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[concertgoers cheering]
[clapping rhythmically]
[screaming and cheering]
[Jane Wiedlin] We are the first all-girl band
that wrote their own material and played
their own instruments to be really successful.
[crowd cheering]
Alright, this is for you for being so nice.
[cheering]
[drumsticks tapping]
[band playing "Can't Stop the World"]
♪♪♪
♪ I gave up looking for a reason ♪
♪ To live with things just the way they were ♪
♪ I came around, used to be ♪
♪ Easy to get to so they ♪
♪ Got to me in just about every way ♪
♪ Caught with no cards up your sleeve ♪
♪ Not much to choose from ♪
♪ Grew up all along ♪
♪ Just thinking that you couldn't lose ♪
♪ I came around, used to be ♪
♪ Easy to get to so they ♪
♪ Got to me in just about every way ♪
♪ Can't stop the world ♪
♪ Can't stop the world, why let it stop you? ♪
[Belinda Carlisle] People automatically assumed
that we were probably put together by some guy,
but we did it all ourselves.
Let's go!
[band playing instrumental break]
♪♪♪
[Charlotte Caffey] We got on stage,
and it happened to be a group of women really kicking ass.
It was great.
[Kathy Valentine] One in a million bands
gets to where we got.
[Gina Schock] America knew who The Go-Go's were.
[male announcer] These are The Go-Go's.
Charlotte Caffey, Gina Schock,
Jane Wiedlin, Kathy Valentine
and Belinda Carlisle.
The greatest all-girl group of all time, The Go-Go's.
[man] The Go-Go's!
-[woman] The Go-Go's! -[cheering]
[Kathy] We were really making big strides,
loving what we were doing
and being in that moment of, like, wow!
♪ Can't stop the world... ♪
[Belinda] I couldn't walk down the street at that time.
That's how famous The Go-Go's were.
[Jane] In the course of a year,
we had gone from playing dive bars to Madison Square Garden.
♪ Can't stop the world ♪
[Gina] I was on top of the world,
I felt like we had made it.
[song ending]
[crowd cheering and applauding]
[instruments tuning]
[Jane] There never would have been The Go-Go's
without the punk rock scene in Los Angeles.
[MC] Well, you got it! From Hollywood, The Go-Go's!
[Margot] Happy Saint Patrick's Day.
[crowd cheering]
There's a problem with the monitor here,
and I'm getting shocked.
Sorry.
[Belinda] At the time, there were 50 kids tops
in the L.A. punk scene.
It was D.I.Y.
and if you were terrible you were cooler,
and anybody could do whatever they wanted.
It was total freedom.
♪ Don't assume that we never think ♪
♪ You think you know but you haven't a clue ♪
-♪ 'Cause we're ♪ -♪ We're ♪
-♪ Here... -♪ Here ♪
-♪ Now... -♪ Now ♪
♪ We don't need you around ♪
[Elissa Bello] It was about feeling emotion, anger, rage,
and you got to express it.
And the rawer the better.
♪♪♪
♪ Don't make the mistake of criticizing ♪
♪ Don't even bother patronizing ♪
I was such a punk, it was like my identity.
Being in The Go-Go's meant being more involved in the scene
with all your friends, just a great sense of belonging.
♪ ...around ♪
♪ And we're... ♪
[Charlotte] I was a little bit of an outsider
because I wasn't overtly punk rock.
You wouldn't think so looking at me,
I look really straight, but I have a very twisted mind.
♪♪♪
We hated society and our parents,
but we supported each other.
Everyone was welcome,
outcasts, geeks, gays, straights,
people of color, women.
It was inclusive.
-♪ 'Cause we're ♪ -♪ We're ♪
-♪ Here ♪ -♪ Here ♪
-♪ Now ♪ -♪ Now ♪
And that was a great place for me to be,
because I always felt like I didn't fit in.
I kind of have this image
of being this really happy person, and I can be.
But I have this thing in me that's just always there,
like, ugh, urgh.
I have a lifelong history of depression.
When I was 15, I tried to kill myself.
Right around that same time
I was looking at Women's Wear Daily
and they had all these photos of the London punk scene.
Oh, my God, it really spoke to me.
I was like, "Ah, I want this!"
So I just started making my own punk clothes,
and one weekend I went to this store on Sunset Strip
that was called Granny Takes a Trip,
and while I was in there I met Pleasant Gehman.
This little girl came in, she had huge eyes.
She looked like an anime action figure.
She had these shirts
that had two zippers sewn in over the boobs,
and so, when you unzipped them, you know,
your bra or your bare boobs would come out.
[Jane] She told me that there was a scene in Hollywood,
a punk scene,
and she gave me a flyer for this club called The Masque.
[punk band playing]
[indistinct shouting]
[feedback]
In the punk scene, there was just so much energy and anger.
♪♪♪
And having suppressed bad feelings my whole life,
the suicide attempt was obviously it trying to come out,
and then, becoming a punk rocker,
I felt was a really positive way for it to come out.
People used to cross the street when they saw me.
I felt powerful for the first time.
I just felt like I had found my home.
[Belinda] The punk scene gave me an outlet to act out
and be the badass that I thought I was.
I'm the oldest of seven kids.
My father left when I was five.
My stepfather was hardcore,
very much an old-school disciplinarian.
We had no money.
I remember growing up and being in school
and always feeling like I was pretending to be something
that I probably wasn't...
I was a real good student, I was a cheerleader.
Does anybody have a cigarette?
...But then, I discovered the punk scene,
and that opened up a whole new world for me.
[Pleasant] Everybody in the L.A. punk rock scene,
it was like there was invisible smoke signals
getting sent out of, like, you know,
"You need to go to this club on that night."
And the Sex Pistols were playing at Winterland in San Francisco
and pretty much everybody in L.A. drove up.
It was really like a religious pilgrimage.
They were just the kings of the original, original punk scene.
♪ Problem, problem, problem, problem... ♪
[Jane] The Sex Pistols gave this, like, slacker performance
that wasn't compelling at all.
Johnny Rotten at the end of the show
said the famous quote of his.
[Johnny laughing]
Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?
Good night!
[Jane] You know, it was kind of like,
"Oh, man, you guys were our heroes"
and they kind of suck.
And it also felt like the first wave of punk was sort of dying.
It was time for some new people to start doing something.
I think that was the weekend I actually got to know Margot,
and then we started talking about forming a band,
a girl band, actually.
Everybody was in a band.
I mean, it was like the cool thing to be in a band
and we were basically the only people left
that weren't in a band, so we decided to do it too.
[Margot] I met Elissa.
She was one of my high school friend's cousins.
[Elissa] Margot then met Belinda.
[Belinda] The punk scene was so small,
so we all knew each other vaguely.
[Jane] Thinking about bands like The Shirelles
and The Shangri-Las, it was exciting to think
we could do the new version of that.
But this time, we were going to play instruments.
[director] With one little problem?
That we didn't know how to play instruments.
[laughing]
[Margot] Well, I wanted to play bass
and I knew I would have to learn by doing.
[Elissa] I didn't have drums, I had to go out and find drums.
[playing guitar riff]
[Jane] You know, I had a couple of weeks of folk guitar lessons
when I was 12, I'll just play guitar.
[Belinda singing indistinctly]
I certainly thought I could sing.
I thought I sounded like Julie Andrews. But...
♪ We can do what we want we can say... ♪
[Jane] We didn't know what we were doing.
In the punk scene it was like,
"Great, you don't know what you're doing?
Just fucking do it."
We'd sort of been, like, going over different names,
nothing really seemed right. Whatever--
Was it The Misfits was going to be,
because that's how we sort of felt at the time.
At that time, The Kinks came out with Misfits the album,
we thought, no, everyone will think, you know,
we stole it from them.
So, The Go-Go's seemed to fit us.
[crowd cheering and clapping]
I remember doing our first show.
It was at the Masque.
[Pleasant] Everyone was excited
when The Go-Go's played at the Masque.
Their set was three songs long
and two of them were the same song. [laughs]
[Margot] We only knew those songs,
so it wasn't a matter of having a set list.
[laughing] We didn't need one.
[Jane] There's one song about Robert Hilburn
who was a huge music critic at the L.A. Times.
[Belinda] People were either laughing
or completely mortified in horror.
It was a big, fat mess.
[Margot] I wasn't really intimidated
about being as terrible as we were in the beginning.
That was the whole point,
you can sound horrible and still make music.
[giggling]
[Belinda] I think that deep down inside
we knew that we had something really special,
but we needed someone that actually knew how to do it.
[electrical feedback]
Let's try plugging the amps into the wall first,
like, you know what I mean?
When I was very, very young, like, first and second grade,
I had an Elvis Presley record
and Johann Strauss "Blue Danube Waltz".
I would listen to both of them, like put one on, dance around,
put the other one on, waltz around, yeah.
