Authors: Belinda Carlisle
I signed up for anything and everything that would get me out of the house. Brownies, Girl Scouts, ice-skating, sports—I did it all. At age ten I developed an interest in music. It was another escape, maybe the best and easiest I ever discovered. I spend countless hours at my friend Christina Badala’s house, listening to music. We laid on her floor with our ears next to her stereo speakers. We tuned in to the popular AM radio station 93 KHJ, following it as if it was our religion. We thought of DJs Charlie Tuna, the Real Don Steele, and Humble Harv as evangelists who taught us about the Stylistics, Cat Stevens, and the Animals.
The first album I owned was
Pet Sounds
, the Beach Boys’ classic. I won it at a bobby sox softball tournament. At the time, I liked the photo on the cover more than the actual collection of songs. I needed time to grow into the rest of Brian Wilson’s masterpiece. It was a little out-there for a ten-year-old. Now it’s one of my all-time favorites.
I didn’t have enough money to buy more albums until high school. But every so often I scraped together enough change for a 45. My favorite was the 5th Dimension’s version of “Aquarius.” It was the first single I bought, and I like it today as much as I did back then.
In those days, I was into
The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family
, and
Here Come the Brides
. I wanted to be Marcia Brady, and I had crushes on David Cassidy and Bobby Sherman. What can I say? I rode around on a Sting-Ray bike and had pigtails. I wasn’t Miss Sophisticate.
But all that began to change in August 1969 when Charles Manson and his followers murdered director Roman Polanski’s beautiful and young pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, and numerous others. By the time they went on trial the following summer, I was hooked on the macabre drama and obsessively followed the headline accounts of their horrific crimes.
At one time, the Manson family had lived in Topanga Canyon, which wasn’t too far from our house. Their Helter Skelter bloodbath also wasn’t
that far away from us, maybe a twenty-five-minute drive. Both locations were close enough that my parents and our neighbors thought there might be more murderous hippies roaming the streets, or copycats, and they started locking their doors. Before the murders, they didn’t think about it.
I couldn’t get enough of Manson and his so-called family. I was fascinated when I learned about Manson’s foray into pop music: that his evil had been inspired by the Beatles song “Helter Skelter,” and his life had also intersected with Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson.
I got out my copy of
Pet Sounds
and looked at Wilson, wondering how he could have gotten involved with Manson. Later, I learned he had picked up two girls who were hitchhiking, and they turned out to be members of Manson’s family. Soon Manson and a bunch of girls were living in Wilson’s house. He introduced Manson to the Beach Boys producer Terry Melcher, who rented his home to Polanski, and that was where the murders took place.
It was weird, creepy, scary, terrible, and about the most interesting stuff I had ever come across. My mom scolded me when she saw me reading the stories in the paper. She didn’t approve of my fascination with Manson. She probably feared I was being brainwashed when I stared at his picture. His gaze was powerful; those eyes certainly did cast a spell, and I can understand now how he was able to lure weak-minded women under his influence.
I especially got into the trial of Susan Atkins, a dark-haired flower child who was convicted of participating in eight of the murders. My mom forbade me to follow her story. She said it was too much for a child. But I snuck the paper into my room at night and read all the articles about her.
A year later, another murder was in the headlines. It was New Year’s Day 1972, and Pete Duel, who costarred with Ben Murphy on the hit series
Alias Smith and Jones
, was found dead of a gunshot wound in his canyon home. I loved that show, and he was one of my favorite actors. Although his death was later ruled a suicide, I assumed it was a Manson-type slaughter of another actor.
I wanted to see the scene myself, and without telling my mom, I took
off on my bicycle, intending to ride to his home. I didn’t know that it was fifteen miles from my house, maybe more than that. It was also up in the hills. I pedaled most of the day, but never got close. I had no idea where I was going.
That was one of the last times I spent all day riding my bike. All of a sudden it seemed like something a kid would do, and I didn’t feel like a kid anymore. I didn’t feel like an adult either. I didn’t know what I felt like, other than different. I was changing. My hormones had kicked into gear and were reshaping me in ways that my mom never took time to explain.
