Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Said Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Kathy Valentine. You know where as
Speaker 1: a member of the Go goes that you just wrote
Speaker 1: an amazing book all I ever wanted. Kathy, Hi, what's that, Bob? Okay?
Speaker 1: So why did you write the book? Well, there's the
Speaker 1: big reason, and then there's the all the little reasons.
Speaker 1: The big reason was I had wanted to write a
Speaker 1: book for a long time. I felt confident that I
Speaker 1: could write a good book. Um, I just felt like
Speaker 1: I didn't have a deadline and I didn't have an assignment,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know if I had the discipline and
Speaker 1: the motivation to actually do it every day. But I
Speaker 1: got a book deal. So once I had a book deal,
Speaker 1: you'd be crazy not to write a book. So there's
Speaker 1: that reason. Okay, but a little bit slower. How did
Speaker 1: you get a book deal? Um? I was doing the
Speaker 1: Texas Book Festival. I was moderating a panel and ut Press.
Speaker 1: A woman was there and she liked She started thinking,
Speaker 1: I wonder if Kathy would be interested in this. And
Speaker 1: I had been thinking about it for quite a while.
Speaker 1: I had done a Twitter memoir starting in like two
Speaker 1: thousand nine that I got in trouble for and I
Speaker 1: took it down, not in trouble from Twitter, but from
Speaker 1: the rest of the go Goes. So I took it down,
Speaker 1: but it was there long enough for me to see
Speaker 1: that that um my story was resonating with people. So
Speaker 1: I I just I had I felt confident, and yet
Speaker 1: at the same time, I wasn't sure what the story
Speaker 1: would be. I knew I wanted to be a memoir.
Speaker 1: I had read several memoirs, and I thought, I got
Speaker 1: a story. I can do that, and I just kind
Speaker 1: of went from there. How much writing had you done
Speaker 1: before you attempted the memoir, Well, I had been to
Speaker 1: college student for many years. I was just I have
Speaker 1: a tendency when life feels kind of like I'm not
Speaker 1: getting anywhere, which happens a lot as an artist, um
Speaker 1: or that I was spinning my wheels or just feeling lost.
Speaker 1: I would take college classes, and a few years ago
Speaker 1: I realized I was very close to having enough credits
Speaker 1: to to get a degree, so I started working towards
Speaker 1: an English degree because part of my big plan was
Speaker 1: I will write a book during an m f A program,
Speaker 1: because then it'll be like having a an assignment and
Speaker 1: I know I'll do it, but I got the book
Speaker 1: deal in between. Then. So in the course of writing
Speaker 1: for college, I was getting a's, I was getting good feedback,
Speaker 1: I was doing creative writing classes, turning in short stories.
Speaker 1: My first idea was to do a collection of short stories,
Speaker 1: but I didn't think anyone would buy me as a
Speaker 1: legit writer, so I thought, and plus, with short stories
Speaker 1: or literature, you're competing with every literary genius that's also
Speaker 1: writing books, Whereas if I wrote a memoir, it's like
Speaker 1: my story, I'm the one that's I'm the one that's
Speaker 1: going to tell this story the best. So it kind
Speaker 1: of was just a smart way to try to introduce
Speaker 1: myself as a writer. Okay, there are a couple of things.
Speaker 1: How did you end up moderating that piano at the
Speaker 1: book fair? Well, I'm in Austin and i'm a I'm
Speaker 1: kind of a semi big fish and a semi little pond,
Speaker 1: so you know, opportunities float my way every now and then.
Speaker 1: And the panel was with Jessica Hopper, who had put
Speaker 1: out a book called the first Collection of Rock Criticism
Speaker 1: by a female rock critic, and so I think their
Speaker 1: idea was that it would be a little hook to
Speaker 1: have the woman rock critic being moderated by the woman musician.
Speaker 1: Maybe that was the idea. Okay, So the woman who
Speaker 1: gave you the deal from the University of Texas Press,
Speaker 1: had you known her previously? No? I had not, and
Speaker 1: she it was just a fluke. She found me. I
Speaker 1: had had a woman had babysat my kid like years before,
Speaker 1: and she was working at UT Press. And this woman
Speaker 1: who had signing Capabile at Ease went to that person
Speaker 1: and said, did you say that you knew Kathy Valentine.
Speaker 1: So the former babysitter contacted me. I I I contacted
Speaker 1: Gianna and we met for coffee and Bob, I gotta
Speaker 1: tell you. Within an hour, I started feeling like, I
Speaker 1: think I've got a book deal. And I said, are
Speaker 1: you giving me a wait? Are you giving me a
Speaker 1: book deal? And I said, you haven't even seen how
Speaker 1: I can write? And she said, oh, we're not worried
Speaker 1: about it. We're not worried about it. And I asked, well,
Speaker 1: can I send you some stuff? I had written some
Speaker 1: scenes the scene about me getting an abortion when I'm
Speaker 1: twelve years old. I had written about that I had
Speaker 1: written about some of some things in my life, and
Speaker 1: I sent her the stuff and she I loved the
Speaker 1: answer because she wrote back and said, I want this book.
Speaker 1: I want this book more than any book. And you
Speaker 1: could probably get another book deal. We can't offer you
Speaker 1: a lot where a nonprofit. And I said, yeah, but
Speaker 1: are giving me a deal, and I don't have to
Speaker 1: shop a manuscript, so I'll go with you T Press.
