by Charlotte Caffey
I felt like I was moving in slow motion, aware of every little detail, as I walked down the alley and descended the stairs into that basement. My senses were in overload—from the graffiti, to the sounds bouncing off of every surface, to the dog collars, safety pins, multicolored hair, crazy makeup, and wild clothing, to the toilets overflowing, to the feeling of the sticky walls and floors, to the nonventilated dense mixture of smells. The air would become so thick that with each breath, it tasted like a bong hit of piss, sweat, booze and drugs. It was 1977, and I was at the Masque. I knew that I had arrived at some sort of Mecca.
Somewhere between the blaze of the California sun and that basement of the Pussycat Theater on Hollywood Boulevard I became a songwriter. I had always been obsessed with songs. I came from a large Catholic family of thirteen kids. What I remember mostly about growing up was being in the midst of total chaos all the time. Also, I was never allowed to show or speak any of my emotions. So I started listening to music via the radio—that was my refuge. That was my salvation. There were two pop stations, KHJ and KRLA. The earliest song I remember is “Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley.” I was five years old. And from then on, song after song, for as many hours of the day as I could, I would have my ear to the radio. In 1962 my grandfather took me to Wallichs Music City on the corner of Sunset and Vine and bought me one of my first singles, Brian Hyland’s “Sealed with a Kiss.” This song haunted me—I couldn’t stop listening to it. I recently read that Frank Zappa used to work at Music City right around that time—I wonder whether he sold me that record? A few years later I saw my first concert: the Beatles. I sat there silent and riveted in a sea of thousands of screaming fans, my eyes fixed on the stage as I listened intently to the songs. Hearing the songs performed live was a whole other experience. That night, as I watched my beloved Beatles, a thought crossed my mind: “I want to do that when I grow up.”
I started working at Woolworth’s on Vermont and Hollywood Boulevard when I turned sixteen. The whole reason I wanted a job was so I could buy records. I had finally gotten my own bedroom and had saved up enough money to buy my very own record player at Zodys. My mom and dad got really mad that I had spent my money on the record player, but I didn’t care. I started building my record collection with The Beatles and Led Zeppelin and added Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, the Stones, The Who, to name just a few. I’d buy as many as the amount of money that I had on hand. I would sit in my room by myself and listen to the records and stare at the album covers and read the lyrics. It was at this point when I first attempted to write songs. I had two older brothers who liked to torture me, so I had to be really covert about my songwriting. I would go to the garage where the piano was, press the soft pedal, and try to play as quietly as I could. Melodies came very easily for me. I started writing lyrics but was afraid to keep a notebook for fear of being found out and mercilessly teased, so I kept everything in my head.
My introduction to “art rock” and avant-garde music was in high school. I attended Immaculate Heart High School right in the middle of Hollywood. It is an all-girls Catholic school. I had an English teacher named Mr. Vliet. His cousin was Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart. One day he brought in Trout Mask Replica to class and played a couple of songs off this notorious record. I heard a whole different take on songwriting in a matter of a few minutes. That album led me to Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, which segued into joining my first band, Manuel and the Gardeners. I was seventeen and had just graduated high school when I met this super-hyper guy name Joe Ramirez who asked me to join his band. Manuel and the Gardeners was an early progressive art-performance rock band. The lead singer, Mick, had a hot plate that he used to fry women’s underwear—live onstage—and would run around in outlandish outfits. The music was avant-garde with heady, surreal lyrics. We played any and every show we could—a biker bar in Venice, a coffee house at Pitzer College, and even a Mexican restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard. I only played keyboards—I didn’t sing or write—but I got to experience the genius of Joe firsthand. He was one of the smartest, funniest, most talented guys I had ever met, and he would play an important role in my early songwriting life. We bonded over albums like Fragile by Yes, Tyranny and Mutation by Blue Öyster Cult, and too many others to mention. And we became inseparable best friends.
All I wanted to do was play in a band and write songs, but my parents were hassling me about what my plans were now that I was out of high school. At the eleventh hour I decided to go to Immaculate Heart College, a small music and art school in LA. Sometimes they would have lunchtime concerts where I once saw Father Yod and the Source Family, who were way beyond avant-garde. During that time of my intense classical piano education I was listening to Tapestry (Carole King), Aqualung (Jethro Tull), Led Zeppelin IV, Jesus Christ Superstar, and the Clockwork Orange soundtrack, as the movie had just come out. One of my professors brought the soundtrack into class. He was very upset by the revolutionary use of the Moog synthesizer with Beethoven’s legendary “Ode to Joy.” I had just seen the movie and thought it was one of the most fucking brilliant things I’d ever seen. All the innovation in this soundtrack opened up my musical spectrum, and these influences showed up later in my songwriting. I graduated with a bachelor’s of music degree.
