Can you handle it?

You began life as the drummer in wild US punk band The Germs and later joined v. successful punk set-up The Go-Gos. Discuss.
I was a drummer who never played. I rehearsed a few times with The Germs then left to become backing singer for Black Randy and the Metrosquad. I loved all music - the LA punk scene made it possible for bands to be on stage and be terrible. If it wasn't for that, we'd never have got started - we weren't very good.

What happened to the mohican haircut you used to sport?
I tried to be as punk as a middle-class girl from LA could be. I had all the gear - the safety pin in the lip etc. I even shaved my head - the whole bit.

You've got such a squeaky-clean image now - it's not true, is it?
I don't think that's true - there's plenty of interesting stuff about me that's been dragged up, like parties, drugs... When people think of me, they don't think of me like a Celine Dion, because l've got background. People know there might be some sickness bubbling under my surface. There's still some punk in me.

Did you tell the Go-Gos to go go?
Yeah, Charlotte (the guitarist) and myself broke up the band because it was pathetic and not happening - it wasn't fun anymore. Unbelievably, it was a surprise to some of the others.

Any chance of a reunion, then?
Absolutely not. I have no desire to do that again.

What happened to your pet pot-bellied pig?
Oh, him. That only lasted about a week It didn't work out, what with the dogs. Plus they get big. They don't stay 20 pounds - they can end up weighing 140!

So did you eat it?
No, we sent it back to the breeders. I don't eat red meat.

So you wouldn't eat all the pies?
No, my weight's been up and down like a rollercoaster, so I don't eat too many sweets, chips, crisps and stuff that I love.

If Heaven Is A Place On Earth, would it be Carlisle?
I don't know about that. I visited Carlisle very briefly in the '80s when the Go-Gos were touring with Madness. I didn't see much of it, though - only the inside of a hotel bar. I'm not convinced a heavenly place really exists on earth. I'm still searching.

Were you ever tempted to change your name from Belinda?
I was for a long time. For a while, I called myself, erm (she giggles and blushes), Donna Rhea. I had a few other punk names, like Dotty Danger. In the end though, I went back to Belinda - it wasn't very punk, but I think it suits me now... better than Dotty Danger anyway.

Does it worry you that you're old enough to be your fans' mum?
It's great that I have a wide age range of fans. When we did Top Of The Pops recently, I looked at the girls at the front and was shocked. I said to another of the band, 'I could be their mother.' She was thinking the same thing. Wow.

Would you consider going all easy listening?
Oh, I loved easy listening long before it got cool. I would like to do a Doris Day cover, but I couldn't do it as well as her.

What about Britpop, then?
I like it, but I would look stupid. Changing your style to whatever's fashionable is not me. I've got all my credibility out of my system. I don't want critical acclaim I just want to do well commercially.

Do you like younger men, like Take That and Boyzone?
I can understand the appeal. They are a little bit young for me, though.

So you couldn't be tempted by a younger man, then? (Oh, go on...)
I didn't say that.. .

You moved to France recently - do you eat snails or frogs' legs?
The idea of eating a frog is just disgusting to me. I have eaten snails before, when I was younger. The butter and the garlic are nice, but the snail is like a piece of rubber.

You've had a hit with In Too Deep - can you swim?
Of course I can. I was born and raised near the beach, so getting in too deep has never worried me.

Have you ever been too deeply in trouble?
Oh yes, very much so. I... you know, it's been pretty deep. I can't go into it too much, but it was pretty deep and very recent. No further details...

Did Belinda handle it? She may be old enough to be yer mum, but she did once wear a safety pin through her lip, so we're not gonna argue. Of course she did!

Go-Go Powder Ranger

· BELINDA CARLISLE 38 year-old mother, wife of ex-White House bigwig and, erm, rock'n'roll survivor. No really! You might think she's just a drab, cheesy MOR pop giant, but, as MARK SUTHERLAND reveals, she was once a cocaine-snorting party animal, who not only flirted with debauchery but got it hopelessly shitfaced and shagged it in the bogs. For ages. Right now though, she's clean, happy and back with a new album... Coke-o pops: STEFAN DE BATSELIER

You are a singer in a rock'n'roll band. After an inauspicious beginning, you suddenly come up with some blinding pop songs, sign a record deal, tap into the cultural subconscious of the planet's youth and make it big. Really big. Shifting-four-million-sodding-albums-in-America big. Pretty soon, you're playing packed stadium shows, being mobbed everywhere you go and discovering hordes of gorgeous women want to sleep with you.

