Lady Gaga shares the joys and heartbreak of making a new album with Tony Bennett in his fight against Alzheimer’s

Lady Gaga first met Tony Bennett ten years ago while hanging out backstage at a gala performance in New York City. The two became “fast friends” and unlikely singing partners, recording and touring live together. Their 2014 duet album “Cheek to Cheek” debuted at number one on the Billboard charts and captured the hearts of several generations. Gaga has often enjoyed talking about Bennett in interviews, and for the past two years the duo have been working on a new album together.

But a newly revealed development puts that endeavor in a very different light: Bennett’s wife and son publicly announced that the legendary 94-year-old jazz singer contracted Alzheimer’s disease in 2016.

In the latest issue of AARP magazine, writer John Colapinto describes meeting Bennett recently in the New York apartment he shares with his wife and primary caregiver, Susan. The picture he paints in the article is familiar to those who have experienced a loved one’s cognitive decline – alternating expressionless responses and moments of clarity with no apparent rhyme or reason. Susan says he can happily remember family members, but he is not always sure what he is doing or what is happening. “Worldly objects, as familiar as a fork or a set of house keys, can be utterly mysterious to him,” Colapinto wrote.

Susan told AARP that they are lucky that her husband has a lot of support and can still live a relatively normal life if his memory deteriorates. She wasn’t sure he could handle the task of recording an album, but they decided to give it a try. Music is a surprisingly powerful tool for people with Alzheimer’s – even patients with severe and advanced dementia can recall memories through music – so Bennett’s neurologist encouraged him to keep making music as long as he enjoys it.

So that’s what he did to make this new album with Lady Gaga, which will be out this spring. However, he won’t be able to promote it himself through interviews or tours like he normally would. Even during the recording sessions, evidence of his illness struck hard when he wasn’t singing, as Colapinto shared:

In raw documentary footage of the sessions, he rarely speaks, and when he does, his words are hesitant; at times he appears lost and bewildered. Gaga, clearly aware of his condition, keeps her statements short and simple (as recommended by experts in the disease when talking to Alzheimer’s patients) “You sound so good, Tony,” she says to him at one point. “Thank you,” is his answer in a word. She says she thinks “always.” about their 2015 tour. Tony looks at her in silence. “Wasn’t that nice every night?” she asks him. “Yes,” he says uncertainly. The pain and sorrow in Gaga’s face is evident at such moments – but never more so than in an extraordinarily moving series where Tony (a man she calls ‘an incredible mentor and friend and father figure’) sings a solo passage of a love song. Gaga watches from behind her microphone, her smile breaking into a quiver, her eyes glittering, before putting her hands over her face and sobbing. “

Watching a loved one’s mind slip is grueling to the point of cruelty. There is no other way to put it. The friends and family of the approximately 5 million Americans living with Alzheimer’s can attest to how difficult it is, especially when the cognitive decline leads to even the most intimate of relationships being forgotten.

The difficulty of Alzheimer’s makes it difficult to destigmatize the disease. People should know that it is not an instant death sentence and that people can live a good life with the support of their loved ones long after they have been diagnosed. We don’t have to hide people with dementia, but we do need to understand how to deal with them and what we can and cannot expect.

And sometimes people with Alzheimer’s can surprise us. Susan said that despite the apparent cognitive decline, Bennett was still able to perform his music flawlessly, right up to his last public appearance in March 2020, when the pandemic ended concerts. She said he could seem very confused about where he was and what was going on backstage before a performance, but as soon as he heard “Ladies and gentlemen – Tony Bennett!” he walked onto the stage, smiled at the audience, and sang with heart and soul as he always had. In every performance for the past four years, Susan would worry about forgetting a line or getting confused on stage. “I was a nervous wreck,” she said. “Yet he has always delivered!”

The entire AARP article is worth reading as it portrays Bennett’s illustrious career, his life before and after Alzheimer’s diagnosis, and how his family is coping with the changes in him. It also contains valuable information about dementia for people who are going through similar changes with their loved ones.

As the world awaits the release of the Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga collaboration, Bennett’s family and friends await the inevitable. Susan indicated that she will know the end is near when Bennett stops singing altogether. “Singing is everything to him. Everything. It has saved his life many times over,” she told Colapinto, before reiterating the power of music.

“There’s a lot I miss about him because he’s not the old Tony anymore,” she said. “But when he sings, he’s the old Tony.”