Whenever I hear someone complain about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I'm inclined to recycle the line I typically use regarding the Oscars: "Whenever I'm tempted to complain about the Oscars, I just look at the Grammys."
Because for me, at least the other two are somewhere in the ballpark, whereas the Grammys have always just seemed inscrutably random. But not everyone's so sanguine about the situation. About fifteen years ago, the comments section of every single article on Rolling Stone's website that even tangentially mentioned the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was littered with statements along the lines of "The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a complete joke!!! Look at all the great acts that aren't in!!" And I'd think to myself, "Yeah!" And then these anonymous internet arbiters of taste would go on to explain that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was a "joke" due to its not yet having inducted ... Rush, Kiss, Chicago, Yes, or Journey. Uh ... not exactly the big exclusions I'd had in mind. I'd been thinking more along the lines of, say, Tom Waits, Roxy Music, T. Rex, or Todd Rundgren. Well, those four are all in now (as are the other five I mentioned), so ... thanks a lot, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, you've robbed me of my God-given right to complain about you.
The thing is, people like to call the Hall of Fame a "joke," but everyone has had their own separate reasons as to why it is a joke. You've got your "classic rock" fans perturbed by the absence of Styx, Kansas, Toto, and REO Speedwagon, and then you've got your '80s alternative scenesters griping about the absence of Black Flag, the Replacements, the Pixies, and Sonic Youth, and each cluster would surely refer to the other cluster's preferences as a "joke." So which joke is it? It can't be a joke both ways, eh? Then you've got the people whose biggest problem with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is simply its name. "Why are Madonna and Whitney Houston in while Iron Maiden and Judas Priest aren't? What a joke!" Come on guys, we all understand it's basically the Pop Music Hall of Fame, but with a cooler name. Go back to your Magic: The Gathering tournament.
But while I caught the Go-Go's bug around ten years ago, and would now defend their greatness even at the risk of lethal harm, I never quite felt they were an egregious exclusion from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. To put it simply, their discography is a little brief. Three albums from the original run, plus a reunion album from 2001, and a few other stray tracks here and there? I mean, bands like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest have accrued these monolithic, bottomless discographies of, you know, 20 to 30 albums, and sure, most people probably couldn't name any of the albums they've released since the '80s, but what I'm saying is, there are groups out there that have left behind some serious recording catalogs. I'm just not sure the Go-Go's' peak was long enough to merit that same level of outrage.
Oh sure, but what about the Stooges (three albums), or the Sex Pistols (one measly album)? Uh huh. Not that I myself prefer those acts to the Go-Go's, but I don't think I'm going out on a limb here by stating that the Stooges and the Sex Pistols, despite their equally truncated discographies, were more musically influential (and certainly more threatening to the status quo) than the Go-Go's were. In fact, putting on my All Music Guide hat for a moment, I feel like I could rattle off the names of at least ten more acts from the punk/new wave era whom I would say, as a more impartial observer, have proven to be more "musically influential" than the Go-Go's were, and yet have hardly even been mentioned as potential Hall of Fame inductees: the Jam, the Buzzcocks, Wire, the Fall, the Specials, Madness, Joe Jackson, Squeeze, the Soft Boys, XTC ... am I at ten yet? Of course, all of these bands were British, and none of them had a massive US #1 album. I'm not saying that I personally like any one of those artists more than I like the Go-Go's. That's not the point. I am someone who is able to differentiate between my own affection for a band and my sense of where that band might rank in the "I can't believe they're not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!" outrage hierarchy. Long story short: I was not appalled by the Go-Go's' exclusion.
However, the Go-Go's themselves apparently were. They kept mentioning it in interviews. They kept talking about how it was so freaking obvious that they should have already been inducted that there must have been a secret Skull-and-Bones style conspiracy to keep them out. The All Music Guide had this to say about their recent Showtime documentary: "There's a recent subcategory of music documentary best described as 'Our case for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,' and this dash through the history of the Go-Go's clearly falls into that bucket." I guess the Broadway musical wasn't enough of an honor? As a fan of the highest order, I wasn't eager to say it, but ... I'm not sure this was the best look. I might have suggested they gain a little more outside perspective, or perhaps simply not care so ... transparently. (A quick message from Little Earl to every band that's eligible for the Hall of Fame but is not yet in it: as far as I can tell, whether you're in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or not has absolutely no bearing on the quality, value, or importance of your music.) I also began to wonder if they were playing up the "feminism" angle of their story a little too heavily, now that "the kids these days" are more into that sort of thing. Some of the band members had even suggested they were being kept out of the Hall due to sexism. Yeah, I dunno, I think it probably had more to do with their meager three-album discography, and the fact that only one of the albums within it is generally considered "classic," and not their gender, but hey, that's just me.