I got my period, started to develop physically, and experienced moods when I just wanted to put on my headphones, listen to music, and be left alone. I traded in my bike and instead went over to my friend Christina’s and hid out in her guest house, where we burned incense and talked about which Beatle we liked best.
I was walking across the street one day, heading to a neighbor’s house, when a boy who lived on the block and another guy whom I recognized from school pointed at me and yelled, “Hey look! There goes fatso!” A year earlier, I might have ignored them or run over and beat them up. Now those same words felt like a mortal wound. I stopped and nearly lost my breath, and when I caught it again, I burst into tears and ran home.
My mom, rather than telling me that I looked wonderful the way I was and to ignore those nasty boys, suggested that I go on a diet and lose weight. She offered to help. She was always on a diet even though she didn’t need to be, and so she put me on the same program. She gave me a calorie-counter book and told me to keep my daily intake under 1,200. Thus began a ritual familiar to many girls—endless days of starvation, frustration, and disappointment in myself when I went off my diet.
Around that same time, we moved from Burbank to a slightly larger place in Thousand Oaks. My dad had spent months building it. I was midway through seventh grade when we packed up—not a great time
to change schools. But I tried to make the best of it when I entered Colina Junior High. I told myself it was an opportunity to get away from all the kids who called me Belimpa or fatso and reinvent myself.
I stuck to a diet, traded my princess dresses for cutoff overalls and knee socks (think early Linda Ronstadt), and twisted my hair into braids. I lost about forty pounds by the end of the school year. My friend Christina couldn’t get over it. She saw me for the first time in months when I visited my grandparents, who had moved into our old house, and she just stared at me, amazed, impressed, and maybe a little jealous of my new look.
“Oh my God, Belinda,” she said. “You’re hot!”
At Colina, I joined the track team and ran the hundred-yard dash. I was interested in boys but never comfortable around them. When I did have a crush, I kept it to myself. I carried around too much shame and fear to ever share my feelings and risk rejection. Then there was another problem: What if the boy liked me? I couldn’t imagine bringing someone home to meet my parents. My dad’s drinking made life in the new house as unpredictable and chaotic as it had been in Burbank.
I barely confided in my new best friend, Jean Olson, an outgoing, good-looking girl whose boobs had miraculously arrived a couple years before the rest of us were out of training bras. They gave her a personality and a presence. I was barely a year or two past believing that storks delivered babies. I’m serious. Even though my mom popped out a baby every couple years, I was ignorant of how it happened—that is, until Jean set me straight about that, and more.
And some things I learned on my own. The following summer I went on my Girl Scout troop’s annual overnight camping trip to the beach. Every year we went someplace up or down the coast. This time we camped at Carpinteria, a surfing village just south of Santa Barbara. There was a boys’ camp down the beach from us, a pretty far way down, but not too far that we didn’t wander over to see one another. One boy took a liking to me.
I enjoyed the attention. We chatted, flirted, and chased each other up and down the beach. It was extremely innocent fun. We didn’t even attempt a kiss, though secretly I wished we had.
After we returned home, my mom got a call from the troop leader. She said I had not conducted myself in the manner appropriate to a Girl Scout and therefore was not welcome to return to the troop. Not welcome? That was a strange way of saying I was kicked out of Girl Scouts. Apparently she went into a little more detail with my mom, but none of it was true.
I was furious. Jean told me not to worry, and she was right. I didn’t care about being kicked out of the troop or that the leader had told an outright lie about me. It simply paled next to the realization that a boy had found me attractive. I was confused by the whole thing—but in a great way.
I wished that had translated into self-confidence, but it didn’t. However, I did feel a certain something, a difference in the way I approached the world and felt about myself. Now I see that I was at that point in a girl’s life when she realizes she possesses certain powers that make her different, powers that will beguile the boys and turn even the strongest of them into jelly if used properly.
