Authors: Belinda Carlisle
“I’m sorry,” I said, dissolving into tears. “I’m sorry.”
He was upset and didn’t know what to do. Neither did I. As his initial
burst of anger and my shock dissipated, we shared a look of helplessness and desperation. He loved me, and I loved him, and it was just such a pathetic, disappointing, awful moment. The way Morgan looked at me, I don’t know if anyone in my whole life had ever seen me as nakedly honest, vulnerable, and in pain as he was seeing me right then.
I needed him to hold me as I regrouped and we regained our equilibrium not just that day but going forward. He never gave me an ultimatum; I simply knew that I had to get sober. And that’s what I did—sort of.
As any recovering addict knows, you can’t be “sort of” sober. It’s all or nothing. But I devised my own plan. I didn’t want to check into rehab; I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing my dirty laundry unfurled in the press. In retrospect, it shouldn’t have been a big deal. If I was going to admit I had a problem, it shouldn’t have mattered if I admitted it to one person or a million. What did matter, though, was admitting the whole and honest truth to myself, and I couldn’t do that.
I thought I was taking the right steps when I confessed to Morgan and then sought out Charlotte, who was recently out of rehab and attending meetings. She was extremely understanding and helpful. With her help and encouragement, I stopped doing coke right away. She took me to twelve-step meetings and I began attending Cocaine Anonymous meetings on my own, too. But I concocted or rationalized my own version of the program, one where I could drink, pop pills, and do hallucinogens—anything except cocaine. That was my one rule: no coke.
I was proud of my progress. Once I told someone who had a number of years of sobriety under his belt that I was in “the program,” a euphemism for being sober and attending twelve-step meetings. He asked if I attended meetings. I said, “Sometimes.” Skeptical, he asked who my sponsor was. I said that I was sponsoring myself. Seeing that I was serious, he shook his head slightly, an almost imperceptible acknowledgment that I didn’t get it, and said, “Okay, good luck.”
Though I was deluded about my self-styled sobriety, I did straighten up considerably by giving up cocaine. In March and April, I went back to work with the Go-Go’s. The five of us rehearsed with the
intention of making a new album. We tried to come up with our own songs and we worked through songs outside writers had submitted. The record company wanted more creative control over the band’s next steps. We didn’t like it, but we didn’t have any better ideas.
Frustrated at every turn and no good at communicating with one another, the band devolved into factions, with Charlotte and me pitted against Kathy and Gina, and Paula left uncomfortably alone on the periphery as we fought during rehearsals. The demos we recorded sounded terrible. I went home to Morgan at night and said what I didn’t dare say in front of the other girls: The band had lost its creative center. It no longer felt like the Go-Go’s.
I talked about it endlessly with Morgan, who advised me to think it through carefully and listen to my instincts. He also told me not to procrastinate and let a bad situation grow worse, because I would miss other opportunities.
And that was the thing. I wasn’t able to retreat to a golden castle and do nothing for the rest of my life. I had less than $20,000 to my name when I moved in with Morgan slightly less than six months earlier. I had blown God only knew how much money on drugs, travel, clothes, and even a racehorse I purchased on a whim for some ghastly sum. I needed to work.
I finally met secretly with Charlotte, who agreed with me that after two months of work the only decent, Go-Go’s-sounding song we had was “Mad About You,” which Paula had brought in. Otherwise the band wasn’t working anymore. It was early May 1985. We had an album to record and a tour to set up. But both struck us as unlikely. The lack of material aside, the dynamics were way off and no one was getting along. Charlotte and I decided it was time to call it a day.
We talked it through until we assured ourselves that the band had stopped moving forward artistically and that we as individuals were stifled. We could do other things. I had already been approached about doing a solo album. Though that hadn’t been an option when the band was my top and only priority, it sounded viable now, and Charlotte was amenable to working with me.
The two of us called a meeting with the other girls on the second
Friday of the month and broke the news that we wanted to end the band. Kathy and Gina were not just shocked, they were blindsided and fought back with anger and bitterness at the way we handled the situation. Kathy insisted we were overreacting and had overcome worse, but I kept to the basic premise: the band wasn’t working, the songs were terrible, and the chemistry wasn’t there.