[classical piano playing]
I started playing piano when I was four years old.
At a very young age, I was moved by music.
I had an ear for music.
I went to Immaculate Heart College, taking classical piano.
I loved it, but it was kind of snotty attitude,
like, some of these students were just like, "Who are you?"
[screaming]
I started going to some of the punk rock shows.
The punk bands just busted me open,
knowing that all this music theory,
rules had to be thrown out the window.
♪ Don't talk to me ♪
When I graduated college,
my best friend Joe Ramirez and I started a band.
We named it The Eyes.
It was one of the most freeing things
just to turn up our amps to ten,
bash through and just anything went.
♪ Don't talk to me, don't look at me ♪
♪ Don't talk to me, oh yeah ♪
"Don't talk to me, don't look at me, don't talk to me..."
That is like a feminist anthem
for women of my generation.
[Belinda] Margot and I went to an Eyes show,
where we thought, "Oh, Charlotte."
♪ Yeah ♪
We thought she was perfect.
[Charlotte] I'm backstage,
and I see these two sets of legs walking up.
One has spikey heels,
ripped fishnets, a trash bag.
That was Belinda.
She said, "Hi, Charlotte. "You know,
we're starting this all-girl band, do you wanna join?"
And what am I gonna say, no?
I was totally intimidated by them
because Jane and Belinda and Margot,
they're all like punks and they're asking me,
like the dork of all time, to, like, join their band.
So, I felt kind of special, I guess.
When they asked, "Hey, do you play lead guitar?"
I lied.
I figured I played bass so, you know,
"Yeah, it's a couple more strings, it'll be okay."
[sighing]
[guitar riff plays]
We started rehearsing,
but, you know, we were pretty crappy in the beginning.
We really didn't sound that great.
[Belinda singing indistinctly]
[Ginger Canzoneri] It was pretty screechy.
I remember going into The Masque one Saturday afternoon,
hearing some music and thinking,
"Oh, who's rehearsing down here today?"
And then, opening a door and seeing Belinda on stage
holding a mic kind of awkwardly.
I just thought, "Oh, God, that's so great,
women pulling together to achieve something,"
and I wanted to support that cause and be part of it.
I love communities of women.
This band caught my interest for that reason.
[crowd cheering]
This song's called "Fashion Seekers."
♪♪♪
♪ Bland ideas in a borrowed head ♪
[Belinda] We saw no reason why we couldn't be
just as good as the boys or men.
♪ They'll suck the shirt right off of your back ♪
We weren't going to be anything but a great band.
[Elissa] They were really on the fast track
and they wanted to get going.
And so, they weren't going to let anything stand in their way.
[Jane] Elissa was very, very eccentric.
I don't know if she was shy or an introvert,
but she was never really part of the gang.
She always held herself apart.
[Elissa] I was coming from two different worlds.
I had to answer to my employer
and I had to answer to the band.
And they wanted me to quit my job, the girls,
and be more dedicated.
I stuck my toe in the water, but I never dove in all the way.
[Belinda] We definitely needed to bring somebody in
that wanted to be there.
I happened to meet the girls at a party one night,
and um... that's how it started, I invited 'em over for--
You know, they said, "Oh, we're looking for a drummer."
"Oh, we're looking for a drummer."
And I said, "Great. I'll try out for the band."
♪ One, two, three, four ♪
♪♪♪
The amps are set up, they bring their guitars, plug in,
we play like three songs, and it was like, done deal.
♪ I buy you cologne ♪
[Jane] Holy shit!
I don't even know how to describe the difference.
It was really, like, ta-da!
♪ I need promises... ♪
[Elissa] The next thing I know they found this other drummer.
I was very upset and hurt.
[Jane] When you kick people out of bands, it's fucking tough.
But at the time, these things just seemed necessary
and they seemed for the good of the band.
[Mrs. Schock] When she was 13 she would come home from school,
go up into the front bedroom,
put the earphones on and bang on the drums.
[Gina] A lot of girls weren't playing drums back then and so,
I got in a band right away.
We were Baltimore's first new wave punk band.
We had a lot of fun,
but at that point I was like, "I want to play in arenas,
I don't want to stay playing in clubs my whole life."
♪♪♪
When I left Baltimore I told everybody,
"The next time you see me, I'm gonna be a rock star."
I drove across country with a dream and a camera.
I was, like, always taking pictures.
I had $2000, and two grams of coke.
[laughing]
[Belinda] I remember the first time I met Gina,
she had this frizzy blonde hair and she was wearing overalls.
She looked crazy, and I was like, "I'm going to fix you."
She needed a little bit of, you know, punking up.
So, we cut her hair, dyed it black and she was ready.
[Gina] Then, I was into taking just Polaroids.
The punk scene allowed you to be whoever you wanted to be,
play the way you wanted to play and you fit in.
You were accepted.
Being in that setting made me feel safe.
And it just allowed us a lot more freedom
to do what we wanted to do.
It's like a dream, only you're really living it.
Jane was just so cute and sweet and bubbly
and her little voice.
We both had crushes on each other, I guess you could say,
but we were girlfriends for a while.
She was the boss in the relationship,
I was the new kid in town and it made me feel comfortable.
Jane broke up with me.
[laughing]
It wasn't like either one of us were heartbroken or anything.
You think something like that's going to fuck with the band?
No way.
♪ One, two, G-O, G-O... ♪
[Charlotte] What Gina brought,
besides being a really amazing drummer,
is that she made us work hard.
She said, "You guys have to rehearse every single night."
And we're just like, "What are you talking about?"
[Gina] Hey, it doesn't hurt to rehearse,
it only makes you tighter.
I mean, I was determined to whip them into shape.
Because I felt there was something magical there,
you just needed to push it more.
You needed to get the girls to be more focused
and more serious about what they're doing.
[Belinda] She was right.
We improved and it pushed us to another level.
[Gina] And I was on fire!
I was sitting at home, it was about midnight,
I was watching The Twilight Zone.
[TV announcer] You're flying to a new planet,
a planet of light, of darkness and the in-between.
[Charlotte] I wanted to write a song
and I was listening to the music all day long.
I really wanted to write something with a beat.
I was hearing something in my mind.
[clock ticking]
I was just sitting there minding my own business
and all of a sudden this whole melody,
this whole idea came to my mind and I was like, "Oh, shit."
I ran and got my little cassette player.
[beginning notes of "We Got The Beat" plays]
And I wrote the song,
it was like five minutes, it just all came out.
The zone of writing, I don't know what happens,
but I can get to that place and boom,
just these ideas just start flowing and it's like,
it's pretty... pretty phenomenal when it happens.
Back then, I didn't have a sense of myself.
Songwriting was so important to me,
it was my identity, my safety zone.
And so, with "We Got The Beat" I was terrified.
I was thinking, "Man,
these girls are going to throw me out of this band"
because it was a pop song.
♪ See the people walking down the street ♪
[Belinda] I don't remember her being nervous,
I just remember thinking it was an amazing song.
I mean, it's just so obvious.
[Margot] We all loved it right away.
♪ They got the beat, they got the beat ♪
♪ They got the beat ♪
[Gina] When she started playing that eighth-note riff,
the pattern that I play on the drums just poured out of me.
It was "do-do da-da do-do da-da."
[drumming]
[Jane] I felt like we had arrived.
It was definitely another step up that ladder.
[Charlotte] Fortunately, they just loved it.
♪♪♪
And I believe that changed the trajectory of the band.
♪♪♪
♪ Go-Go music really makes us dance ♪
We were rough sounding when we played live,
but we had these songs that were just coming together.
♪ That's when we fall in line ♪
Just doing those little shows, it was a really cool time.
[Gina] We were the house band at The Whisky.
So, we would open up for whatever bands
would come into town.
Madness came into town and they were English, you know,
we loved that.
[Thompson] All-girl band writing their own tunes?
I mean, outrageous.
Yeah, we got it!
♪ We got the beat ♪
Come on, don't be too cool.
[Gina] They thought we were great
and they went back and spread the word about The Go-Go's.
And then, The Specials came and we opened for them.
One of the best things that happened for The Go-Go's
was meeting us, you know,
and I would say probably one of the best thing happened to us
was meeting The Go-Go's.
They were young, they were fresh, they were beautiful.
We are a bunch of misfits, of course, that's why it works!
[Gina] Their manager started talking with Ginger
about how to bring us over to England
so we could tour with both bands.
[Ginger] Somebody from The Specials came to me and said,
"We're planning a seaside tour in England.
Do you think your band might be able to get over there?"
And I said, "Yes!"
I did a lot of pawning of jewelry
and selling a lot of things
to be able to get the girls over on that trip.
[Belinda] She sold everything.
Her car, she put her whole life on sale
basically to fund us to get to London.
[Charlotte] My dad was in the entertainment industry,
but he was not behind me being in this band.
