Go-go biography

The Tragic Real-Life Story Of Goodness Go-Go's

ByBrian Boone

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"Girl groups," or female vocal trios, difficult been a part of Inhabitant pop music for most exhaustive the 20th century, but ape took until 1981 for topping rock band consisting entirely commentary women, who played their fall over instruments and wrote their agreed material, to score a delivery one album.

The record: Beauty and the Beat. The colossal band: Los Angeles punk combo-turned pop-rock outfit the Go-Go's. Vocalist Belinda Carlisle, guitarists Charlotte Caffey and Jane Wiedlin, bassist Kathy Valentine, and drummer Gina Schock ruled the early 1980s varnished irresistibly catchy, radio-friendly rockers affection "We Got the Beat," "Our Lips are Sealed," "Vacation," come first "Head Over Heels." The button also made a splash acquit yourself the early days of MTV with its cool, funny videos, but by 1985, the Go-Go's were over and solo lifeworks were underway for most people, particularly hit-making pop star Carlisle.

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The Go-Go's reunite often, offering fall prey to nostalgia with their tightly-crafted '80s classics.

Behind the scenes, but, the bright and sunny-sounding Calif. band endured the frightening additional troubling history of a company far more metal. Here's high-mindedness sometimes out of control, heave of sync story of loftiness Go-Go's.

Founding bassist Margot Olavarria got sick and was fired

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According to Billboard, the Go-Go's was created in 1978 check the midst of a doing well Los Angeles punk rock perspective.

The founding members were boast punks — singer Belinda Carlisle was briefly a member rot the notorious Germs, guitarist Jane Wiedlin went by the gnat name Jane Drano, and bassist Margot Olavarria resisted and protested when the band grew bonus competent and leaned toward flatter a top 40 pop-rock fillet, calling it a "cutthroat licence for commercial success." 

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"She hated fervent.

She was like, 'I don't wanna be a f****** project band. I'm in a hoodlum band! And I think illustriousness rest of us were liking, 'This is evolving, so f****** get with it or buy out," drummer Gina Schock thought in the documentary The Go-Go's (via the New York Post). But Margot Olavarria didn't conviction the Go-Go's voluntarily.

In 1980, she contracted hepatitis A charge took some time off deseed her band to get raise. When she was ready detonation return, she learned that she'd been replaced by new bassist Kathy Valentine. Olavarria sued dignity Go-Go's in 1982 (a stuff settled two years later) deeprooted she and Carlisle, once close associates and bandmates, never spoke again.

Fame led to an eating mess for Belinda Carlisle

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Belinda Carlisle was the shrink singer of the Go-Go's near so also, its face.

Routes outlets that covered the toggle fixed on Carlisle's appearance. "[They] mentioned how much I weighed — so I was 'cute and chubby,' 'pretty and plump.' It was always about unfocused weight," she told Deseret News. Carlisle had been long shy about weight issues; in grouping memoir, Lips Unsealed, she investigate being called "fat and stupid" by her family.

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Go-Go's bandmate Jane Wiedlin first spotted Belinda Carlisle in L.A.

punk clubs in that she skipped the usual regalia of skimpy miniskirts in vantage of vintage dresses. "At say publicly time, I thought it was just extraordinarily hip. Now Unrestrained know it's because she sense she was heavy," Wiedlin told Rolling Stone. During Carlisle's time advise the Go-Go's, an eating confusion took hold, which in trip led to a dependency set drugs, which she found helped keep her weight lower.

Carlisle also struggled with cycles deadly binge-eating and overcorrecting. "I esoteric a terrible relationship with food," she told ABC News. "If I did eat something misapprehension, I would be on honourableness treadmill for hours and twelve o\'clock noon. "

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Belinda Carlisle was addicted watch over cocaine and alcohol

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A lot of rock stars get involved in cocaine now it helps them get tall and stay there for twelve o\'clock noon on end.

That wasn't by definition so for the Go-Go's minstrel Belinda Carlisle, who'd started dabbling in drugs at the ravage of 14, per The Daily Record. "One of the reasons give it some thought I got into cocaine was because it was an tendency suppressant," she told Fox Word. But then, addiction set solution. According to The Guardian, Carlisle struggled with an extreme dependance on the drug for examine three decades.

"I can't cancel I'm not dead," she blunt. "I should actually look just about the Phantom of the Oeuvre with just two holes be thankful for the front of my face."

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Not just addicted to cocaine, Carlisle also drank alcohol heavily all for years. Even in 1992, from way back pregnant with her son, Artisan, she imbibed daily.

"I didn't notice and I didn't remunerate attention," Carlisle said when starkness would see the visibly expressing singer drinking. "I only detected what I cared to notice." In 2005, at age 47, Carlisle got sober.

Kathy Valentine difficult a rough childhood

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Bassist Kathy Valentine lived a courage befitting a rock star, single of excess, instability, and organized lack of boundaries ...

instruct yet a lot of turn this way went down when she was a child, well before she was ever a member jump at the Go-Go's. According to The Statesman, Valentine's father, an pilot from Lubbock, Texas, split move around the time the future totter star was three, leaving drop mother, Margaret, to raise interpretation child alone.

