Deep in the soul of every writer lies a secret: what does the writer do to avoid writing? I'll empty my brain pan now: I clean every surface, animate or inanimate, in my living space. Having let dust and slime pile up happily since the last story, suddenly I become a whirling dervish who could put hausfrau Pat "Windex" Benatar-Geraldo to shame. Who could possibly type a syllable amid rampant

spores and the cat's spider mites? Nothing escapes my chemical fury—nothing except the typewriter. No, my exploration into the essence of Go-Go must wait until the earrings are cleaned. The cat dried and fluffed to my lisa, she-wolf of the SS specifications, I turn on the TV. So the rules change somewhat, OK. It's Curt Gowdy's weekend sports wrap-up! The Milwaukee Brewers are skidding around the bases singing "We Got The Beat" by the Go-Go's, only it really is the Go-Go's.

used to have a social life on the road unlike any male band ever had. -Jane Wiedlin

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This is serious. The wizards who choose music to go with sports highlights go for your jugular with the snappiest, yappiest pop they can yank out of the Top Five. In their heart of hearts, they don't give a fig about alternative radio, heart, passion, or the Christgau Consumer Guide. They want the tunes to make the hapless players seem to dance, make them look funny when they fall and if there are a few pointed lyrics (do the Brewers have the beat?) all the better.

So the Go-Go's are a part of this hallowed institution, weekend sports highlights. So then, there is no escaping THE GO-GO'S: THE INTERVIEW

Charlotte wears a gold ring and a gold cross on a chain around her neck. She plays lead guitar and her grin splits her face in two. Baby-faced Belinda, she of the lead Go-Go voice, collects baseball cards— L.A. Dodger baseball cards (heh heh heh). Jane Weidlin has a perm and is cultivating dreadlocks. It is suggested by a Go-Go that she resembles Buckwheat. Kathy Valentine, upholding her fast reputation as the Go-Go's primo writer, punctuates conversations with sly, pithy remarks delivered with a smirk of her sloe eyes. Close-cropped Gina the drummer talks tough, but in repose is the daintiest of blondes, suggesting Jean Seberg with a Baltimore accent. (Joan of Arc in Female Trouble?)

We love what we do. And when it turns out to be not as good a thing anymore, well stop doing it. —Belinda Carlisle

I observed all of this (and more, let's hope) on a stunning, blues skies/wooly white clouds kind of summer day, a Friday no less. If the Beach Boys couldn't have this day, the Go-Go's were certainly entitled to it.

The instructions from Howard Bloom Inc. were clear. I was to become a Go-Go for the afternoon; talk in hotel rooms, go on the bus to the soundcheck, etc. Did Robert Hilburn have to become a Go-Go? Another story...

First, I entered a hotel room and found four pairs of female eyes upon me—in a career in rock journalism this only happened previously when I found myself on an elevator with four of Chicago's finest Led Zeppelin groupies.

But the Go-Go's'eyes were friendly; the sultry Jane was sprawled in a bed, the smiling Kathy and thoughtful Charlotte ("Have a seat!") sat on chairs, Gina took part in an exciting phone call, and Belinda was awaited.

OK, here are 4/5 of the group Home Video Magazine proclaimed "America's No. 1 Group!" So what did "CREEM's representative" put to them?

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Hey, how's your love life?

All: "It's great!"

Jane: "It's really good."

Charlotte: "It's really good right now!"

Jane: "I can't talk about it."

feithy: "I can't either."

Charlotte: "I can't either."

Wow! Let's probe some more...

Kathy: "Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's like...'"

Charlotte: "It's either feast or famine!"

Kathy: "Lately it's been one big feast."

Jane: "We used to have a social life on the road unlike any male band ever had, I think..."

Could they elaborate?

Jane: "No, I'd get in trouble!"

Charlotte: "You can get in trouble enough for saying that. "

Jane: "Don't..don't print who said that!"

Kathy: "I haven't said a word. Print that."

They weren't referring to male groupies following them around on the road?

Jane: "Oh, no."

Charlotte: "We don't want to get diseases and stuff."

Jane: "We have a lot more to risk. Boys can't get preggers."

Kathy: "We can. We can and we will."

Jane: "I won't."

Charlotte: "I won't either."

Jane: "No way."

☆ ☆ ☆

Let's splay prejudices on the table. I reproduce the Go-Go's girlish wisecracks because they have a healthy group personality. They make fun of each other, they have an enjoyably flippant attitude towards any over-serious regard of pop music—theirs or anybody's^-and they cheerfully predict that they'll go-go no more when the hits stop coming.

Besides all these admirable qualities, there were more melodies rampant on Vacation than I could perceive on the latest Who opus. It would seem, in the realm of pop, that practice doesn't always make perfect.

"To each his own opinion," said Charlotte mildly, when I asked their opinion of the reviews of Vacation.

"Well, we go overboard anyway when we see something in print," added Jane.