They also blamed the breakup on Morgan, as if he was the Yoko Ono of the band, maintaining I had changed since meeting him. I had changed, but only because I wasn’t off my trolley on coke anymore and began to have some opinions. But they were mine, not Morgan’s. It wasn’t fair to blame him—or true.
For the next eight months, I worked on
Belinda
, my first solo album. I dove in without thinking about any of the pressure-packed issues I would face later on when I actually stepped out publicly and faced critics, Go-Go’s fans, and the new reality that I was on my own. I moved quickly, sticking to the relatively safe and familiar pop territory for which I was known. Should I have tried to develop an edgier sound or gone back to my punk roots? In retrospect, I wish I had pushed it to a harder place. But I wasn’t in that headspace. Nor did I have that kind of creative freedom as a new artist.
I was working with veteran producer Michael Lloyd, and we chose Paula’s infectious pop song “Mad About You” as a starting point. I loved the song, as did Miles and the rest of his IRS team. I also relied heavily on Charlotte, who had five songwriting credits on the album. Plus Michael and I chose songs from such proven hitmakers as Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham, Split Enz’s Tim Finn, Tom Kelly, Billy Steinberg, and the Bangles’ Susanna Hoffs.
The album was rounded out by musical contributions from Duran Duran’s Andy Taylor and session legends David Lindley and Nicky Hopkins, among others. The danger of employing so many disparate talents, of course, was ending up with an album that didn’t have a personality of its own. But after hearing an early compilation, I thought the album was good. I was proud of it.
Critics would say it wasn’t much of a step forward (it’s “the antithesis of the Go-Go’s intelligent girl-group gestalt,” said
Rolling Stone)
, but it began a transformation for me whether it was evident or not. When it was time to take pictures for the album’s cover, I realized that I photographed well and was considered pretty even though I didn’t feel that way about myself.
No, when I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw me at ten years old, wearing the polka-dot dress my mom had gotten on special at Sears, the one the kids at school knew was my only outfit. Or I saw myself a year or two later in a sleeveless hand-me-down that was lime green with flowers and let me believe when I put it on and did my hair in pigtails that I was pretty like Marcia Brady. Yet then I ran outside just as a car carrying some kids from school drove past and one of them yelled, “Hey, fatso!”
Despite being almost twenty-eight years old, inside my head I was still that girl, scared, awkward, and full of shame and insecurity. I definitely didn’t see the beauty other people kept saying I had turned into.
On the other hand, after cleaning up my act, I saw a profound physical change. I lost the bloat I had from doing coke and drinking every night, especially from my face. I also lived a healthier lifestyle, eating better and working out. I started my day in the morning, a positive change in itself, as opposed to ending my day at that time, and I hit the gym with a trainer, lifting weights and running. All in all, I shed about twenty pounds and received lots of compliments about the way I looked.
There was nothing like being in a boutique and hearing women whisper, “Isn’t that Belinda Carlisle? I didn’t know she was so pretty.” (Hey, I didn’t know it either.) I also heard people say I looked like a young Ann-Margret, whose starring roles in
Viva Las Vegas
and
Bye Bye Birdie
had made her one of my favorite actresses.
But I had mixed feelings about such compliments. All through the Go-Go’s I never lacked for boyfriends, but the press constantly referred to me as pretty and plump or cute and chubby, which bugged me. Then, as I started to do some early interviews before my album was close to being released, I began to hear the flipside, that I was slim, svelte, and sexy, like a new, hot Belinda Carlisle.
I knew it was all well intentioned. But why did my size even have to be an issue? I was confused enough. Couldn’t I just be liked for being myself?
Good question.
No easy answers.
When it came time to shoot the album cover, I knew I had the opportunity to do something special. I let the music inspire the image. I came up with the idea of modeling it after Ann-Margret’s great look from
Viva Las Vegas
, in black tights and a sweater. Since people were making that comparison, why not? Matthew Ralston, the photographer, liked the idea, and so we went with it.
The resulting photo was stark and classy yet still pop. It sure didn’t look like old pictures of me in which I always seemed as if I had just hit the deli tray, that’s for sure. I thought it conveyed a slightly more grown-up vibe. I liked it.