Speaker 1: Plus I liked what they had been putting out. They
Speaker 1: had put out a couple of pretty cool little music books. Okay,
Speaker 1: and you're going to give the other reason for doing
Speaker 1: the book, I might have covered it and all that blabbing. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's focus because you know there's the famous line on
Speaker 1: the Springsteen Live album where his mother says, you can
Speaker 1: always go back to college. Okay, there are most musicians,
Speaker 1: if they went to college at all, certainly don't finish.
Speaker 1: So when did you start taking college classes? I started, well,
Speaker 1: I started when I was sixteen, and then they kicked
Speaker 1: me out of community college because I didn't have a
Speaker 1: high school transcript. I didn't return until I was in
Speaker 1: l A. And I was just very frustrated. I thought
Speaker 1: like every band I started just wouldn't get any traction.
Speaker 1: And it just started feeling like everything I did didn't
Speaker 1: go anywhere. And I thought, I mean, oh, I know
Speaker 1: what happened. I I read a book, a historical fiction book,
Speaker 1: and it was just a fluke. I found it on
Speaker 1: an airplane, and my I felt like this feeling. I
Speaker 1: was enthralled with ancient history. And I started devouring all
Speaker 1: these books, like I mean practically like academic things about
Speaker 1: ancient Rome. And that's what made me want to go
Speaker 1: back to school. I thought, I want to I want
Speaker 1: to get a I want to study ancient history. And
Speaker 1: I started out with Latin because I wanted to read
Speaker 1: all the texts in actual Latin. Of course, I didn't
Speaker 1: realize that being a classic major just means that's all
Speaker 1: you do is a transcribe and transpose, uh stuff. So anyway,
Speaker 1: but then I realized very quickly I had to take
Speaker 1: basic college courses that I hadn't finished. So I taught
Speaker 1: myself algebra to get myself up to a level of college. Well,
Speaker 1: how did you teach yourself algebra? You just go buy
Speaker 1: books at like Barnes and Nobles, Like teach yourself algebra,
Speaker 1: High school Algebra one. I was doing it by trial
Speaker 1: and error. Then I got in trouble. They sent a
Speaker 1: report home to my parents whatever. So I didn't see
Speaker 1: the learning curve is flat. I saw it as relatively steep.
Speaker 1: Well I and so, but I just did it. It
Speaker 1: was like I had to do it to get into
Speaker 1: college level math. And I just kept finding these wonderful things.
Speaker 1: Like when I got into college level math, I took statistics.
Speaker 1: I thought, what a what a bore and this statistic
Speaker 1: professor And it was at Glendale Community College and he
Speaker 1: remains to this day my favorite instructor I've ever had.
Speaker 1: I just sent him a book. We stay in touch,
Speaker 1: and he made mathematics seem like the language of God.
Speaker 1: He was phenomenal. And learning is like that. It's like
Speaker 1: once you once you start feeling kind of fired up,
Speaker 1: and and just that feeling of being enthralled is all
Speaker 1: I know. I hadn't found that since music. I never
Speaker 1: found anything that, you know, literally like made my palm
Speaker 1: sweat and made me my heart race and learning something
Speaker 1: and doing well. I'm I've always been kind of an
Speaker 1: approval junkie. So getting an A and a class feels good.
Speaker 1: It gave me self esteem and validation, and I just
Speaker 1: I like it. I just like it. So I just
Speaker 1: started kind of haphazardly taking courses and I went on
Speaker 1: to Pasadena City College, and then I got married and stuff,
Speaker 1: and when I got to Austin, I started resuming mainly
Speaker 1: so I could get that into that m f A program.
Speaker 1: But there's a mismiss, there's a mistake. I'm not actually
Speaker 1: I've not graduated yet. I'm two classes away from having
Speaker 1: my my college degree. So do you plan to take
Speaker 1: those two classes? I do, because one of them is
Speaker 1: just writing a thesis. It's even in this undergraduate undergrad program,
Speaker 1: you need to write a capstone thesis about So that's
Speaker 1: that's one thing. And the other thing I've been trying
Speaker 1: to just avoid as much as possible, um like sitting
Speaker 1: in a classroom. Like I've done a lot of portfolio
Speaker 1: things where I put together proof that I know the
Speaker 1: material well enough. I've done a lot of that and
Speaker 1: whatever I could get away with taking UH online and
Speaker 1: then of course I've had to sit in a lot
Speaker 1: of classrooms. But if I can do it at home,
Speaker 1: i'd rather because I like making my own schedule. Okay. Well,
Speaker 1: as I say that you cover your life pretty well
Speaker 1: in your book, but just to hit some of the highlights,
Speaker 1: you have rather unique upbringing. Can you amplify that? Yes,
Speaker 1: I did, UM, and I guess I would. The basic
Speaker 1: thing I would say is that my mom, I mean,
Speaker 1: I could have spun it very differently. I could have
Speaker 1: made her just a post sixties free spirit um, but
Speaker 1: she was okay. I had talked to her about being
Speaker 1: truthful and honest about my my childhood and how I
Speaker 1: was raised. But basically, my mom had me at twenty one.
Speaker 1: She's from England. She she divorced my dad when being
Speaker 1: married and living in America didn't meet her expectations, and
Speaker 1: she was She was very um, I thought, fearless and brave.