Charlotte protested: "That's not true of me, I don't go overboard. Nothing bothers me!"

Jane: "Oh, no, nothing bothers you."

Charlotte: "Lots of things bother me, but that doesn't bother me."

Jane: "Yeah."

Had their life gotten much easier since their success?

Jane: "Heck yes. More social life. It's more comfortable, everyone has their own room. We have our own wardrobe cases. We have a bigger crew."

What about that very tangible sign of success: the radio and TV commercials using Go-Go's "music"?

Jane: "I saw the Agree one. It has... Go-Go's music in it."

And the video game commercial that lifts the idea of their "Our Lips Are Sealed" video...

Gina jumped in with her wonderfully perverse Baltimore accent: "Yeah, they're driving around in this car, you know. And they're all dressed in new wave outfits, and they jump in a convertible..i"

"That's not very nice!" Jane purred.

Charlotte: "Whattaya mean, it's flattering!

"Well, I want to get paid for it," Jane countered.

Gina agreed: "It'd be more flattering if they paid.. .a certain percentage."

Being Go-Go's, we retired to the bus for the journey into the Michigan woods to Pine Knob, the exurban outpost where the Go-Go's would perform that night. Informing me that this is Neil Diamond's bus, the girls make themselves comfortable; Belinda opens her bag and systematically goes through her baseball cards, pausing only to read the Detroit Free Press. After perusing the Go-Go's story, she scanned the entertainment page.

"The Boners...oooo, what a gross name," she opined. "Jerry Vile and the Boners."

Belinda and Jane proceeded to communicate about a certain batch of baseball cards Jane had pitched in her hotel room, which were Belinda's for the asking.

Jane: "There was only one Dodger card, so I thought that's the only card you would want." I think it was Steve—no, Ron Cey."

Belinda: "Ron Cey? You got Ron Cey?"

"I don't like baseball," Kathy said firmly. ☆ ☆ ☆

Later I chatted with seatmate Jane about her visit to the Detroit FM radio giant that morning. I don't know if it's much-ballyhooed female adaptability, but Jane was very understanding about the starion's last minute jump onto the Go-Go's bandwagon: "If you're a successful station, it's hard to change.. .if you're doing well."

It's an older generation, and perhaps it is tough for them to give up the heroes of their glory days.

"Yeah," she agreed. "We're trying to get together some kind of benefit for nuclear disarmament—we started talking about it lately 'cause it seems that all the rock 'n' rollers who are helping out with the whole thing are all so old, and the young kids weren't paying attention to it. You know, Stephen Stills, David Crosby—it's not their heroes. So we're trying to donate one of our shows, the profits to that, and get more young kids aware of that.

"We're in the position right now of having a lot of young kids listening to what we have to say. It's about time we shared some responsibility."

Could their image as a fun band ever get out of hand?

"It's OK," she demurred. "If it starts to get out of hand, I think we would probably go to some measures to change it, 'cause we don't wanna get locked into having to look any certain way, or play any certain way. Like lately I have not been wearing skirts onstage anymore because it's kind of what everyone expects us to wear now. And Kathy started to wear jeans onstage, which we've never done. That seems like a small thing to do, but people put so much importance on your image."

They do have an identifiable * '80s pop image, which is possibly why TV commercials can rip them off.

TURN TO PAGE 57

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 29

"Yeah, we know," Jane nodded. "We see it every night in the audience. I think it's fine, but it gets a bit ridiculous if you get out onstage and someone sitting in the audience is wearing your outfit. Sort of takes away the glamour and mystery of the whole thing."

Being an all-girl band, they must be vain! Did they worry about their pictures, or anything?

"Yeah," Jane responded. "Every time we open up a magazine we see another ugly picture of ourselves."

Kathy added: "There was this paper in Australia that took a picture of us right when we got off the plane, and it was really as awful picture. Then they print our publicity picture next to it. Side by side. They wrote underneath it, 'This is the way the publicity machine makes their fans think the Go-Go's look like—this is what they really look like!"'

Jane hooted. "We looked sooo ugly!"

"It was a wide-angle lens, too, so we looked—" Kathy made a pig face, "distorted beyond all recognition!"

Our conversation veered to Blondie, and her "image"...

Jane: "I was just talking about it the other day—that Blondie poster that came out when they did their first album, with her tits showing. It's amazing that just those few years ago you could get away with that. It was pretty acceptable, but now if anybody tried to pull that! I mean, people have a fit about our album cover! Because the waterskiers' bodies are wearing bathing suits!"

Come on, now, did anybody think those were really your bodies?

"Some people do. The critic for the New York Times thought it was our bodies. Robert Palmer. He said "How dare they flaunt their bodies like that!' It's pretty funny that it's not even us!"

Gina's distinctive Cagneyesque patter started issuing from the back of the bus, and would not be stopped: "You guys, d'ya know who I talked with last night? All the guys who're in Kenny Loggins' band, and they just love us to death, they think we're so fun—"

"Didja go to bed with all of 'em?" Jane asked.

