DISGRACELAND - The Go Go’s: Serial Killers, Drug Addiction, an Historic Album, and “the Rumor”

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

Serial killers, drug addiction, avoiding death, destruction, punk rock cliches and surviving an unmentionable “rumor” all while doing something no group of female musicians had ever done before. Which "girl group" is the greatest of all-time? Tell Jake at 617-906-6638, [e-mail], or on socials @disgracelandpod. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at ⁠⁠⁠⁠www.disgracelandpod.com⁠⁠⁠⁠. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠⁠⁠⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yello. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monjou, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunts. I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move.

And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes a suspect is found guilty before a verdict is ever read in court. On the Wicked Words podcast, I talk with the writers who dig deep into the cases that changed history, including Marsha Clark, who went from prosecuting one of the most famous murder cases to writing crime fiction. It doesn't matter that you didn't take part in the murder.

If you were at the scene at all, you're guilty of murder. Every week, the real story is revealed. Join us every Monday for new episodes of Wicked Words. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. This is a story about the darkness. and the light. About serial killers.

And seriously killer pop hits. It's about high heels and trash bags and leather jackets and sex tapes before we had a name for them. It's about the greatest girl group to ever hit the charts. One of the greatest groups ever, actually. It is about the go-goes. And you know what the go-goes did? They made great music. unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show.

That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Jerry Lee did it first, not you, MK.1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to centerfold by the Jay Giles Band. Why would I play you that specific slice of wuffle-guffa-cheeze could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America, on March 6, 1982. And that was the day that the go-go's album, Beauty and the Beat, also went to number one. Marking the first time in the history of pop music that an album written by a group of all women had gone to number one on the charts.

On this episode, Girls on Top, serial killers, a sex tape in the go-goes. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. women had been turning up dead in the hills outside Hollywood for the past two years. And when they finally caught the psychopath who was responsible, it turned out that there were actually two men doing the killing. The serial killer capital of the world got a little darker that day. Welcome to Los Angeles, 1978. The hillside Strangler, or Stranglers, rather, kidnapped, raped, tortured, and murdered 10 women and held the city, especially, its women in the grip of fear for close to a year.

For Angelinos at the time, this somehow did not seem out of the ordinary. In the late 1970s, fear blanketed the city with an oppression as familiar as its notorious smog. L.A. was dark, figuratively and literally. The hillside stranglers were not alone. There was the freeway killer, the skid row stabber, violent Chicano gangs controlled the streets on the east side. Quick to kill bloods and crips were transforming South Central into a war zone. Down on the wrong side of sunset, long-haired freaky people convinced kids to run away from their parents and get religion. Charlie's girls shaved their heads and kept the cany canyons

culty. Dune buggy assassins ran drugs out of Death Valley. Bikers and what was left of the Black Panthers kept the squares freaked out. Greasers ripped the strip and killing machine muscle cars and the Scientologists were just getting started. Down off Hollywood Boulevard on Cherokee, outside the Canterbury apartments, paramedics were wheeling out the dead body on a gurney. And no one knew how long this resident at the Canterbury had been dead. No one cared. She was a washed-up starlet from a long ago Hollywood era.

Certainly her retirement plan did not include this. A run-down apartment building inhabited by debased delinquents. debauchery, an open-air drug market, vice, grime, and squalor, filth and fury, American style. Young men and women engaged in all manner of revolt. Their natural post-pubescent rebellion turned to nihilism by the extreme violence reflecting down on them under the big black sun that blanketed L.A. Good morning, midnight. America. Do you know where your lost children live? They live here. Runaways, suburban castoffs, spoiled rich kids on the other side of their expiration dates,

and all of them moving to the sound of souped-up classic cars, surf guitars, and subversion. Punk rock, West Coast style, was amalgamating on its own and in its own way, 3,000 miles from New York City down in the dingy basement of L.A.'s Canterbury Apartments, where a new band was rehearsing, the go-goes. Their guitar player, Canterbury resident, Jane Wyland, led their sound with a narrow pressible energy that belied her city's gloom. Similarly, the signature outfit of Go-Go's singer Belinda Carlyle, literal trash bag clenched with a thrift store belt, could not suppress her natural beauty. The Go-Go's were young, raw, and fresh off their first show at L.A.'s The Mask. The West Coast answered a CBGB's.

