Welcome to a Breath of Fresh air with Sandy Kaye. Hi, thanks for joining me today. I hope you’ve been having a lovely week since we last caught up.
I’ve been hanging around in some rather strange weather. We often say that living here in Melbourne, Australia, that we’re used to experiencing four seasons in one day, but with all this climate change stuff, I think there are now about 20 seasons per 24 hours, and that makes choosing clothing very difficult indeed. I hope it’s better for you wherever you’re listening to this.
On the show today, a very special guest, Gina Schock, who’s best known as the drummer for that all-female band, The Go-Go’s. Gina’s been a galvanizing force behind the Los Angeles group’s success for more than four decades, and to date, The Go-Go’s remain the only all-women rock band to play their own instruments, write their own songs, and have their debut album skyrocket to number one. Due to a whole lot of hard living and rock and roll drama, the band called it quits after only a short time together.
They did find one another again though, and during the hiatus, Gina Shock concentrated on songwriting. She’s also recently released a terrific coffee table book called Made in Hollywood, All Access with The Go-Go’s. This is her story.
I’m sure you’re going to find it very funny and full of rock star wisdom. Hey Gina Schock, fantastic to meet you. Thanks so much for your time today.
Oh my god, I appreciate it. This Australia, gee, I haven’t talked to anyone in Australia. I do have a couple of friends.
I haven’t talked to anybody there in ages. Hey, we’re exactly the same age. You’re a month and a bit younger than me.
No kidding. Your life’s been a little more interesting than mine though, I have to say. I don’t know about that, but it has been quite a journey for me, you know, and everything is like, I cannot believe at this point in time, how everything is just blossoming into a whole other series of big events in my life that I thought wouldn’t be happening at this point in time.
You know what I mean? The 80s were when we were really big, but it’s like, there’s just so much going on right now, Sandy, with The Go-Go’s and then on a personal level, it’s a lot going on with me and I’m just like, wow, I haven’t been as busy since the 80s, you know, like in the 90s, things are, you know, over the years since the 90s, like things are spread out more now. It’s like, I mean, I don’t have a minute’s time. All of a sudden, I’m getting calls from people, you know, it’s like really weird.
And but I’m loving it because you surprise yourself with what you’re capable of doing when when the call comes. All right, so you’re gonna have to walk me through that busyness and maybe that’s exactly where we should start and then we’ll work our way backwards if that’s okay. So I know you’ve got this super book.
It looks sensational. It reads brilliantly. And it’s kind of a tell-all.
It’s called Made in Hollywood, All Access with The Go-Go’s. Wow. I can’t believe I did this.
I really did a book. I mean, I mean, I made a book. I’m a photographer.
I’m an author now. I mean, I’m like, it’s insane. I can imagine how proud you must be.
You discover all these things about yourself, you know, that, you know, I was just, thank Christ, the last year, a year and a half, really, but the last year has been I was been so busy writing this book, and putting together the photos, you know, that it’s kept me from going crazy. I’ve been on the phone every day with with the fellow that helped me organize this and get this working. Very fortunate in that respect.
So I’m super excited. I mean, this is the culmination of well, since 1978, these photos go back to from, from from me, from 78 79, when I drove to LA and my father’s pickup truck. And my friend from high school was my co pilot, driving to LA knowing three people in LA and leaving Baltimore and telling everybody the next time you see me, I’m gonna be a rock star.
Crazy shit that you do when you’re, you know, 21 years old, you know, anything’s possible, you know. And I mean, thank God you really, really believe it. I certainly, I absolutely believe that I was going to make it I was going to go to go to California and I was going to make it now.
It says a lot about the power of positive thinking no matter what age you are, doesn’t it? If you tell yourself something, and you really do believe it, it tends to happen. You know, I have always believed in the power of positive thinking. It’s like, you know, if you want to get sick, you can you can make yourself sick.
Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah, you can make yourself better. You can do a lot mind over matter stuff. And I mean, I come from just a very typical middle class family.
My father worked on the waterfront. So did my brother. So did my father’s father.
And, you know, so what did they think about you leaving? I mean, packing that car up and heading to LA and, and aiming to be a musician. They were completely freaked out. And I, at the time, of course, I wasn’t thinking anything about it.