He said, "Hey, there's an opening
at the music library at Paramount."
I remember it was like a really good-paying job,
and I just said to him, I said, "I can't,"
because inside of me I had to leave.
I had to do this, I had to do it.
♪♪♪
♪ Seen your pictures in the 'zines ♪
♪ And you look real good ♪
♪ Pale blank faces, black and white keen ♪
♪ London boys, cigarette lean ♪
♪ London boys, wish you were here ♪
[Jane] Because the punk rock scene had started in England,
all the bands that we worshipped were English.
I mean, England was always, for us,
ground zero of great rock music.
It was like Mecca! [laughing]
[Golding] When The Go-Go's come over here,
walking around the city is just really, really bleak.
Shite, absolutely grim, grey.
It wasn't a very nice place to be.
There seemed to be an air of something's about to go off.
♪ We're living in gangster times ♪
Don't call me Scarface!
[Jane] The Specials and Madness were both ska bands
and they were stars.
We felt like having these opening slots with two bands
that were at the top of their game
and were very, very successful there,
that, I mean, how could we fail?
♪♪♪
[Margot] It was our first time touring in a tour bus
and playing every night.
♪ The street lights are shining bright ♪
♪ The billboards are shedding their light ♪
[glass breaking]
♪ My crowd's hanging around ♪
[Charlotte] We were being spit at,
stuff thrown at us every single night.
[Jane] Ska music attracted a bunch of the white nationalists,
they called themselves the National Front in England.
And they hated us!
First of all, we were not ska,
so what the hell were we doing opening for these ska bands?
Second of all, we we're Americans.
And third of all, maybe worst of all, we were chicks.
[Belinda] No, we don't do that...
[crowd jeering]
[Belinda] You know, here are these five little girls
from southern California,
get up on stage and play to these scary skinheads.
It was frightening.
[Thompson] One venue, a fella was standing people in a line
with a razor, and another fella with a hammer.
[Jane] The tours were not going at all
like we thought they were going to go.
But at the same time,
we were also having the time of our lives.
There was like a lot of romances going on
between the band members.
But it was good 'cause we all had boyfriends in like, Madness
or The Specials to console us when we got off stage.
[Golding] Gina is... I love her.
"I just didn't know how to come and approach you."
I should've asked you to marry me
and you probably would've said no,
but I'd have felt better that I asked.
We had such a good laugh, oh, she's lovely she is.
[Jane] I met Terry. He was in The Specials.
We were very attracted to each other.
We spent a lot of time together on the tour
and it was kind of sort of a romance,
but, I mean, he had a girlfriend, and supposedly,
she was a fiancée and they were going to get married.
And I don't know what I was thinking.
You know, I just thought it was this big, important romance.
[Ginger] Behind the scenes,
I was bringing their cassette tapes around.
Stiff Records might have been a small label,
but they had a group of dedicated people.
[Dave Robinson] I think Ginger asked us
whether we would like to sign them,
but I thought an American punk girl band
who are objecting to being spit at,
I don't know that it's going to really work.
But I remember seeing "We've Got the Beat"
as a potential single,
which was my talent to find the door opener.
I tried to publish the song
'cause I could see that it would do well.
They were really pressuring about the publishing,
and I had been told
that that was something you don't give up.
Ginger, I think, was a bit more knowledgeable
about the idea of hold onto what you've got.
[Jane] Thank dog she knew
an artist needs to keep their publishing,
because really it's one of the only ways to make money,
and it's very valuable and it's valuable for a lifetime.
[Ginger] Well, I stuck to my guns
and signed this one single deal with Stiff Records.
♪♪♪
[Gina reading] "Friday, June the 6th in Bridlington.
"Tonight was okay, the audience were rude but we played fair.
"Bridlington was pretty shitty.
Oh, well, I guess we'll try harder".
[Charlotte] We were just determined, like,
"We're gonna show those fuckers."
Every night, we'd get on stage
and we would be so belligerent with our playing,
and just being even more of who we were.
♪ And you're the one to blame ♪
♪ I used to know my name ♪
♪ But I've lost control of the game ♪
♪ 'Cause even though I set the rules ♪
♪ You've got me acting like a fool ♪
[Margot] They were really wild, crazy audiences,
but we made fans, as well.
♪ Lust to love ♪
♪ Was the last thing I was dreaming of ♪
♪ And now all I want is just to love ♪
♪ Lust turned to love ♪
[Golding] They're grew, they proved themselves,
and for The Go-Go's to pick themselves from L.A.
and come to London, you know,
wow, respect to them girls, man, you know.
[Thompson] Their musicianship compared to us
was second to none.
They taught me a thing or two.
♪ Lust to love ♪
[Gina] There was nothing much
that we couldn't handle at that point.
♪ Just to love ♪
♪ Lust turned to love ♪
♪ Lust to love ♪
It was us against the world,
and I think we were ready to take it to the next level.
♪♪♪
Our Stiff Records single was the key that unlocked the door.
People were able to buy the single in Los Angeles.
KROQ-AM in Burbank and KROQ-FM in Pasadena,
we're live on the rocks.
Okay, here's The Go-Go's, "We Got The Beat."
[Jane] When we did come back,
it was like the triumphant return of the home girls,
The Go-Go's!
Everyone thought we were huge stars in England
and we were not telling them anything different.
[Belinda] I remember doing our first show
after we got back at the Starwood.
There were kids wrapped around the block to get in to see us.
We were like, "Whoa, what happened?"
And I guess our strategy worked.
♪♪♪
I was in the Starwood one night and The Go-Go's were playing,
and they had been in England.
♪ Go-Go music really makes us dance ♪
It was packed and everyone was going crazy.
That's when they got more of my attention.
I thought, "Okay, they're going places."
♪ 'Cause we got the beat, we got the beat ♪
♪ We got the beat ♪
♪ Yeah, we got it ♪
♪ We got the beat ♪
The difference from before that tour and after the tour
was just stunning.
♪ We got the beat ♪
I was like, "Oh, my God, this is going to be huge."
-♪ We got the beat ♪ -♪ We got the beat ♪
♪ We got the beat ♪
-♪ We got the beat ♪ -♪ We got the beat ♪
♪ We got the beat ♪
[crowd cheering]
[Jane] People would freak out when we played.
It was great.
I mean, we felt like we were at the top of our game,
and yet we couldn't get anywhere with it.
[Ginger] I had a file folder of rejection letters
from record labels in Los Angeles.
"Thanks, but you know, all-girl bands just don't sell records."
[Belinda] They wouldn't sign us we were told
because we were girls, and there'd been no predecessor
that had been that successful.
There'd been The Runaways,
but we put ourselves together, we had no Svengali.
[Gina] It was ridiculous.
Okay, we were girls, but look at what we're doing.
You know, close your eyes and listen.
♪ I know a cat who can really do the cool jerk ♪
[Belinda] Through the years I've been asked,
"Were you feminists?"
We were, I realize it now, because of our attitudes,
but we weren't, "We're going to do this against the guys
and you know, fuck them," that kind of thing.
We weren't like that at all.
♪ When they see me walking down the street ♪
We thought anything was possible,
including succeeding in that industry
that was run by men.
♪ They know I'm the queen of the cool jerk ♪
♪ Oh cool jerk ♪
[Kathleen Hanna] Knowing about being a woman in a band
and how many obstacles they'd had to face,
that the response isn't, "I'm going to quit."
[Belinda] Bring it down!
Whooooo!
It's, "Thank you, assholes, for telling me I can't do this.
Thanks for the inspiration,
now watch me get my next hit single."
[guitar playing]
[Jane] After we got home from England,
I would move back and forth from my parents' all the time
because I'd run out of money.
Terry stayed in touch.
He would send me letters, and in one letter
he talked about how he dreamed of having his own band.
and he sent me a bunch of lyrics.
And he said, "I'm going to write these songs."
[Jane singing lyrics]
I saw the lyrical beginning to "Our Lips Are Sealed."
And even though I'd gotten a little bit lazy
about writing music because Charlotte was so good at it,
I figured, why should I bother, I'll just do lyrics.
But this time, I actually went back to writing music.
I just thought it was such a good song.
I was so in love with it.
I didn't show it to the band for weeks and weeks
'cause I was so afraid if they didn't like it,
what was I gonna do? I was gonna... die.
[Belinda] I remember hearing that song for the first time.
I was completely blown away with it.
♪ No secrets to reveal ♪
Because of Jane's not being a trained musician and writer,
the chord progression in that song is so unusual.
♪ ...people play ♪
It really got your attention.
♪ Our lips are sealed ♪
♪ Pay no mind to what they say ♪
[Charlotte] We started writing more melodic songs,
and we got this hybrid of pop and punk.
♪ Hush now darling, our lips are sealed ♪
♪ Hush now... ♪
[microphone feedback]
It was changing and some people didn't like the change.
