It's 1981, I'm almost out of my teens, and The Go-Gos are important to me. Why? That's a year of epoch making records like Primary, Spellbound, Everything's Gone Green and Release the Bats, why would I waste time on some Californian popsters who look like the wet dream of a major label executive? Well, because I'm standing in Rockinghourse records in Brisbane, poring through the new imports and a drum beat has burst out from the shop sound system. Hard four on the floor and swinging. A low piano note, guitar and bass thud a root note. The bass breaks free with a bluesy riff, doubled on the piano. A high female vocal, crisp and solid, sings four chanting lines before the chorus breaks through and everything explodes into wide screen. The power chords plummet as the vocals soar above in tight harmony: "They got the beat, they got the beat they got the beat YEEEEAH! They got the beat!" I'm almost welling up as I remember it. Second verse same as the first and then a riff on the riff as the guitars extend the pattern, rising to a keychange you feel before you understand it's happened. I bought the album before the song was over. "Who's this?" "The Go-Gos" G. There! Now! Bus home. Play the whole album in headphones. Cover art was a group of young women in towels and faces obscured by moisturiser against a polarised colour background. The back cover was the glamour shots of each of them in a bathtub. First look: well, that's exploitative. Second look: it's ironic and funny. The kind of bird-flip to the mainstream typical of the era. Oh, they're all girls, that's great.
Dig? They could have been anyone from anywhere, putting out a sound like that. It was a perfect blend of punk energy with late sixties songcraft, it was exciting and it was the sound of the summer that year as I headed back up home from Uni and settled in for the lazing and the pool and the parties. They toured the next year and a bunch of us went to Festival Hall for the gig (we didn't get the bill with Sunnyboys which would blown my head off but ...) and it was non stop.
And then Vacation came out and I didn't even bother listening to the whole album, let alone buy it. The title song led as a single and felt like the lighter cuts on the first one. I only heard about the third one years after it was released. Shrug: not everyone has ten great albums in them and there's still the wonder that is Beauty and the Beat. So, what happened? That's the reason for this film.
The Go-Gos formed in the late '70s punk scene in LA and built a following. Buoyed(see what I did there) by what felt like the fizzer that was the Pistols last gig (Winterland). Because things are always loose at that level they go through a few lineup changes and find a manager who hocks her car to get them on tours with The Specials and Madness in the UK. They come out from the wall of spit from the skinheads who want to ska and they're stronger and tougher. Back in LA the songs get better and, after a lot of knock backs from A&R men who don't think all girl bands can cut it, they get picked up by Miles Copeland's Indy offshoot IRS and get added to a Police tour. Bye bye bass player who thinks they are selling out. Hello to Blondie producer who turns their set into one of the finest crafted slabs of vinyl of the era: Beauty and the Beat. And a big shout out to the mixed-font neon-clad publicity machine that was the 1980s.
And then decline forms like the picture when the jigsaw puzzle starts making sense. Drug problem here (with the main songwriter), resentment of internal inequality there, songwriter denied a lead vocal on an album there. And then it crumbles. If you saw The Go-Betweens: Right Here and winced at the bit where Forster and McLennan dictate the end of the band to everyone else, regardless of their standing or commitment, you'll wince again when Belinda Carlisle and Charlotte Caffey dissolve the band and move on.
From there it's the story of the reunions and the who-knows-where of the present. The difference between this documentary when it gets to this and comparable ones is that everything still feels balanced after the major fame and fortune chapters are over. The PiL documentary covered every single lineup, way beyond the point of the band producing anything compelling and felt like three hours. A Wanda Jackson doc a few years back started feeling like a promo to petition the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This film doesn't. Mostly, because the full complement of members past and present (the reformed band is the lineup from Beauty and the Beat) get more than a word in and manage to salt the nostalgia away with frankness. It also doesn't hurt that the newly released Club Zero (plays over the end credits) has ALL of the push and tangy vocals of anything from the debut album from 1981.
Rock docs should never just celebrate. Because of the associated pitfalls and ego disasters that fame in the genre bids all who enter, the opportunities for life lessons abound. The aforementioned Go-Betweens movie is a great telling of how a persistent lack of success can both show resilience and caution against hubris. The Go-Gos' story is like that except with a phase of gigantic fame. We are given time to gauge old sound against that of the fame period, decisions that now look incomprehensibly rash and self-annhiliating (the story of the dispatch of their first manager will give you serious cringes) and simply how much mess can be created with the best or, more usually, no real intentions. For me there is no better encapsulation than this: while on tour at the crest of the wave, drunk, young and happy in their hotel, the band took polaroids of a few of them on their beds pretending to give birth to Kathy Valentine. Towards the end of the movie the band sit around a table, looking at the photos, riffing and laughing. It's completely infectious.
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