"A lot of people automatically assume that some guy started our band, but we did it all by ourselves."
Belinda Carlisle's voice resonates forcefully at the beginning of
The Go-Go’s
, the documentary that chronicles the troubled existence of the first all-female group that, playing their own instruments and writing their own songs, managed to reach number one on the album list. Bestsellers in the US in 1982. The film, directed by Australian Alison Ellwood, chronicles a handful of girls who shaped the Los Angeles punk scene while trying to avoid the rampant machismo of the music industry.
Almost four decades after that milestone, no other ensemble made up of women who have composed their own songs has reached that position again.
The trigger for the film, presented at the last Sundance Film Festival and premiered on the American platform Showtime, was an old episode of the
Behind The Music
series
on the VH1 network that, tinged with yellowishness, charged the inks about their addictions and their internal fights.
"They were the ones who contacted me," explains director Alison Ellwood, who is also the author of the documentaries
American Jihad, History Of The Eagles
and
Laurel Canyon
.
“There came a point where they were ready to get in front of the cameras.
They had seen some of my works, they proposed it to me and, since I was a fan, I did not hesitate.
For me it's about a group of women who came together and said, 'Hey, we can do this too.'
And I think that's an incredibly powerful message, especially for girls. "
The result, well stocked with exclusive images, unpublished videos and
multicolored
new olera
memorabilia
, means hanging a VIP pass around your neck to discover the secrets of one of the most successful bands of the eighties - with seven million copies shipped, while the eight protagonists ( the five current members and three other former members) act as guides with characters such as Kathleen Hanna (Bikini Kill), Lee Thompson (Madness), Lynval Golding (The Specials) or Stewart Copeland (The Police).
The story of The Go-Go's starts, like all good rock stories, in a dressing room.
We are in March 1977 at The Masque club, in the middle of Hollywood.
Backstage at The Dickies, one of the founding bands of Los Angeles punk that just played there, Jane Wiedlin and Belinda Carlisle have their first contact.
Wiedlin often sells her own designs under the name Jane Drano at Granny Takes A Trip, the
vintage
clothing
store
located on Sunset Boulevard and a meeting point for the scene.
For her, who has had several suicide attempts in her teens, that sound and that aesthetic are her salvation.
“People crossed the sidewalk when they saw me.
For the first time in my life I felt powerful ”, she acknowledges in the documentary.
For his part, Carlisle, who at that time called Dottie Danger, has started playing drums with Germs, other pioneers of "do it yourself".
The thing lasts very little, because a mononucleosis crosses its path and the rest of the group decides to replace it before its live debut.
"In that environment, if you played badly it was almost better," she recalls in the film.
“Anyone could do whatever they wanted.
There was total freedom ”.
On January 14, 1978, the flash occurs that changes everything.
The Sex Pistols perform at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, where a good part of the
Los
Angeles
punkarreo attends
.
In the end, Johnny Rotten says goodbye to the audience with a slap phrase.
“Have you ever felt like you've been cheated on?” Proclaims the vocalist.
That show, the last of the classic formation of the London quartet, also became the starting signal for many other groups that emerged around that mythical night, The Go-Go's among them.
Something unusual
A few days after that concert, Carlisle, Wiedlin and Margot Olavarria, a mutual friend, meet at a party on Venice Beach.
There they seal their pact to form a band only with girls, something unusual at the time.
Carlisle will be in charge of singing, Wiedlin of the guitar and Olavarria of the bass.
Shortly after, Elissa Bello (drums) and Charlotte Caffey (guitar) join.
They start practicing in the bassist's apartment, although they hardly even know how to plug in their instruments.
Weeks later they rent a rehearsal space, which they share with X and The Motels, and land a few gigs at The Masque.
Soon they are made with a good legion of fans and, for the same price, with another small mob of professional haters who accuse them of being sold to the new wave.
They want to be a modernized version of The Shirelles or The Shangri-Las.
“But playing our instruments.
The problem is that neither of us knew how to play anything, ”jokes Wiedlin on the tape.
Gina Schock replaced Elissa Bello on drums in the summer of 1979, at the same time that her first concerts at the Whiskey came to Go Go as the opening act for Madness or The Specials.
The two British ensembles are so shocked that they decide to take them on tour in Britain in 1980, although they have not even released a single.
The tour, surrounded by financial hardship, culminates with a performance where far
-
right
skinheads
and infiltrated members of the National Front insult them, while yelling at them to show their boobs.
At least, from that chaotic experience they get an agreement with Stiff Records, the leading English punk label, which released their first single,
We Got The Beat
, in May 1980. It is a song composed by Charlotte Caffey in a fit of inspiration while viewing a nighttime marathon from
The Twilight Zone
series
.
By then they already have a few dozen concerts on both sides of the Atlantic, but they still do not have a contract to publish their LP.
His manager, Ginger Canzoneri, collects rejection letters from all the labels in the country: "Girl groups don't sell" is the most common response.
In reality, they are the first female rock band without any male mentoring in the shadows, such as The Runaways and Kim Fowley.
Rare bugs in the eyes of any record executive.
To top it all, Olavarria is quite annoyed with the melodic direction they are beginning to take.
Taking advantage of the fact that at the end of the year the bassist was sick with hepatitis A, the other four members resolved to replace her with Kathy Valentine, without even explaining the situation face to face with the defenestrated woman.
