“Mucha gente asume automáticamente que algún tío montó nuestra banda, pero todo lo hicimos nosotras solas”. La voz de Belinda Carlisle resuena contundente al inicio de The Go-Go’s, el documental que narra la atribulada existencia del primer grupo totalmente femenino que, tocando sus propios instrumentos y escribiendo sus propias canciones, consiguió llegar al número uno en la lista de los discos más vendidos de EE UU en 1982. La cinta, dirigida por la australiana Alison Ellwood, es la crónica de un puñado de chicas que dieron forma a la escena punk de Los Ángeles mientras intentaban esquivar el rampante machismo de la industria musical. Casi cuatro décadas después de aquel hito, ningún otro conjunto formado por mujeres que hayan compuesto sus propios temas ha vuelto a alcanzar ese puesto.
The film trot, presented at the last Sunday Film Festival and released on the American platform Showtime, was an ancient episode of the Behind the Music series of the VH1 chain that, stained with yellow, loaded the inks about its addictions and itsInternal fights."They were the ones who contacted me," director Alison Ellwood, also author of the American Jihad, History of the Eagles and Laurel Canyon..“There came a point where they were prepared 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 is a group of women who joined and said: ‘Hey, we can also do this’.And I think that is an incredibly powerful message, especially for girls ".
The result, well supplied with exclusive images, unpublished videos and multicolored new memorabilia, means hanging a VIP pass to discover the secrets of one of the most successful bands of the eighties - with seven million dispatched copies, while the eight protagonists (The current five members and three other excommunicants) act as guides with characters such as Kathleen Hanna (Bikini Kill), Lee Thompson (Madness), Lynval Golding (The Specials) or Stewart Copeland (The Police).
The Go-G’s story starts, like every good rock story, in a dressing room.We are in March 1977 at The Masque Club, in Plenary Hollywood.In the backstage of The Dickies, one of the founding groups of Punk Angelino who just played there, Jane Wiedlin and Belinda Carlisle have their first contact.Wiedlin usually sells his own designs under the name of Jane Drano in Granny Takes to Trip, the vintage clothing store located in Sunset Boulevard and the scene meeting point.For her, who has had several suicide attempts in her adolescence, that sound and that aesthetic are her salvation."People crossed sideways when I saw me.For the first time in my life I felt powerful, ”he acknowledges in the documentary.
For his part Carlisle, who then calls Dottie Dottie, has begun to play the battery in 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 touched badly it was almost better," she recalls in the film."Everyone could do whatever you wanted.There was total freedom ".
On January 14, 1978, the flash that changes everything occurs.The Sex Pistols act in the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, where a good part of the Angelino punkarreo goes.In the end, Johnny Rotten says goodbye to the audience with a phrase-boofed."Have you ever felt that you have been deceived?" Proclamates the vocalist.That show, the last of the classical formation of the London quartet, also becomes the starting gun for many other sets that arise around that mythical night, The Go-Go’s among them.
Something unusual
A few days after that concert, Carlisle, Wiedlin and Margot Olavarria, a common friend, are at a party at 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 de la Guitarra and Olavarria del Bajo.Shortly after Elissa Bello (drums) and Charlotte Caffey (guitar) are added.They begin to practice in the bassist's apartment, although they hardly know or plug their instruments.Weeks later they rent a trial place, which they share with X and The Motels, and get some performances in The Masque.Soon they are made with a good legion of fans and, for the same price, with another small mob of professional odiators who accuse them of sold to the new wave.They want to be a modernized version of The Shirelles or The Shangri-Las."But touching our instruments.The problem is that none knew how to play anything, ”jokes Wiedlin on the tape.
Gina Schock replaces Elissa Bello in the battery in the summer of 1979, while her first concerts in the whiskey to go like Madness or The Specials.The two British sets are so impacted that they decide to take them to tour through Britain in 1980, although they have not even published a single.The tour, surrounded by economic hardships, culminates with an action where ultra -right Skinheads and members of the infiltrated National Front.At least, from that chaotic experience they take an agreement with Stiff Records, the English reference punk stamp, which edits its first single, We Got The Beat, in May 1980.This is a theme composed of Charlotte Caffey in an inspiration outburst during the viewing of a night marathon from The Twilight Zone series.
At that time they already have a few dozen concerts on both sides of the Atlantic, but still without a contract to publish their Elepé.Its manager, Ginger Canzoneri, collects rejection letters of all stamps in the country: "Girl groups do not sell" is the most common response.Actually, they are the first female rock band without any man acting as a mentor in the shadow, such as The Runaways and Kim Fowley.Rare bichas in the eyes of any record executive.To top it off, Olavarria is quite upset with the melodic course they are beginning to take.Taking advantage of the fact that at the end of the year the bassist sick of hepatitis A, the other four members resolve replace it with Kathy Valentine, without even explaining the situation face to face the defenestrad.The new member learns the repertoire in a couple of ultra -propelled days by a few grams of cocaine, a substance that has already fully entered into the formation.
