Monday, June 18, 2012

Belinda And Lorna Doom Try To Stalk Freddie Mercury, Meet Darby Crash And Pat Smear Instead


What do you do when your favorite band is in town? Go see them in concert, right?

Don't be silly. You go to the hotel where they're staying and you try to stalk them!
I was at work one day in early 1977 when Theresa called me with breaking news. Queen was in town.

That night, we dressed up and went to the hotel. Theresa had found out what Freddie Mercury's room number was, and we headed straight for it after making it through the lobby and into the elevator without getting stopped.

Outside his room, we encountered two other freaks on a similar mission to meet Freddie. They told us their names, Bobby Breahm and Georg Rutherberg. They were our age and from West Los Angeles. They immediately pegged us as a couple of girls from the Valley. It didn't matter.

"Is this Freddie's room?" I asked.

They nodded and added that they had been camped out there for a while and hadn't seen him come or go.

"Or heard anything going on inside," one of them added.

Theresa and I turned toward the door and knocked. We waited and then hit it again. We probably knocked about a dozen times without anyone ever coming to the door. In retrospect, I know from personal experience that this didn't mean he wasn't in there. I've been in plenty of hotel rooms over the course of my career and heard fans in the hallway debating whether or not to knock on my door, and then knock over and over again. I never open the door.
Belinda, you are so ... mysterious! It's like she's talking about the metaphorical door ... to her soul.
Eventually we sat down in the hallway and forgot all about Freddie. Instead we got to know one another. We talked for hours about music and emerged at the end of the night as friends. Bobby and Georg said they were going to start a band and asked if we wanted to be in it. Theresa and I said yes.
And that band ... became the Go-Go's.

See, that's the funny part. That band did not actually become the Go-Go's. In your normal pop star narrative, that band would have totally become the Go-Go's right there. But this is no ordinary pop star narrative, my friends. This is Lips Unsealed.

The band that she's talking about ... became the Germs.

I repeat: the Germs.

Still not making that up.