Kathy Valentine didn't have a lot of clean from her mother — arrangement was the 1960s and Margaret embraced the decade's wild features, giving her daughter free restraint to do whatever she sought, according to her memoir All I Ever Wanted (via Washington Post).

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By age 12, Kathy Valentine was sexually active, unstrained to bed for the precede time with a high school-age boy.

It resulted in smashing pregnancy, and as termination was illegal in her home divulge of Texas at the frustrate, she and her mother army to California to obtain say publicly procedure. A year later, Valentine was hitchhiking and wound relate to each other at an apartment of team a few young men, one of whom assaulted her.

She also exact drugs (sometimes with her mother) and rarely attended school. Amplify her freshman year of extraordinary school, Valentine dropped out work school to attend an vote institution called Greenbriar, and before long thereafter, things improved greatly considering that her mother's boyfriend — smashing drug dealer who'd escaped lock away — taught her how round on play the guitar.

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Charlotte Caffey's carpus issues led to a reach your zenith of problems

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In mid-1983, the Go-Go's were one receive the biggest bands in Indweller music but weathered major tensions from guitarist Charlotte Caffey's unhinged crisis.

Just as the Go-Go's began work on third book Talk Show, Caffey realized she couldn't move several fingers move forward her left hand. Caffey esoteric been stressed from life row a successful band as spasm as a legal fight examine the band's managers. The taxing way she held and stilted her guitar led to efficient diagnosis of carpal tunnel peculiar to, characterized by an inflammation nigh on the cartilage around the carpus.

That cartilage put pressure concentration Caffey's hand muscles and inelegance, making it tough if shed tears painfully impossible to finger overnight case on a guitar's fretboard.

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"It was supposed to last bend in half weeks," Caffey told Rolling Stone, "and it went on famine four months.

Band members came to resent Caffey being 1 to participate in band activities, and at one point, she stopped showing up for rehearsals. "It got to be expert very tense situation — recurrent trying to get you here work when you can't. Uncontrolled think we came very nothing to breaking up." Charlotte Caffey said it led to plant of guilt and depression, mushroom physical therapy eventually improved collect situation, but she still confidential to give up a outline of lead guitar work deviation Talk Show to bandmate Kathy Valentine.

Charlotte Caffey was addicted find time for heroin

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Shortly after connexion the Go-Go's in 1978, musician Charlotte Caffey traveled to England with her boyfriend, Leonard Phillips of punk rock band rendering Dickies, which is where she ramped up her consumption pills substances from more pedestrian table to heroin.

In the emergency supply More Fun in the Latest World: The Unmaking and Birthright of L.A. Punk (via Billboard), Caffey wrote that she "snorted something the size of a-okay matchstick tip" and didn't conclude she would experience any belongings. Instead, she "instantly became addicted" and spent nearly seven grow older dependent on heroin, keeping blow a secret from the further Go-Go's.

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After the band was shipshape to IRS Records in 1981, Caffey thought six weeks inlet New York — away non-native her drug suppliers — nigh record Beauty and the Beat would help her kick class habit, but she instead trolled around the city's seedy Rudiment City neighborhood in search bring to an end heroin.

As the Go-Go's became more successful, Caffey added cocain and fair amounts of liquor to her daily habits crucial would frequently drive under interpretation influence. All the while, she remained the band's most refractory songwriter. In 1984, at nobleness suggestion of new Go-Go's bassist Paula Jean Brown, according proficient the documentary The Go-Go's (via the New York Post), Caffey checked into a rehabilitation program.

Gina Schock underwent heart surgery take into account the peak of the Go-Go's fame

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Around the sicken that the Go-Go's finished their third album, Talk Show, according to Rolling Stone, 26-year-old baron Gina Schock went to fastidious doctor for a routine review, who spotted something wrong pick up again her heart.

Outfitted with skilful monitor and electrodes to guardian her heart's activity during primacy day, tests revealed that Schock had a pebble-sized hole hole her heart. Determined to nurture a congenital birth defect, engage wasn't urgently fatal, but conj admitting left untreated, within 15 lifetime, Schock would have trouble implementation basic tasks without getting weary.

The drummer decided to disorder ahead and get a restorative operation as soon as potential, and she turned down leadership customary rounds of post-op modus operandi painkillers to speed up world-weariness recovery.

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The idea of the besides young Gina Schock dying bazaar a heart problem — ruthlessness on the table during righteousness open heart surgery she prerequisite — brought the band band together in support of Schock.

Give it some thought included a pre-surgical Palm Springs getaway weekend "in case she croaked," guitarist Jane Wiedlin explained in the documentary The Go-Go's (via the New York Post). They gave her alcohol, Benzodiazepine, and psychedelic mushrooms, but wouldn't allow cocaine, in case make certain triggered a heart attack.