Speaker 1: What she was was pretty reckless and irresponsible. UM. I
Speaker 1: was kind of left to raise myself. My earliest memory, UM,
Speaker 1: not as an event, but as a feeling, was the
Speaker 1: sense that I needed to be okay, that if I
Speaker 1: wasn't okay, she wouldn't be okay, and the whole precarious
Speaker 1: thing of our relationship and my my childhood would would
Speaker 1: fall into the abyss. So I've I very much felt
Speaker 1: like I always had to be okay. I carried that
Speaker 1: with me most of my life. Now, does that mean
Speaker 1: you were faking being okay? Or you will find a
Speaker 1: way to make yourself both both You just your kid,
Speaker 1: You figure it out. You know. It meant when it
Speaker 1: meant because there was no other kids around, It meant
Speaker 1: being able to amuse myself, entertain myself. It meant, you know,
Speaker 1: I had no brothers and sisters. The only child I
Speaker 1: learned how to read. I would read books. I was
Speaker 1: just on my own a lot um. And when I
Speaker 1: got to be a certain my dad was not present
Speaker 1: in my life. I think it was very painful. It's
Speaker 1: not conscious when you're a kid, you know. I just
Speaker 1: felt like I don't think I felt like I mattered
Speaker 1: very much to him, and uh I, um, I just
Speaker 1: kind of got very uh as soon as I found
Speaker 1: something that made me feel like I could fit in,
Speaker 1: which was drinking. And I started drinking at twelve, and
Speaker 1: I found a group of misfits that I could kind
Speaker 1: of fit in with. And once I started feeling like
Speaker 1: I fit in a little bit, um that was that
Speaker 1: was how I coped. So we didn't want to go
Speaker 1: into that right away, but I got a little okay,
Speaker 1: but your you say your mother went to college. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my mother was a ut student. It took her twelve
Speaker 1: years to get her degree. She uh was raising me
Speaker 1: by herself. She had a boyfriend and she was obsessed
Speaker 1: with for about a decade who really wouldn't give me
Speaker 1: the time of day. So it was kind of dysfunctional.
Speaker 1: I just wanted attention from him, never got it. She
Speaker 1: was obsessed with him. I felt very very abandoned and
Speaker 1: alone and that my job was to take care of myself.
Speaker 1: That's what I felt. And did your mother graduate from college? Yes?
Speaker 1: She did, so do you think that's an inspiration for you?
Speaker 1: I think that the academic life has always been something
Speaker 1: that I valued. My dad was a professor of economics.
Speaker 1: Even though he wasn't a big part of my life,
Speaker 1: I was proud of him because that's how he got
Speaker 1: out of Lubbock, Texas and how he kind of separated
Speaker 1: himself from the poverty that he grew up with was
Speaker 1: through education. And school was just something until it became
Speaker 1: something where socially it was too painful. It was something
Speaker 1: I enjoyed. I enjoyed excelling at it. I enjoyed approval
Speaker 1: and I enjoyed learning. So before you turned twelve and
Speaker 1: you took a left field turn, um, did you so?
Speaker 1: You did well in school? Were you popular? Did you
Speaker 1: have friends? I was? Um? I was a straight A
Speaker 1: student and very advanced and in terms of like the curriculum,
Speaker 1: but I felt like an outsider. It wasn't so bad
Speaker 1: at first because my mom she would work at a
Speaker 1: job for like a year or two save up her
Speaker 1: meager retirement, and we'd go to England and spend a
Speaker 1: couple of months, and when the money ran out, we'd
Speaker 1: come home and we'd live in a new apartment and
Speaker 1: I'd go to a new school. So I was always
Speaker 1: the new kid. But in the fifth grade, she decided
Speaker 1: she wanted to give me something better. And that's when
Speaker 1: it really got bad, because she moved to this this
Speaker 1: very kind of lower middle class neighborhood wherever one was
Speaker 1: quite conventional and it was seventy seventy one. The we
Speaker 1: just stuck out like sword thumbs. And that's not what
Speaker 1: you want to do when you're eleven. You don't want
Speaker 1: to stick out, but we really did, and uh, I
Speaker 1: remember being embarrassed. She would pull up in her sports
Speaker 1: car and her mini dress, and I would be embarrassed. Uh.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to be like everybody else, and it
Speaker 1: was it wasn't gonna happen, just was not going to happen.
Speaker 1: So I was kind of a mess waiting to happen.
Speaker 1: And you talked about your mother in the book. How
Speaker 1: does your mother feel about the book? Because you're very
Speaker 1: honest in the book. She's really I've always been her
Speaker 1: most vicarious, pride of and proof that she didn't mess
Speaker 1: everything up. Um, she feels very very proud of me.
Speaker 1: I she I didn't want her to be the villain
Speaker 1: of the story. I mean, I really try. I too
Speaker 1: adhere to the conventions of storytelling and that there was
Speaker 1: an arc, there was a protagonist that was me, that
Speaker 1: overcame obstacles and came out a changed person. I knew.
Speaker 1: I knew the conventions of storytelling enough to want that,
Speaker 1: but I didn't want that villain in my story. And
Speaker 1: I asked her about everything before I would write about it.
Speaker 1: I said, I'm going to write about you know, us
Speaker 1: dating the drug dealers. I'm going to write about you
Speaker 1: having an affair with a friend of mine, a teenage boy.
Speaker 1: I'm going to write about this, and is that okay?