tiny subterranean punk rock club beneath the skinflick house where early LA punk bands, X, the bags and the germs got their start. Belinda Carlisle sat behind the drum kit for the germs back in the day before graduating to become frontwoman for the go-goes. One of Belinda's germs bandmates was Pat Smir, who would go on to join Nirvana and then the foo fighters. Darby crash fronted the germs. Darby would go on to become a punk rock casualty. Worse, a rock and roll cliche, dead of a heroin overdose at just 22 years old. The go-goes formed with Jane Wyland and Belinda Carlisle, as well as the excellent musician and songwriter

Charlotte Caffey, bassist Margo Oliveira, and Elisa Bello on drums. In 1978, they were just beginning their journey to not become punk rock casualties, or worse, to become rock and roll cliches. Like most punk rock bands worth a damn, the go-go's aimed for authenticity. For them, that meant balancing the darkness of L.A. and of L.A.'s punk scene with the natural, bouncy, idealized vision of the West Coast that the band members had grown up in. Frankie, Annette, Jan, Dean, and the Brothers Wilson before Manson taught them how to never learn not to love. Being authentic meant drawing on your own influences, not some preceptive. describe punk rock dictum stating what a young punk band could and couldn't sound like.

Guitarist Jane Wilden's taste spanned beyond the obvious impact of the Ramones and the Buzzcocks to 60s girl groups. Singer Belinda Carlyle was California to her core, surf music, the grassroots. And guitarist Charlotte Caffe grew up obsessed with all kinds of music, the Beatles, Stones, Genesis, Patty Smith, and more. A new drummer, Gina Shock, who joined in 1979 after coming up through the ranks of the Baltimore trash scene behind the kit for the John Waters star Edith Massey in her E.D. and E.D. and E.N.E. and E.D. and E.N.E. E.N.E.N. E.E.N.E.E.N.E.E.N.E.E.N. KATH was a obvious influences of the all-girl group, The Runaways, or New York's female-fronted

blondie. No, the go-goes, from their inception, were as serious-minded musically as the serial killers who proud their shared streets were murderous. On stage, the go-goes killed. Off-stage, they nearly killed their career. Because the go-goes were hell-bent on staying true to themselves, on being authentic, on not becoming rock and roll cliches. And to do that,

they needed to do the one thing, every adult, every professional, every male record executive told them they shouldn't do. Write their own songs. There's two golden rules that any man should live by.

Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man.

A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of the Wicked Words podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories

and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face and he knows something happened. His father just grabs him. and says she's gone. She's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever.

Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you'd do. You know, you look back at it, and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history.

I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air, so much so that the bags are under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive headfirst into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know,

but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything, and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It sounds ridiculous now, but back in the early 1980s, the idea that a group of women could write their own hit songs was radical.

It may be radical is the wrong word. Heretical is more like it. It was heresy in the late 70s, early 80s music industry to believe a group of girls could write hit songs. The runaways had a male Svangali, Kim Folly, behind them. And Blondie's Debbie Harry had a bunch of dudes in her band. The Supremes, the Pointer Sisters, La Belle, their hits were all written by others. Same goes for all those Phil Spector-produced girl groups of the 60s that the go-goes love. There simply was no model for a group of women writing their own hit songs.

And you know what that's like. When something hasn't been done before, no matter how, simple or obvious the task, for the majority of people in the world, that something seems impossible. People who are governed solely by reason, who need to witness physical or historical evidence before they can put their faith into something, generally speaking, are averse to risk. By contrast, the go-goes, because they insisted on writing their own songs, well, the go-goes, therefore, in the record industry's eyes, were a risk themselves. And they couldn't get a record deal. No matter how many times they packed the whiskey a go-go on the sunset strip,

which was exactly what the go-goes were about to do, except they needed a bass player. Kathy Valentine was holed up in her friend's L.A. dark room as her friend developed photos. Kathy contemplated the cocaine he was selling, and her friend contemplated Kathy. Should he get high with this girl? She was young, just 21.