[Margot] My identity as a punk,
I was so absorbed in the scene,
it was my life, my lifestyle, my everything.
Oh, yeah, Margot, fuck, man, yeah, she hated it.
She's like, "I don't want to be a fucking pop band!
I'm in a punk band."
And I don't know, I think the rest of us were like,
this is evolving,
so fucking get with it or get out, I don't know.
[Margot] You know, it wasn't just the music,
it was the sense of being packaged into a product.
It was just becoming less about art and more about money.
[Gina] I just felt like, what the fuck are you doing it for,
to stay with a following of a couple of thousand people?
Or do you want to have people all over this country
know your music and know your songwriting,
know, you know, what kind of musician you are?
[Jane] We had shows over New Year's Eve at The Whisky,
and Margot had gotten really, really sick.
So, we had to scramble around and find someone.
[Charlotte] Kathy, I met at the Whisky a Go Go.
[Kathy] I was approached by Charlotte
and asked if I could play bass, and I said yes.
It was a big lie.
I figured, I've been playing guitar five or six years,
why can't I play a bass?
So, I go home.
First thing in the morning, I borrow a bass from somebody.
Charlotte came over.
She brought me a little cassette.
She left.
I plugged my bass into my guitar amp.
Feels weird, I use my pick.
[Go-go's playing fast song]
I start listening, I can't hear, it's a rehearsal tape.
It sounds, you know... zzzt!
[music playing, quickly]
You know, I'm like, "Shit."
[rewinding tape]
[music playing]
First thing I have to do is learn on guitar the chords,
because I can't hear.
[bass playing]
Then, I started picking up some of the bass parts.
What I could make out I learned,
what I couldn't make out I just made up my own.
♪♪♪
[rewinding tape]
I played it over and over.
[rewinding tape]
I'm a perfectionist, you know.
[rewinding tape]
The only way to do it as much as I was doing it
was to get pharmaceutical help.
[sniffing]
I basically learned all their songs on a coke binge.
[sniffing, rewinding tape]
[sniffing]
[bass and guitar playing]
Charlotte came over to see how it was going.
[laughing] I went to her house.
She was kind of like in the middle
of like a three-day bender on coke,
and I'd never met anyone like that.
And I thought, "Wow, my God."
She was a badass musician.
She learned those songs on bass in, like, a couple days,
and she had never played bass.
[Kathy] By the time I'd learned those songs,
I just wanted to be in the band.
[Belinda] In case you haven't noticed,
we have a bass player filling in for Margot, she's sick,
and her name's Kathy.
[Charlotte] Kathy Valentine, yeah.
[crowd cheering]
In came Kathy Valentine like a knight in shining armor.
♪
[Kathy] I got to be there with the sold-out shows.
It was everything that I had been looking for
since I started playing.
I'm an only child,
and it was just me and my mom when I was raised.
I really liked the idea of a band being a family.
Right away, I just felt like
these are going to be my sisters.
Something just felt right, it just felt like, "We're here."
♪ Last night you slept, you slept in fits ♪
♪ You smashed your windows bit by bit ♪
[Kathy] They wanted me and I wanted them
and I guess it's a lot like cheaters,
you know, people having affairs.
[Belinda] I remember Margot being true to herself
and very authentic.
She wanted to remain a punk band but we didn't,
so we just decided it was best to carry on without her.
I was told I had to do the firing because,
"You're the manager, Ginger, you've got to do it."
Because none of them had the... the guts to do it.
[phone ringing]
[Margot] It was a shock to get a phone call from Ginger.
"You're out of the band.
The girls didn't want to tell you."
It was a decision that they had made and that was it.
It was something I'd worked so hard for
and with friends.
People ask me, "How do you deal with such betrayal?"
[Belinda] In our little scene in L.A.,
there was lots of gossip and lots of people talking about us,
and not in a good way.
We had fired Margot, we had sold out,
we weren't a punk band, we were ambitious.
[Pleasant] In the community, it became like a divorce
because it was like they were on a rocket to fame
and they decided to fuck Margot over.
[Margot] I knew I would miss the scene and the community,
but I didn't want to be hanging out
where I would risk running into them.
I didn't want to see them at all.
♪ Pay no mind to what they say ♪
♪ It doesn't matter anyway, hey hey hey ♪
[Kathy] I didn't think about how that must have felt for her.
♪ Our lips are sealed ♪
There were shows booked for three weeks later
and I just wanted to make sure
I was the one doing them, you know.
♪ Pay no mind to what they say ♪
[Ginger] Kathy Valentine fit right in
and was the needed change
to propel the band to their next step.
♪ Our lips are sealed, our lips are sealed ♪
You have no idea how barren the landscape was in '81.
The idea that women, a host of different women,
would tell their stories in these kinds of songs
and do it the punk way.
Finding their own way in a very difficult environment,
that was unheard of.
♪♪♪
There was a whole new generation of music coming up
and the establishment record business
really sort of dismissed them,
and I saw them as a generational change.
[Jane] Miles Copeland, who managed The Police,
decided to start his own boutique label.
He called it IRS Records.
[Miles] Part of what I wanted to do
was to find some local American bands.
And I'd heard about The Go-Go's.
All girls, punks from L.A.?
Even if they were crap you'd almost want to sign them,
you know what I mean?
But they were good and they had good songs.
[Kathy] We signed on April 1st to IRS Records
and the next day we flew to New York.
♪ ...if you could and be one of us ♪
We played a couple more gigs.
♪♪♪
You know, I was 22 years old
in New York City making a record.
♪ Change the lines that were said before ♪
♪ We're all dreamers ♪
[Richard Gottehrer] With The Go-Go's as a punk band,
they didn't have the experience
to know they could do more than just execute the moment.
That's what I would try to instill in them,
to say there are grooves, there are feelings.
If your songs are really good, you don't run through them.
♪ Change the lines that were said before ♪
♪ We're all dreamers, we're all whores ♪
♪ Discarded stars like worn-out cars ♪
[Gina] When Richard Gottehrer got a hold of us,
he said, "Slow everything down."
♪ This town, litter the streets ♪
So, you could actually understand the words
and the melodies were more flowing.
♪ This town is our town ♪
♪ It is so glamorous ♪
That's when I realized, these are all pop songs.
♪ And be one of us ♪
[Belinda] I think actually it was my idea
for the face masks and towels,
to sort of be timeless and incognito.
[Ginger] I thought fabulous graphically,
I thought, "Oh, that could be really brilliant."
[Gina] Once again we had no money,
so Ginger went to Macy's and bought all those towels.
She returned those towels to Macy's afterwards. [laughs]
I couldn't invest in all these
brand-new fluffy, white, expensive towels.
We couldn't afford those.
♪ It is so glamorous ♪
We were like going through adolescence again together.
[Richard] Being the good middle-class boy growing up,
girls are one way, guys are another way.
Well, I learned it's not like that.
I learned that completely from them.
We'd get done with a session and I'd hear something like,
"Let's go get some booty tonight."
And I'm thinking, "booty?"
We had a lot of fun, did a lot of drugs,
drank a lot, just like a band does.
[Kathy] Just a bunch of scruffy girls
having the time of our life.
♪ This town ♪
But in the midst of all the bonding and insanity and fun,
I just felt so much distance with Charlotte.
[Belinda] Charlotte tended to isolate herself quite a bit.
So, we had really...
she had this whole secret life going on.
We knew it probably wasn't good.
Okay, let me talk about myself.
I was full-blown heroin addict at the time.
So, I would be scoring dope, which is so scary.
Like, I'd go down to Alphabet City. Yikes!
[Margot] When I moved to New York, I became a squatter
living in what is now the East Village,
and I saw Charlotte walking east to Alphabet City.
The Alphabets is where everyone would go to cop drugs,
so I knew where she was going.
[Charlotte] After I graduated from college,
I tried heroin for the first time.
"Oh, let me try this. I'll be fine!"
It was like, you know,
a little matchstick head size that I snorted.
It made me feel like really great,
and I was like, "Wow, I like this feeling!"
But I didn't understand at that time,
like, it was deadly shit.
Then, I became addicted.
♪ Automatic, time stop ♪
[Jane] She and I were like sharing a room together
and she was actively having a heroin addiction,
which I never saw her take heroin, I never saw heroin.
I mean, how did she do that? She was very secretive.
She'd come to rehearsal, I'd say, "Look at her fucking eyes!
Her eyes are pinned, look at her eyes!"
[Kathy] I went and I knocked on her door.
She answered and she had on her Ray-Bans.
And I said, "They told me that you do heroin."
And she just looked at me, she said, "No, no, no."
And I was like, "Oh, okay, good."
[Gina] She was way more out of control
than I think any of us really knew about.
[man] You alright?
Yeah, I'm trying to figure something out here.