I was too busy looking forward. But you know, in retrospect, I think, Oh, my God, there goes there, the baby of the family in in our father’s pickup truck going to drive to Los Angeles, knowing three people, you know, when really what they wanted me to do was go to college like my brother did. Yeah, you know, and follow do something a little bit more logical, but say, you know, not some crazy dream, not not.
But I they knew how passionate I was. I mean, everything in my life was about music. Every penny I got was spent on music.
And, you know, whether it was magazines, or certainly records, and better, better equipment, stereo equipment, and, you know, drums, and yeah, I mean, guitars, everything. It was all it was concerts, you know, going to every concert. Yeah, it’s all I can do.
It’s all I can think about. You know, the minute I can do it. I left.
Yeah, I get that. And we tended to up and leave a lot earlier in those days and be independent than what kids are doing today, too. But Gina, when did you first discover that drums were your passion that you were so into music? Well, I, I mean, I was I was always into music since I can ever remember, because I, my mom and dad, there was always music playing in our house.
And they love dancing. My brother and I would be so embarrassed, because they get up and start dancing in front. We’re like, Oh, my God, they’re embarrassing us, John, look at them, you know, but they could really they were high steppers, those two could really dance.
And they loved music. So it was always music in our house. And it became a part of me, it became something that I look forward to.
And then I found my own sort of music that I like. Well, I did. I like Count Basie.
I mean, they love Count Basie. And you know, I mean, everybody, any, any big band stuff they love. Yeah, that was the era.
I certainly had an appreciation. I mean, I still have even more of an appreciation now because I understand it a hell of a lot better. But then, you know, when my brother would buy records, I’d start, when he was out of the house, I’d grab his record and play it scratch it all up.
And so so I was, you know, I was playing his Stones records and Beatles records, you know, and Led Zeppelin records, I would be listening to Roxy music and listening to Aerosmith and listening to Leonard Skinner, because I liked all sorts of different genres of music. And so I would buy them and I didn’t didn’t matter to me if they were black or white. I love Jimi Hendrix, you know, Sly and the Family Stone, one of my all-time favourite bands.
And I was like, Oh, my God, I love this. I love it. And I was like, I remember it was a big deal every Sunday to watch the Ed Sullivan show on channel two.
It came on Sunday nights at like seven o’clock or something. That was the thing we all sat down to watch it. And of course, they’d always have some incredible musical guests.
Yeah, you know, of course, everybody was on that show. You know, I remember seeing the Beatles on that show. And I was like, Oh, my God, I love this.
I I want to be on that stage. That’s what I want to do. That’s what I want to do.
And then what really changed everything was in 1969. My brother took me to my first concert. And that was Led Zeppelin opening for The Who.
Okay, good concert. First, first concert Led Zeppelin opening for The Who. I like lost my mind.
I knew I had an epiphany at the age of 11. I knew that that’s what I wanted to do. That’s all from that moment on.
I didn’t care what instrument I played. I just wanted to be on that stage. I loved it.
I was just mesmerized by what I was seeing. And then to have two bands like that be the first thing you see. It’s wonderful.
Christ, you know, it doesn’t get better than that. Yeah. So why the drums? How did they come about? The drums came about because they were the easiest instrument for me to play.
And that’s how that happened. I, you know, I tried the guitar, I tried bass. And when I saved up my allowance money and bought drums, I sat down, picked a six up.
And it just felt right. It felt natural. I didn’t have to think at all.
I wasn’t fumbling around on a fretboard. You know, I would just, and what I would do, I would I would put records on learn. That’s how I learned to play guitar.
And any, you know, I learned to play drums. I would put my favourite records on, put my headphones on and play along with the record. Your parents must have thought you were mental, sitting in your room playing drums.
They didn’t. Can you imagine? I have my drums in my bedroom. Okay.
And you know, my parents are in the same house. Yeah, the windows, the windows are open at summertime, and I’m beating the hell out of the drums. But in fact, then the neighbors didn’t care.
They’re like, Oh, that’s little Gina shock up the street. She plays drums, like all the time. Nobody cared.
Everybody thought it was just like, so funny and weird. This little girl playing. Yeah.
But in those days, I mean, people didn’t sit at home playing drums, but certainly little girls didn’t sit at home playing drums. Right. So that’s why I think people like kind of didn’t call the cops on me playing the drums, you know, and my mom and dad were just so tired and beautiful about it.