And from out of town, Texas, and now. here in L.A. He wanted a freebase, though. Was she hardcore enough for that? Was she ready? She was a musician, she claimed, so perhaps yes. And the smell of chemical fumes overpowered Kathy. That was nothing compared to what was about to happen.

On the radio, in the dark room, the news came through with zero passion. John Lennon was dead, murdered outside his apartment in New York City. And Manhattan wasn't about to be outdone by L.A.'s darkness. New York City had its own creeps too, there at the end of 1980, and one of them had just gunned down the coolest beetle. Kathy couldn't help but cry.

She didn't care what her friend slash drug dealer thought about that. And her friend no longer cared whether Kathy could handle free-basing. If there was ever a time to freebase, it was now. So that's what they did. And then Kathy Valentine took her cocaine back to her apartment and proceeded to smoke her rock and roll grief away until a couple of days later, pulling herself together and heading out to the whiskey to see X play on Christmas Eve. It was there in the dingy rock club's bathroom,

where Kathy met the rest of her life, Charlotte Caffy, the Gogo's guitarist. Charlotte knew Kathy could play, and Charlotte needed a bass player to fill in for Margot during the Gogo's upcoming four-night headlining stint at the whiskey. Charlotte asked Kathy if she'd be interested in the gig, as to fill in for the go-go's bassist. Kathy said yes on the spot. And there was only one problem. Kathy couldn't play bass.

Kathy was a guitarist, but that didn't stop her. Kathy didn't reason her way out of her destiny. She had faith in herself as a musician. So she spent the next 48 hours hold up in her apartment, snorting lines of cocaine, in learning how to play the go-go's entire set on the bass guitar. When it came time for the shows, eight shows and four days, two shows per day, Kathy was ready and she killed it.

And by the time the shows were over, the gig was permanently hers. Kathy Valentine had outshined Margo Oliveira, and the go-goes knew a perfect fit when they saw one. Kathy was asked to join the band. And of course, she did. With the whiskey shows triumphantly in the rear view, view, now the go-goes could focus on writing hits for their debut album. But the problem was,

no record label would sign them due to the go-go's insistence that they write their own songs. And that was exactly what Charlotte Caffey was busying herself with on New Year's Day, squirled away up in her L.A. apartment. Word of that murdered girl, Jane King, being broadcast from the local news. Jane was hanging out at the mask when the go-goes played their first show. That is, Jane hung out at the mask before the hillside stranglers got their hands on her. Charlotte ignored the news and cut up some cocaine. She had a job to do. Writing songs was work, like anything else.

The drugs, though, were not helping. And neither was the television. Charlotte did another line anyway. And then she changed the channel. Yes, exactly what she needed. The annual New Year's Day Twilight Zone television marathon. Charlotte let herself get sucked in. On the TV, the Black Leather Jackets episode,

Three aliens disguised as greasers, pompadours, motorcycles, black leather, denim, beyond cool, walking down the street with an eerie but irrepressible beat. Charlotte stared into the black and white haze of the television and eventually passed out. When she woke up, she had it. Just like the dudes in the black leather jackets from back in the day. Back then, they did the pony. They did the Watuzi. It put them all on a trance.

Charlotte was looking for a beat-based song, and here it was, courtesy of cocaine and Rod Serling. See the people walking down the street, fall in line just watching all their feet. They don't know where they want to go, but they're walking in time. They got the beat. Charlotte pulled from her deep well of musical influences and brought some light to the darkness surrounding her.

The darkness from her growing drug addiction, from the eerie television show, from the local news, from the danger on the streets outside her apartment. Charlotte laid down a perfect West Coast guitar riff over an imagined heavy tom beat. It wasn't punk, but it wasn't pink either. It was nasty, link ray notes hammered over a sexually charged Dennis Wilson day at the beach. It was LA's dark streets waking up to the light of another perfect day. It was, We Got the Beat, a perfect pop song.