In other words, I was slowly but surely becoming a woman. It takes a lifetime to figure out what that means and how to put that wonderful gift of fate to good use. It doesn’t come with an instruction book; at least it didn’t when I was that age. Instead, I gathered information from girlfriends and books. I went from Jean telling me where babies really came from to stumbling upon books about witchcraft and trying to conjure up powers without making a fool of myself—or at least
too
much of a fool.
Jean was amused by my interest in black magic. Why wouldn’t she have been? Her natural gifts had already taught her how to cast powerful spells simply by wearing a halter top. Jean also taught me how to smoke. Along with another girlfriend, Bonnie, we snuck down to the far corner of the football field between classes and puffed away while listening to Carly Simon albums on a portable tape player.
She also introduced me to booze when I slept over one weekend and we got plastered on Boone’s Farm apple wine. The fun didn’t stop there. The two of us used to watch the Dallas Cowboys run through their workouts at Cal Lutheran College. The team set up camp there every
summer before the preseason. Jean liked to watch the good-looking, hard-bodied athletes practice, and she took me along for company. We wore halter tops and short-shorts, and were quite the Lolitas as the players ogled us.
I’m sure there were older, more age-appropriate women around scouting the players for extracurricular activities. For us, it was an amusing way to spend a summer day. It was harmless fun. Some of the players had probably wished it wasn’t innocent. Bob Hayes, the Cowboys’ Hall of Fame wide receiver, kept a protective eye on us. He made sure the younger players didn’t get any ideas. He also lectured us about being good girls.
One night Jean and I ran away from home. Both of us had been punished for something that seems insignificant now, but was a big enough deal back then to get us grounded. We snuck out of our homes, met at the local Kmart, and decided to leave town. We walked out to the road and stuck out our thumbs. Who motored by? Bob Hayes. The World’s Fastest Man slowed down, and then stopped when he recognized us.
He had Jean and I get into his car and then drove us back to our homes. He gave each of us a stern talking-to about being careful and safe.
But home was the last place I wanted to be. My dislike for being there had intensified from the initial confusion and uncertainty I experienced when my mom and dad split due to the hardships Walt’s drinking caused, as well as from the nonstop burdens of helping my mother. She needed more and more help, too. Something happened to her around this time that was never explained. She grew weak and almost feeble. It was a gradual downhill slide that occurred over months, until one day she stopped getting out of bed.
She was usually able to prepare meals for us, but otherwise she stayed in bed and I had to pick up much of the slack in running the household and caring for the little ones. When I asked my dad what was wrong with Mom, he said she wasn’t feeling well. He didn’t offer any more information.
I was forced to figure things out on my own. From conversations that
I overheard, I learned she was taking lithium and occasionally seeing a doctor. Then there was talk about the possibility of putting her in a psychiatric hospital for an undetermined length of time. That really scared me. I had no idea what that entailed, but my imagination went straight to the worst: shock treatment, a lobotomy—losing my mother.
I don’t know how or why, but she gradually emerged from her depression before she had to be hospitalized. It was still a long time before she returned to normal. As much as I loved her, her illness was one more reason I didn’t want to spend much time at home. It debilitated her, but it also put an enormous load on my teenage shoulders.
I went through a stage where I lied about my family and told all sorts of tall tales whenever someone asked about my home life. I went so far as to say my father was actor Chuck Connors from the TV series
The Rifleman
and that I was related to Ohio State’s All-American linebacker Randy Gradishar. I lied all of the time. I can’t even remember all the stories that I told.
In a way, I went into survival mode by inventing my own reality. Instead of facing the reality of my life, I made myself into someone else. For a while, I went through a stage where I decided to be a bad girl. I dressed in dirty jeans and scuffed shoes and washed my hair in baby oil to make it look greasy. I’ll never forget leaving for school one day when my dad’s voice stopped me in my tracks as he snapped, “Where the hell are you going looking like that?”
I didn’t want to tell him that. By ninth grade, I had my eye on two very cute boys, Jack Wild and Kyle Rodgers. Kyle’s father, Pepper, coached the UCLA football team. Both guys were cool, California types. They wore their hair long and dressed in faded T-shirts and shorts. All the girls, including me, thought that they were hot.