I also have yet to be convinced that the lack of female artists in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ranks terribly high on the list of modern society's civil rights injustices, just as I could never get too wrapped up in the whole #OscarsSoWhite debate. I mean ... it's the Oscars. Who thinks the Oscars are actually important? (I guess #GrammysSoWhite could have never gained much traction because nobody thinks the Grammys are important.) When I would read articles stating that the Go-Go's should be inducted into the Hall of Fame because, that way, the Hall could instantly add five more women into the Hall of Fame ... like, isn't that a little patronizing? Isn't the whole point that they shouldn't be inducted because of their gender per se, but because they made passionate, heartfelt, playful, well-crafted music and didn't give a fuck about what other people thought of them? Frankly, what I personally love about the Go-Go's isn't so much that they were the first all-female band to suddenly score a #1 album, but that they were the first trash-bag-and-safety-pin-festooned L.A. punk band to suddenly score a #1 album. To me, that's the story. And the Go-Go's are only half the story anyway, because you've got to factor in the unfettered Yuppie zaniness of Belinda's late '80s solo career. Of course, the other four members of the band ... uh ... don't really see that as part of the story.
Well, at any rate, they're in now! What, you expected me to complain? The nice thing is, they're all still alive - something of a minor miracle, given their various substance abuse "adventures," the general unpredictability of human health after the age of 60, and the fact that they are a band of five, and that many bands of their generation, such as the Pretenders, the Cars, Devo, or the B-52's, can no longer perform as their original lineup. Not to mention, the five of them are currently getting along well enough to attend the damn ceremony together (something that was not true even four years ago). I just hope this means they can finally spend their time talking about something else.
But the thing is, the Go-Go's have already spent 30 years talking about the same old things anyway, which I suppose is what happens when a group's heyday only consisted of a blindingly bright four-year supernova, when only the lead singer ever managed to genuinely establish an identity for herself outside the group, and when the other not-so-famous members all need to make a living somehow and yet don't feel like releasing too much more new music under the Go-Go's umbrella. This is probably something only an obsessive fan who has watched way too many post-1980s Go-Go's YouTube clips would even gripe about, but after a while, every interview starts to sound the same and every version of "We Got the Beat" simply bleeds into the others. And given that, aside from "Head Over Heels," they've essentially retired Talk Show from their concert setlist, that's two albums of material they've been milking dry for 30 years now. Just imagine what life must be like for a one hit wonder.
Perhaps the most amusing aspect, then, of revisiting the Go-Go's' 1990 reunion (ostensibly the intended subject of this post), is to observe how much of a big freaking deal both the band themselves and the media in general made of it, without anyone involved knowing, of course, that this "reunion" would last five times longer than their original recording career did.
So. While Belinda had been busy running around indulging in mermaid cosplay with the Beach Boys, convincing George Harrison to play on her album almost as a dare, unexpectedly flirting with Sammy Davis, Jr. and Dave Mustaine, and generally ascending to her throne as the undisputed Queen of Yuppie Rock, what the hell had the other former Go-Go's been up to? It's sort of like asking what Michael Collins was up to while the other two astronauts were busy walking on the moon: far from your first question, but at some point, it probably crosses your mind.
In addition to hitching her wagon to the Belinda solo train, Charlotte formed the Graces, which included a young Meredith Brooks (of future "Bitch" fame - and I mean that in the nicest way), although their lone 1989 album didn't set the charts on fire. At some point, she also married Jeff McDonald of Redd Kross. But basically, yeah, she hitched her wagon to the Belinda solo train.
Jane, whom astute readers may recall, actually left the Go-Go's to try her hand at a solo career before the band even officially broke up and stuff, released Jane Wiedlin in 1985 and Fur in 1988, which didn't exactly do Belinda-type numbers either, but her single "Rush Hour" certainly did, hitting #9 in the U.S. and #12 in the U.K. Many are the internet comments I've read expressing great fondness for "Rush Hour," but I don't recall hearing it back in 1988, and it hasn't quite grown on me much since I first heard it roughly ten years ago. Although AMG's Stewart Mason writes that "Jane Wiedlin's 1985 solo debut is probably the best solo album by any ex-member of the Go-Go's" and that "the singles 'Modern Romance' and 'Blue Kiss' really should have been hits (they're certainly better than most of Belinda Carlisle's solo work)," I mean ... I dunno ... I guess I'm just a Carlisle-ophile. For me, listening to Jane Wiedlin solo material is like eating roasted garlic all by itself. Roasted garlic is good in stuff. Adding roasted garlic to a soup? Mmmmm. But eating roasted garlic all by itself? Sure, some people might enjoy that. Probably not most people.
Kathy attempted to form a band called the World's Cutest Killers with Kelly Johnson, former guitarist of Girlschool (AKA "the Go-Go's' New Wave of British Heavy Metal counterparts"), but sadly neither it, nor a few other fledgling bands, ever got off the ground.