Speaker 1: Is that okay with you? Because I wasn't going to
Speaker 1: do anything hurtful. If she said it's not okay, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have done it. And oddly or ironically, her saying
Speaker 1: yes and giving permission gave me a lens to see
Speaker 1: all this stuff and through a different point of view,
Speaker 1: because as I'm writing it, you're I'm appalled, like, how
Speaker 1: could she do this? How could she do this? I'm
Speaker 1: a mom, I can't imagine that, but okay. It made
Speaker 1: me realize that it was more important to her that
Speaker 1: I tell my story and tell it truthfully and honestly
Speaker 1: than it was for her to be depicted as some
Speaker 1: idealized great mom. And that made me realize how even
Speaker 1: though some big pillars of parenting were missing, i e.
Speaker 1: Guidance and boundaries, actual parenting, I realized that I had
Speaker 1: gotten support and I had gotten love. And uh. She
Speaker 1: said it's painful for her to read. It's painful, but
Speaker 1: she said something funny. The other day. She again, she
Speaker 1: said it was so painful. I thought I'd done a
Speaker 1: really good job until I wrote that. So was there
Speaker 1: anything you intentionally left out about the childhood about your mother.
Speaker 1: Uh No, I I pretty much told most of that stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I think I think I hit on
Speaker 1: all the big ones. Okay, So what she anges? When
Speaker 1: you're twelve, you're in this new neighborhood. How do you
Speaker 1: fall in with a bad crowd? Shall Lisa? Well? I?
Speaker 1: I remember the first time I drank, and it was
Speaker 1: Boone's farm, Strawberry Hill, and I was wretching. I was
Speaker 1: practically throwing up every time I took a gulp of it.
Speaker 1: But it was an instantaneous like why on earth you
Speaker 1: would continue doing something that was making you sick to
Speaker 1: your stomach? But it seemed like instantly it was doing
Speaker 1: something to my the way I felt, and it made
Speaker 1: me feel like things were okay. And I started drinking
Speaker 1: with a with a quite a I've drank like an amateur,
Speaker 1: but I drank from that moment on and smoking and
Speaker 1: um it gave me. There was a small group of
Speaker 1: misfits and once you it was never going to fit
Speaker 1: in with the normal kids. Ever, no way that was
Speaker 1: never gonna happen. So having that little sort call of
Speaker 1: people um that also smoke and got high and drank,
Speaker 1: that was kind of became the thing, and then I
Speaker 1: didn't care about school. For the first time, I got
Speaker 1: a c you know, and I didn't care. And okay,
Speaker 1: did you perceive smoking and drinking is being bad things? Well,
Speaker 1: my mom's smoked, so I I when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I would always like, like, you know, ranted heard it,
Speaker 1: quit smoking, quit smoking. Um. But yeah, once once I
Speaker 1: did think it was bad. Yeah, it was bad because
Speaker 1: we were we were across the street. We were considered,
Speaker 1: you know, juveniles, and and we thought anybody that that
Speaker 1: didn't drink or or smoke pot was a narc. We
Speaker 1: called him narks. And yeah, I knew it was bad,
Speaker 1: but that was I wanted to be bad at that point,
Speaker 1: because being bad when I was accepted and I had friends,
Speaker 1: it was being bad. Did that give you further attention
Speaker 1: from your mother? No? No, my mom, Uh, she didn't
Speaker 1: know what I was doing. And when she found out,
Speaker 1: and the way she found out was I I passed
Speaker 1: out in someone's front yard and a police cruiser found
Speaker 1: me and drove me home and came to the door
Speaker 1: and I they stood there at the front door when
Speaker 1: my mom answered, and I crawled through the door. And
Speaker 1: even that didn't cause a lecture. I mean, the only
Speaker 1: thing she said was I hope you've learned your lesson,
Speaker 1: And the lesson was like about getting drunk because my
Speaker 1: mom wasn't a drinker. I think that was what she
Speaker 1: thought the lesson was. But uh no, there was no
Speaker 1: punishment ever. I was never punished ever. Okay, so does
Speaker 1: the school notice that you're taking a left turn? No,
Speaker 1: so you're basically out there on your own. So you also,
Speaker 1: and this is really in the book, along with drinking
Speaker 1: and smoking comes some sexual experience. Insis. Yeah, I've been
Speaker 1: really emotional lately, so I'm gonna try hard not to
Speaker 1: like start blubbering because things are a little raw just
Speaker 1: because of everything. So I'm trying not to do that,
Speaker 1: but some things are so for some time. One of
Speaker 1: my most distinctive memories, uh and unpleasant things was the
Speaker 1: fact that a young boy when I was when I
Speaker 1: was very young, I guess twelve, it must have been twelve,
Speaker 1: and he kind of cornered me. I was that his
Speaker 1: sister was my friend. He cornered me. Uh, he paid
Speaker 1: attention to me. As I wrote in the book, I
Speaker 1: would go over there trying to avoid him, but get
Speaker 1: his attention at the same time, and it was just
Speaker 1: a matter of time before he said he loved me
Speaker 1: and wanted to be with me and wanted to be
Speaker 1: the first person and kind of just went at it
Speaker 1: with me, pushed, pulled my bats down, and I didn't
Speaker 1: know what was happening. I had no idea what he
Speaker 1: was doing or if we did it. I thought maybe
Speaker 1: we had done it regardless. He when that event was over,
Speaker 1: he went and told like everybody in the school, everybody,
Speaker 1: and the next day everyone was talking about me and
Speaker 1: pointing at me and laughing, and other guys guys were
Speaker 1: coming up to me or yelling things at me. And
Speaker 1: I wrote about it in the book and it's extremely painful.