They knew that. I mean, I mean, I think they can see that this was a gift because it really was. It’s like something that I can just do.
I’m not the greatest at what I do, but I’m good at what I do. And it’s definitely a gift. I don’t know how or why I can play drums, but I just I don’t know.
You know, everybody has something they can do. And that was it for you. So you packed up the car and you’ve moved to LA thinking that you’re going to get onto that stage and be a drummer in a band somewhere.
What happens next? So I drive to L.A. and I stayed with a friend of mine, Steve, who I stayed at his house the year before. I’d been to L.A. and San Francisco, been to the West Coast in 1978. And I know if you’re familiar with John Waters, his films, John Waters, the filmmaker.
Well, there was an actress in there called Edith Massey, the egg lady. She was in the neighbourhood that I moved in when I was 20 and called Fells Point. Fells Point was a very hip neighbourhood in Baltimore City.
And, you know, it was kind of like, you know, poets and kind of freaks and the bohemian sort of place to be. Yeah, very cool place. Let’s put it.
Edgar Allan Poe died in the gutters of Fells Point, a hopeless opium addict. It was right over on the water. Ships came in.
It was all kind of carrying on. It was great. Right.
So I would go and she had a thrift store called Edith’s Shopping Bag. And I would go in and visit her. And one time I went in, she’s like, oh, Gina, I’m going to put together a punk rock band.
You want to join? And I was like, yes, Edith. We’re going to California, New York. Absolutely.
So we got these two other girls and we put together a set and boom, we were off. My first plane ride, you know, and it was thanks to Edith. And then I met people in New York and L.A. and San Francisco.
And when I got home, I knew that I was going to leave. I knew I had to go back and do what I felt very passionate about. And I went to New York for a while, went to L.A. for a while, went to San Francisco for a while.
You know, I went back home, saved up my money for like a year and I came back. And I decided on that trip that L.A. was going to be the easiest place for me to live because it was most affordable out of all the places. And, you know, those three places were really happening in a big way.
L.A. would have been the centre of the music business at that time, wouldn’t it? Yeah. But San Francisco had a thriving music scene. You know, as did New York, Blondie and the Dead Boys.
There was a lot going on there. Blondie’s heart of glass. Stay tuned.
Next up, Gina Schock tells us the story behind how she joined the Go-Go’s and managed to lead them to massive success. It was tough. Nobody wanted to deal with an all-girl band because there hadn’t been an all-girl band that had been hugely successful.
So they’re not going to put out, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars, you know, to get something going where they don’t have anything. There’s no test run, no test run for that. You know, thank God that you had people like Miles Copeland, who had IRS records and was smart enough to take advantage of what he saw was an opening in the industry because there was nothing like the Go-Go’s.
This is a Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. Thanks for hanging in.
I’m chatting to the irrepressible drummer from the Go-Go’s, Gina Schock, who’s recently released a coffee table photo book called Made in Hollywood, All Access with the Go-Go’s. So far, Gina has told us how she grew up in a working class family in Baltimore, but always knew that she was going to be a rock star. So you get to LA and you’re there and how do you fall into the lap of the Go-Go’s? So I put up my name at a bunch of stores, music stores, record stores, drummer looking to join a band, my influences, blah, blah, blah, how long I was playing.
I got into bands right away and they were bands with all guys and myself, which was pretty typical at that time. I never had a problem getting into any bands because I guess guys were like, oh, well, it’s a girl that can play drums. It’s an oddity.
Yeah, a novelty. So whatever, I didn’t have a problem. But the guy that I was living with at the time, Steve, was like, Gina, there’s this band, the Go-Go’s, you need to go see them.
And you’re going to kick that drummer out and join that band. And it’s going to be, you’re going to be famous. So I did go to see them and I thought, oh my God, they’re so bad.
But they’re, you know, like an ugly dog that’s so ugly, it’s beautiful. Well, it was like the Go-Go’s, they were so bad, they were great. I was ear to ear smiling.
And it’s sort of like, because I was like so uptight, like everything has to be perfect. Everything, the way you play, it’s got to be all perfect. Precision, precision.
They were up on stage having fun. They were making mistakes. They didn’t care.
I was like, I really need that in my life. I’m a Virgo, man. I could use a little bit of that, right? And I met them at Steve’s brother, Doug, at his party like a couple weeks later or whatever.
