Belinda Carlisle on punk, cocaine, body image and Buddhism: ‘I was born a little bit of a rebel’

Guardian ^ | Mon 28 Jun 2021 | Emine Saner

[nickcarraway]

It hardly matters – who really cares about these things? – and yet it does. This year the Go-Go’s will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and earning a place at the museum in Cleveland, Ohio, for all its naffness, is still a mark of influence and recognition. “I always said: ‘**** them, I don’t care,’” says Belinda Carlisle, the band’s lead singer. “But when it actually happens, it’s: ‘Oh, this is not so bad.’”

The Go-Go’s have had a reappraisal in the past year, thanks mainly to a documentary by the film-maker Alison Ellwood. It tells the story of how these scrappy young LA punks put together a band (the lineup shifted until arriving at the current five members) and made history – incredibly, they are still the only female band who write their own music and play their own instruments to have reached the top of the US album charts. That was in 1982. As with many female artists, belittled for years by the male-dominated music industry and press, the recognition feels long overdue.

The documentary also refocuses perceptions of Carlisle. After leaving the Go-Go’s, she became a glossy pop star, but I love seeing the older images of her wearing a bin bag dress, or facing down sexist thugs while on an early UK tour supporting Madness. On the phone from her home in Bangkok, Carlisle, now 64, is warm and unguarded. She laughs at the memory, but also adds it was “very intimidating. We would come off stage crying.” But that tour, and the kudos they had earned on the US new wave scene for touring Britain’s ska clubs, was the turning point for the band. “It exploded after that,” she says.

[nickcarraway]

Never part of the punk scene - they were the industry’s attempt to mainstream punk and were just a girl band. A sanitized version of the Runaways.

You don't know what you are talking about, and you have it backwards.

The Go-Go's started in January 1978, and developed a reputation in the Hollywood punk scene, and they opened for Madness and The Specials, and they were invited by both bands to tour in the U.K., which they spent the better part of 1980 doing.

They were around for over three years paying their dues, before they were signed to a recording contract. Their debut album did went to #1, despite not having been supported that much, or expected to do that well.

The Runaways were more like the female Monkees. They were helped from the start by music industry insider and Svengali Kim Fowley, who cowrote all but one of the songs o their first album. (Unlike on the Go-Go's debut) Because they were originated with a music industry insider, they had an album out in less than a year.

[dfwgator]

The Runaways basically ripped off Suzy Quatro.

[nickcarraway]

I think The Runaways were trying to sell sex, which Suzi Quatro and the Go-Go’s weren’t. Not that they weren’t attractive.

[dfwgator]

I thought Suzy was hot as Leather Tuscadero on Happy Days.

[wardaddy]

Fruitcake lib

But looks good for her age....no question

Lives in Bangkok

Buddhist

GoGos in before

Warren Zevon

Joy Division....influencers and New Order

Iron Maiden.....

Brian Eno....

Sound garden

The Smiths

Tina Turner

[Psalm 73]

Oh look - an interview with Tim Burton....

[MikeSteelBe]

The Slits were a real punk girl group.

What about the Cycle Sluts From Hell?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeuNckmt7h8