Sadly, behind the scenes, all is not so dandy. You discover fame, fortune and having loads of girlies want to touch your bottom aren't actually all they're cracked up to be. Drug problems and internal rivalries take their toll until, eventually, your band breaks up in a blizzard of cocaine and punch-ups. You're left without a band and without any money, but WITH a stack of personal problems and the mother of all drug habits.
It's a familiar rock'n'roll story, alright. One straight out of the Music Biz Cliché Handbook. It could be the life story of almost any male rock star from any decade you care to mention.
But it isn't. This time the seller of all those records, the snorter of all that cocaine, the object of lust for all those women, the singer in that rock'n'roll band is, in fact... Belinda Carlisle. Belinda. Carlisle. Formerly of The Go-Go's. BELINDA CARLISLE. You heard.

SAT IN the lobby of a discreet London hotel where only the seriously rich can even contemplate staying, Belinda Carlisle doesn't look much like your average ex-punk rocker, ex-cocaine addict, ex-lesbian lust icon and ex-target of no fewer than 32 stalkers. She looks like your average fabulously wealthy 38-year-old Californian mother-of-one, animal rights activist who just happens to also be a ludicrously successful pop star. Which is to say, not very average at all.
But then she's anything but an average person. You may think she's just another piece of MOR pop fluff, but she's actually on ultra-intimate terms with The Madness. She could tell tales to make Courtney Love tremble. Sell you a 'punk survivor' story to make that of more feted veterans like Patti Smith look like Sonya Echobelly: The Movie. Relate cocaine-addled episodes to make a night out with Liam and Noel look like the proverbial children's tea party. Even better, that's precisely what she is going to do.
The wonder is she's here to tell the tale at all. The eldest of eight kids, and the 'product' of a broken home, by the time Belinda was 19 she was ripe for the punk rock picking. And so, after meeting Pat Smear at the Beverly Hilton while chasing Freddie Mercury's autograph, Belinda found herself drumming in the first incarnation of 'seminal' LA hardcore types The Germs. Sadly, a bout of mononucleosis (A bit like glandular fever, apparently - Medical Ed) meant she was replaced before their first gig, but the bug had bitten and she formed The Go-Go's with four of her female pals. Their brand of feisty-but-naive teenage punk-pop quickly established them as a sort of Californian Kenickie and, by 1981, The Go-Go's were every American teenager's favourite band. And Belinda was every American teenager's favourite Go-Go.
And that's where the problems started. The Go-Go's were marketed as cute, all-American gals-next-door but, behind the cheesy grins, sun-drenched videos and multi-platinum albums, something a great deal more rock'n'roll was going on.
"We partied pretty hard," understates Belinda. "But really, it was only considered outrageous because we were girls. We just acted like guys."
Right down to sleeping with groupies?
"We wanted to have the whole groupie thing but the truth is guy were totally intimidated by us," she sighs. "So all we got were loads of really aggressive lesbians backstage. We had girls coming on to us all the time but we weren't into that at all... or, at least, most of us weren't. But the road crew loved it, 'cos they'd get all this incredible action from these gorgeous women who were desperate to meet this all-girl band."
Small compensation, one suspects, for the torture inflicted upon them by The Go-Go's themselves, who were apparently prone to taking photos of their, ahem, private parts and pushing, them under the road crew's doors. True fact? "Oh yeah, we did all that stuff."
Indeed, 'doing stuff' became something of a Belinda Carlisle speciality. Especially if the 'stuff' in question was cocaine.
"I was a big-time cocaine addict," she confesses. "It started off as a fun thing - y'know, 'C'mon girls, let's get a gram' - but pretty soon it got out of control and became a cliché and, eventually, it did turn into a nightmare. It was one of the big things that broke us up.
"But, of course, it was also tremendous fun. I was 21, single, with no responsibilities, with more money than you can ever imagine and taking more drugs than you can ever imagine. Of course it was a complete blast."
Even so, from the moment The Go-Go's hit Number One with 'Beauty And The Beat' to the moment they fell to pieces in 1984, they were locked in a vicious downward spiral of in-the-closet drug binges. Quite literally in the closet, as it happens.