I moved out of my parents house—FREEDOM! I had a job at a hospital and was able to get a cheap apartment and buy an old upright piano. I didn’t have the threat of my brothers anymore, so I started writing down my songs. I told Joe that I had written a few songs. He wanted to hear them—I was horrified. I had never played anything for anybody. I sat down at the piano but couldn’t bring myself to play. Joe saw the potential in me and proceeded to coax, prod, plead, and beg it out of me. Finally I got the courage and played him a song called “Oh Daddy-Oh.” It was a demented beatnik love ballad. He absolutely loved it. That moment changed everything for me. Joe and I spent all of our spare time listening to records—Radio City by Big Star, Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, Cheap Trick, The Move. My whole songwriting world was opening up even more. Joe was my first songwriting collaborator. We wrote songs that were a mix of Joe’s weirdo stuff and my pop melodies. It was a good combination. He wrote unconventional and outrageous lyrics and played his guitar, “Rosie,” a Telecaster with a rosewood neck in open E tuning, which added to his unique style of writing.
We started a band called The Eyes with Don (DJ) Bonebrake in 1976. We met Don at a gig at one of the Immaculate Heart College shows where he was playing in a band called Rocktopus. He totally blew me and Joe away. I acquired my first bass, an electric blue Rickenbacker, even though I didn’t know how to play it yet. I just started bashing away when the song started. I ended up breaking a lot of strings. We were going to tons of shows and seeing a lot of bands and were totally inspired. These were pre-punk bands that had finally made their way to the West Coast, paving the way for what was to come in the Hollywood punk scene. We saw Patti Smith, The Flaming Groovies, and Television. And in early 1977 Blondie opened for The Ramones at the Whisky. We stood right in front, watching The Ramones, getting our eardrums blown out by their Marshall stacks, and having the time of our lives. Something was unleashed inside of me that night.
The Eyes’ songs had evolved into what I would call “progpunk”—progressive punk. There were elements of punk but also more sophisticated chord changes and song structures. But as Joe and I were witnessing all this intense energy at live shows and listening to all these new bands, we had an idea. We decided to write an album in one hour: no editing, just pure, raw emotion—whatever came out of us. Well, it ended up taking us a couple of hours, but we wrote ten songs, including the manic “Kill Your Parents” and “Don’t Talk to Me,” a favorite of young punkers even today. We played one of our first gigs at the Masque. It was ground zero for the small Hollywood punk scene and run by this crazy and lovable Scottish guy named Brendan Mullen (R.I.P.). There was a large room with a stage where the weekend punk shows took place, and there were also smaller rooms where bands would rehearse during the week. The stage was in the big cement room, so the sound from the amps, drums, and speakers bounced all over the place—it was a sonic train wreck. There were rivalries between different bands and drama between members of the same groups, all of which I pretty much ignored, but I was mesmerized by what people would do under the banner of self-expression. For instance, Bobby Pyn (Darby Crash) would smear peanut butter on himself onstage or Alice Bag and The Bags would wear paper bags over their heads when they performed . . . or just strutting down Hollywood Boulevard. I loved all of it!
It was pretty clear from our first show that The Eyes were an “out crowd.” I looked like a full-on surfer chick, with waist-length blond hair, and Joe had a short afro. So right there we didn’t fit in. But on the inside we were filled with latent teenage angst and untapped raw energy. One night I was at The Avengers’ show at Larchmont Hall in Hancock Park, and it happened to be my birthday. I remember running into Pat Smear and Darby Crash (Bobby Pyn) of The Germs, and they asked me, “How old are you?” I told them that I had just turned twenty-two, and they said, “You’re too old to be a punk!” I laughed at them because they were only a few years younger than me. I never hid my age—I really didn’t care. But our outcast days came to an end one night when Joe kicked Darby in the head for heckling us during a set at the Masque. I guess Darby must have loved it, because after that we were no longer the “out crowd.”
We played more shows at the Masque and got asked to play at the Whisky and the Starwood. But The Eyes were about to come to an end. Exene and John Doe asked DJ to join X. I was bummed and okay with this at the same time. I couldn’t imagine the band without DJ, and I felt like Joe and I had taken this band as far as we could together. I also valued our friendship too much and knew in my gut I had to leave the band because we weren’t getting along. And artistically Joe was going in one direction and I was moving in another. Oddly enough, one of the last shows Joe and I saw together was Edie and the Eggs, led by John Waters’s superstar Edith Massey at the Nuart Theater in LA. Little did I know that the following year I would be in a band with the person that was drumming that night.