[man] Okay, go ahead.
Just put yours first, just keep it the same.
Are we both saying it? "Hi, we're Kathy and Charlotte."
Yeah, let's just do it.
[man] Okay, we'll give it a try.
Here we go. In three, two...
[both] Hi, we're Kathy and Charlotte of The Go-Go's
and you can watch MTV 24 hours a day
on cable vision in stereo.
♪♪♪
♪ Can you hear them? ♪
♪ They talk about us... ♪
The Go-Go's and MTV came up
at the perfect time for each other,
because MTV was all about,
"This is what the artists that you love look like."
They came along looking adorable and effervescent and fun.
It just was a match made in heaven.
♪ Hey hey hey ♪
♪ Our lips are sealed ♪
[Jane] Well, it was a cheap music video, actually.
"Our Lips Are Sealed" was done on a $6000 budget,
and that money came from a Police video
that they didn't spend all their money on,
so Miles took the money and let us spend it.
♪ Doesn't matter what they say ♪
[Belinda] We had no idea how important video was going to be,
so we thought, "This is a big waste of time.
Why are we doing this?"
None of us took it seriously.
We wanted to get arrested and have that on tape.
[Jane] We decided if we jumped in the fountain,
the Beverly Hills cops would come and arrest us
and it would be a really great way to end the video.
So, we're sitting there frolicking in the water,
frolicking, frolicking, frolicking.
[Gina] We jumped around in that goddamn fountain
for quite a while and nobody even paid any attention to us.
No one would arrest us.
[Jane] Next thing you know, MTV is the biggest thing in America
and they're showing The Go-Go's every half hour.
♪ Our lips are sealed ♪
[Copeland] I was saying to Ginger, "Your band is happening.
If we put you on opening for The Police,
it's going to really open so many more eyes and more ears
that it might really help make the difference."
[Ginger] Miles Copeland, with his vision saying,
"Would you like The Go-Go's to open for The Police?" Why, yes!
It was a coup for us because they were huge at the time.
We traveled around the world opening for them.
♪♪♪
They were the best opening act ever.
The Go-Go's came out, they were so enthusiastic, so up,
their songs were so bright
that they just would light up the room.
♪ Walking by ♪
♪ You hold your head so close to hers ♪
♪ I could cry, I could cry ♪
♪ I want to be... ♪
[Gina] When we toured with The Police,
it took us from playing clubs to arenas.
When I walked out on stage, I almost died.
♪♪♪
♪ How much more can I take ♪
[Stewart] They had the most important ingredient
of musicianship, which is feel.
They established a groove that worked,
that you could lock into.
They just created something that exploded on the stage.
♪ Yeah, crazy oh yeah ♪
Yeah!
[crowd cheering]
[Jane] During that Police tour,
our album kept going up and up and up in the chart.
Their album was like a sky rocket,
and that made it really fun for us.
It was like a vicarious thrill because we were old and jaded,
to see these women, a new band,
experiencing the thrill for the first time,
that lit us up.
[Kathy] We were in Atlanta and Sting came in the dressing room
and he's got champagne. "Congratulations, girls."
We're looking at him, like, what?
He said, "Your record has passed ours."
They were number six and then we went to number one.
[Jane] They brought us champagne.
It was actually very gentlemanly of them to do that
and not kick us off the tour! [laughing]
[Ginger] Beauty And The Beat's gone to number one
and I think we were all kind of over the moon.
[Kathy] This is it, this is everything.
Every step along the way, it just kept getting better.
I wish there was another phrase other than "dream come true,"
because it was so beyond that.
It was like fulfilled everything.
This is a circus.
[laughing]
[Miles] When you have something that bucks the system
and succeeds, it opens people's eyes.
They did something that no group has ever done before them,
and that is have a number-one album in the United States,
being all girls.
They opened people's eyes to potential for women
to do something that had never really been done before.
For The Go-Go's to have a debut album go to number one,
that's something that only like 26 other artists have done,
like you know, the biggies, Elvis, The Beatles.
[Chris Connelly] They made history.
They're the first all-female band
to play their own instruments,
write their own songs, number-one record for six weeks.
Mic drop.
[crowd cheering]
[Hanna] When I went to The Go-Go's concert in 1982,
as a young girl going into a space
where women own the stage,
and own it unapologetically
like they were born to be there,
to me it represented a moment of possibility.
Thanks, good night!
[crowd cheering and applauding]
Thanks a lot!
These-- we're having a high school reunion, you see.
I went to high school with all these people.
Girls run up to us and say,
"We started a band because of you!"
That's probably the best feeling in the world,
it's really great to think that you inspire people
to go out and start a band.
So, this is the dawning of a new era, this is it.
Everybody has a different perspective I'm sure
on what happened at Saturday Night Live.
Oh, God.
[Kathy] We got there 11 in the morning,
and we had to wait until 11 at night basically.
I think it was just a case of us
sitting around a TV studio way too long,
and then, just starting to dip into the booze.
[Kathy] Let's have a toast, champagne.
And then, oh, it's lunch time, we'll have some wine.
So then, you want to balance it out,
you want to lift things up a little,
so magically the blow appears.
[Charlotte] Right before we went on,
they said, "Remember, girls,
you're playing in front of 50 million people live."
And we were just like ...
♪ Yeah, we got it ♪
[Gina] We were like cross-eyed drunk.
[laughing]
The funny thing is, the next day we sold a ton of records.
[Kathy] Even buzzing, messed-up Go-Go's
being beamed into people's living rooms,
it' still something that people are just going,
"Whoa, we like this."
[audience cheering]
Now that we've had a little bit of success and stuff
and now we know how wonderful it can be, we want more.
[Jane] The Rolling Stone cover
was supposed to be a comment on sexism,
and obviously it backfired,
because if we had really been trying to be sexy
and push our wares as women,
you know, we would have worn sexy underwear
instead of, you know, Hanes and Fruit of the Loom.
It's so tame, but when it came out
it did not help that Rolling Stone chose the headline:
"The Go-Go's Put Out."
[Ginger] "Ginger, you've gotta call Rolling Stone.
We're not happy.
We don't like that they used these pictures
on the front of the magazine."
So, I phoned Rolling Stone
and asked for Jann the publisher.
I said, "Jann, some of the girls are very upset about the image
used on the front of the magazine."
And there was a brief pause and Jann said,
"I thought you were calling me to thank me for the cover.
You girls need to grow up." Clunk!
Maybe that's why we're not in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,
those ungrateful wenches.
Our success was so quick,
and I always felt like a little bit of an impostor
when it came to success, like it was undeserved.
[host] We asked them why they are succeeding
where other girl groups have failed.
The majority of the reason must be because of the songs,
if people don't like your songs they're not gonna wanna
come see you live, or buy your records.
[Gina] Whether you're a girl or whatever you are.
I think that timing and luck, there is an element of that.
I think luckily for us there are now five....
women all in one band who all have fear of failure.
Really.
[Belinda] I think everybody, not just the band,
probably the record company,
was scrambling around to figure out what to do next
on the back of such a big success.
Putting out a second album made sense to the record industry
because they want to make more records and make more money.
And they're going to milk it for everything that they can,
but at a price.
[host] Do you have any time to write songs now
with all the traveling you're doing?
[Charlotte] We've come, right now we're starting,
this next month we're going to work on new stuff.
[host] What are you gonna write about?
[Charlotte] Well, I can't really say
what we're going to write about, I don't know.
Vacation as a record,
we were so rushed that the songwriting reflects that.
But I felt like, "Oh, my God, I wrote a hit song
and now what do I do," you know?
It's like, it messes with your head.
And, you know, you always hear about the sophomore jinx.
I was freaking out because we were scrambling for material
and then, luckily we got "Vacation."
Kathy wrote "Vacation" and was playing it in her previous band
to The Go-Go's, The Textones.
♪ I've thought a lot of things about you ♪
♪ I've stayed awake just thinking 'bout you ♪
[Kathy] I showed it to Charlotte,
she said, "I really like this song,
I think, you know, it needs more of a chorus."
♪ Tomorrow's a day of mine that you won't be in ♪
I really felt like the original version kind of went down,
and this, it just should have gone up.
♪ Vacation, all I ever wanted ♪
♪ A vacation, had to get away ♪
If we hadn't had that song on the record,
it would have been a very different outcome for us.
That probably would've ended everything right there,
'cause that song was really cool.
♪ Had to get away ♪
♪ Vacation, meant to be spent alone ♪
Who knew that the girls were such able water skiers?
At the video shoot, they started wandering off
wearing their little water ski tutus
and started walking up La Brea Avenue.
I followed them and started snapping away.
They just looked like four ballerinas
between takes on a movie set or something.
"Vacation" soon hit the radio waves
and did really, really well and got lots of play.
But it stalled in the charts.