The new member learns the repertoire in a couple of days, ultra-propelled by a few grams of cocaine, a substance that has already fully entered the training.
Multiple versions of the same story
"Margot Olavarria was the most difficult to convince to appear in front of the camera, because her feelings were still on the surface," says Ellwood.
“In the end, he preferred to tell his version of the story.
Also, they were all upset by the image of them in the VH1 documentary, which focused too much on their drug problems and internal fights.
These are themes that I have also portrayed, although I preferred to focus on the difficulties they had to go through when they were so young and became famous overnight ”.
Another of the burning issues of the film is the machismo that exudes the music industry of the eighties, not too different from the one that surrounds the Laurel Canyon scene in the sixties and seventies and that the director herself describes in another of her recent works.
"Sexism was part of both environments," he warns.
I remember Linda Ronstadt telling me that free love in the sixties was not so free for some.
The rule was that men could do whatever they wanted, but women had to act in a certain way.
And in the eighties things hadn't changed much: that was the reason why it took them so much to sign a contract ”.
Finally, in July 1981, the IRS label was encouraged to release their debut LP,
Beauty And The Beat
, which includes hits like
Our Lips Are Sealed
.
A month later, MTV begins its broadcasts and the artists of
Nuevaoleros
are one of its top priorities.
Catapulted by musical television, they soon became ubiquitous.
They act as opening act for The Rolling Stones in Rockford (Illinois) at the express request of the English quintet and The Police, one of the most successful bands of the moment, choose them as guests for their entire
world
tour
.
In March 1982 the
sorpasso
took place
: The Go-Go's reached number one in sales in the US, overtaking The Police, who ran aground in sixth place.
It is Sting himself who is in charge of bringing the champagne to the dressing room as a congratulation.
But Charlotte Caffey is getting more and more into herself due to her addiction to heroin: “I tried it after graduating from high school.
It made me feel really good.
What I didn't know then was what kind of deadly shit that was, so I was soon hooked, "she confesses in the film, while explaining how she permanently camouflaged herself behind some Ray-Bans to hide her pupils.
Not a month has passed since their debut has reached number one and, under pressure from their record company, they are already recording their continuation,
Vacation
, which comes out in July 1982 without having stopped chaining tour after tour.
A rhythm of work between robotic and criminal that Wiedlin defines as
robo-go-going
.
Although the direct ones seem not to resent.
“When I saw them on stage in 1982, a world of possibilities opened up before me,” Kathleen Hanna declares during the film that, a decade later, she will be one of the promoters of the feminist movement
riot grrrl
at the helm of Bikini Kill.
The album doesn't perform as well commercially as the first, but that's the least of its problems.
The cover of the August issue of
Rolling Stone
magazine
, by photographer Annie Leibovitz, shows them in their underwear, which they approve, even if they are not too amused.
It is at this time that Ginger Canzoneri, his lifelong manager, is fired to sign with a more powerful agency.
To make matters worse, disputes between them for the credits of the songs are already common.
The point of no return
Talk Show
, their third LP, appears in March 1984 and, in October, Jane Wiedlin, one of its main songwriters, leaves the group due to their discrepancies over the distribution of royalties and is replaced by Paula Jean Brown.
“For me, the point of no return was when Jane left the band,” says the director.
“There it is all over.
But there were many details that led to that situation: they should never have fired their manager;
they should have had more time to rest between records and should have tried to recover from their addictions.
The combination of drug abuse and the pressure they were put under to constantly publish new material completely burned them. "
Even so, they participate in the first edition of the elephantian Rock In Rio festival, in January 1985, attended by almost one and a half million
of people.
That's their swan song and one of their last concerts before parting ways in May.
It's only been seven years since that party in Venice Beach where they decided to join forces.
That break leaves two incompatible sides for a long time, with Belinda Carlisle and Charlotte Caffey on the one hand and Gina Schock and Kathy Valentine on the other.
After that divorce, each began their solo career and only Carlisle managed to get close to the popular impact of their previous project thanks to hits like
Heaven Is A Place On Earth
(1987).
In the following decades several reconciliations take place for specific tours with different formations.
They also manage to add a reunion LP like
God Bless The Go-Go’s
(2001), a star on the walk of fame awarded in 2011, a musical in his honor (called
Head Over Heels
, which premiered in 2018) and a good assortment of cross demands.
Although the film tiptoes through these legal disputes, the filmmaker confirms that she has had complete freedom to tell their lives.
“They wanted to be very honest,” she clarifies, “but there were a couple of judicial issues that they preferred not to deal with.
They are recent questions and I think they do not affect the heart of the story ”.
A plot that also does not avoid the semi-hidden romantic relationship between Jane and Gina.
“It did surprise me that Gina mentioned it –post-, because she had always been quite reserved.
What struck me the most was that Jane recounted that she had been diagnosed as bipolar.
In fact, she made that revelation in front of the camera, because she had never wanted her peers to know before ”.
With a newly released song, the first in two decades, titled
Club Zero
, and an American tour scheduled for 2021, The Go-Go's still await their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame.
Another historic discrimination for the only female band that has managed to place their debut album at number one for six consecutive weeks in the US There are only 25 other artists who have done it, including Elvis and The Beatles.
As Kathleen Hanna concludes, "They may not be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but they are in my particular hall of fame."
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