On April 14, 1978, I was sitting backstage at the Starwood, writing a song list for our second set that night. The Eyes were third on the bill, opening for The Jam and The Dickies. As I was writing, two pairs of spiked heels walked up in front of me. I heard a voice say, “Hi, Charlotte . . . ” I started looking up, past the ripped fishnet stockings, to a Hefty bag cinched at the waist and then to a head of bright purple hair. “I’m Belinda. Do you play lead guitar?” I lied and said, “Yes!” even though I had never played lead before. The other girl, Margot, was wearing a torn vintage dress and had pink-and-green hair and very heavy makeup. “We’re starting an all-girl band and want to know if you’d like to join.” “Okay,” I said without a second thought. We exchanged phone numbers. And in that moment telling one teeny white lie changed my life forever.
I went to England with The Dickies (Leonard Phillips was my boyfriend) and missed The Go-Go’s’ first gig, which was at the Masque in May 1978. But when I got back we were able to get a rehearsal room at the Masque, which we ended up sharing with X (and subsequently moved to another one that we shared with The Motels). The rooms were not soundproofed, so we could hear what every other band was playing and vice versa—we couldn’t have cared less; it just added to the chaos and fun. Our first rehearsal together was classic. I had met Belinda and Margot at the Starwood, and then I met Jane Wiedlin, who was a super-smart, pixie-like girl, and our drummer, Elissa Bello, who was very intense. I was the only one who really knew how to plug the amps in and turn them on. This kind of helped break the ice. On the outside I was plugging in amps and joking around, but on the inside I felt so awkward. These girls were in the scene. Jane lived at the infamous punk-rock apartments, the Canterbury, and Belinda lived at the equally notorious Disgraceland just a few blocks away. They dressed really cool and were outrageous and funny as hell. I was thinking, “These girls are real punks. I still look like Marcia Brady.”
I started learning songs that Belinda, Jane, and Margot were writing—“Robert Hilburn,” “Blades,” “Over Run,” “Living at the Canterbury,” “Party Pose.” I loved these songs. They felt really rebellious and dark. They had heard “Don’t Talk to Me,” so when I said I had a song that needed to be finished, they wanted to hear it. Now I was really terrified because the song I decided to bring in was so pop and the lyrics were so boy-girl and the melody was very sixties. It was called “How Much More.” Well, Belinda and Jane loved it. “How Much More” changed the direction of The Go-Go’s. Shortly after this we learned a cover of “Walking in the Sand” by The Shangri-Las. We started out slow just like the original, then blasted into a full-on powerful punk version. We had fused our sixties influences with our punk rock—and we were on fire.
None of us were very proficient on our instruments and we sounded pretty horrible, but that didn’t stop us. I had to covertly figure out how to play lead guitar. I just figured it was going to be easy because the strings were thinner than the bass strings and the guitar wasn’t as heavy. Boy, was I wrong. I bought a red Fender Duo-Sonic guitar—I liked it because it was red. I started playing it at rehearsals, and my fingers were bleeding because the tiny steel strings were cutting into them. It was pure pain, but I kept playing. I also had no idea how to get a good sound on my amp. I kept turning the reverb up because I was trying to get a sustain for my guitar parts, and I inadvertently created a punk/surf hybrid that became my sound. This sound inspired many of the guitar lines that I wrote.
Belinda worked at a magazine publishing company that published things like Guns and Ammo. She booked gigs for the band and was writing lyrics as well while she was at work (that was some good multitasking!). She showed me “Skidmarks on My Heart” (lyrics). They were about her brother. I immediately fell in love with them and took them home to try to write them music. I was listening to a lot of Cheap Trick and Ramones at the time, so this was where my inspiration for the music for this song came from. Then I brought her an idea I was working on. I had come up with a rad surf-guitar intro riff, but I needed help finishing the song. Belinda finished the lyrics for “Beatnik Beach.” Jane had also written a song with Don Bolles of The Germs called “London Boys,” which quickly became a fan favorite. Joseph Fleury (R.I.P.), the manager of The Mumps (Lance Loud, Kristian Hoffman), showed me some lyrics and asked me to write the music. The song “Fashion Seekers” was born. These songs were staples in our early sets. In addition, there were two songs Jane had written that just blew my brains apart—one she had written with all minor chords, which, in my music theory mind, was something you couldn’t do (cannot remember the name of it), and the other was one of the band’s favorites, “Fun with Ropes”—I didn’t know you could stuff that many chords in one song.