And we, you know, we exchanged phone numbers. They were looking for a drummer. I’m looking to join them.
I said, I said, oh, I’m looking to join a band, even though I was in two bands. But I was like, I want to get in the Go-Go’s because they’d only been together for like six months. And, you know, they were just really learning and figuring things out.
And I, and anyway, so they came over and we played a couple songs and that was it. That was the end of it. You were in.
The next day I left the other two bands and they fired their drummer and then that was it. That was the end of it. Love it.
I knew that you would tear my world apart I knew 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 got me acting like a fool When I deceive, I lose my cool Lost in love When all I know is dreaming on And now it’s time to love Now it’s time to love Lost in love When all I know is dreaming on Now it’s time to love You obviously brought them up to speed, got them to take their music more seriously and they imparted a sense of fun to you. Yes. Yeah.
It was a trade off and it was perfect and it was needed to happen. It was like I brought in my insane work ethic and they gave me in return, you know, lighten up about it. Okay.
It’s not so serious. Let’s have some fun on stage. Let’s not be so, so incredibly serious about every little thing.
And, you know, I needed that. And the combination obviously worked really well. And we just got, we did get busy down there.
We stopped this bullshit of rehearsing a couple of times a month. And we were rehearsing five days a week. You go to work, then you rehearse.
And it didn’t take long before it started to pay off because, you know, I knew when I saw them that there was something there that needed to be discovered. I’ll use that word. Yeah.
Or nurtured. Yeah. Yeah.
And it was the right fit, fortunately, for all of us. And, you know, I paid attention to them and they paid attention to me. And it worked beautifully.
And we got our asses working hard. And before you know it, we were selling out, you know, people, lines around the block coming to see us. You wouldn’t have even been surprised by that, would you? Because that was your self-fulfilling prophecy.
Well, I, you know, I honestly did think we were going to be huge. I know that’s just insane, but I really did. I thought, oh, well, this is typical.
There’s no one like us. And we’ve got each other’s back. We are a girl gang.
Don’t fuck with us. You know? Got on really well? Famously. Infamously.
Famously. Wow. Yeah.
Yeah, it was good. We all got along really well. You know, we all had the same politics.
It was us against the world. We’re not just friends. We’re way more than that.
We’ve been through so much. And we’re still here and we still love each other and still like doing what we do. And it’s true, everybody has their moments where they’re an asshole in the band, but they always come back and we always greet them with open arms, as it should be.
Like, it’s like family. We were up for anything. And I heard you did get up to plenty.
We got up to lots. You had. Typical.
Typical that age. Hey, you’re 21, 22, 23. It’s all about having a good time.
But it was all, there was a purpose. There was a, you know, there was a guiding light somewhere. In the midst of all the insanity, which should definitely be there at that age.
Yeah. I mean, I wouldn’t trade in a thing. Not one minute, you know, of my life would I trade ever.
It was all worth it. And the good and the bad amounts to, you know, the person and the band that we are to this day, and I’m very proud of it. It’s where it’s turned out to be, you know? Yeah.
You’ve got to be surprised that the Go-Go’s are still around and doing so well today. I mean, that you couldn’t have foreseen. No.
I tell you what. I never thought that we would be 40, over 40 years later, relevant. You know, in the music business, I mean, but we are.
I mean, Sandy, we can tour all the time. You know? It’s just getting everybody to agree, you know? I mean, me, I like to tour. I’d tour constantly if I could get the rest of the girls to do it.
But I try my best. It didn’t take very long until you had that breakthrough hit, We Got The Beat, did it? Yeah, well, that and Our Lips Are Sealed, boom. Here we are in England, opening for bands and the specials, thinking, you know, America doesn’t get us.
We’ll go to England. They’re going to get us right away. We’re way ahead of the times.
You know, they don’t know. I mean, we flopped in England. We come back to the States, and We Got The Beat is sort of really, people are making a fuss about that, you know? The clubs are packed.
They’re playing at the clubs constantly. You know, we’re starting to get a big following, and it’s not just in L.A. and New York. It’s like nationally, we’re starting to happen.
So here we are, you know, in another country, thinking, oh, America sucks. We come back, and there’s some heat underneath of our music. They embraced you.