Gina formed the gloriously-named House of Schock with Vance DeGeneres, older brother of Ellen (!), but if you're wondering how well their lone album did, all I need to tell you is that House of Schock doesn't even have its own Wikipedia page. Hey, not every band has a Phil Collins in them, all right?
In summary: Charlotte was doing fine, Jane wasn't doing as well as she'd hoped to be doing but could have been doing worse (and let's not forget Clue and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure), and Kathy and Gina, who were adamantly against the band breaking up to begin with, found their concerns solidly confirmed. I feel like this should put Belinda's griping about stuff like Runaway Horses "only" going gold into a little perspective.
But alas, as we all know, despite radiating a surface aura of nonstop success, Belinda felt like shit virtually the entire time, and she definitely felt like shit at the dawn of the '90s, particularly after becoming reacquainted with her old powdery friend in Ibiza. For the first time in five years, perhaps Belinda wasn't quite feeling the solo "magic." Funny how, back in 1985, the band must have seemed like a stifling, suffocating force, but now, given the pressures of maintaining her worldwide solo stardom, a resurgent coke habit, an eating disorder or two, and her marriage to her ever-loyal husband now revolving around a certain degree of untruth ... perhaps reverting back to the warm and protective cocoon of the Go-Go's didn't seem quite so stifling and suffocating after all! From Lips Unsealed:
On the bright side, I crossed paths with Gina one day. After a fun catch-up, the two of us on a whim arranged for a reunion with the other Go-Go's. Without telling anyone, we met for dinner at an Italian restaurant in West Hollywood. It was the first time the five of us had been together since Jane left and our subsequent breakup. All of us were nervous. Jane held up her palms and said, "They're sweaty!"
We agreed to one ground rule: none of us would say anything that would piss off someone else. Then we had a great time. We reminisced about the crazy times we'd had in the early days, offered apologies for things said in the latter days, worked through some hard feelings, and, as we told a local reporter who got wind of the reunion, we realized "even the bad times we've gone through didn't seem so bad."
I left dinner appreciating the special camaraderie the five of us shared - and that it had survived. But all was not rosy. As I later confessed to Morgan, I felt uncomfortable about having a successful solo career when some of the other girls were struggling in their endeavors. While Jane and Charlotte were both working on albums, Gina's label had dropped her and Kathy didn't have a deal.
I realized everyone might benefit from a Go-Go's reunion. I mentioned it to my manager, Danny Goldberg, who had a lengthy background as a political activist ... He loved the idea of a Go-Go's reunion. But it sat a few months until Danny found the right event, a fund-raiser Jane Fonda was spearheading for California's environmental ballot initiative. It sounded good to me. I called the girls. Everyone was game.
In January, we announced our reunion show at a press conference with Jane Fonda.
"I think we have about ten years, and if we don't do it in ten years, we're in big trouble," she says? Well. Good thing we solved the world's environmental crisis back in 2000, eh?
Somehow environmentalism morphed into anti-fur activism, an issue one certainly doesn't hear quite as much about these days, possibly because most furry animals are nearing extinction anyway. The band posed "naked" with a poster declaring "I'd rather Go-Go naked than wear fur!" Funny funny.
Sadly, those expecting actual nudity would have to wait another 10 years for Belinda's appearance in Playboy.
Two and a half months later, we got together for rehearsals at SIR, where I was also in rehearsals for my Runaway Horses tour. I felt self-conscious running back and forth between rehearsals and maybe some resentment from the other girls, who I sensed - and it could have been me being overly sensitive - looked at me as Miss High and Mighty with her rock band, getting ready for her world tour. At the end of the day, I was feeling like I should apologize.
You owe them nothing, Belinda, nothing!
But I was able to set that aside and enjoy stepping back into the Go-Go's. It wasn't hard for me to switch gears. The band was part of my DNA. On March 27, we played a surprise warm-up show as the KLAMMS at the Whiskey, a stage that was like a second home in our punk days. We still looked like an odd collection: Jane wore short-shorts, Kathy was in a polka-dot negligee, Charlotte radiated laid-back L.A. rock chic in a long, embroidered shirt, Gina had on her trademark jeans and T-shirt, and I was in a fancy black gown that a girlfriend of mine laughingly said made me look like I had dressed to go to Harry's Bar in London.
If the dress she's describing is the one that she appears to be wearing in almost every single Go-Go's clip from 1990, I'm inclined to describe it more as her "Disney princess" look, but fair enough.
The fun we had carried over into the next night at the Universal Amphitheater when we performed a set of the band's hits to a crowd of L.A. politicos and celebrities that included Jodie Foster, Rob Lowe, John McEnroe and Tatum O'Neal, and Sandra Bernhard. Afterward, all of us were agreeable to doing more shows and maybe even a tour later in the year when IRS released a greatest hits package.