Right around this time we had a personnel change. Jane met a girl named Gina Schock at a party. She was a wise-crackin’ kick-ass drummer from blue-collar Baltimore. She told us that we had to rehearse at least five times a week. We followed her advice and became so much better live. Gina was the drummer for Edie and the Eggs, who I had seen the year before. The first time I met Gina she had a perm, aviator glasses, a baseball cap, and a pair of overalls—I suddenly didn’t feel so bad looking like Marcia Brady!
There was a heck of a lot of songs being written in that one square block in Hollywood at that time. I didn’t have any kind of rules for songwriting, and it didn’t seem like anyone else did either. I don’t recall actually being influenced by any songs per se from our little punk scene; it really was more about the collective energy, the visuals, the experimentations, and sonic assault that inspired me. I fed off of it. Don’t get me wrong, there were some great songs, like X’s “We’re Desperate,” “Lexicon Devil” by The Germs, “You’re So Hideous” by The Dickies, The Screamers’ “Peer Pressure,” and “We Got the Neutron Bomb” by The Weirdos. But the songs that inspired me and knocked me on my ass were right in my own band.
The moment Jane finished “How Much More” we started a writing collaboration between us that was nothing less than magical. We discovered we had this sort of telepathic writing relationship. We had only known each other for a short time, yet we were bringing in music and lyrics that just happened to fit perfectly with each other. We were collaborating but weren’t in the same room. Jane and I wrote “He’s So Strange” about a guy that we knew, but what we didn’t know was that he was dating both of us behind our backs. We also wrote “Screaming,” which was inspired by Tomata du Plenty. It opens with a frenetic guitar riff and ventures into raga rock–sounding verses with a surf-inspired chorus. At one point I had finished three songs that I was working on and knew that none of these were very good. But each song had one really good part. So I combined those three parts and came up with music I loved. Shortly after that Jane gave me a set of lyrics that were a cool twist on a love song and were just so beautiful and haunting. It just so happened that my music matched perfectly with her lyrics—it gave me the chills. The song was “Lust to Love.”
“Lust to Love”
It used to be fun was in
The capture and kill
In another place and time
I did it all for thrills
Love me and I’ll leave you
I told you at the start
I had no idea that you
Would tear my world apart
And you’re the one to blame
I used to know my name
But I’ve lost control of the game
’Cause even though I set the rules
You’ve got me acting like a fool
When I see you I lose my cool
Lust to love
Was the last thing I was dreaming of
And now all I want is just to love
Lust turned to love
Every night consisted of one of three things: playing a show, rehearsing, or partying. I’m not sure if Jane and I deliberately set out to write an anthem-like song, but we did with “Tonite.” She showed me a set of lyrics she had been working on, and I loved the idea because the words captured the feeling of exactly what we were doing every night. I had music for a verse I was working on that fit perfectly, and we finished the chorus together. I wrote a guitar intro that had a drone note in it—I think it was the first time I did this in one of our songs.
Not only was Jane a brilliant lyricist, but she also wrote amazing music. I remember how blown away I was when she brought in “Automatic.” It was this really sparse, eerie love song. The riff that I came up with was very staccato-robotic to go along with the way the word “au-to-ma-tic” was pronounced in the lyric. The Go-Go’s were really against doing a “ballad,” and this was the closest thing we ever got to it.
Then one day she asked me to come over. She wanted to show me a new song she had written. I remember clear as day walking into her room in Agora Hills. She was sitting on the carpeted floor with an acoustic guitar and proceeded to play me a song called “Our Lips Are Sealed.” It was incredible. Jane had had a mad love affair with Terry Hall, the lead singer of Madness. He had written her a letter, and Jane took some of what he had written and transformed it into a masterpiece. The song was in a 3/4 (waltz) timing, and my only suggestion was that she try it in a more straight 4/4 beat. That is how we started rehearsing it, and I knew at that point that we had a hit song on our hands.
“Our Lips Are Sealed” was so great that it inspired me to come up with what would become one of the quintessential Go-Go riffs. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was truly becoming a lead guitarist. I was learning that being a lead guitarist had little to do with noodling solos at breakneck speeds and everything to do with elevating the song with strong melodic riffs. I came up with melodies and runs that would uplift a song like George Harrison did with The Beatles. It was my natural instinct to play this way, coming from the era of classic pop I grew up in. I liked to write counterpoint melodies that wove in and out of the main melodies—this was a result of me learning about counterpoint from the hours spent playing the Bach inventions in college.