Several versions of the same story
"Margot Olavarria was the most complicated to convince to appear in front of the camera, because her feelings were still in the skin," says Ellwood.“In the end he preferred to tell his version of the story.In addition, they were all upset by the image that occurred of them in the VH1 documentary, which focused too much on their problems with drugs and internal fights.These are issues that I have also portrayed, although I have preferred to focus on the difficulties that had to happen when they were so young and become famous overnight ”.
Another of the hot affairs of the film is the machismo that distils the eighties music industry, not too different from that surrounding the Canyon Laurel scene in the sixties and seventy and that the director itself describes in another of her recent works."Sexism was part of both environments," he says. ".I remember that Linda Ronstadt told me that that of the free love of the sixties was not so free for some.The norm was that men could do what they wanted, but women had to act in a certain way.And in the eighties things had not changed too much: that was the reason why it cost them so much to sign a contract ”.
Finally, in July 1981, Seal I.R.S.It is encouraged to publish your debut elepé, Beauty and the Beat, which includes successes such as Our Lips Are Seared.A month later, MTV starts their broadcasts and new artists are one of their maximum priorities.Catapults by musical television, they don't take time to become omnipresent.They exercise as the edge of 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 invited for their entire world tour.In March 1982, Sorpasso is produced: The Go-Go’s arrive at the number one of sales in the United States, advancing The Police, which runs in the sixth place.It is Sting himself who is responsible for taking the champagne to the dressing room as a congratulation.But Charlotte Caffey is increasing.It made me feel very good.What I didn't know then was what kind of mortal shit was that, so I soon hooked, ”he confesses in the film, while explaining how he camouflaged permanently behind a few Ray-Ban to hide his pupils.
It has not been a month since its debut has reached number one and, pressured by their record lab.A pace of work between robotic and criminal that Wiedlin defines as theft -going.Although direct seem not to resent."When I saw them above a stage in 1982 a world of possibilities was opened before me," Kathleen Hanna said that, a decade later, it will be one of the drivers of the Riot Grrrl feminist movement in front of Bikini Kill.The album does not work commercially as well as the first, but that is the least of its problems.The cover of the August number of Rolling Stone magazine, the photographer's work Annie Leibovitz, shows them in underwear, something that approves, although it does not make them too much grace.It is at that time when they fire Ginger Canzoneri, his lifelong manager, to sign with a more powerful agency.To top it off, the disputes between them for the credits of the songs are already common.
The point of no return
Talk Show, his third Elepé, appears in March 1984 and, in October, Jane Wiedlin, one of his main composers, leaves the group due to his discrepancies for the cast of royalties and is replaced by Paula Jean Brown."For me the point of no return took place when Jane left the band," says the director."Everything is over.But there were many details that led to that situation: they should never have fired their manager;They had to have more time to rest between album and disc and they should have tried to recover from their addictions.The combination between drug abuse and the pressure to which they were subjected to constantly publish new material burned them completely ”.
Aun así, participan en la primera edición del elefantiásico festival Rock In Rio, en enero de 1985, al que asisten casi un millón y medio de personas.That is his swan song and one of his last concerts before separating in May.It has only been seven years since that party in Venice Beach where they decided to join forces.This break leaves two incompatible sides for a good time, with Belinda Carlisle and Charlotte Caffey on the one hand and Gina Schock and Kathy Valentine for another.After that divorce, each one begins his solo career and only Carlisle manages to approach the popular impact of his previous project thanks to successes such as Heaven Is a Place on Earth (1987).
In the following decades several reconciliations for specific tours with different formations take place.They also manage to add an elepé of meeting as God Bless The Go-Go's (2001), a star on the Paseo de la Fame granted in 2011, a musical in his honor (called Head Over Heels, which premiered in 2018) and a goodCross demand assortment.
Although the film tiptoe through these legal disputes, the filmmaker confirms that she has had total freedom to tell her lives.“They wanted to be very honest - he clarifies - but there were a couple of judicial issues that preferred not to deal with.They are recent issues and I think they do not affect the heart of history ".A plot that either avoids the semi -socio -relative relationship between Jane and Gina.“Yes, it surprised me that Gina would mention it," here. "Because she had always been quite reserved.What hit me the most is that Jane told that she had been diagnosed as a bipolar.In fact, he made that revelation in front of the camera, because before he had never wanted his companions to know it ”.
With a new newly published song, the first in two decades, entitled Club Zero, and an American tour planned for 2021, The Go-Go’s still await their entry into rock and roll hall of fame.Another historical discrimination for the only female band that has managed to place its debut album in number one for six consecutive weeks in the US.There are only 25 other artists who have achieved 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 fame hall".
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