"At the time I was living with this guy who was a total asshole. He had no idea what was going on, which shows you how much he was into me. So I used to do drugs in my walk-in closet without him knowing. There were a few times in there when I thought for sure I was having a heart attack, but I couldn't say anything."
When The Go-Go's split, however, Belinda was left with little option but to come clean. For a start, she was completely skint. Her own excess (she'd habitually hire swanky cars only to park them in the garage and forget about them for months on end while, after one particularly spectacular evening, she woke up to discover she'd bought a racehorse. And a completely hopeless racehorse at that) and a succession of rip-offs meant The Go-Go's millions had vanished.
Enter a most unlikely saviour; Morgan Mason, son of actor James Mason, former Chief Of Protocol to President Ronald Reagan, and current Mr Belinda Carlisle.
"It's weird," she admits. "When he was in the White House I had green hair and was out dropping acid and doing MDMA. Talk about opposites attract..."
Belinda claims Mason didn't force her to clean up: "He just made me realise the opportunities l'd miss if I didn't." Even so, she's refreshingly free of ex-junkie rock star moralising.
"I've lapsed plenty of times," she admits. "But there's no way l'd become an addict again. Y'know, I've done every drug in the world, including smack, but the thing with cocaine is, if you take it regularly and you've got the money, there's just no way it's not going to become a problem eventually."
Oasis might claim otherwise.
"Just wait. I guarantee you they'll be talking to NME in ten years' time, telling you how terrible it all was. If they're lucky."
And, soon after ditching the white lines, 'lucky' is precisely what Belinda Carlisle got. She wrote no Go-Go's tunes, but has been the only member to sustain a solo career. Indeed, with her second solo album, 1988's multi-million shifting 'Heaven On Earth', she achieved success to make The Go-Go's and, indeed, every pop star on the planet bar Madonna and Michael Jackson, look like very small potatoes indeed.
The resulting renewed media interest, of course, brought a whole new stack of problems. Belinda could cope with the constant speculation about the state of her marriage and even the perpetual jibes about her weight problems. It was complete strangers wanting to kill her that got her down.
"At one time I had 32 people after me that were considered dangerous. There was one guy who lived half an hour away from me who wanted to kill my husband because I belonged to him. And I had one guy who came to my show in Reno, Nevada, with a gun - and they wanted me to go onstage wearing a bulletproof vest so they could capture him! I was like, 'No way! Why should I live my life like this? It's f--ed!'."
Soon enough, however, Belinda had the perfect excuse not to live her life like that any more. After two more planet-conquering solo albums, 1 993's raucous 'Real' LP became the first bona fide flop of her career. She split with her record company and headed off for a life of family-oriented isolation in France. Once again she was down the dumper. Difference this time was, she didn't care one bit.
Now, however, after a brief flirtation with a Go-Go's reunion, she's back (Back! BACK!) with a new, rather-wonderful-actually album 'A Woman & A Man', featuring a heavyweight collaboration with Beach Boy Brian Wilson ("Is he mad? Well, he doesn't bring a sandbox to the studio or anything, but he's definitely... different") and a slightly less heavyweight collaboration with Per Gessle from Roxette ("Is he mad? Er... no.").
And, with two UK Top Ten singles already, it's starting to look just like old times. Minus The Madness. After all, Belinda Carlisle may be The Weeble Of Pop (knock her down as hard and often as you like: she'll come bouncing right back every time), but she's also a boring old square these days, right?
"Oh, I don't know about that," she grins, slurping her red wine.
Come on. Exactly how rock'n'roll can motherhood be?
"Well y'know, my son was born to the sound of 'Welcome To The Jungle' by Guns N' Roses."
Hmm. Not bad. What's his name?
"James Duke Mason. But we call him Dookie. As in the Green Day album."
Aah. Don'tcha just love a rock'n'roll story with a rock'n'roll ending?

Belinda Carlisle
My Worst

She's top pop lady Belinda Carlisle and she wants to tell us about her worst...

JOB
"I pumped gas at a gas station when I was 16. Luckily I didn't have to wear dodgy overalls or anything. But I had to do the night shift I couldn't sleep during the day and I hated having to answer to somebody."

INJURY
"I tore my hamstring in high school when I was cheerleading. I was trying to do the splits but I went the wrong way! My leg was black from my hip down to my ankle."