We come back to sold-out everything, you know, and then we get a record deal here. You know, it wasn’t easy to get a record deal. Even with that, our manager, Ginger, was bringing in folks from every goddamn label in L.A. to come and see us play, and we were getting turned down left and right.
You know why? Because we were girls. They didn’t know what to do with you. There were no women that were hugely successful in the business up until the Go-Go’s happened, and everybody turned us down until Miles Copeland and IRS Records, and they were a small little label.
They didn’t have much to lose. They signed us. So how this works is you’re in a club.
You’re playing clubs. You get a call from the manager saying that, you know, the head of the record company, Miles Copeland, his brother, of course, is in the police, and he manages the police, Stuart Copeland, and he wants you to open for the police on their tour. And we’re like, well, hell yes.
Of course we want to do that. We love them, number one. We’re huge fans.
And yeah, what a hell of an opportunity. So we go from playing clubs to 18,000 to 20,000 seaters, and we were ready, man. We were ready to do it, because we had been playing for several years now, going around the country in a 12-seater van, really having a rough time.
But you’re young, so you can handle it. Doesn’t mean you don’t complain about it. It all worked out beautifully.
I’d watch them every night. They’d watch us. We had a great time with those guys.
Every game you play, every night you stay, I’ll be watching you. So I’m thinking of In Excess and when we toured with them, because they’re, you know, Australian. We love those guys, man.
We had a great time touring with them, and it was so cool to see them doing what we had just done. We had just opened for the police all over the world. We had just opened for them, right? We came back, took, like, off a couple weeks off, and then we went back and played all those arenas and In Excess opened for us.
And I was like, wow, this is cool. It’s sort of watching this happen again, except where they have honoured, they’re on their way up. They’re going to be huge.
They’re so talented. They’re so good looking. They’re going to happen.
Of course they did in a major way. Absolutely. Absolutely.
And you were really the driving force behind the band, I mean, not only just in terms of keeping time and setting the time on the drums, you really drove the pace all the way with the girls, didn’t you? Well, I mean, I don’t know. You know, I tried. I guess it’s just my personality to be.
I mean, music, I love music so much. Everything about it, every aspect of it, I completely am absolutely in love with. And so, you know, for me, you know, pushing the band harder and harder, you know, it was just something that I couldn’t help.
And the girls, I guess, I think they needed it and they accepted it. And they just thought, I mean, I’m a little crazy, but hey, you know what? Maybe she’s got something there. Penny, stop! What sort of dog is it? Penny is a gigantic, my little gigantic chihuahua.
That was tough. She’s a rescue. She gets whatever she wants.
Isn’t that lovely? So Gina, you were taking photos across this entire journey? Yeah, because I love photography. And it’s weird because it wasn’t really a conscious thing. It was just something that was happening like in my subconscious, just click, click, click.
Oh, I like click. Oh, that’s cool. And I have all these photographs and over 40 years of photographs of the band and my life.
And I just, for the last at least decade, the girls in the band have been saying to me, Gina, you need to do, you need to put out a photo book. And I really wanted to. It took a while to find the right person to collaborate with.
And then I found this fellow, Steve Preget, and that was it, man. It was like, he and I got along great. He helped me organize.
He came up and helped me go through all my photos. I mean, it was intense. And because there’s so much to choose from, I mean, and for me, it’s really hard for me to do it.
I can’t be objective. It’s like I look at them and they all mean something. I look at a photograph or a song.
It brings everything back from that moment in time. And it’s important to you, you know? If you get up and walk away, if it’s not your time, go ahead and take a ride. No time for much fun.
The words you said don’t mean a thing. Get up and go from the Go-Go’s. And that’s exactly what they did.
We’ll be back in a sec to hear more from drummer Gina Schock.
This is a Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. Welcome back.
I hope you’re enjoying hearing the story of the original girl band, The Go-Go’s, as told by Gina Schock. Tell us a little bit about this extraordinarily good-looking book. Well, thank you for calling it a story.
It does. It’s like everybody would want one on their coffee tables. It just looks great.
The photo on the front is just brilliant. The colours are awesome. And it’s a really enticing kind of read there, a teaser that tells you what’s inside.
So tell my listeners. That photo tells it all from The Go-Go’s at that point in time, I feel. Looking at this photo? Yeah.