Speaker 1: I went to my mom and tears and I told
Speaker 1: her what had happened. And this is this is not
Speaker 1: any exaggeration. My mom said, you didn't do anything wrong.
Speaker 1: You did it with the wrong person. And her reason
Speaker 1: for saying that was that she didn't want me to
Speaker 1: be hung up about sex. She didn't want me to
Speaker 1: think like, oh, I can't have sex anymore. She I mean,
Speaker 1: it was just her intention was okay, it was pretty
Speaker 1: pure as an intention, but it was just placing adult
Speaker 1: concerns on a child. You know, It's like maybe if
Speaker 1: I had been twenty five, she would be worried about
Speaker 1: me not being hung up on sex, but to not
Speaker 1: be worried about your little girl. So it was really painful,
Speaker 1: it really I really amped up the drinking and stuff
Speaker 1: after that. Well, I just know anybody in high school,
Speaker 1: they would label people truly or falsely, and everybody would
Speaker 1: know would be very painful for the individual involved. It
Speaker 1: was extraordinarily painful, and especially because I had I had
Speaker 1: friends that were guys, and then they would I thought
Speaker 1: they were friends, and then they would tell people that
Speaker 1: they had had sex with me and they hadn't, or
Speaker 1: they would corner me and try to have sex and
Speaker 1: I would I would fight them off and run off,
Speaker 1: but they would say it happened anyway. So it was
Speaker 1: probably the most painful time of my entire life. I
Speaker 1: took my daughter ten years ago to see where I
Speaker 1: grew up, and I drove with her to that where
Speaker 1: we lived when this happened, and the school I went to,
Speaker 1: and even my daughter said, I don't like it here.
Speaker 1: I don't like it here. This makes me very this
Speaker 1: this is a bad place. So what do you tell
Speaker 1: your daughter about sex. Well, she has a very different
Speaker 1: childhood than mine, and in the era, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: very different than the seventies. I mean, as as as
Speaker 1: terrible as some of this sounds, you have to be
Speaker 1: of a certain age to understand what the seventies were like,
Speaker 1: and coming right after the free love, uh era of
Speaker 1: the sixties, and it was very there was a lot
Speaker 1: of debauchery and openness um without the without the freeness,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, so it's kind of like it was
Speaker 1: a very different era. I haven't I haven't had to. Uh.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've talked to her about what happened to
Speaker 1: me a little bit. It makes her very sad. You know,
Speaker 1: we're really close, and my daughter is really kind of
Speaker 1: protective of me, and the idea of me being hurt
Speaker 1: or being treated badly upsets her a lot. So how
Speaker 1: old is she today? Seventeen? Has she read the book?
Speaker 1: She's only read parts of it, and she's avoided those parts.
Speaker 1: She's read some of the other things, and uh, she's
Speaker 1: really proud. I think she'll read it when she's ready.
Speaker 1: I don't think she's She's always been very good at
Speaker 1: self regulating herself in terms of knowing what she's ready for. So, um,
Speaker 1: I'm just letting her take the lead on it. And
Speaker 1: where is she on the continuum between wild and crazy
Speaker 1: and book smart and you know, nerd, what kind of
Speaker 1: kid is she? She's amazing. She's all she is thinking
Speaker 1: about is going to college and where she wants to
Speaker 1: go and how to make sure her applications are great.
Speaker 1: And she's uh, she has admitted to trying alcohol a
Speaker 1: couple of times and says it's not her thing. And
Speaker 1: she's never known me to drink or smoke. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've been sober thirty one year, so uh, but I've
Speaker 1: always I've planted my little seeds here and there. Like
Speaker 1: if we or somewhere and somebody's like obnoxiously drunk, I
Speaker 1: kind of can just go, oh, that's what happens sometimes
Speaker 1: if you can't handle your liquor, you know it's going
Speaker 1: to get it in when I can let her make
Speaker 1: her own judgments. Okay, Now, since it's in the book
Speaker 1: and you mentioned it earlier, ultimately you do get pregnant
Speaker 1: at twelve, so can you tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: more about them? Yeah, So after that horrible event where
Speaker 1: pretty much my my course was charted. I think the
Speaker 1: way I said in the book, it was like the
Speaker 1: stories he told started becoming the story of my life,
Speaker 1: even though there was not any truth. And some older
Speaker 1: boys started coming around to our house. My mom worked,
Speaker 1: I was a latchkey kid, My mom was beautiful, and
Speaker 1: there was just something. We started being kind of a novelty,
Speaker 1: like the wild girl with the beautiful mom and she's
Speaker 1: not home in the day. So teenage boys much older
Speaker 1: than me started hanging around. Um, one of them would
Speaker 1: bring that would bring records over, and I wrote in
Speaker 1: a book like bonding over music and bands is where
Speaker 1: I really started feeling like I was connecting with people.