We Got the Beat was emblematic of who the go-goes were and where they had the potential to go as a group. As was the romantic bop Jane Wilding created with her tune, Our Lips Are Sealed. These were not the songs of a modest punk rock band, because the go-goes were not a modest punk rock band. To pretend so, would be inauthentic.

At the expense of their L.A. punk rock credibility, the go-goes did what came naturally to them. They wrote the only songs they knew how, songs that were potentially giant smash pop hits, born of punk rock, but far from being punk rock. Nobody, it seemed, though, saw that potential. Nobody believed that five women could write their own hits, even when those hits were blaring back into their faces.

Nobody in America would believe it that is. But across the pond, Miles Copeland, brother of the police's drummer Stuart Copeland, manager of his brother's band and head of IRS records, he did see the potential in the go-goes. From the strength of We Got the Beat and Our Lips Are Sealed, that potential should have been obvious to anyone with ears. Not to mention the fact that the go-goes look great on stage. They had a style that was totally their own, a mix of thristore chic, punk rock nihilism, and old Hollywood glam.

And I mean, come on, Belinda Carlisle was their frontwoman. She was an incredibly charismatic singer who was impossible to take your eyes off of. No wonder, Miles Copeland signed them to his record label. He knew the go-goes couldn't miss. All they had to do now was put their incredible songs on tape and make a record. But doing that meant that the go-goes would have to leave L.A.'s darkness behind and eventually move past their own darkness. We'll be right back after this world, word, word.

There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.

I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of the Wicked Words podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face, and he knows something happened. His father just grabs him and says she's gone. She's gone.

These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists, who cover them changed forever. Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you'd do. You know, you look back at it, and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation.

New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Wicked Words on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband, is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro,

and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of family secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive head first into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves.

My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of showed me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off and that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets,

starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Destroying a hotel room for a rock and roll band is a right of passage. Doesn't matter if that band is a bunch of dudes or the go-goes. The difference with the go-goes was that after they destroyed their hotel room, they'd clean it up. It wasn't because they were women and inherently nicer than their male counterparts. No, I think it had more to do with the fact that they were at their core punk rock kids.

And punks, a lot of them anyway, despite their nihilistic tendencies, actually have a conscientious side to them. But I'm betting that deep down, Jane, Belinda, Kathy, Charlotte, and Gina, I'm betting they couldn't help but think about the poor minimum wage worker whose job it was to clean up after their rock and roll circus left town. And that's why they cleaned up after them.

By 1981, the go-goes were entitled to their rock and roll trappings. Their debut album, the excellently titled Beauty and the Beat, was racing up the charts on the backs of the group's two masterful singles We got the beat and our lips are sealed. The go-goes were on tour supporting the police, who at the time were a much bigger band. This was a stadium tour. The police were capable of packing stadiums

with or without the go-goes supporting them. The gig for the go-goes was about promoting their record, and it was working. One night in Atlanta, while the girls and the go-goes picked at a deli-tray backstage, Sting burst into their dressing room with two bottles of champagne to celebrate. the fact that the go-goes had just passed the police on the charts.

Things were about to change for the little punk rock band from Los Angeles. It wasn't just the shine the go-goes took off the police by opening for them every night. The go-goes, like the police and like Duran Duran and Blondie, were being played on MTV constantly. The go-goes, despite their disdain for the inauthentic video-making process, were naturals on camera. That modern West Coast vision of a tough but hot thrift store girl, group was novel. Kids on the other side of the television set ate it up. I know because I was one of them. All of a sudden, the go-goes were to early 80s mall culture, what the beach boys had been to 60s

surf culture. The go-goes had transcended punk, transcended even rock and roll, and they were now something bigger. The go-goes represented a modern take on what the blasters Dave Alvin called American music. The go-goes projected something different, a new neon 80s Americana. Back in Los Angeles, in those dingy clubs that the blasters were filling alongside the go-go's other contemporaries, the makers of beauty and the beat were falling out of favor as their fame cemented itself into national prominence. It didn't matter that the go-goes had helped build the L.A. punk scene. It didn't matter that Jane and Belinda were such a core part of L.A. punk that they literally played and lived alongside members of the germs and the bags in both the notorious Canterbury apartments