That really says it all right there. And this is definitely a photo book, and I hadn’t the intention of having so much text in it, but it just wound up – they said, well, you need to write a little something with this. And it just kept flowing and flowing and flowing and flowing because, you know, everything I look at, there’s a story.
And then that leads into the next story and to the next one. And before you know it, I’ve got like over 30,000 words, which was not my intention. I started this out wanting it just to be all photographs and then the captions in the back of where it is and what, you know.
And it turned into something bigger than that, which I’m grateful for because I learned – I became a writer and I didn’t know I could do that. Yeah, you’ve written songs though, famously for people like Miley Cyrus. You’ve been a songwriter.
Yeah, but it’s a whole different thing. It’s just – yeah, it’s a whole different thing. It was, you know, that’s present.
I can sit down and write a song. That’s one thing, but to revisit your life through photographs and be able to try to tell it in a really cohesive manner when it’s, you know, 40 years ago, 35 years ago, it’s hard. It’s amazing that your memory permits you to do that.
My memory sucks, Sandy, but you know what? I have since 1978 kept a daily planner, which I still have to this day. Wow. Okay, I still do that.
I got out since 1978 all my daily planners. And when I looked through it, it helped me put everything – it helped me organize it and make sense of it all, you know what I mean? And it was like, you know, I’d write a couple things down here, what was going on that day. It was like, oh my God, this happened then.
And then that would spark another idea and that sparked another. And so it just snowballed and it was like, wow, I have so much to tell. And I could start another book right now.
Of course. I certainly have enough photos to do another one. And there’s never-ending stories.
Because we did do a lot of drugs and that has been out there. And everybody knows we had our problems with drugs. Like, who hasn’t in the music business except Gene Simmons, who’s the only guy I know that’s never done any drugs.
And especially in the 80s was the decade of excess. And we all partook in it. And thank God we’re all around to still be able to talk about it.
And we were in our 20s, our early 20s. And all of a sudden we were rock stars and had a lot of money. And we were, you know, behaving somewhat like that.
Not really insanely outrageous shit. But we were fooling around and having fun. I don’t regret any of it.
This journey that we’re all on of life, lots goes down. Some of it you’re extremely proud of. Some of it not so much.
And then there’s all the stuff in the middle, which is most of your life. So that’s the way we’ve always been. A lot of those photos are all setups.
You know, I’m setting everybody up to do something ridiculous or whatever. Or catching a photo of Belinda looking like crap after being on tour for a couple years. And like in the dressing room ready to burst into tears.
It’s just that I happen to be in the band. So I’m catching all this stuff. These candid shots that most other people were not privy to.
Nor would they be allowed in the room with Belinda having a fit. Me Orange Fluid You build your love So high You act a lot But only alone You don’t want to Let me Be Melt your heart Not made of stone Let me be Some Explanation Why you feel The way You do The world No Explanation I just want To touch You Touch You You don’t want to let me Turn to you Turn to you Just let me Turn to you Turn to you You don’t want to let me Turn to you Turn to you Just want to Turn to you I love the fact that you take the reader with you on this journey. And you kind of put us as flies on the wall into what’s going on.
You really put us in very close proximity with everything that’s happening in your life at that time. Is there an absolute favorite photo and story that goes with it that you’ve put into this book? You’ve got to be able to point to something that’s really your highlight. Oh, shit.
I love that photo of myself and Jane Fonda. The coolest woman in the world. I agree.
I could not agree more. She’s the one person I’ve not interviewed that is still on my bucket list to talk to. Even though I blame her for my hip replacements and my knee operations and all of that.
Yeah, she’s cool. She is so awesome. So lovely.
And the reason the Go-Go’s got back together in 1990 is because of Jane Fonda. Tell me why. Because, you know, we had broken up in 85.
But then everybody started talking. This one call and that one back and forth, you know, in a couple of years. And then all of us got calls separately from Jane Fonda’s people saying, you know, she wants to get this green initiative on the ballot in California.
Do we want to be a part of it? Will we do a show at Universal Amphitheatre to help support this? And we’re like, well, we’re all environmentalists. And of course we will. And animal activists.
Of course we will. That’s when she and I blacketed over the backdrop. The radio’s blasting.
Sun after sun. About the big romance. The last words are already few.
She said, have some mercy on me. You have to be the mercenary. She’s screaming inside.
