Rolling Stone
- Issue 773 November 13, 1997Women Who Rocked the World
By Gerri Hirshey
[An excerpt from the article at pages 80 amd 81]
THE '80s ALSO SAW A MODEST revival of girl groups who put a reverse twist on the vixen look. White girls dipped back into ditzy lyrics and beehive kitsch: The B-52's punked it up and Bananarama, the Go-Go's and the Bangles all had fun, fun, fun with the form. Vivid red lips chomped big, ripe bananas in Bananarama's "Cruel Summer" video; the Bangles got middle America to walk like Egyptians. They all sang agreeable harmony with Cyndi Lauper's chickpower anthem, "Girls Just Want to Have Fun". And in a go-go time when money men tossed junk bonds like so many Frisbees, when restaurant madness made idols of chefs and cruel dominatrixes of their black-clad urban hostesses, such giddines played.
Though they came snarling out of the L.A. punk scene in the late '70s, the Go-Go's were America's New Wave sweethearts by 1981. Their album Beauty And The Beat was the first No. 1 album by an all-woman band, selling more than 2 million units. It held the top spot on the Billboard list for six weeks, spinning off singles "Our Lips Are Sealed" and "We Got The Beat".
Early in May of 1985, Go-Go's lead singer Belinda Carlisle and guitarist Charlotte Caffey are walking home down Sunset Boulevard from SIR recording studios, where the band has been rehearsing for its fourth album. Nothing is working. The band has two new and shaky members and a history of ego-fueled snits.
Carlisle has been fending off press assaults on everything from her visible weight gains to her drug and alcohol problems. Caffey, the band's other drug user, has finally kicked along with Belinda. Clean and sober but sad, the two women trudge along, reliving the session until they reach this fatal crossroads: "We can't make another record".
The Go-Go's broke up a week later, on May 10. Carlisle and Caffey told the other group members in a sterile room at their management firm. It was Kleenex and recriminations all around - yet still such a bloodlessly corporate end for a bunch of unregenerate garage girls. So un-rock & roll. Surely the group suffered from the too-much-too-fast syndrome that has kayoed bands - girls and boys - for years. But this crackup had a new wrinkle: The real lives just didn't match the pictures. Women who came up in smudged mascara on the L.A. club scene couldn't maintain all that made- for-TV, Pretty in Pink glow. Said Carlisle: "I got tired of being cute, bubbly and effervescent all day. I just didn't feel like being bouncy anymore."
Bassist Kathy Valentine put it this way: "There was a real desire on the part of the media and society for us to be nonthreatening and wholesome.... We could have done more to try to control the way our image was thrust on us, but for some reason that had to be part of the package in order for us to be accepted."