Since the tales of drug abuse and acrimony had already been told in at least part of the press, the Go-Go's two-month reunion tour in November and December 1990 gave us a chance to focus on the thing that mattered most: the impressive collection of music we had put together before calling it quits six years earlier. With a new greatest-hits package that included a snappy remix of "Cool Jerk," plus a video featuring the five of us looking like a million bucks, everyone agreed we could make a point about our contribution to the eighties. If we also made a profit, no one would complain.
Another version of "Cool Jerk"? Hey, why not? As Belinda hints at, I.R.S. decided to take advantage of the reunion to put out a Go-Go's greatest hits album, whether the band wanted one out or not, so a remake of "Cool Jerk" was included as the *cough* new product. Of all the Go-Go's' 438 different versions of "Cool Jerk" (the early demo featured on Return to the Valley of the Go-Go's, the proper studio version released on Vacation, various live versions), I think I'm into this one the most, despite it sounding like their attempt to be the B-52's circa Cosmic Thing. The issue I've always had with the Go-Go's' perennial obsession with covering "Cool Jerk" is that, while it certainly stems from the right era (the Capitols' original came out in 1966), it lacks the angst and turmoil of, say, "Remember (Walking in the Sand)." It's the kind of song a casual Go-Go's fan might think the Go-Go's would cover. Like John Lennon with "Across the Universe," apparently the group kept hoping that just one more version would finally be the "right" one.
At any rate, the band milked their 1990 reunion for all it was worth, and trying to view every YouTube clip from this period kind of feels like swatting at flies in a swamp, but allow me to share a few highlights. Notice how, at the 2:00 mark during this interview for E!, while Kathy observes, with touching sincerity, that "the songs really held up over all this time, you know, it wasn't like I felt like we were doing something old, it felt just as current today," Belinda blatantly fiddles with the neckline of her dress for at least ten consecutive seconds, sneakily letting the world know that, yes indeed, "bad" Belinda was back. And get a load of this line: "Their very public break-up and subsequent solo careers have given them a very grounded perspective for this 'Go-Go' a-round." Oy.
Plus, every time Belinda tries to say something serious during one of these interviews, someone else in the band quickly makes fun of her. For example:
Belinda: Gandhi said, um ...Gina: [giggles]Belinda: I know, I'm just saying I thought it was a really good quote ...Kathy: She can quote Gandhi if she wants.Gina: [continues to giggle]Belinda: I know, I'm not trying to be intellectual but he said, "The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way it treats its animals" ...
Also, who can forget this Bugle Boy commercial that apparently aired during Super Bowl XXV?
Sorry Bills, the Go-Go's must have jinxed you.
More important, having already come to terms on past disagreements, we felt like we could get along, and for the most part we did. We preceded a kickoff appearance on David Letterman's late-night talk show with a heavy-duty shopping spree in New York City that reminded me of the fun we used to have together. Onstage, I had a blast singing the old songs and looking to either side and seeing Gina and Kathy in sync and watching Jane and Charlotte trade riffs.
Belinda also apparently had a blast indulging in the kind of naughty stage banter that probably wouldn't have flown at her solo concerts, particularly when introducing the band's re-worked acoustic version of Talk Show's somewhat overlooked closing track "Mercenary," one riveting version of which appears on Return to the Valley of the Go-Go's. "This next song ... is about a girl who likes to be mean ... I know I like to be mean," she proclaims to immediate applause (sadly the version on Return to the Valley doesn't feature the comment added at other shows, "Charlotte likes to spank her boyfriend"). It should also be mentioned that, whether the band liked it or not, by December of 1990, Belinda's voice was kind of hoarse and shredded and she'd probably had one gin and tonic too many, which might either add or detract a little something, depending on your point of view. Toward the end of "Mercenary," for instance, she really lets it rip like she rarely has before or since, perhaps the cover of being in her "old" band providing her the freedom to let her sound as fucked up as she probably felt.
Occasionally the old jealousies reared their head. The girls didn't like it when we pulled up to one venue and the marquee read "Belinda Carlisle and the Go-Go's." Several hotels also gave me a larger room than the others even after we made sure to tell them everyone in the band was equal. I even forced a couple of the girls to see my room before they checked into theirs so they knew I wasn't creating the problem. After a few more times, though, I got fed up with the carping and complaining and had a Neely O'Hara-type moment when I snapped, "I can't help it if I'm a bigger star than you!"
That's the spirit. (I guess if I'd seen Valley of the Dolls instead of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, I would have picked up on Belinda's "Neely O'Hara" reference, but I had to look it up.)
Ironically, I kept myself on the road as much as possible. Without consciously realizing it, I was running from my life. In mid-December, though, the Go-Go's tour ended and I returned home, which meant either facing hard truths about my behavior or lying to Morgan.
I chose the latter.
Did we expect anything less?