Speaker 1: That was the first time nothing else had ever connected
Speaker 1: me with people of my own age who are around
Speaker 1: my own age. So, UM, one guy, he he, we
Speaker 1: just had sex. And it was so painful that I
Speaker 1: realized that the first time that the guy hadn't even
Speaker 1: done anything, that he basically just poked around because and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I mean, even at that age, and I
Speaker 1: really like, I've had to listen to this ship all
Speaker 1: year long and uh, and nothing even happened. So that
Speaker 1: was just ridiculous. But it turns out that first time
Speaker 1: that it did work and I did have sex. I
Speaker 1: was very unlucky and very fertile and got pregnant and
Speaker 1: found out within a few months. And this was, uh
Speaker 1: it was two years before Roe v. Wade. We tried
Speaker 1: to figure out a way to get this pregnancy aborted
Speaker 1: and couldn't do it in Austin. My mom spoke to
Speaker 1: some doctors. They said there was a clinic in California,
Speaker 1: and that became my first trip to California, Uh, to
Speaker 1: to have an abortion when I was twelve years old,
Speaker 1: and I wrote about it, I think, pretty gritty, real
Speaker 1: uh terms, and uh, it's hard. I was nervous about
Speaker 1: writing about abortion. It's such a it's such a polarized issue.
Speaker 1: If I could have have I had written about it
Speaker 1: in the eighties, it would have been like, no big deal.
Speaker 1: But now you just say the word and it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm probably gonna get like a zillion uh
Speaker 1: messages about being a baby killer or something. So it
Speaker 1: was hard. It was scary to write about it. But
Speaker 1: having an abortion at that age obviously the a lot
Speaker 1: of things happened to you at a young age a
Speaker 1: little different from the average citizen. UH did it. How
Speaker 1: emotionally did it affect you having an abortion or it
Speaker 1: was all such a crazy time, It was all mixed together.
Speaker 1: I by that time I was very uh adept at
Speaker 1: not feeling my feelings. So what I saw it as
Speaker 1: was a problem that had to go away. That was
Speaker 1: my my most uh driving sent it about. It was
Speaker 1: just that I just want this problem to go away,
Speaker 1: I said. There was a planned parenthood social worker. She
Speaker 1: told my mom. She asked me how I felt about it,
Speaker 1: and I just said, I want to I want to
Speaker 1: deal with it, That's all I said. And she told
Speaker 1: my mom, I was obviously repressing my feelings, and you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course I was repressing my feelings. That's like, whatever
Speaker 1: it took to survive and be okay was what what
Speaker 1: I did. And um when I what I remember more
Speaker 1: than anything was the relief, the relief after because I
Speaker 1: was put under I went under general anesthesia, and when
Speaker 1: I came out of it, there was that glorious moment
Speaker 1: where I was a clean slate and remembered nothing, and
Speaker 1: then I remembered everything, and that was quickly just I
Speaker 1: was washed over with this enormous relief that this horrible
Speaker 1: problem horrible problem. I mean, I had never heard of
Speaker 1: an a Shan. I didn't know anybody that else I
Speaker 1: knew I did. It was not like my girlfriends and
Speaker 1: I were sitting around talking about having sex. I didn't
Speaker 1: really have any girlfriends, and the ones I did have,
Speaker 1: I don't think we're doing that. So I was really
Speaker 1: glad it was over with and I went on the
Speaker 1: pill from twelve when I was on the pill. And
Speaker 1: now you mentioned that there was a time when your
Speaker 1: mother was dating a friend and then when you were
Speaker 1: both dating the drug dealers, Uh, can you tell us
Speaker 1: about that? Yeah, well, I had one one of my
Speaker 1: good friends. Um, well, he he was somebody I thought
Speaker 1: really happy about. And we connected on Facebook not too
Speaker 1: long ago, and I said, what do you remember from
Speaker 1: that time and and he said, I remember you were
Speaker 1: funny as ship. You're so funny. And then I said,
Speaker 1: I know what happened with you and my mom. And
Speaker 1: he just ignored it. He just ignored it. He wouldn't
Speaker 1: wouldn't talk about it, because what the deal is, my
Speaker 1: mom had an affair with this guy. I had no
Speaker 1: idea at the time. I cannot even imagine how it
Speaker 1: started or how it happened. In the book, I kind
Speaker 1: of pieced together that it probably started when I went
Speaker 1: to visit my dad um. When I came back, they
Speaker 1: were hanging out together, and it kind of crossed my mind,
Speaker 1: like why would my friend and my mom be hanging
Speaker 1: out without me being there? And I have to say
Speaker 1: she was smoking pot by then with me and my friends.
Speaker 1: My mom was smoking pot with me and my friends.
Speaker 1: And she didn't tell me about this affair until my twenties,
Speaker 1: and we were high, We were high on drugs. We
Speaker 1: were like nin nin n like talking like you do
Speaker 1: all night or and she said, you know, well, you
Speaker 1: know I had an affair with James Hits, a pseudonym,
Speaker 1: And I said, and I was shocked. But at that point,
Speaker 1: I'm still in my twenties, and as I wrote in
Speaker 1: my book, like she was my pal, Like you don't
Speaker 1: get mad at your pal for having an affair with
Speaker 1: your other pal. And it came up again when in sobriety,
Speaker 1: and I think I brought it up, and then it
Speaker 1: came up again. And the cool thing about writing a
Speaker 1: memoir is that I get the luxury of sometimes going
Speaker 1: into the present and being able to write with the
Speaker 1: reflection and the insight. And there's this scene in the
Speaker 1: book where I'm saying to my mom because I'm looking
Speaker 1: at my daughter and I'm like coming, I said, what
Speaker 1: were you thinking? It's just the enormity of it really
Speaker 1: sunk in from writing about it was and I said,
Speaker 1: I could have been taken away and put in foster care.