[interviewer] Are you still getting along?
Yeah, we're getting along really good, as a matter of fact.
I mean, but this is the beginning of tour,
so we'll see how it is the last week.
No, we'll get along,
we always have got along pretty good I'd say.
[crowd cheering]
Show time!
♪ It's everything but party time ♪
♪ It's everything but party time... ♪
[Gina] I mean, this was like a fucking treadmill.
They were pushing us constantly. We were on tour constantly.
[Ginger] You would be absolutely exhausted
and arrive from some long transatlantic flight,
and the promoter for an upcoming show
was reaching out to you in panic saying,
"We need the girls to do this, this, this and this."
[interviewer] This has been an incredible year.
The success, how's it affected your life
at this stage of the ball game?
[Charlotte] We're aware of how well we're doing
but we don't feel it, yeah, not yet.
[Kathy] Just too much overload on the brain right now.
[Belinda] My life has been planned out for me
for the next two years.
I can tell you my schedule
until September of next year practically.
[Miles] When you go from nowhere to number one,
things change, it's inevitable.
The old joke is, you know, when you're a new manager
and you knew what you were doing
and you're signing a new band, you're God.
The day they're number one, you're the janitor.
♪ Can't seem to get my mind off of you ♪
[director] What's the worst thing about being a manager?
When they don't want you anymore.
[Belinda] I think the band just got too big for her to handle.
[Gina] We wanted to make the most of the time
that we had in the spotlight.
We wanted to make money and continue to be successful,
and we felt like we needed...
a more experienced person at the helm.
[Ginger] It was surprising how quickly
people came out of the woodwork, other managers,
saying how they could do so much better
if they had a big management team behind them.
[Gina] I'm pretty sure that she knew
we wanted her to work with a bigger manager
that had a firm instead of like one person.
I'm getting kind of choked up, my throat.
It's like...
No, no, it's just that it's emotional for me,
because going back to that time
it was difficult, remembering it and how I felt.
It was very painful.
My band was taken away from me.
I remember sitting in on meetings
and feeling incredibly little
as the girls sat on the edge of their seat
looking enthralled by these new managers,
all men, not that that mattered,
but just like a new power base,
like this was going to be great,
that this was going to be, like, change everything.
It was horrible having them say with the band there,
"Well, Ginger, we know you know how to take a band from A to B,
and you do a great job.
We can take that band from B to Z."
We felt like it was going to help us go to another level.
People that set all of it in motion,
they knew that my days would be numbered,
that anyone with any integrity,
you're not going to stick around. Why would you?
I guess we hurt her, must have hurt her pretty badly
because she just, one day she was gone.
It was no "fuck you" or nothing, it was just gone.
[director] How angry were you?
Angry enough to move to New York?
[Belinda] She was like the sixth Go-Go.
When she left, it really turned into a big business.
It wasn't even that much fun anymore.
We just, that's all we knew how to do was be a Go-Go.
[Jane] Gina was in our new manager's office,
supposedly a more professional management company
who turned out to suck,
we should've just stuck with Ginger.
But, I guess Gina saw a check that Charlotte got
and it was for, like, a gazillion dollars.
And of course, Gina wasn't getting a check like that.
I almost fell over.
He said, "See how much she makes?
That's 'cause she's a songwriter."
[Miles] There are two ways you make money out of a record.
You make it in the recording and the publishing.
The person who writes the songs,
which is really the vehicle that you need...
is going to make more money.
And that can cause problems.
You write a lot of the songs, right?
-Yeah. -With Charlotte?
[Jane] Charlotte writing "We Got The Beat"
all by herself, that song was huge.
It's like everyone wanted it for commercials and movies
and TV shows, and that's like
cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching.
Songwriting was so important to me, it was my identity.
That's why I held so close, so dear to me
and, you know, you can't, you can't take any part of this.
This is mine, this is who I am.
I will still stand behind the belief that songwriting
is a really specific skill that many people don't have,
and it's a lot of extra hard work
that other people aren't doing.
[Kathy] I'd made more money
than I'd ever imagined in my lifetime,
but I knew there was going to be an issue in the discrepancy
between the highest earner, who was Charlotte,
and the lowest earner, who was Gina and Belinda.
I knew there was gonna be a problem.
Most people think that we're really rich right now,
but I don't...
I know that we're not rich right now!
[Belinda] I was too busy having a lot of fun,
and I just let the others write the songs.
Gina would say to me, "This is not fair,"
and, you know, and I would say, "I know it's not fair,"
but I felt like inside
like I really had no right to say anything
because I was such a fuck-up.
[Kathy] What scared me was an unhappy lead singer,
who pretty much made the band into contenders,
feeling cheated and unappreciated.
It set up a vibe
where I started feeling very concerned about our future.
And it's like, are you fucking kidding me?
Now, we're already having this be a problem?
The fighting and the real drugs
happen when we all get money, you know.
It wrecks everything.
♪ Walking around it's clear that I'm worlds away ♪
Charlotte was isolating quite a bit.
I spend a lot of time here.
I don't go out that often,
because I like it here a lot in my house.
I bought a house up in the hills and I was by myself.
It was a bad situation.
I was suffering,
and I didn't know who to talk to or what to do.
[Belinda] No, we're just like sisters
and we're all looking out for, you know,
each other all the time,
and we all love each other very much.
We didn't communicate, and then when we did communicate
we didn't do it in a loving, sort of respectful way.
[Jane] By 1984, things were getting pretty frazzled with us.
We'd still really never had been given enough time to write
or recuperate or anything.
So, it was very tense.
[Gina] Being in a band, you become each other's best friends
and also each other's worst enemies.
[Kathy] It became a difficult place to be
because I always wanted to put out fires.
Somebody's not happy, you know, fix this, fix, fix, fix,
you know, and have fun.
No matter how miserable everyone is, have fun.
[military drumming]
[car horns honking]
[Gina] This is when we first got to England,
making the third record.
And this was the clown family.
[Kathy] We had something called the clown family
where everybody posed the same way and put on a clown nose.
[Gina] This is the clown family watching TV.
And here's the clown family doing some blow,
upon arrival in London.
[laughing]
The ultimate is the clown family giving birth to another clown.
[laughing] Except Jane was the other clown.
Every single person birthed Jane.
♪ Like an old movie backdrop ♪
♪ The radio's blasting ♪
We still managed to have a lot of fun,
despite what might have been going on.
♪ She says "I just wanted to make you" ♪
♪ "I never meant to break you" ♪
♪ He says "Have some mercy on me" ♪
♪ "Do you have to be such a mercenary?" ♪
[Miles] I went into the studio
when they were recording the third album.
There was a famous scene of one of the members vomiting on me,
you know, she'd had too much to drink.
I won't mention who,
but I was covered in vomit in the studio.
So, I knew stuff was going on.
Good evening, I'm Charlotte.
-Good evening, I'm Gina. -Good evening, I'm Jane.
-I'm Kathy. -Good evening, I'm Belinda,
-I'm The Go-Go's. -She's not! No, I'm The Go-Go's.
-I'm The Go-Go's. -No, we're all The Go-Go's.
Well, anyway...
[Kathy] We'd started writing songs for the third record,
but Charlotte hit a bit of a writing block.
It got harder to write, actually, it prevented me.
I was really writing a lot,
because Charlotte was in a lot of trouble with the drugs.
♪ When it goes dark, forget the night ♪
There are people that really loved that album,
but I can't even listen to it
because to me I was so miserable during that time, oh, my God.
♪ When it goes dark ♪
♪ Get me to bed ♪
On that trip, there was an implosion.
Jane got really upset.
♪ Wait for the light of day ♪
I think she felt frustrated probably with me
and with wanting to have a bigger role.
♪ I'm the only one you run to ♪
♪ The one you come to ♪
♪ The only one you can get to ♪
♪ I'm the only one for you ♪
-♪ I'm the only one ♪ -♪ Only one for you ♪
♪ I'm the only one ♪
[Jane] When we were recording the album,
I had decided that I wanted to sing one song on the record,
and there was one song that I'd written
that was super personal to me called "Forget That Day."
Then, I went to each girl and was like,
"Please, can I sing this one song?"
♪ I remember that day ♪
♪ Wind pushing birds around ♪
She came to us and we just said, "No."
Belinda was the lead singer, it just felt weird.
We decided that that wasn't the way to go,
that we wanted to keep everybody had their role within the band,
and that was the way it was going to be.
I don't really like to talk about that,
because it wasn't like a unanimous thing in this band.
One of them said,
"What makes you think you're good enough to sing a song?"
Which is something I'll never forget hearing.
It was a huge betrayal,
and I did not know how to get past it.
♪ I lost my heart ♪
♪ But I just said I hate heights ♪
It never occurred to any of us
that we have to sit down and how can we make this work?
But, no, nothing could change, nobody could grow.
