By NYDailyNews.com
The producer who discovered Lady Gaga is suing her company, claiming he got cut out of millons after turning her from a “guidette” into a mega-star.
Rob Fusari’s production company seeks more than $30 million from the “Poker Face” singer’s Team Love Child and Mermaid Music, claiming he even created her unique name.
“It’s an age-old story in the music business,” said Robert Meloni, a lawyer for Fusari. “You become famous, and you turn on the person who discovered you.”
Back in March 2006, Lady Gaga was known as Stefani Germanotta and performing at The Cutting Room when songwriter Wendy Starland thought to put her together with the New Jersey producer, the suit says.
“Starland knew that Fusari had been searching for months for a dynamic female rock-n-roller with garage band chops to front an all-girl version of The Strokes,” the suit says. “Starland was blown away by Germanotta’s performance and immediately called Fusari and told him she had found his girl.”
The next day, the suit says, Germanotta took a bus from the Port Authority terminal, then hiked to Fusari’s 150 Studios in Parsippany.
“Fusari then asked her to play one of her songs on the studio piano and within seconds, realized that Germanotta had star potential,” the suit says. “The trick would be coaxing it out of her.”
Fusari, who produced “Bootylicious” for Destiny’s Child and “Wild Wild West” for Will Smith, says in the suit that he came up with the Lady Gaga name because he would greet her daily with a rendition of Queen’s “Radio Gaga.”
“One day when Fusari addressed a cell phone text to Germanotta under the moniker ‘Radio Gaga’ his cell phone’s spell check converted ‘Radio’ to ‘Lady’,” the suit says. “Germanotta loved it and ‘Lady Gaga’ was born.”
A relationship that eventually turned romantic eventually soured, the suit says, when Fusari was cut out of Lady Gaga’s merchandising and recording royalties.
The suit, filed in Manhattan, says Fusari is entitled to a 20% cut agreed to in a contract.
A representative for Lady Gaga could not immediately be reached for comment.
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