“Our Lips Are Sealed”
Can you hear them
They talk about us
Telling lies
Well, that’s no surprise
Can you see them
See right through them
They have no shield
No secrets to reveal
It doesn’t matter what they say
In the jealous games people play
Our lips are sealed
There’s a weapon
That we must use
In our defense
Silence reveals
When you look at them
Look right through them
That’s when they’ll disappear
That’s when we’ll be feared
It doesn’t matter what they say
In the jealous games people play
Our lips are sealed
Give no mind to what they say
It doesn’t matter anyway
Our lips are sealed
Hush, my darling
Don’t you cry
Quiet, angel
Forget their lies
I’m a natural collaborator, as it is one of my strengths. But in the case of “We Got the Beat,” it was definitely an act of solitude. It was New Year’s Day 1980, and I really wanted to write a beat-centric song. So I locked myself in my apartment, got as high as a kite, and listened to a ton of Motown while the annual Twilight Zone marathon played in the background on TV. I sat down a couple of times and tried to write something, but nothing happened. I gave up, did more drugs, and started watching TV. Around midnight this idea came to my mind. I scrambled to turn on my cassette player, and the entire song came to me in just a few minutes. I remember thinking, “Oh shit” because I believed I had just written a hit song. I still have that original cassette.
“We Got the Beat”
See the people walking down the street
Fall in line just watching all their feet
They don’t know where they wanna go
But they’re walking in time
They got the beat
They got the beat
They got the beat, yeah
They got the beat
See the kids just getting out of school
They can’t wait to hang out and be cool
Hang around ’til quarter after twelve
That’s when they fall in line
They got the beat
They got the beat
Kids got the beat, yeah
Kids got the beat
Go-go music really makes us dance
Do the pony puts us in a trance
Do the watusi just give us a chance
That’s when we fall in line
’Cause we got the beat
We got the beat
We got the beat, yeah
We got it
“This Town” is the best song Jane and I ever wrote. When she showed me the lyrics, I knew I was looking at perfection. Instead of inviting the listener to join us, the lyrics sarcastically let the listener know that they will never be one of us. And “We’re all dreamers, we’re all whores” is hands-down one of my favorite lines of any of The Go-Go’s’ songs. The music writing was a full collaboration. We wrote a darker-sounding verse that soars into a strangely uplifting anthemic chorus. I had the intro guitar part. Jane suggested that instead of a two-bar intro we make it longer into a four-bar intro. She came up with the idea of cutting the last bar in half, thereby making it a 2/4 bar rather than a 4/4 bar, and I started jumping up and down, saying, “Oh my God! We are prog-rock now!” We both laughed so hard, but let’s just call it The Go-Go’s version of progressive rock!
“This Town”
We all know the chosen toys
Of catty girls and pretty boys
Make up that face
Jump in the race
Life’s a kick in this town
Life’s a kick in this town
[Chorus:]
This town is our town
It is so glamorous
Bet you’d live here if you could
And be one of us
Change the lines that were said before
We’re all dreamers, we’re all whores
Discarded stars
Like worn out cars
Litter the streets of this town
Litter the streets of this town
Jane and I and the rest of the band knew we had really good songs. That is what kept pushing us forward through all of the obstacles we faced. We kept trying to find a record deal, but no one would take a chance on us. They would say, “You’re an all-girl band—we can’t sign you!” even though we had great songs and continued to sell out every show. There was even an article in the Los Angeles Times about how we couldn’t get a record deal.
After our performance opening for British supergroup Madness in early 1980, we were asked to join them on their next UK tour. We were beside ourselves. We figured out all the logistics and were on our way. Returning from that tour in July, we played the Starwood to an overcapacity sold-out crowd. Miles Copeland was there that night and also at our New Year’s Eve run at the Whisky later that year, which included Kathy Valentine’s debut as our new bass player. It was then that he offered us a record deal on his small independent label, I.R.S. Records. We started recording in April of 1981, and our record came out July of that summer. “Our Lips Are Sealed” was the first single released from the LP. I remember exactly where I was when I heard it on the radio for the first time. I was driving down Laurel Canyon and had to pull over because I burst out into tears of joy. “We Got the Beat” was the second single, which put us over the top and pushed our record to number one. And just as I had done when I was younger, I’d have my ear to the radio for as many hours as I could, listening to songs. But this time it was to the songs from my band, The Go-Go’s.