and the infamous flop house known as Disgraceland. Hold up. It's time to address the tiny elephant in the room, Disgraceland. The name of the flop house, Belinda Carlyle, once lived in in Los Angeles, a dingy dive on Las Palmas, where reportedly everyone who was anyone in the L.A. punk scene lived or partied at one point in the early 80s, including, of course, the go-go's front wall. Now, did I know about the L.A. punk scene's disgrace land when I named this podcast? Yes, I did. Did I get shit from angry punk rockers from that scene when they heard about my podcast? Yes, I did. Did I care, or do I now? No, I do not. These same L.A. punks stole the name Disgraceland from Jerry Lee

Lewis, just like I did. Should I have given the L.A. Disgraceland Punk's credit when I took the name, as some of them have suggested and angry Facebook messages, also no. In all my research of the L.A. punk scene, I've never once heard or read anyone mentioned the original disgrace land, which was Jerry Lee Lewis's home in Nesbit, Mississippi. I've been clear about where I got that name from the very beginning. Go back and listen to episode one of disgrace land, and you'll hear what I'm talking about. Am I concerned what old-school L.A. punks will think of the name thing when they listen to this particular episode? I am. A little. I love some of those bands.

X, the Blasters, and of course the Go-Go's, and I have nothing but respect for the scene and its contribution to music history. So with that said, back to our story. Falling out of favor with hometown scenesters was the cost of doing business for the Go-Go's in the early 80s. They didn't sign to a record label and changed their sound. They signed a record deal, an independent record deal, mind you,

with IRS records, and recorded with Blondie's producer Richard Gotter and proceeded to put down on tape the same sound they've been tooling together since their early days in the basement of the Canterbury apartments. Their sound had evolved, which is what happens when any group of great musicians and songwriters continue to apply their trade. It's just that the go-goes were so damn good at their trade

that their sound evolved into massive pop hits. To create anything different would have been inauthentic, which is the one thing in punk rock that you absolutely cannot be. So the go-goes, in staying true to themselves, in staying punk, alienated. They also garnered a Grammy nomination in 1982 for Best New Artist. And word spread quick. The go-goes had sold out. They were all Grammys and Glits, which of course was total bullshit.

Along with the thrift store dresses and self-styled hair and makeup, the girls brought to the Grammys for an award they ultimately lost to Sheena Easton, the go-goes brought along their demons as well. For Charlotte, this meant masking an intense heroin habit that threatened to break up the band. For Jane, Belinda, Kathy, and Gina, they had their own drug and alcohol demons to deal with. But for the entire band,

there was nothing to threaten their current status at the top of the pop mountain as much as... The rumor. Were the go-goes kind of bubble-gummy? Yes. Were they beautiful? Yes. Were they super happy fun time West Coast vibes kind of music?

Yes. Were they also dark, depraved, sexual deviance? Perhaps. This is what made the rumor so delicious, the contrast. That same dichotomy that had been at the heart of the go-goes since their inception. Like Los Angeles, they appeared to be one thing, and they were that thing, but they were also the opposite. By day, Los Angeles shined bright, forever 72 and sunny. At night, serial killers prowled the streets and left bodies up in the hills.

During the day, the go-go's sunny vision of West Coast teen culture blanketed the airwaves. At night, the go-goes conducted drug-fueled orgies with male groupies that would have made Led Zeppelin blush. Or so went, the rumor. At first, you hear whispers in the hallway at school. You're 17. You've heard some shit before. After all, you've got a job at Bergeson's Burgers.

and not just a job, you're a manager. A single successful guy. If you're lucky, Mara McColliffe will let you get under her shirt this fall when you take her out to the spot in your cruising vessel. But back to the whispers. At first, they're just a random collection of words dancing with the sounds of slamming lockers and sneakers squeaking on the high school linoleum floors.

Orgy, blowjob, Spanish fly. You've heard all these words before, of course, and they're no surprise. But the frequency you're hearing them now is a little more intense. And now there are more words. Party tape. Sex tape. And then Belinda Carlisle. Yeah, man.

Jacking off. Wait. What? From the go-goes? There's a sex tape? A sex tape? Of the go-goes? What?