RUMOUR
"I don't pay much attention to the papers. The most annoying thing is people saying l've had plastic surgery. I hear constantly that l've had my cheek bones or nose done. I just think, 'Whatever!'"

HAIR DISASTER
"I gave myself an afro when I was 17.1 did a home perm but it ended up like a big puffball. At the same time I was working in an ice cream parlour gaining 30lbs. I was very unattractive."

KISS
"Playing truth or dare with Jack Wild on a Friday afternoon when I was 13.1 fell madly in love with him - the reason it was the worst was because by Monday he didn't even remember my name!"

* Belinda Carlisle's new single Love is in the Key of C is out on November 18

POP MUSIC REVIEW; Reunion Takes a While to Get Go-Go-ing

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO--Sure, it's pretentious for a band to make its stage entrance to a blaring tape of "Also Sprach Zarathustra," but perhaps that pomp is justified when the timpani are drowned out by the tumult of the standing ovation greeting the band.

So the Go-Go's reclaimed the concert stage after nearly a 10-year absence (discounting a 1990 mini-tour), kicking off a short reunion tour Sunday at the Coach House (they also play the Wiltern in Los Angeles on Dec. 1 and 2).

In 1982, the Los Angeles quintet was the first to prove that an all-female rock band could be successful, topping the charts with dolled-up garage rock. The members then proved they were also equal to their male counterparts in substance abuse, infighting and other band-wrecking skills. That led to the Go-Go's disbanding in 1985 and, subsequently, to some grim solo careers.

Now they're back to prove that females, too, can cash in on their legacies. But though they've regrouped to promote a new hits package--"a great Christmas gift," bassist Kathy Valentine reminded the crowd--their 90-minute performance was far from being just a money run.

From the get-go, compact powerhouse Gina Schock wore an infectious grin and attacked her drums with great vigor. Too bad the rest of the band was facing away from her, for, despite her pounding beat, they got off to a tentative start.

Singer Belinda Carlisle--whose voice was obviously filled-out by digital harmonizing effects at the sound board--seemed neither to connect with the lyrics of the first several songs nor particularly to land on the right notes.

*

There was scarcely more musical precision from Valentine, guitarist Jane Wiedlin (sporting short, green-tinged black hair) and ex-Bangle Vicki Peterson on lead guitar (subbing for a pregnant Charlotte Caffey). One new song, "Good Girl," got a decent, if uninspiring, airing, while "Vacation" scarcely got on the road, given Carlisle and the band's ragged delivery.

But their shortcomings either vanished or ceased to matter by the seventh song, when they kicked into groove with the effervescent power pop of "This Town."

The show was pure party from that point on, with band members bouncing around the stage, exchanging laughs and seeming to remember the pleasure it is all supposed to be. The audience was way ahead of them, up and dancing to nearly every song in the 21-song set.

The set spanned the group's early, rough pre-fame numbers like "Fashion Seekers" and "Playing With Ropes" to songs composed for the new hits package, a double CD titled "Return to the Valley of the Go-Go's."

Those songs show promise for the full-fledged reunion the group says it is intending this time, especially "Beautiful," a song detailing an idyllic "bed of roses" life, given an edge by Carlisle's vocal, which pitched the lyrics somewhere between affirmation and irony.

*

It is such unexpected balances that may be the hallmark of the Go-Go's. Their early efforts were a mix of punky drive and bittersweet pop confection, while later efforts still had a garage sensibility lurking under the smooth production values.

On Sunday, they played with a palpable punch on their old stage burners "Cool Jerk," "Our Lips Are Sealed," "Get Up and Go" and "Lust to Love" as well as on the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated," aptly closing the show with "Let's Have a Party."

*

Opening act That Dog didn't seem to want for much, except perhaps a reason to exist. The quartet includes the teen-aged daughters of Warner Bros. Records executive Lenny Waronker (Anna Waronker) and jazz bassist Charlie Haden (twins Petra and Rachel Haden). The group is completed by drummer Tony Maxwell.

Despite their youth and the shadow of famous parents, the group's 12-song set had an abundance of self-assurance and musical ideas. Though sometimes awry, the vocal harmonies were usually rich and inventive, while the musical backing effortlessly shifted from feedback-spattered grind to soft violin pastorals.

