La-la landing

The Go-Go's return in style

by Sean Richardson

For yesterday's pop stars, there's no greater double-edged sword than appearing on an episode of VH1's immensely popular Behind the Music series. Just ask early-'80s rock sweeties the Go-Go's, who saw their career revived by the show but must have had second thoughts when they saw their various drug, alcohol, and interpersonal problems strewn across national television. Following a successful reunion tour with the B-52's last summer, the band are back with their first album in 17 years, God Bless the Go-Go's (Beyond) -- and a begrudging respect for Behind the Music.

"Well, it is what it is -- tabloid television, almost," says singer Belinda Carlisle. "Generally, I think we feel pretty good about it. I'm a little uncomfortable about the dirty laundry, but everybody knows about that now anyway. What we did like about it is that a lot of people don't know the origins of the band. We weren't one of those girl vocal bands that are put together by the marketing department at the record company like they are these days. We came from a thriving music scene in LA. We put ourselves together from a very organic place. People were shocked and surprised to know that it wasn't like, `Voilà! Spice Girls!' It sounds cornball, but it really is the story of an American dream. You can do what you want to do if you put your mind to it."

Formed amid the legendary craziness of the original LA punk scene (Carlisle had even been an early member of the Germs), the Go-Go's became the first all-girl rock band to top the charts, with their classic '81 debut, Beauty and the Beat (IRS). They followed that up with a string of hits over the next few years, then abruptly burned out following the '84 release of their third album, Talk Show (IRS). After Carlisle's killer '88 solo hit "Heaven Is a Place on Earth," the band pretty much dropped out of the spotlight. Then the acid-washed wave of '80s pop nostalgia came calling.

"A couple of years ago, there started being a lot of interest in the Go-Go's from movies and books, and it got us all to talking," Carlisle explains. "We went on tour for a couple of weeks, then decided maybe we should try to take it a little more seriously. We started collaborating with each other for possibly an album. At first, we thought that we'd just do our own recordings and put it out on the Internet, but then it turned into a proper record deal. We all have our own things going on in our own lives. This is just something that's fun for us to do, and we try to make time for it because it is a pleasure."

Produced by Boston's Paul Q. Kolderie and Sean Slade (Radiohead, Hole), God Bless is about as legit as comeback albums get. All five original members are here: Carlisle sounds great, and the band play with a youthful energy that belies their encroaching middle age. They may have been away from the charts for years, but the individual Go-Go's have all remained active in the LA pop scene. So the disc features collaborations with sharp songwriters like Susanna Hoffs, Jill Sobule, and -- on the first single, "Unforgiven" -- Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong, who struck up a creative friendship with the group when he went to see them play last year.

"Billie Joe's a fan of the band," says Carlisle. "He came to see us play, and Charlotte [Caffey, guitarist] approached him to get together and collaborate." Soon after, Armstrong recorded a rough version of the song and mailed a tape to Caffey and guitarist Jane Wiedlin, who ended up finishing it off. "He had the seed of an idea and they took it to another level. Then he came down to the studio and put on a guitar and backing vocal. It was great."

Bursting out of the gate with a signature Go-Go's descending surf-guitar line, "Unforgiven" is a perfect synthesis of the band's upbeat charm and Armstrong's increasingly refined pop sensibilities -- it can definitely hang with old favorites like "We Got the Beat" and "Our Lips Are Sealed." The rest of the album is just as punchy. As distinctive as the Go-Go's were when they first came out, they're even more so now that they're a bunch of fortysomething women who still know how to rock. They've still got their tongues planted firmly in cheek, too: check out the bubbly "La La Land" (their latest harmony-fueled ode to California) and "Throw Me a Curve" (a silly, punk-tempo dis of anorectic supermodels).

The band do go adult-contemporary on the acoustic ballad "Here You Are" (co-written by noted song doctor Jim Vallance and featuring the Wallflowers' Rami Jaffee on mellotron), which just might be their best chance at getting back on the radio. But even that sounds sappy in a good way, and the heartfelt "Apology" also finds them at their reflective best. They break out the mellotron again on the autobiographical "Daisy Chain," a cute psychedelic sing-along that opens with the rhyme "Punk rock girls with some noise to make/Hollywood 1978." VH1 couldn't have said it better.

So how are things different this time around? "It doesn't really feel any different at all," Carlisle answers. "There's an inherent sound as a band. Lyrically, it's just the Go-Go's with 15 years of experience and living and learning. It's a healthier group of people that know how to communicate with each other, and that was what was seriously lacking the first go-round."

Getting the beat back

"They were at the top of our list of people to work with," says Belinda Carlisle of God Bless the Go-Go's producers Paul Q. Kolderie and Sean Slade. "Besides somebody that could get great sounds -- and we loved the work that they had done with Hole and Radiohead -- we thought we needed somebody that got the essence of the band. Not just the music but what the band was about -- the humor and the irony and everything. They got it. They did a great job of making the band sound the way it's supposed to sound and the way it does sound live."

Originally tagged for the job by Redd Kross frontman Jeff McDonald (who's married to Go-Go's guitarist Charlotte Caffey), Kolderie and Slade set up a meeting with the band when they played the FleetBoston Pavilion last summer. "We went down not really knowing what to expect," says Kolderie. "You never know with something like that, but we hit it off. We ended up sitting in the trailer with Belinda drinking wine and talking about France [where Carlisle now lives]. I think the other thing that got us the job was we promised to do it old-school -- straight-ahead, no computers or anything. There was a big faction of the band that wanted to do it that way. That's kind of our trip."

Last fall, Kolderie and Slade headed out to LA's famed Sound City Studios to start recording. "You can't take the Go-Go's out of LA," laughs Kolderie. As far as he's concerned, most of the credit for capturing the vintage Go-Go's sound goes to the band. "People have said that, but to be honest it wasn't something that we even really tried to do. Using Gina [Schock] as the drummer, the way Jane plays guitar, the way they think together -- that's their sound. It's like the Eagles or something, you know? They got a sound. They just hadn't put it together for a long time."

Things went smoothly enough, but there was a slight hitch in the project when Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong showed up to record his parts on "Unforgiven." "Billie Joe didn't want to sing on the song," Kolderie explains. "It's funny, everything was going great until we said, 'Yeah, you wanna sing on it?' He got this weird look on his face like, 'No, I don't think so, man. That's okay.' We were like, 'Why?' I don't know him, I didn't want to push him too hard. And finally, he said -- and he was right -- 'There's never been a male voice on a Go-Go's record.' He didn't want to be the first. So we had to promise him that we'd kinda make it so people wouldn't give him shit about it or that he wouldn't have to ever really answer to it. [Hence Armstrong's back-up vocals are conspicuously low in the final mix.] And of course, the label wants you to feature the guest artist, but we had to try to make everybody happy on that one. It was tough."

-- SR