It's all over school. It's all anyone in your 11th grade class can talk about. And not just the dudes, the girls, too. And you thought Pat Benatar was the freak. Turns out, it's Belinda and the fucking Go-Go's. What are they actually doing on what is quickly becoming known as the go-go's skin flick or the party tape? Is it the entire band having sex? Together?

No, there's male roadies involved. That's the word. Okay, okay, okay, what else? Well, it's not the whole band. It's just Belinda and Kathy. Okay, Belinda and Kathy. No, Jane. That sucks, but you can take it.

Belinda Carlisle is likely the hottest singer you've ever seen, and Kathy Valentine looks like she'll hurt you, but in a seriously sexy way, so you're all in on the party tape. You have to know more, and the rumors won't quit. They're all over the halls and the cafeteria in the locker room that day. You're not actually convinced, though, that anyone you're talking to has actually seen this tape.

Word is, some senior named Harry has an older brother in college whose friend's girlfriend works at a cutting house over in Burbank, and that the owner's ex-boss has a kid whose girlfriend is friends with a dude over in the valley, whose cousin writes for a horror movie magazine, and that guy supposedly saw a copy at a party that some publicist from West Hollywood threw over the weekend. But wait, are Belinda and Kathy from the go-goes

actually having sex on tape with their roadies? Worse, they're supposedly forcing them to have sex. Really? No, not really. When this news gets back to you by the end of the day, your pervy ass is bummed, but not totally bummed, because the party tape might not be a full-on go-go's orgy, but it is Kathy and Belinda coercing some dude into masturbation. And they're wasted pills, supposedly.

And Kathy wants to make an art film. And Belinda seems to just want the roadie dude to get hard and get off. And Belinda Carlisle, wanting that and voicing her desire, nearly makes your head pop off your shoulders and roll down the hall in the six-period study hall. If you can't get sex, then the person's being said, for you to do is to jack up. There was no sex tape.

Just some grainy footage of Belinda Carlisle and Kathy Valentine wasted on pills and booze trying to talk some dude who was too high on ludes and jerking off into a heart on. It didn't work, but the rumor was the rumor. And to say it was an embarrassment for the girls in the go-goes would have been an understatement. They'd done what all the experts said could not be done. They'd succeeded as women who wrote their own songs, and now they had the number one record in America. That's right. Beauty and the Beat had gone to number one, and it stayed at number one for six weeks. It was the first number one record by a group of girls who wrote their own material ever, and it still is.

And this was a remarkable achievement. And there the go-goes were, in their moment of shining glory, with all their darkness on full display for the rest of the world. world to see. Little did anyone know that the darkness on that so-called party tape was just the tip of the iceberg. Opium is a dark, sticky substance. Picture a tar-like wad of gum that smells flowery but pungent. It's highly addictive. It's the main addictive substance in heroin, in Oxy, you know, in the bad drugs that destroy lives and bans. And it was this dark, sticky substance that the girls and the go-goes were currently shoving up their asses in the backyard of some fan's house in Washington State.

Imagine that. You're 18, 19 years old. You score tickets to see the go-goes at your local Coliseum or whatever. They got the number one record in the country at the moment. And somehow, you and your handsome friends get the go-goes to come back to. to your place for a party afterward, and now Jane, Kathy, and the rest of the girls are in your backyard squatting alongside you and your friends with their pants around their ankles, shoving sticky opium up their butt holes to get high with you. Life is weird, man. But this behavior wasn't all that weird for the go-cos.

Drugs had been a part of the band since before they'd written the songs for their hit record. And all of them dabbled in the hard stuff, but Charlotte had a serious heroin addiction. one that had been growing in secret since back before the go-go's recorded Beauty and the Beat. As the band embarked on recording and touring in support of their follow-up album, Vacation, Charlotte's heroin addiction had become almost all-consuming. Personally, this was, of course, disastrous. Professionally, this was the type of addiction that could kill a band, given that Charlotte was the group's main songwriter.