Speaker 1: You know, I always say, oh, my childhood was crazy,
Speaker 1: but at least I wasn't in foster care or or
Speaker 1: beaten with a broom or locked in the closet. But
Speaker 1: it could have happened. I could have been put in
Speaker 1: foster care. And this realization was very enormal. It was,
Speaker 1: it was profound. And I said, what were you thinking?
Speaker 1: You had you were smoking pot with us, You could
Speaker 1: have been thrown in jail, you had an affair, you
Speaker 1: could have been charged with statutory rape. What were you thinking?
Speaker 1: And I got to write that scene in my book
Speaker 1: because as I was questioning her this, I realized that
Speaker 1: I was wanting her to say, yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: what I was thinking. It was wrong. I made a mistake,
Speaker 1: and no she didn't. She didn't. She's a deflector. Okay,
Speaker 1: then what about the drug dealers? They were dating. That
Speaker 1: was a happy period. Um My mom met a young
Speaker 1: drug dealer. Are our closest friends. By this time, I'm
Speaker 1: out of public school. We're done. We don't fit into
Speaker 1: this scenario at all. My mom found a commune, hippie
Speaker 1: commune that had an uncredited school, So I'm going there
Speaker 1: for the first time. I'm happy as can be. Uh,
Speaker 1: you can do whatever you want at this school, and
Speaker 1: you can learn whatever you want. Most kids want to learn,
Speaker 1: so it's not a disaster. Um and I and guitar there.
Speaker 1: So but I'm doing this by the day, but in
Speaker 1: the evenings, we're spending time with this couple and their
Speaker 1: drug dealers, and I think they're fabulous. They love me,
Speaker 1: they love my mom. They live in a fancy house.
Speaker 1: Um and one of their friends, one of their dealer friends,
Speaker 1: started dating my mom. He was a young twenty four
Speaker 1: year old. He was an escapee from Leavenworth Prison. He
Speaker 1: was a dope dealer and a biker and a junkie
Speaker 1: and charismatic and kind of wild and fun. And it
Speaker 1: was exciting to know him and these people. And he's
Speaker 1: the first person that brought an electric guitar and an
Speaker 1: app into my house. He's the person that showed me
Speaker 1: the very first time I plugged a guitar into an
Speaker 1: app was to this guy. So I think of him
Speaker 1: with very warm feelings. Um. But one day his friend,
Speaker 1: his partner pulled up a thirty six year old I'm fifteen,
Speaker 1: and uh I started an affair with him. My mom's
Speaker 1: with the other guy. And I write about this time
Speaker 1: because it really felt like, um, well, she was my
Speaker 1: best friend at that point in time, and it was
Speaker 1: it was really being lifted out of a place where
Speaker 1: you know, we just my mom had such a mindset
Speaker 1: of the rules don't apply to her. She doesn't be her.
Speaker 1: She's much more forward thinking and much more out of
Speaker 1: the box. And these straight people in this neighborhood or
Speaker 1: this convention that the rules don't apply to my mom
Speaker 1: still to this day. So um, she loved, you know,
Speaker 1: having these kind of counterculture. And when I say drug dealers,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm talking big time, like flying private jets
Speaker 1: around with kilos of of pot and you know, thousands
Speaker 1: and thousands of dollars and it was it was made
Speaker 1: of on a major scale. So yeah, that happened. And
Speaker 1: when I wrote about this, I try not to do
Speaker 1: it in a sensational way. It's just it's it's pretty
Speaker 1: matter of fact. It just that you do though it's
Speaker 1: not sensationalized in the book. And Okay, let's get a
Speaker 1: couple of things down. At what point do you how
Speaker 1: old are you when you stopped living with your mother? Um?
Speaker 1: I moved out from her, probably at age seventeen, and
Speaker 1: for money to find a place. What's that? What do
Speaker 1: you do for money? For rent? Oh? I got jobs.
Speaker 1: I got jobs from We were poor. If I wanted anything,
Speaker 1: I had to get a job and work for it.
Speaker 1: So I had been. I was babysitting when I was
Speaker 1: nine years old for money to buy the toys I wanted.
Speaker 1: I I had started. Um, I started working. Um what
Speaker 1: was my first job? I wrote about it? But anyway,
Speaker 1: I the smartest thing I did was take the United
Speaker 1: States Civil Service exam and I could get jobs at
Speaker 1: at the the Census Bureau, the I R S they had.
Speaker 1: They had a center in Austin, so I was getting
Speaker 1: well paid. I worked in a bear distributing distribution warehouse. Um.
