Authors: Belinda Carlisle
One day I got a package with a half gram in it and later that night I went with Kathy to the Mudd Club, where we were having a good time when John Belushi sidled up alongside us. John was one of my favorite comedians, and he was an equally big fan of the Go-Go’s. He had seen us play the previous December at the Whisky and partied with us a bit backstage afterward. After Kathy and I traded hellos with him and explained why we were in New York, I asked if he wanted a hit of my coke.
Because of his reaction, I almost felt like I had insulted him. First his eyes widened, then he pulled Kathy and me close so we could hear him better, and then he proceeded to give us a stern lecture on the evils of drug use, fame, and the sycophant-filled world of show business. I was shocked. I felt kind of embarrassed and stupid for having offered him coke.
A week later, the phone in my hotel room rang at one in the morning.
It was John. He said he was in the lobby and asked if he could come up. I said, “Sure, we’re up.” A moment later, I let him in and then stood back, shocked, as he blew past me like a blast of wind and circled the room. He was wild-eyed and obviously wired. He took a huge vial of coke out of his pocket, dumped it on his hand, and looked at me and Kathy and the other girls with the face of a toxic teddy bear.
“Do you want some?” he asked.
We knew John had serious issues with drugs. If we hadn’t known, we certainly saw them laid out in thick, messy lines on our dining room table. We obviously weren’t Girl Scouts, but he was in a different league, and it scared us. We declined his offer to get high, and we said no when he invited us out to hit the clubs. None of us felt comfortable being part of that craziness.
After he left, I turned to the girls and said, “Didn’t he just lecture us about not doing drugs and avoiding that whole scene?”
It was strange and stranger still in retrospect. John left our place and eventually found a cabdriver who drove him around for a couple of days as he hit clubs and late-night clubs and God knows where else.
If it wasn’t the start of his rapid decline, it was part of it. I could tell he was in trouble.
That said, our producers, Rob Freeman and Richard Gottehrer, had their hands full with us. We were either drinking and partying in the studio or hungover from the night before. Kathy and I went to clubs every night and stayed out until all hours. When the clubs closed around two
A
.
M
., we rounded up whoever was left and went to the after-hours joints, where we sang, played drinking games, and flirted until we crawled out at around eight in the morning.
I don’t even remember when we worked. But we did—and we had fun. We were probably relaxed because we had such a wealth of good material. With what I know now after having recorded so many albums, I realize there’s nothing like that first album. You have years to work on that material—to write and hone as many songs as you can create—to get rid of the bad ones, perfect the good ones, and treasure the great ones.
We actually had too many songs. One of my favorites, “Fun with Ropes,” didn’t end up making the album. We left those important choices mainly up to Rob, who had worked with Blondie, and Richard, who had written the pop classics “My Boyfriend’s Back” and “I Want Candy” in the sixties. They had taste and knew what they were doing.
The album, which I had already titled
Beauty and the Beat
, came together pretty easily. I remember everyone having trouble laying down the basic tracks for “We Got the Beat,” which we were redoing from the UK version. Everyone’s timing was a little off. We took a break, ordered in pizza, and tried it again. We nailed it on the first take. Food always worked with us.
The album’s biggest hit, “Our Lips Are Sealed,” was a gem that we’d played for a year. Jane had gotten involved with the Specials’ lead singer, Terry Hall, when we’d been in London, but he had a girlfriend. After we left, he sent Jane a letter about their complicated situation. She set some of the lines from that letter to music, added some lyrics of her own (she’s a genius), and voila, she had “Our Lips Are Sealed.” I knew it was a hit as soon as I heard it, and I was right. The song only got better the more we played it.
The entire album was like a time capsule: “Tonight” captured the vibe of being on Hollywood Boulevard; “Lust to Love,” which Jane wrote, was immediately one of my favorite Go-Go’s songs; “Automatic” was about Jane’s boyfriend Dean, who was in the Rockats; “You Can’t Walk in Your Sleep,” a Charlotte and Jane collaboration, was about Jane’s problem with insomnia and occasional tendency to sleepwalk; Kathy brought in the song “Can’t Stop the World,” which she had originally intended for the Textones, but it was such a natural for us. Finally, “Skidmarks on My Heart,” which I cowrote with Charlotte, was about my brother, who was going through a hard time; my cat; and my first car, the one missing the passenger side.