Yet this band would not die. The band members pushed on through their demons. Their second album was not quite the follow-up smash that a monster hit like Beauty and the beat demanded, but it did well enough, largely on the strength of the Kathy Valentine-Penned title track, Vacation, which Jane and Charlotte contributed to. But by the time the Go-Go's third album,

Talk Show, hit the shelves. The wheels were coming off. Gina had developed a hole in her heart that required surgery, and the band sent Gina off with a drug binge and Palm Springs. rings. The five of them hold up in a hotel room like vampires doing every drug they could get their hands on, but keeping the cocaine away from Gina's ailing heart, of course. And when they weren't high, they were paranoid and jealous. Money. What to do with all of it? Who got how much for writing which songs and which parts? Money was a constant source of tension in the band.

Charlotte was the main songwriter, but Jane Wildland and Kathy Valentine contributed nearly as much to those songs, and Belinda Carlyle and Gina Shock lent considerable style and attitude to the music. So the question of authorship was no easy matter to settle, especially under the haze of drugs. And the fierce fight over songwriting credits and royalties caused Jane to quit while on tour in support of their third album. Drugs, excess, squabbling over their large S.

The go-goes had become the one thing their punk rock instincts had driven them not to become. cliches. The only thing left for them to do was to overdose and die. And in Rio de Janeiro at the Rockin Rio Festival in 1985, Charlotte Caffee was doing her best

to make that happen. On the bill with the go-goes were ACDC, Ozzy Osborne, Rod Stewart, Queen, the B-52s, and other major acts. The show drew a crowd that was estimated at nearly half a million people. And back at the hotel

where the artists were staying, The party was on. Rock stars, roadies, groupies, dealers, hangers on, all poolside and in and out of hotel rooms getting high. Cocaine was everywhere. The girl from Ipanema blasted on repeat. Beautiful bronze bikini-clad women in droves. Charlotte bounced between Rod Stewart's and Ozzy Osborne's hotel rooms. Rod was pissed off at her for some reason she couldn't figure out.

and the B-52s were avoiding eye contact with her. Ozzy Osbourne was in no mind to deal with her, and her own band was nowhere to be found. Charlotte drank more. Charlotte did more drugs. Charlotte's manager thought that now was a good time to bring up rehab. Charlotte blocked out her manager, smoked more, snorted more, shot more heroin, shot more tequila, shot after shot after shot.

On stage, in front of the biggest assemblage of people she'd, ever seen, Charlotte sweated through the motions. After the set, back to the hotel for more drugs and more drink. To this day, no one knows what exactly happened. But whatever Charlotte did that night resulted in none other than Ozzy Osbourne kicking her out of his hotel room. How fucked up do you have to be to have Ozzy Osbourne think you're too fucked up to hang out with? Really fucked up is the correct answer. It was one of many last struggle. It was one of many last for the gogos. Charlotte wasn't going to be a rock and roll casualty. She wasn't going to be a punk rock cliche. Charlotte Caffy checked herself into rehab, and soon after she followed Jane

Wildland and quit the go-goes. Sobriety in a rock and roll band is a hard road, and frankly, not one that Charlotte needed to travel. Why live in the dark when there's so much light? The go-goes did what they said couldn't be done. They succeeded at the highest level of of the music industry as women who wrote their own songs. In 2021, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Getting there and surviving their excesses nearly killed them. But in the end, the band avoided becoming a rock and roll cliche. And in doing so, avoided disgrace.

I'm Jake Brennan. This is Disgraceland. All right, thanks for hanging with me and the go-goes in this episode. to Apple podcast listeners, make sure you have auto downloads turned on so you never miss any episodes. Guys, this week's question of the week is, which girl group is the greatest girl group? And why? Is it the go-goes? Is it the runaways?

Is it, I don't know. You tell me. I'm doing too much talking. 617-9066638. Leave me a voicemail. Send me a text with your answer. And you might hear yourself on the after-party bonus episode coming up right after this. Leave a review for disgrace land on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and win some free merch.

All right. I've got to return some videotapes here. some credits. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership.

Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad-free. Plus, you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month. Weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelampod.com slash membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at DisgracelandPod, and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at DisgracelandPod. Rockerola.

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