Not pausing for a breath: "Yeah. I did. One at a time."

"Was Kenny the best?"

"Nah, I liked the bald-headed midget!" Hey! Midget is a strong word coming from five gals who would fit neatly into the reet petite line of clothes in any department store. I, who only tower over, say, half of femaledom, looked down on all of them.

But Gina had a story to tell: "They liked our band a lot and they were like so pissed that they had to leave today 'cause they want to see our show really bad so I thought that was nice."

"Awww—that is nice!"

Did they ever find that a band might like them but that they weren't really thrilled with the other band's music?

Jane: "Yes, yes."

Gina disagreed. "I like everybody. Most of the time, most people, I do like."

Charlotte: "Gina loves everybody. She's an extraordinary human being."

Jane: "If we meet a band and we don't like their music but they're nice then we'll like them anyway."

Gina added: "Then we'll make sure we'll give a listen to 'em one more time to make sure that we really don't.. .you know.. .but I like Kenny Loggins. I don't know any of their music but now I'm gonna go out and buy something."

Next on the bus we (l)stopped when the Flock of Seagulls' bus stopped to "look at • what fell off the bus." (2)the rest of the girls looked at the Free Press write-up, featuring a large color picture of Belinda with her new chopped off hairdo, in the middle of a song-pose. "Oooh, she looks like a re-tard!" one exclaimed, (3)listened to road manager Bruce lecture Belinda for leaving her racquetball card back in the last hotel. Arrangements were then made for B. to teach racquetball to J., who didn't know she played. (4)J. proclaimed that she'd bought underwear as "drug diversion therapy." (5)The Go-Go's admired their sign on the way into the outdoor theatre.

Maybe there is something to that theory that girls are socialized to be more—agreeable, appreciative, 1 dun no—than boys. All I know is, it's hard to imagine most male bands going on about what a nice sign it was announcing their gig. All it said was "WRIF WELCOMES THE GO-GO'S AND FLOCK OF SEAGULLS"! And commenting on the nice trees and grounds...

I suppose this is as close as I'll get to the sort of "one of the boys" stories male rock writer get to whip off after a bus/ plane/whatever trip with the exceedingly masculine star of your choice. They're all guys, most of them—I guess the easy sort of nonsexual banter you can exchange with your own sex does make for a casual sort of intimacy it takes longer to forge between the sexes. Charlotte commented favorably (bless her little guitar-playing heart) upon my existentialist interviewing techniques: "It's great, you're just kind of laid back. You don't have a long list of questions or anything, like the guys who interview us."

She describes a male interviewer from Oui, who "had an attitude."

"If someone has an attitude about us, that's their prerogative, that doesn't bother us. We'll torture them sometimes, give 'em a real hard time...put them on. Staring at them with eyes like this," she did a passable crazy girl look, "I can tell they're intimidated. Oui...they thought we were going to be these sleazy girls. We're sitting there, wearing our little dresses, eating like pigs and we said 'Well OK, let's start the interview!' And these guys...they didn't know what to do."

Oui probably wanted Runaways/jailbait sort of stories from them..-.

"Really! Well there's nothing out of the ordinary," she mused. "I mean, we're such a non-active band that we joke about it constantly. As far as what you're supposed to do in a band, I mean, it's just not like that!

"I can't imagine people doing it every night!"

She waxed philosophical as Belinda viewed a movie on the video recorder. "I think we appreciate everything that happened to us because it was so gradual. I'm sure other bands have worked as hard. But as far as a concentrated amount of work... we played so much, so many times, and we're really aware of spending our money, ruining our health—I mean, it sounds corny, but it's true! We really don't want to mess things up. We love what we do. And when it turns out to be not as good a thing anymore, we'll stop doing it. Stop while we're ahead, we won't drag it on forever."

The Go-Go's seem the perfectly designed band of the '80s: all women, so they avoid most of the cliches of contemporary pop (it's still a novelty to see the dimunitive Gina flexing muscle to beat the hell out of her drums). One of those cliches is the male-directed female group, dressed in cherry bomb black corsets or spandex panties. The girls act naturally on and offstage—no exaggerated porn mag "femininity," no posed dirty t-shirts antics based on some macho ideal. Their notions of dress are calculated to amuse themselves (Belinda's neo-'50s Bermudas 'n' flats) or be functional (Jane's neat clean t-shirts in Go-Go's pink), "no big deal," as Charlotte described it.

They're as appropriate to this year as last spring's techno-pop graph paper Camaro ads, or the current glut of neo-atomic age clubs like Danceteria. It's no accident the ad agency smarties lifted the Go-Go's look and sound.

They've got the beat and the look a generation of young girls want. They don't seem to think the whole thing will outlast their own girlhood, showing a respect for the ephemeral traditions of pop. With an attitude like that, they may be around as long as the Beach Boys... W?