The “Mad About You” video, directed by Leslie Lieberman, was a fun, romantic postcard that fit with the song. We shot it in Santa Monica’s Ocean Park, overlooking the beach and on the sand itself. I wore a black cocktail dress, swept my hair back, and put on a pair of sunglasses. It was simple and classy and felt to me like it fit the song.
My favorite part was that Morgan played my dreamy love interest. He didn’t want me kissing anybody else.
Fine with me. I didn’t want to kiss anybody else.
I was in a good place, the best in years. I was most accurately described by my new catchphrase: 100 percent. I used it all the time. I was giving my career 100 percent. My attitude was 100 percent positive. I couldn’t say I was 100 percent sober, since I allowed myself an occasional glass of wine. But I was 100 percent in love.
Morgan was, too. One night, as we ate dinner, he said we should get married. Both of us had always felt like we got engaged the first night we had dinner together. We never doubted we were going to get married; it was merely a question of when. As Morgan pointed out, with my album set for release at the start of summer, and a tour, our lives were going to
get very busy. He thought we should make our relationship legal before we were swept up in events we couldn’t control. I agreed.
After dinner, we got out the calendar and set a date. The rest was easy. I had always known that I didn’t want to walk down the aisle in a white dress in front of tons of people. I knew better than to fantasize about a family get-together. Morgan, who’d grown up with parties every night, didn’t want a big, fancy wedding either.
We set a date and without telling anyone, I went out the next week and bought a white suit and a pair of Prada pumps. (Back then I had to ask, “What’s Prada?” Now I know.) We picked Lake Tahoe as a fun place to elope. The day before we left, Morgan broke the news to his mother and I filled my parents in on the plan. If any of them were disappointed we weren’t going to have a large wedding, they didn’t tell us. We heard only encouragement and congratulations.
For all of Morgan’s planning, though, I forgot my makeup and had to wear cover stick on my face and blue eyeliner instead of mascara. Even though I looked like a Kabuki dancer in our wedding photos, he still held my hand, as I did his, when, on the evening of April 12, 1986, the minister from the local Elvis Wedding Chapel joined us in our hotel suite and pronounced us husband and wife.
We exchanged simple gold bands and a long, romantic kiss. Then we changed into our sweats and went down to the casino. I won $4,000 playing baccarat.
I had never considered myself unlucky. But now that I was married to this most wonderful man, I felt even luckier.
THREE AND a half weeks later, I was onstage in a small San Diego club, and I wouldn’t have blamed anyone watching my performance if they closed their eyes for a moment and thought they had stumbled into a surprise Go-Go’s show. It happened to me. After all, my voice still had the trademark let’s-get-this-party-going timber of the group’s three previous gold albums, and as I pranced around barefoot in a simple print dress, I radiated the same sun-kissed, surfer-girl looks under the spotlight. But some key elements were different or missing, starting with three out of the other four Go-Go’s.
When I looked to my right, I still saw Charlotte on guitar and keyboards. Otherwise I was out there by myself. I was also singing brand-new material from my eponymous album,
Belinda
. I didn’t have any proven hits to fall back on and get the crowd going. The only song people might have heard before was the first single, “Mad About You,” which had been released days earlier.
No wonder before the show I was a bundle of raw nerves, knowing that I could no longer divide the responsibility up four other ways. The whole thing was on my shoulders. Once that spotlight hit me, there was no denying this next phase of my career. I was starting over.
Morgan supplied the confidence I lacked. He sent roses to that warm-up gig and channeled positive energy to me a few nights later when I headlined three sold-out dates at the Roxy. I had played there with the Go-Go’s. It represented a lot of good times. But seeing my name centered by itself on the marquee felt more frightening. It was one thing
to affect a different image in a photo session and quite another to step out onstage and embody it.
I was also open about the challenges I faced offstage. I told
Los Angeles Times
critic Robert Hilburn, as well as other reporters, that I had been on the road to physical ruin and needed serious help getting my act together. Though I stopped short of admitting my cocaine addiction, I did say that I attended twelve-step meetings. It was a good story, and I wasn’t lying when I said that I probably would have been “broke, alone and desperate” if I didn’t change my ways.