Can’t stop this turning. Been through it before. There’s no bumping all around.
She’s not really bad. She’s still waiting for me. So scared to be alone.
Then we started talking, talking a lot. And then when we got together, it was like all was forgiven. It was because the thing that will shine through in this book is that at the end of the day, we are family.
We are family. And sometimes you don’t like your family, but at the end of the day, you always love them. And we’ve been through so much shit.
None of us have been in relationships longer than we’ve been in relationships with each other. It’s like being married to four other women. And Jane Fonda got us together to play a show, to do a show.
And believe me, stepping on stage with the girls is like a magical experience. The chemistry is just incredible. And doing that show, it was like, oh my God, of course.
And then we started booking shows that year. In 1990, our agent was already booking go-go shows the rest of the year. So it didn’t take much.
I read it in the paper. I see it on my TV. And the whole world laughs at that.
It was a good time. You’ve been brought to me. It’s a process.
Being in a family, you know how it is, right? Yeah, sometimes you talk and sometimes you don’t. Yeah, but we have much in common, much in common. And the things that we do have in common are big and important.
Well, nonetheless, being the last 40 years of being together, of achieving so much together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you really did pave the way for girl groups to follow you, didn’t you? You were the pioneers of that.
And you’ve opened the door for a whole lot of others to step on in. Well, that’s kind of nice to think of it that way. I hope so.
I hope that we did. Because there’s no greater compliment as far as I’m concerned. There’s nothing better that you can do than to give other little girl musicians the thought that they, too, can do it.
That’s right. It doesn’t have to be just a male-dominated world. And anything is possible.
And I’m proof of it. I come from, like I said, a blue-collar, middle-class family. Very proud of it.
And everybody comes from somewhere, Sandy. Nobody wakes up and they’re a rock star or they’re a huge actor. I mean, we all come from somewhere.
And then we work, and sometimes we get a lucky break, and it happens. There’s so many incredibly talented people out there that are yet to be discovered. But they will if they are tenacious and they keep at it.
You’re going to get a little stuck along the way. But as long as you don’t lose sight of what your goal is, then you’re going to be all right. Gina Schock, the documentary, The Go-Go’s, how was that for you? That was a love fest.
It was like, yeah, it really was. I mean, that brought us all closer together, seeing all that history and realizing that. And this happened for me with the book as well.
Yeah, there were some times that were rough, but ultimately, the majority of the time was a blast. It was a blast and was such a beautiful, lucky, incredible thing to happen to the five of us, you know? Absolutely. We five were chosen somehow for things to happen.
And, like, how incredible is that? I don’t know. I’m in disbelief to this day. The Go-Go’s became eligible for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.
They had to wait until 2021 for it to actually happen. It’s the funniest thing because, you know, before it happens, you’re sort of like, oh, whatever, whatever. And then when it happens, it’s like, wow, this is a really big deal.
So it’s really pretty mind-blowing. It was very, very cool. We were really very nervous, but we got through it.
Everything worked out. And better late than never because when it did happen, we were all kind of knocked out. Everything has to be in the right place at the right time.
I don’t know how this shit works, but it happens when it’s supposed to, I guess, right? Yeah. And the first thing we want to do is we want to get the V52s in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They so deserve it.
I look at all this now, especially now, when I can appreciate it, when I have time to appreciate it, because at the time, we were so very busy doing what we were doing. We didn’t have time to appreciate what was going on around us. It’s only when you look back and you… The arenas that we were selling out, we were just like, okay, yeah.
On the treadmill. Yeah. Yeah, I get it.
Gina, thank you so much for being so generous with your time. It’s been just lovely chatting with you. Pleasure.
Absolute pleasure. And thank you for pushing this book because it is like my life, 40 years of my life there. Isn’t she a great character? Gina Shock from the all-girl band, The Go-Go’s.
Do you have someone from the 60s, 70s or 80s that you might like to hear from? Just send me a message through the website, abreathoffreshair.com.au, and I’ll see if I can make it happen for you. I really hope you’ve enjoyed today’s show, and I wish you a fabulous week ahead. I’ll look forward to your company again same time next week.
Have fun meantime, won’t you? Bye now. It’s just a beautiful day You’ve been listening to A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. Beautiful day Oh, baby, any day that you’re gone away It’s a beautiful day