I.R.S 70021
Producers: Richard Gottehrer & Rob Freeman
Track listing: Our Lips Are Sealed / How Much More / Tonite / Lust to Love / This Town / We Got the Beat / Fading Fast / Automatic / You Can’t Walk in Your Sleep (If You Can’t Sleep) / Skidmarks on My Heart / Can’t Stop the World
March 6, 1982
6 weeks
In 1978, with the do-it-yourself ethic of the punk movement sweeping Los Angeles, fashion design student Jane Wiedlin and former high school cheerleader Belinda Carlisle decided they too could form a band. Wiedlin had left her parents’ San Fernando Valley home for an old building in Hollywood called the Canterbury, which was a dormitory of sorts for punk rockers. “That was when we decided to form the Go-Go’s,” Jane says. “It didn’t matter if you’d never picked up an instrument in your life. Everyone was in a band.”
Wiedlin and Carlisle traveled separately to San Francisco to see what would turn out to be the final show by the Sex Pistols on January 14, 1978. The Go-Go’s, however, didn’t want to be like the Sex Pistols. “We didn’t really want to be a punk band,” Carlisle says. “We wanted to play melodic pop, more like the Buzzcocks or one of those type bands.”
After creating a buzz on the L.A. club scene, the Go-Go’s traveled to London to record a one-off single for the independent Stiff label. Upon the band’s return to L.A., Miles Copeland, the head of I.R.S. Records and manager of the Police, signed them. “He was the only one interested,” recalls Carlisle. “Everyone else was afraid to take a chance.”
By the time the Go-Go’s recorded Beauty and the Beat, the band had settled on a lineup that included Carlisle on vocals, Wiedlin on rhythm guitar, Charlotte Caffey of the Eyes on lead guitar, Kathy Valentine of the Textones on bass, and Gina Schock of the Baltimore band Miss Edie & the Eggs on drums. The album was recorded at Pennylane Studios in New York. “We did it for fun,” Carlisle recalls. “Our priority was not the record; it was more or less having a good time.” However, no session players were called in during the recording. “We did a lot of takes and we wouldn’t get it. Then we would order a large pizza, eat it, and do another take. We weren’t the most proficient musicians and singers, so it took a while to get it right,” Carlisle recalls.
When the Go-Go’s heard the finished product, they were a bit shocked as the band’s punk influences had been airbrushed by Richard Gottehrer’s slick production. “We were all horrified,” says Carlisle. “We were used to sounding much rawer, the way we did in the clubs. Listening to this pop record at first was a little scary, but it grew on us.”
The Go-Go’s had differing expectations of how Beauty and the Beat would be accepted. “I remember saying, ‘Wow, if we sell 150,000 copies that would be so cool,.'” Carlisle recalls. Wiedlin, however, expected bigger things: “I said to one of the record company executives, ‘We are going to go platinum,’ and he just laughed in my face.”
But the Go-Go’s had the last laugh. They became the first all-female rock group playing their own instruments to score a Number One album, as Beauty and the Beat, helped along by the hit single “We Got the Beat,” reached the top spot after 32 weeks on the album chart.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of March 6, 1982
1. Beauty and the Beat, The Go-Go’s
2. Escape, Journey
3. Freeze-Frame, The J. Geils Band
4. 4, Foreigner
5. I Love Rock-n-Roll, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts