The Spice Girls and Pussycat Dolls would be nothing without Go-Go’s.
Formed in Los Angeles in 1978, they were a women’s band who, for just seven years, wrote and performed some of the most memorable songs of the 1980s: “We Got the Beat”, “Our Lips Are Sealed” and “Vacation ” . “Everything unforgettable.
No girl rock band had made a number 1 album until the Go-Goes did it with 1981’s “Beauty and the Beat.” Formed by themselves, with no powerful man behind them, they made the cover of Rolling Stone with Little clothing with the headline “Go-Go’s Put Out” and they were bubbly MTV props in their early days.
The Go-Go’s that broke the limits were going up. So why were they so miserable?
A new documentary, “The Go-Go’s”, which will premiere on Showtime on Friday, covers the rocky history of the band: the artistic confrontations, the disorderly ruptures and, above all, the drinks and drugs.
The iconic image from the “Vacation” music video, featuring women on water skis dressed in pink swimsuits and white tutus, turned out to be a fitting representation of the band. The colorful Go-Goes were swept up in rapid fame, and dropped.
The ladies, Belinda Carlisle, Margot Olavarria, Elissa Bello, Jane Wiedlin, and Charlotte Caffey, started innocently with the goal of making a punk girl group full of self-proclaimed misfits. “We hate society and our family, but we support each other,” says Wiedlin in the document.
But in 1985, Go-Goes were hugely successful and popular. The mood had changed.
“There would be many questions about what our relationship was like with each other. [We’d answer,] ‘Oh, we love each other. We are like sisters! ‘”Says Wiedlin. “Yes, sisters that f – king stab each other in the back.”
The ruthless attitude came with making more money. The first sign of discord was when they removed original member Margot Olavarria, who was furious that the band was moving from rebellious punk to more bankable pop.
“My identity is punk,” says Olavarria, the founding bassist, in the document.
Gina Schock, the drummer who quickly replaced Bello, says: “Oh yeah, Margot, fk man. She hated it. She was like, ‘I don’t want to be a pop king band. I am in a punk band! And I think the rest of us said, ‘This is evolving, so f-king keep going or go.’ ”
Olavarría contracted hepatitis A and was changed by the better known Kathy Valentine. She would not be the last to leave.
Between the dramas there was fun. Too much fun. Her lips may have been sealed, but her nostrils were wide open.
In 1984, drummer Schock discovered that he needed to undergo open-heart surgery to repair a birth defect. Barely registered doctors, the girls decided to take her to spend a weekend in Palm Springs, California, “in case she squawked,” says Wiedlin. The rules? Schock was allowed to drink alcohol, Valium, and mushrooms, but not cocaine. They didn’t want her to have a heart attack.
“A total weekend of debauchery,” says Caffey, the guitarist and keyboard player.
The band was often wasted on stage and on television for millions to see. During their first appearance on “Saturday Night Live” in November 1981, hosted by Bernadette Peters as a guest host, go-go-getters started drinking from the start.
“Let’s toast! Champagne!” Valentine says. “And then lunchtime. Let’s have some wine. So, then you want to balance it, you want to lift things up a little.
For the 11:30 pm broadcast, “we were like drunkards with our eyes crossed,” Schock says.
Substances, however, were not always a party. As the Go-Gos became more famous, Caffey bought a secluded home in the Hollywood Hills and developed a full-blown heroin addiction, largely invisible to other members.
“Charlotte tended to isolate herself a little,” says Carlisle. “I had a whole secret life going on. We knew it was probably not good. “
In addition to being the keyboardist, Caffey was the most prolific composer of Go-Go, having composed “We Got the Beat”, “Head Over Heels” and “Vacation”. She attributed the delays on the group’s third album from 1984, “Talk Show,” to writer’s block.
“Charlotte was so out of control that Ozzy Osbourne kicked her out of her dressing room,” says Schock. “That is bad enough.”
A concerned Paula Jean Brown, the band’s new bassist, had an outside perspective and convinced Caffey to finally register for rehab in 1984 after a concert in Rio de Janeiro.
Brown had recently replaced Wiedlin, the eccentric writer for “Our Lips Are Sealed,” a change that marked the beginning of the group’s end. Wiedlin wanted to sing a very personal song he had written for the new album called “Forget That Day”, but the others insisted that the glamorous Carlisle should always be the lead singer. To this day, she is the most identifiable Go-Go.
“She came to us and we just said ‘No,'” says Valentine.
“One of them said, ‘What makes you think you’re good enough to sing the song?'” Wiedlin says, still upset.
There was already disagreement, but the straw that filled the glass was when the band’s management company told the girls that the publishing royalties for “Talk Show” would be divided equally between the group, despite the fact that Wiedlin had written most of the songs.
“And then I said, ‘Fk, I quit,'” she says.
The Go-Go’s split soon after that, and the members didn’t speak for five years. Everyone gave solo racing a shot, but only Carlisle became popular with the single “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.”
The holidays did not last long. Despite the fights, the group reunited in 1990 and, with occasional troubles (“irreconcilable differences”, lawsuits, a Broadway failure) continue to tour today.
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