Belinda Carlisle and Charlotte Caffey broke bendy the Go-Go's but didn't background the others

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The Go-Go's loom large in '80s tor, but the band's time shell the top was extremely short-lived.

Their first album, Beauty accept the Beat hit stores snare 1981, and the third roost final album (not counting simple 2001 reunion record) came screw up three years later. According succumb to singer Belinda Carlisle's memoir Lips Unsealed, guitarist Jane Wiedlin be made aware the band that she'd assign leaving the Go-Go's after their final tour dates in Oct 1984.

She'd apparently "had and needed to do bodyguard own thing," and had diverted the notion of leaving authority band even earlier. The Go-Go's continued on, briefly, with bassist Kathy Valentine moving to bass to replace Wiedlin and appointment new bassist Paula Jean Brown.

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But for Belinda Carlisle and instrumentalist Charlotte Caffey, the band was out of steam and they didn't have the energy take force it to keep depressing.

And so, in 1985, those two chief creative forces unfailingly the Go-Go's broke up justness band. But they didn't background other veteran members Kathy Valentine and Gina Schock, or regular let them vote on honourableness idea. According to Valentine come to terms with her memoir All I Astute Wanted (via the Washington Post), she and Schock were christened to their managers' office, place they were coldly informed become aware of the Go-Go's ignominious end.

Gina Schock sued the Go-Go's

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When a successful band breaks squeal, the aftermath is far complicate complicated than its members plainly not writing or recording songs together.

It's more like interpretation closing of a business, affair legal and financial contracts ray agreements officially dissolved. That's what happened when the Go-Go's sever up in 1985 — illustriousness band's company, the Go-Go's Firm, which once actively oversaw probity management of the group's separate and finances, shut down.

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After that happened, former Go-Go's industrialist Gina Schock alleged in spiffy tidy up 1997 lawsuit (according to MTV News), that band guitarist squeeze songwriter Charlotte Caffey received material amounts of Go-Go's related funds and "failed to distribute it" properly to her former groupmates. In other words, Schock estimated that she was owed sovereignty payments and that Caffey sat on them.

In the action, the drummer alleged, among carefulness crimes, breach of contract, bite the dust of fiduciary duty, and infringement. Seeking $100,000, the suit was quietly settled, and according endorsement the Seattle Times, Schock scold Caffey signed an agreement competent not discuss the case wacky further.

A reunion tour was postponed when Jane Wiedlin tore set aside ACL

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The Go-Go's aren't all that active of top-notch band anymore as far monkey recording new material goes.

Prestige group released little more prior to three albums in the '80s, a reunion LP in 2001, and the one-off single "Club Zero" in 2020. The Go-Go's of the 21st century generate a comfortable living playing high-mindedness old hits, live and imprison concert, to its throngs allround adoring fans. The band toured in 2011, 2012, 2013, but turn on the waterworks in 2010.

A series farm animals concerts were scrapped when musician Jane Wiedlin suffered a constricting enough injury that prevented respite from touring.

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According to a publicize on the website of give someone the cold shoulder comic book Lady Robotika, Wiedlin was hiking near her San Francisco home in May 2010 when she tumbled down excellent 20-foot cliff.

"I knew lob was terribly wrong with pensive knees as I rolled put together the mountain, because there was a horrendously loud popping get, like champagne being uncorked," Wiedlin said. After two days rivalry bed rest, an MRI arrive at her left knee revealed nickelanddime "exploded ACL," or the ligament that joins the leg unintelligent in the knee.

She authoritative surgery and a year go to seed from live music to vigorously heal, but that was change on the left one.

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"I don't even know yet what hype wrong with my right joint because my insurance would solitary pay for one MRI have emotional impact a time," Wiedlin wrote.

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Kathy Valentine sued the Go-Go's

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In the summer of 2012, honourableness Go-Go's reunited for a flex to celebrate the 30-year tribute of the release of tight breakthrough album Vacation. But vicious circle wasn't a full reunion, regrettably — bassist Kathy Valentine couldn't participate because she couldn't caper, requiring surgery on the lateral radius bone in her carpus, as No Treble reports.

The tour coincided with her recovery and renovation period, and she hoped run into join up for the on top leg of the road animated film. That injury set off well-organized bad chain of events select Valentine and her band.

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"The Go-Go's have parted ways business partner bassist Kathy Valentine, citing lexible differences," the group said story a statement (via No Treble).

Valentine didn't offer up woman on the clapham omnibus additional details at the hold your fire as to the reason send off for her abrupt and formal alteration, but two months later, chattels became a bit more get to the bottom of. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Valentine sued the other two Go-Go's after they reorganized righteousness band's corporate structure in systematic move that reduced Valentine's profit-sharing from 20 percent to 2 percent, costing her in depiction neighborhood of $1 million.

Valentine additionally alleged that the unit conspired to keep her nip in the bud of a summer 2013 expedition. Fortunately, by 2018, according die the Los Angeles Times, integrity lawsuit was resolved (settled hark back to of court) and relationships mended enough for Kathy Valentine constitute rejoin the Go-Go's for concurrence dates.

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