And I was part of it, too.
♪ I left to get some work done ♪
We made Belinda feel guilty for being a star and a diva.
We made Jane feel like what she wanted and needed
was not important enough for us to even sit down and talk about.
We made Gina feel like what she contributed wasn't enough.
You don't deserve to make as much.
♪ Why'd you say you love me ♪
And we couldn't see the pain
that Charlotte was walking around in.
♪ Try to forget that day ♪
[Miles] I was always an optimist
hoping that we would keep the things together.
I don't know that they recognized then,
and after the third album, what they really had together.
♪ Head over heels, where should I go ♪
[Kathy] "Head Over Heels", we made a video,
it got released as a single.
The tour machine's picking up.
♪ ...out of sync ♪
♪♪♪
We were getting ready to tour for the third record.
We were at rehearsal and a call came in,
it was like, "Gina, your doctor's on the phone."
I was like... We all sort of stopped, like, what is this?
Gina had always been like coming off stage, "I can't breathe,"
and we'd be like, "Oh, my God, she's such a drama queen,"
like, no, absolutely like no sympathy whatsoever for her.
Now what?
Because she has been seeing this doctor and that doctor
and we're just like, "Oh, come on."
But as it turns out she couldn't breathe
because she had a hole in her heart
and she wasn't getting enough oxygen. Yeah, so... our bad.
Gina was diagnosed with a hole in her heart.
She was going to have surgery.
Heart surgery, what the fuck?
It was a little scary,
but we dealt with it with a lot of, like, humor.
Our humor was, you know,
always gallows dark.
So, we decided to have this final lost weekend
in Palm Springs together just in case Gina croaked.
They were taking me out on my last hurrah.
♪♪♪
We rented I think a convertible Jag and a convertible Cadillac.
Let's buy a bunch of drugs and go out to the desert.
[Jane] We had just like a shit ton of drugs
and we're driving into Palm Springs
going 100 miles an hour.
[truck horn blaring]
It was a total weekend of debauchery
and drugs and drinking.
♪ Sex ♪
[Jane] And we had a special rule
that Gina was not allowed to do cocaine,
she can only do booze, Valium and mushrooms,
so you know, we were keeping her safe!
Because they didn't want me to have a heart attack.
[laughing]
♪♪♪
[Belinda] It did bring the band together temporarily.
[Gina] It's funny how you can feel so isolated
from people in the band,
and then in a minute, in a second, you're family again.
We were really at odds, and when I had that surgery
everybody sort of came together for a while there.
[host] We've gotten a lot of calls and letters
and your fans are real concerned.
If you could just give us an update on your health?
I'm fine. My heart is better.
My doctor told me I can do anything I like.
I can't wait to get out on tour because I'm bored to death.
[laughing]
[host] Well, I do want to talk about the tour.
What kind of tour sponsorship are you considering?
[Jane] Before the album was released, that's kind of
when the publishing thing really came to a head.
We were called to a meeting
at the crappy management's office,
and it was stated all the publishing
needs to be split equally.
And then, I said, "Well, wait a minute,
"this album is totally done.
"I totally agree to do that for the next album,
"but I'm not doing it for this album,
because I fucking worked my ass off."
And they're like, "Nope, you gotta do it."
I'm like, "I won't do it."
"You've gotta do it." "I won't do it."
And then, I just said, "Fuck you, I quit."
And that's when I quit the band.
But, of course, I couldn't leave the band yet
because we had a whole, huge tour planned
to support the new album.
She told us that she was, after the tour for
Talk Show she was going to leave.
[host] You guys have been together now for quite a while.
Do you still all just get along as friends?
Argh!
There would be a lot of questions
about what our relationship with each other was like.
"Oh, we love each other. We're like sisters."
Yeah, like sisters that fucking stab each other in the back.
[crowd cheering]
♪♪♪
It was a little toxic, shall we say.
♪ But I know what you're doing ♪
But the machine, Go-Go machine, had to keep going.
♪ Falling to ruin ♪
♪ You got your walls so high ♪
Things were really coming apart.
♪ There may be some explanation ♪
[Kathy] This band is everything to me.
My driving focus was to keep that shit together.
♪ I just want to turn to you ♪
-♪ Come on let me turn to you ♪ -♪ Turn to you ♪
♪ Turn to you ♪
[Charlotte] There was a lot of crap going on,
and it felt like the dream of The Go-Go's was slipping away
and, of course, I more so felt like my life was slipping away.
♪ It has a lot to do ♪
[Jane] There were definitely times
when you really had to fake it to get through it.
We had this whole thing that we called robo Go-Go-ing,
where you would just get out there on stage
and no one would fucking know
that you had just had a screaming fight backstage.
You would just get out there and be like, robo Go-Go!
♪ I want to turn to you ♪
♪ Come on, let me turn to you ♪
♪ Please let me turn to you ♪
During the tour,
Jane announced that she was leaving, which I didn't believe.
And then, sure enough she did and it was really devastating.
[crowd cheering]
I felt completely betrayed.
I felt like...
she was breaking up something that was so precious.
We knew we were in trouble then,
because, I mean, she's an original member,
she's a key songwriter, and she's irreplaceable.
It was like a hatchet had come and just...
it was never going to be the same after that.
That was it, really, a piece of the puzzle was missing.
I felt like the rat that had, you know, left the sinking ship.
[Miles] The Go-Go's as a unit worked.
And you take out a piece, is the picture complete?
Maybe not.
[Kathy] I just thought this could be the end of everything.
All I was, I was a Go-Go, that was all.
That meant I could take care of my mom.
By this time, I'm supporting my mom.
It's easier to find a bass player
than it is a guitar player.
I'll play guitar, we'll get a bass player.
Hundreds of girls wanted to be in The Go-Go's.
Big surprise.
[Charlotte] I really wanted Paula Jean,
and the other girls weren't really agreeing with me,
but for some reason they acquiesced,
and Paula Jean became our bass player.
[Paula Jean] I felt like Dorothy walking into Oz,
because they were all so much shorter than me.
I knew before I auditioned that the band was having problems
because Jane quit the band,
and I had read enough and followed them enough
to know that things weren't going great interpersonally.
[Kathy] So, we started rehearsing with Paula Jean,
getting ready to go to Rio.
We're playing the biggest show of our life.
It's the Rock in Rio festival.
[man] Belinda!
What are your expectations towards the festival?
Should be a lot of fun.
[Paula Jean] I could tell that the joy of them playing together
was not what it probably once was.
It felt to me like they were all trying to muster it
for the occasion.
[Gina] In Rio,
this is the height of everybody's drug intake.
People driving around in cabs searching for coke all night.
[Belinda] I didn't sleep for, like, a week.
[Charlotte] I'm supposed to go to sound check
and I went out to cop some dope.
I was late, and I had to make up a big lie,
and that's another thing with drugs,
like, you become a big liar.
[Gina] Charlotte was so out of control
that Ozzy Osbourne threw her out of his dressing room.
Now that's pretty fucking bad.
♪ Head over heels, where should I go ♪
♪ Can't stop myself, outta control ♪
♪ Head over heels, no time to think ♪
♪ Looks like the whole world's out of sync ♪
[Paula Jean] The Go-Go's were a family,
and, you know, I think that Gina and Kathy
kind of had become the caretakers in a way,
trying to hold it together.
Charlotte was there, but you could tell just not there.
It was just getting to be where it was unsustainable.
[Kathy] Paula goes,
"You guys, Charlotte's really in trouble."
What?
New girl says what?
I said, "I just really feel like she's going to die."
[Charlotte] Paula came to me one day and said, you know,
"Charlotte, I know a place where you can go to get some help."
And I said, "What are you talking about?"
She told me about, you know,
a recovery hospital, you know, for addicts.
And then, something shifted in me.
I went back to Los Angeles
and I checked myself into rehab with Paula's help.
I'm not saying it was easy, but I was dedicated.
And I'm forever grateful to her for giving me that information,
because it totally changed my life and saved me.
When I got sober, it was so amazing
to be free of that prison that I was living in.
As dedicated as I was to my band,
I was dedicated to myself.
When we started rehearsing again for the fourth album,
I made the decision to choose myself over the band.
It just wasn't working, it wasn't going to work.
Paula was great, but she wasn't Jane.
The only decent song that came out of it was "Mad About You."
They really liked "Mad About You."
It's a song that Paula wrote for our band.
The relationships were just disintegrating in the band.
Charlotte and I discussed ending the band.
[Kathy] Gina and I are feeling more and more
like Charlotte and Belinda are on one side,
and me and Gina are on the other side.
[Gina] Her and Belinda called Kathy and myself
into management's office.
I was like, "This is not good."
It's not good.
Even now, I can't. Remembering this makes me feel ill.
"We've decided to break up the band,"
that was the first thing.
And Gina and I said, "You can't.
