she and the album’s producer Andrew Watt shed tears “witnessing music history” as the Stones made their first new record of original material in 18 years.

“I sang in a way I never really sang before except for with Mick. Andrew and I both cried -there’s something about witnessing music history and when you get to be a part of it, I think that’s exactly what our heaven feels like. It’s just a sweet sound.”

Rolling Stones members Keith Richards, Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood. Picture: Mark Seliger

The Stones longtime Beatles rival and mate Paul McCartney is also part of another album highlight, playing fuzzed bass on the punk assault of Bite My Head Off. In the middle of the track, Jagger shouts “Come on Paul, play something” in a Liverpool accent.

Watt, who has become the go-to producer for legacy rockers including Ozzy Osbourne, Iggy Pop and Elton John, has captured the 60s and 70s essence of The Stones on Hackney Diamonds and given it a modern polish.

This is the Stones’ Eras album, Jagger and Richards reclaiming the songwriting chemistry which helped shape the sound of rock’n’roll through the sixties to eighties before the nineties saw them reinvent stadium rock with their mammoth world tours.

They have taken the electricity of the big stage into the studio with so many songs ripe for the next Stones setlist, including the Miss You disco groove of Mess It Up, which features the late Charlie Watts on drums.

The first single Angry would also be a setlist contender alongside Bite My Head Off, Sweet Sounds of Heaven and Live By The Sword, which features John on piano and former Stone Bill Wyman on bass.

Hackney Diamonds is out on October 20 with speculation still swirling the Rolling Stones may tour Australia next year.

Originally published as ‘Screaming’: Lady Gaga crashes Rolling Stones recording session