A strange dichotomy concerns 80’s all-girl rock bands. You can like both The Go-Go’s and The Bangles, but you’re going to like one of them more than the other. What seems to surprise most people is the former started out as a punk band fully committed to that aesthetic. People seem to think artists can’t, or shouldn’t grow.
And that is how the band came to lose a couple of members early on. One of those, bassist Margot Olaverra, had even been a member during the group’s UK tour and still got the axe after complaining too much about the move to a poppier direction. Given such a band member’s reaction, and subsequent removal, one can imagine the reaction their original fan base had concerning this metamorphosis.
We learn all about that and a great deal more in 2020’s documentary The Go-Go’s. I thought I already knew everything I cared to about the band. I have the expanded editions of all three of their original, pre-reunion albums, and had read bassist Kathy Valentine’s autobiography, so I though I already knew everything about them I would ever care to know. Fortunately, this concise documentary proved otherwise.
The structure is conventional, starting with those nascent punk years. I never thought I would want to be a punk, but the interviews sold me on that lifestyle, presenting an outlet for frustrations and a freedom from the restrictions of society and the standards of conventional music. “You could be whoever you wanted to be. You could do whatever you wanted to do.”
And so these fans of various punk bands decided to form a band. Except for a couple that already had experience making music, the others had to decide what instrument they wanted to play and then learn how to do that. No knock on anybody, but I was reminded a bit about when the members of The Monkees decided to become a real band, and two of them suddenly had to learn what instruments they could handle. I guess Belinda Carlisle would be the Davy Jones in this analogy, as one might notice both are restricted to vocal duties.
Lead guitarist Charlotte Caffey was the first major songwriter in the group, conceiving of “We Got The Beat” while watching an episode of The Twilight Zone. I can’t remember if she said this specifically, but I suspect pharmaceuticals may have been involved. At least, drugs factor heavily into their story, to such an extent that their raucous behavior will get them kicked out of Ozzy Osbourne’s dressing room at one point.
Like so many other groups, jealousy will rear its ugly head, and one major bone of contention will be songwriting royalties. That has been the undoing of many bands before the Go-Go’s—just look at what happened to The Byrds when the others noticed the checks chief songwriter Gene Clark was getting.
Another problem is disproportionate media attention being paid to the lead singer. Another frequently songwriter for the group was rhythm guitarist Jane Wiedlin, who was shot down by the other members when she wanted to sing a song she had penned. Nope—Carlisle was the singer, and that was that. This bit reminded me of one of the major bones on contention that fractured The Bangles, as they went from four singer-songwriters to Susanna Hoffs being presented as the “face” of that band.
The group’s relationship with the media was a double-edged sword. Some treated the band as a gimmick or took a slightly condescending tone to them. The first time they made the cover of Rolling Stone, the headline read, “THE GO-GO’S PUT OUT”.
Then there was MTV, the rise of which coincided perfectly with that of the band. I like the recollections of the shoot for “Our Lips Our Sealed” where they all danced in a public fountain at the end, just begging for the police to arrest them. The cops, of course, pay them no mind. Funny, but the only way that video was going to be made was because of leftover money not spent on a video by the band The Police.
Unfortunately, it seemed the good times ended really early for this group. They especially seemed to get hit by the sophomore jinx harder than most when it came time to record LP #2. The album’s saving grace was “Vacation”, a song Valentine had already recorded with another band years before. “If we hadn’t had that song on the album, it probably would have ended us.”
A low point, in my opinion, was when they fired manager Ginger Canzoneri, somebody who sold her car to pay for that first UK tour. This statement says it all: “We wanted to make the most of that time we had in the spotlight, and we felt we needed a more experience person at the helm.” Funny how a similar decision has marked the beginning of the downward slide for so many acts.
Then again, it was probably hard to think clearly, when your life has become one continuous blur of touring and promotional work. “If was like a treadmill. They were pushing us constantly. We were touring constantly.” Carlisle, in a contemporaneous interview: “I can tell you my schedule through to September of next year, practically.”
The original era of the group lasted for only three albums before each went their separate ways. None found much success except for Carlisle, who went on to have a monstrous solo career. What I always found curious is how bland her solo output was for somebody who was a punk only a decade prior. She wisely ropes in Caffey to write some hits. Pretty soon, Caffey is bringing Wiedlin into the fold. Having made some inroads in the direction of a reunion, it is no surprise they do just that eventually, releasing a fourth long player in 2001.
I enjoyed The Go-Go’s, finding it informative and never dull. If it has a fault, it is that I still never felt I really got to know any of the members as fully-fledged people. I’m not sure I would want a longer documentary about them, but the impressions I was left of each member was like a courtroom artist sketch. Then again, given some of the statements made her, maybe I don’t want to get to know any of them better: “Oh, we’re like sisters. Sisters that fucking stab each other in the back.”
Dir: Alison Eastwood
Documentary
Watched on a blu-ray bereft of special features, when it should be a cornucopia of them