Like the title, I came up with the concept for the album’s front and back cover before we ever left L.A. I thought putting us in face masks and wearing only towels was a look that would be timeless. Take away our identities and clothes and we were women who would be just as current in twenty-five years as we were then. And I think I was right. The back cover, showing all of us in a bubble bath, was supposed to be
pure girly fun, and it was—except we shot the photo in our hotel room and the Mr. Bubble in the tub gave all of us an infection.
We were back in L.A. and rehearsing for upcoming gigs in one of the large rooms at Studio Instrument Rentals, or SIR, a Hollywood production facility, when the label messengered a copy of the finished album to us. We ran out excitedly to the parking lot and listened to it from start to finish in someone’s car. Our hopes were so high and before we pushed the Play button we were all shushing one another. Then the drums kicked into the first cut, “Our Lips Are Sealed,” and we quieted down. We let the next ten tracks play without too many comments either way, and finally, after about thirty-five minutes, we just looked at one another for reactions.
We weren’t happy—or as happy as we had hoped. In the studio, we had thought we were making a great punk album. On hearing the final version, it sounded more pop than we had anticipated.
We weren’t going for anything as hard as Margot had wanted, but we’d had more of an edge in mind. Everyone had little criticisms. In my case, I was horrified by my vocals. They had been sped up and I found it painful to hear myself race through those songs.
Don’t get me wrong. We recognized the album’s charm. But we still wanted it remixed.
We took our case to Miles, who said no. As he explained, he got exactly the record he had wanted from us. He loved it. Then, of course, as a wider audience responded positively to the album, all of us began to change our opinion and think, Oh, it’s not
that
bad. Later on, we upgraded it again. On June 12, “Our Lips Are Sealed” was released as the first single. We promoted it with an in-store appearance at the Licorice Pizza record store on Sunset Boulevard, and thanks to nonstop promotion from Rodney, plus advertising, the store was already mobbed when we pulled up in a limo. We stayed all afternoon, signing autographs for every single person.
I was in Buster’s car the first time I heard the new single on the radio. We were on Sunset, and he turned up the volume. As much as I didn’t
like my vocals, I couldn’t stop grinning, moving, or singing along with the radio. I was on the radio: I felt like a rock star.
We celebrated the single with a sold-out show at the Roxy, and then a month later, at the end of July, we played one show in Palo Alto and immediately followed that with a much bigger bash at home.
“Cute
. That’s what I thought two years ago when I first saw the Go-Go’s,” wrote critic Robert Hilburn in the
Los Angeles Times. “Great
. That’s what I thought after seeing the Go-Go’s concert Friday night at the sold-out Hollywood Palladium. The quintet not only has more spirit than ever, but its musicianship is also vastly improved …”
For me, though, that show was as much a good-bye as it was a triumph in front of the hometown fans. I had moved with Ann McLean into the Trianon Apartments from Disgraceland, where, sadly, I felt a little too exposed and unprotected. I didn’t know how to deal with losing my anonymity. I just knew it made me uncomfortable. But I had no time to think about that or anything else.
In August, we hit the road for a month of shows back east. We rented a big white van and piled in, all of us: band members, roadies, and equipment. We turned the van into a pit on wheels; I mean, we defaced it in every possible way, letting trash and stink pile up and writing on the walls as we drove from Boston to Philadelphia and into Canada, opening on an all-IRS lineup featuring us and Oingo Boingo and topped by the Police, who provided our first up-close exposure to real rock stars, with their big entourages, bodyguards, fancy coaches, and private jet.
Sting was nice but aloof and seemed to be reading a Sartre book whenever he had free time. Gina palled around with Stewart, and Charlotte had a brief fling with Andy Summers. All of us attended Miles’s wedding in New York and jammed at the beautiful reception he had at Tavern on the Green in Central Park. We also played a show at the Ritz, where I spotted the Who’s Pete Townshend and other rock royalty checking us out. Even though I was not starstruck, I regretted not having been able to hang out with them.