You can't do that, it's our band too."
"Yes, we can."
Somebody said,
"She writes the hits and I am the voice."
"She's the voice and I write the hits."
And Kathy and I were fucking flabbergasted.
They completely freaked out, completely freaked out.
There was a lot of crying and screaming.
I definitely raged,
and then, I dialed back the rage
and groveled, apologizing.
I... I wanted to kill both of them.
I really did.
After all we'd been through,
how could you fucking dare say that to me?
I won't survive this if I stay here
and I cannot risk using and drinking again,
I cannot risk that.
What was horrible was like going home from that meeting
just shattered.
And then, the phone rings
and it's the guy from the management company
and my heart just, like, "Ah, they've changed their mind!"
And instead he goes,
"You're going to get a call from The L.A. Times
to make a comment about the band breaking up."
It's like, "What, are you fucking kidding me?"
You know, it's been an hour.
Within months of me leaving the band ended up breaking up,
and I certainly wasn't happy about it,
but I also wasn't surprised either.
[Charlotte] We didn't speak to each other
for five years after that.
Gina and Kathy, I didn't speak to.
Jane was off doing her solo record.
I felt the need to try something new.
I was also interested in singing my own material.
I was used to being a big star,
and all of a sudden it was like, "She sucks!"
I hated it so much and I was just so mad,
but now honestly, I really feel like the person I am today
would not exist without all the failure I went through,
and all the success I ever had never taught me one damn thing.
Never.
[Kathy] I tried so hard to create another band
with the chemistry and the magic that The Go-Go's had,
and nothing I did seemed to work out.
I tried being a singer.
I never wanted to be a singer, but I tried it.
I couldn't be a studio player
because I didn't know how to read music
and that wasn't my thing.
And so, I went out and tried to get a solo deal.
I did one show at the Roxy and got signed by Capitol Records,
which was great for a while.
[Jane] And then after a few years,
it was almost like The Go-Go's didn't even exist anymore.
It was only like, Belinda!
[Katie Couric] When The Go-Go's split up
I guess everybody went their separate ways,
but you're the only one who really hit it big.
Why do you think that's the case?
Well, I think I definitely had a head start
as being the focus of the band,
which, you know, people do tend to focus
on the lead singer of any band.
And, you know, that did give me some advantages.
[Charlotte] Belinda offered me a job.
She said, "Do you wanna tour with me and write on my record?"
I was so grateful to her,
because that was still at that place in my life
where that was my identity, doing that,
and just beginning to find out that that wasn't who--
that wasn't the totality of who I am.
So, she gave me that bridge.
[Kathy] As they went on,
Charlotte was working with Belinda.
Jane is back in the fold.
Now, all of a sudden, it's like,
the three of them are doing shit for Belinda.
I started feeling like it was a vendetta against me and Gina.
It was... it was horrible.
I just wanted to write and play drums.
I've written stuff for other people.
I had a song covered by Miley Cyrus,
and then four songs by Selena Gomez,
so I felt like, "Yeah, finally getting what I deserve."
[laughing]
I've always known I had a book in me...
When I turned 40,
I was dropped by my record company as a solo artist,
and that was actually the beginning of, like,
soul searching and what is this all about?
What were The Go-Go's all about?
Who am I?
With sobriety, my world is vast and bigger than it's ever been.
I think for me, there are a lot of ego issues, to be honest,
a lot of slapping down I've needed,
and a lot of... I needed a lot of humbling.
It's five people in this band,
and everybody was set on their own sort of course...
But then we got back together. [laughing]
Because the story never ends!
The story never ends.
[crowd cheering loudly]
Thank you for coming out tonight.
[playing "We Got the Beat"]
♪♪♪
♪ See the people walking down the street ♪
[Kathy] As angry as I was when they broke up the band,
I missed them.
Nobody really knows what that felt like to be in The Go-Go's,
only four other people know what that feels like.
And that's the bond.
Nothing has happened so bad that it overshadows that.
I don't know how this keeps going,
I swear to Christ, I don't.
[man] The Go-Go's day in Hollywood!
[crowd cheering]
We are making Go-Go's history
with our debut as Broadway songwriters.
[Gina] You get older and you get wiser,
and you drop a lot of the bullshit.
We are a family, that's just what it is.
♪ We got the beat ♪
♪ Everybody get on your feet ♪
[out of sync] ♪ We know you can... ♪
-[laughing] -Can you drum?
[Jane] Gina needs coffee.
♪ We used to have the beat ♪
♪ We had the beat ♪
I remember when we had the beat! We got it back.
♪ Everybody, we got the beat ♪
♪ We got the, we got the beat ♪
[Kathy] That was fantastic.
That was amazing.
Oh, my God, do we have the motherfucking beat.
I love that.
That wasn't bad for not playing together a really long time.
[playing guitar]
Hey, it doesn't hurt to rehearse,
it only makes you tighter.
[Belinda] I think that The Go-Go's,
if you believe in karma,
there's a lot of karmic ties in this band.
Just the fact that we've been in each other's lives
for so many years, it has to be to work out something.
♪ Fair's fair, don't care ♪
♪ They may have control but we're not scared ♪
♪ Zero fucks given ♪
Oops.
About a year ago, I went to a psychiatrist
who diagnosed me as being bipolar.
♪ Wake up, can't you see ♪
For the first time in my life
I haven't thought of suicide in a year,
which is like fucking mind-blowing to me.
Do you want to decide which key you like better?
-Yeah, that'd be good. -Okay.
And luckily, The Go-Go's have finally gotten to the point
where we actually can be civil to each other and get along.
I can see the good in everyone in the band.
[playing guitar]
♪ There's a place for us, don't look for a sign ♪
♪ Not on a map ♪
♪ It's a state of mind ♪
♪ This is club zero ♪
Okay, so, verse or chorus?
We talked about things we wanted to write about
and we did kind of make a conscious decision
to try to write about, you know,
the place of women and our future roles.
It's kind of a testament to our longevity and our bond.
-Tenacity. -And how we can work together.
That we've been able to withstand it, I think...
[laughing]
[Charlotte] It was hard!
We've been able to live through it!
[laughing]
What were you saying, Gina?
Wait a minute!
[Kathy] Okay, are we ready to go loud?
-[Gina] Yeah, man. -[Jane] You wanna go loud?
[Gina] One, two, a-one, two...
♪♪♪
♪ There's a place for us, don't look for a sign ♪
♪ Not on a map ♪
♪ It's a state of mind ♪
♪ This is club zero ♪
♪ The rules they made are battle lines ♪
♪ The grand design is out of time ♪
♪ Hey, we've got something to say... ♪
[Charlotte] There was this power that we all felt,
of us together doing what we're doing.
We showed up as who we were
and just, against all odds,
busted through some ceilings.
I don't know what more they have to do
to get in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
What the fuck? They're not?
Come on! Come on!
They're in my Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
♪♪♪
♪ There's a place for us, don't look for a sign ♪
♪ Not on a map ♪
♪ It's a state of mind ♪
♪ This is club zero ♪
♪ Time's up, it's the clarion call ♪
♪ 'Cause zero hour is upon us all ♪
♪ Tik-tok, tik-tok ♪
♪ The rules they made are battle lines ♪
♪ The grand design is out of time ♪
♪ Hey, we've got something to say ♪
♪ Gonna make the world shake ♪
♪ Ready or not, here we are ♪
♪ Better get out of our way ♪
♪ Looking for heroes, we are club zero ♪
[laughing]
-I love it. -[Gina] We did blow in our bras.
That day we did blow and gave birth.
[Jane] Yeah, it was time to have babies.
Which one is that?
She's having her baby.
[Jane] Why am I always the baby?
[Kathy] You were always the baby
'cause you were the only one that could fit between our legs.
♪ Fair's fair, don't care ♪
♪ They may have control but we're not scared ♪
♪ Zero fucks given ♪
♪ Wake up, can't you see ♪
♪ Heads up, we're the new MVPs ♪
♪ Of the twenty-first century ♪
♪ The rules they made are battle lines ♪
♪ The grand design is out of time ♪
♪ Hey, we've got something to say ♪
♪ Gonna make the world shake ♪
♪ Ready or not, here we come ♪
♪ You better get out of our way ♪
♪ We won't stop until we're done ♪
♪ Better get out of our way ♪
♪ Walking like heroes, we are club zero ♪
♪♪♪
♪ The rules they made are battle lines ♪
♪ The grand design is out of time ♪
♪ Hey, we've got something to say ♪
♪ Gonna make the world shake ♪
♪ Ready or not, here we come ♪
♪ You better get out of our way ♪
♪ We won't stop until we're done ♪
♪ Better get out of our way ♪
♪ Looking for heroes, we are club zero ♪
♪ Walking like heroes, we are club zero ♪
♪ Oh ♪
♪h