It was all very clever, but, without much evident emotion behind their constructs, their set grew thin long before it ended. Even so, they were a lot more fun than Wilson-Phillips, and they may be more worth watching a couple of years hence.

Copyright, The Times Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times, 1994.

New Go-Go's: A Tour Without Bitterness; Pop music: The all-female band made it big in the early '80s, then broke up. They hope that this reunion is permanent.

By MIKE BOEHM, TIMES STAFF WRITER

"Cute, bubbly, effervescent."

In what is for the Go-Go's a three-word mantra of sorts, guitarist Charlotte Caffey has summed up an image that has stuck since its early '80s heyday, much to the band's chagrin. The first all-female band ever to make it big, the Go-Go's were celebrated for their fun-loving charm, for their best-buddies camaraderie and for the garagey pop songs that propelled their first album, "Beauty and the Beat," to a six-week stay at the top of the charts.

"It's not that we weren't that way, but there were other sides to us," Caffey says now, looking back on the Go-Go's misadventures in the image-making game.

Her argument is partly supported by the 1981-vintage "Beauty and the Beat," which had its moments of winking irony to go with the cute, frothy stuff, and it is completely clinched by the darker, troubled tone of the band's third and last album, 1984's critically esteemed but commercially disappointing "Talk Show."

"I'm still trying to sort out in my mind how much we were responsible for it," ventures bassist Kathy Valentine, sitting with Caffey and rhythm guitarist Jane Wiedlin in a North Hollywood rehearsal studio. "Society was going, 'Here's a successful girl band.' It's almost like we couldn't be accepted and embraced. . . . "

"Unless we were non-threatening," Wiedlin jumps in, finishing the thought. "If we had been angry, it wouldn't have worked."

"That's what's so great now," Valentine resumes. "Women (rockers) are accepted as being sexual, angry, crude--all the things it was acceptable for guys to be all along."

Seasoned by past pitfalls, cognizant of present possibilities, the Go-Go's are back.

The immediate cause of the band's return is the recent release of "Return to the Valley of the Go-Go's," a double-disc retrospective of hits and rarities.

As they did in 1990, when they regrouped for the first time to play an environmental benefit concert and promote the release of a greatest-hits package, the Go-Go's will do a short tour, which includes shows Thursday and next Friday at the Wiltern Theatre. Former Bangles guitarist Vicki Peterson will fill in for the pregnant Caffey, who will avoid the rigors of the road until after her February due date.

This time, the Go-Go's aim to keep their reunion going. The members say that touring in 1990 enabled them to get over whatever hurt feelings remained from the band's bitter initial split.

When they heard that I.R.S. Records was preparing a more complete retrospective release, the Go-Go's, who weren't happy with the 1990 hits package, decided to reconvene for the sake of quality control and to add new material.

"This retrospective was going to be put out with or without our involvement, and it was a perfect excuse to get together again," singer Belinda Carlisle said in a separate phone interview.

Besides dipping into personal archives for tapes of early gigs and rehearsals, the band recorded three new songs for the retrospective, all of them catchy, overtly ironic garage-pop fare.

"It inspires us to want to make another record together," said Carlisle. "That's a big possibility down the line."

Is this just another case of fashionable rock reunion-itis?

"The way I keep looking at it, there are opportunities that keep coming to bring us back together, and this time we're not going to fight it," says Caffey, invoking fate.

"The only way we'll know if the Go-Go's have artistic validity or mean anything is to do a record," Valentine says. "We made ourselves really happy with (the new songs) we've recorded."

In their first run, the Go-Go's succumbed to the pressures of being young and suddenly famous. Infighting set in, and Caffey and Carlisle were hampered by substance-abuse problems. Wiedlin was the first to leave, in 1984. Caffey and Carlisle gave up drugs, then decided upon sober reflection that they didn't want to be Go-Go's anymore. They declared the band finis in the spring of '85, to the chagrin of Valentine and drummer Gina Schock.

Now the Go-Go's are in their mid-30s, except for Caffey, a fresh-looking 40.

"We're not putting any pressure on ourselves," Carlisle said. "Getting serious and intense about it is going to take the enjoyment out. I want to have fun with it."

* The Go-Go's play Thursday and next Friday at the Wiltern Theatre, 3790 Wilshire Blvd., 8 p.m. Thursday sold out, Friday $25 and $35. (213) 380-5005 .

Copyright, The Times Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times, 1994.