In September, as reviews and mentions of us appeared in
People
and
Rolling Stone
magazines, we returned to L.A. and watched with a mix of curiosity and amazement as our video for “Our Lips Are Sealed” hit
MTV, the brand-new music TV network that had launched only the month before. I was clueless about the impact it would have on music, fashion, and pop culture.
Just to show where my head was at, I thought making a music video was a stupid idea. I had grumbled about it being a waste of time and asked why I had to do it. It just seemed ridiculous, and so I gave it a half-assed effort. I couldn’t even be bothered to get out of the car when, after tooling around in the convertible, we pulled up in front of Trashy Lingerie and Jane did her solo, singing, “Hush, my darling.” If you look close, you can see me hiding; I’m bent down but the top of my head shows.
We also tried to amuse ourselves by getting arrested. That’s how we ended up frolicking in the water fountain at the intersection of Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards. We thought if we jumped in, a cop would see us, stop, and there’d be a confrontation, which we would capture on tape. But nobody came to arrest us. Cars just slowed and some guys honked and whistled at us.
When I think back on those early days of MTV, all I remember seeing is a lot of the Split Enz hit “I Got You.” I noticed them because of a funny thing that happened a year earlier when I was living at Disgraceland. It was the night we were having one of the more infamous parties in that place’s history, an event we had dubbed the Forbidden Foods Party. It was girls only—no boys allowed. About thirty of us got together, and the two requirements for admission were that you had to wear a negligee and bring the most fattening food you could find.
We were in the middle of this party, drinking from a giant bowl of alcoholic punch, dancing around, eating, and acting crazy, when there was a knock at the door. We opened it and Neil Finn and some of the guys from Split Enz were standing there. They said they had just come to town and heard there was a party, so they showed up. It made perfect sense to me. What do you do when you get to town? You find out where the party is and go. So I told them to come on in and enjoy themselves.
How could they not? There were thirty girls prancing around half-naked, eating pizza, French fries, cannolis, and cream puffs. They
didn’t know what hit them. To this day, whenever I see Neil, he says, “Do you remember that party?” And there’s always a twinkle in his eye.
In October, we flew to Rockford, Illinois, to open for the Rolling Stones, which was incredible just to say out loud. It was also weird, thrilling, and probably the most nerve-wracking gig I had played to that point—not because of the size of the crowd as much as knowing Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and the rest of the legendary band were watching us. Only a few years earlier I was in high school and listening to their albums.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have any interaction with them other than seeing Mick stretching before the show. But that’s how those shows could be; you could have several bands backstage and they never saw one another because of their different preperformance rituals.
Then we flew back to L.A. and performed several concerts up and down the coast before finishing up with three star-studded nights at the Greek Theatre. Talk about a great venue. The theater was outdoors and nestled in the hills of Griffith Park, and the number of stars in the sky seemed to match the number of stars in the audience. One night I looked out and saw Steve Martin in the front row. The next I saw Al Pacino. Midway through that second show I also spotted Rod Stewart and between songs I turned to Jane, made sure she saw the celebrities, and said, “This is really freaking me out.”
As cool as I tried to look in the spotlight, I couldn’t get over the fact that these people, these stars, were coming out to see anything I was part of. I couldn’t reconcile the larger picture that people were interested in me. But they were; interview requests streamed in. I put on a funny face for
People
magazine, which photographed me goofing around with Buster for a profile on the band in October. The next month, I mused more seriously to the
Boston Globe
, saying that while success hadn’t changed me, I was “afraid of [others’] perspectives of me changing. I can’t exactly go out of my head and go dance and have a great time because I’m constantly being judged.”
True, but it didn’t really inhibit my behavior. In November, we guested on
Saturday Night Live
, along with Bernadette Peters and Billy Joel. The appearance was a significant moment for us.
Beauty and the Beat
was
number 20 on the Billboard 200 chart and climbing; the exposure on a show that defined hot to America’s youth was going to keep that momentum going. And in terms of pop culture, playing on
SNL
was huge; in fact, it blew my mind to think that we were big enough to be on the show.