Speaker 1: I just I was working. I was making money. So
Speaker 1: when I moved from her, I was working at a
Speaker 1: health spa okay, So was there always music in your
Speaker 1: household or how did you get turned onto music? Music
Speaker 1: was was not a big part. We didn't even have
Speaker 1: a stereo until I got one. But what it was
Speaker 1: was like the jukeboxes, the TV shows, UM, the table
Speaker 1: jukeboxes at the coffee shop, UM. And once I got
Speaker 1: and it was in school too, and the radio. I
Speaker 1: was just your average you know. And I didn't have
Speaker 1: brothers or sisters like bringing records home and stuff, so
Speaker 1: I really was dependent on the radio. One of my
Speaker 1: favorite stories was writing about how when I heard Cream
Speaker 1: Sunshine of Your Love and in Lubbock, Texas, I was
Speaker 1: sent there for the summer. My sixteen year old cousin
Speaker 1: was playing this song and it was the first time
Speaker 1: I had realized that music elicited a response that was
Speaker 1: quite different than what I was used to, more pop
Speaker 1: music and singing along and feeling uplifted, and this was
Speaker 1: a more primal response. And it kind of instilled in
Speaker 1: me of real love of kind of bluesy rock for
Speaker 1: for for from then on. But music had just always
Speaker 1: been there for this just like most people, I think
Speaker 1: it it soothed me, It took me out of myself
Speaker 1: and when there was rock stars that I looked up to,
Speaker 1: that was key, because you know, I'm in a in
Speaker 1: this place where I don't fit in and there's no
Speaker 1: way I'm going to fit in. And then I would
Speaker 1: see David Bowie or Mark boland or and I would
Speaker 1: just go, there's no way these guys would fit in either,
Speaker 1: And it just it felt like it felt like it
Speaker 1: was evidence that there was a world away from where
Speaker 1: I was so between music and then my mom kind
Speaker 1: of carding me off to angle in every couple of
Speaker 1: years or so, I really held on tight to that
Speaker 1: this was temporary. This was a temporary place. This horrible,
Speaker 1: painful adolescents and these mean, disgusting, terrible people, and they
Speaker 1: really were. They were bad people, bad kids. Um, We're temporary,
Speaker 1: and music was was how I was gonna Once I
Speaker 1: started finding music as being a musician, that I was like,
Speaker 1: this is how I'm going to get put as much
Speaker 1: my ledge between me and this circumstances as I can now.
Speaker 1: They teach you how to play guitar at the alternative school.
Speaker 1: At what point do you say, Hey, I want to
Speaker 1: play guitar, I want to form a band. Well, I
Speaker 1: didn't think of it until I was drawn to music
Speaker 1: from a young age. I mean I felt a pull.
Speaker 1: I joined the orchestra. I had taken piano lessons, but um,
Speaker 1: when I started playing guitar, it felt like the right instrument.
Speaker 1: But it didn't occur to me that I could be
Speaker 1: in a band. I had never seen a woman in
Speaker 1: a band other than being a rock singer like Janice
Speaker 1: Joplin or I think in Austin we had a we
Speaker 1: had a great Marsha Ball was from New Orleans, a
Speaker 1: great keyboard player, but other than her, I had never
Speaker 1: seen women and bands playing electric instruments or drums or
Speaker 1: anything and just didn't think it was done. Um. It
Speaker 1: was going to England with my mom. I was I
Speaker 1: was fourteen, and there's three channels on the BBC and uh,
Speaker 1: Top of the Pops came on and Susie Quatrow was on,
Speaker 1: and it literally was a life changing, life defining moment
Speaker 1: to see her. It was like, Oh, okay, and this
Speaker 1: is this is what this is what I wanted. From
Speaker 1: that moment, I knew I wanted to do music. I
Speaker 1: knew I wanted to have a band, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to have a band with other gals like me. I
Speaker 1: wanted it to be, and part of that was because
Speaker 1: I hadn't seen anyone else doing it, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to do something extraordinary. I wanted to feel like I
Speaker 1: mattered and that I had value because I didn't feel
Speaker 1: like that inside, and doing something extraordinary seemed like the
Speaker 1: way to do it. And I thought, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be the best guitar player ever. It's gonna be. It
Speaker 1: sounds so silly now, but I I was like, there's
Speaker 1: gonna be Jimmi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck,
Speaker 1: and Kathy Valentine. That's what I thought. And uh so
Speaker 1: I was really excited after I saw Susie and had
Speaker 1: that become very crystal clear what I was, what I
Speaker 1: was meant to do in life, and so what were
Speaker 1: the steps you took to achieve that. I came back
Speaker 1: and I pretty much twisted my best friend and his
Speaker 1: arm into becoming a drummer. And I was still at
Speaker 1: my commune school and there was other kids played, so
Speaker 1: we put together a band right away, and we got
Speaker 1: access to playing right away because the school was dirt
Speaker 1: poor and always was having benefits and local Austin bands
Speaker 1: would play at the benefits, So we got to do that,
Speaker 1: and I was often running. From the minute I saw
Speaker 1: Susie Quatro, I knew what I wanted to do, and
Speaker 1: I was off and running. Now you paint a picture
Speaker 1: of really seeing everybody in the clubs in Austin. Now,
Speaker 1: was this after seeing Susie quatrow that you felt, Hey,
Speaker 1: I want to go see these musicians. What what instigated that? Well,
Speaker 1: music has always been a big part of Austin. You know,
Speaker 1: way before it branded itself as um as a music city.
Speaker 1: It was just by by nature and organically one so
Speaker 1: um and my mom was a young either college student
Speaker 1: or you know, kind of hip person. So I had
Speaker 1: gone around to certain places there was you know, there
Speaker 1: was a lot of music around in the clubs, but
Speaker 1: it was really lax. Once once I started wanting to
Speaker 1: kind of go out and see bands, I was doing that.
Speaker 1: I would say probably from the age of um, sixteen sixteen.
Speaker 1: I was going to clubs and uh, really really grateful
Speaker 1: for what I got to be exposed to in Austin
Speaker 1: and the variety and the spectrum of music and just
Speaker 1: how how lax it was. I think they just figured
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be there if you shouldn't be. And also
Speaker 1: the Armadilla World Headquarters was like this amazing venue and
Speaker 1: my one of my mom's friends worked there, so we
Speaker 1: would go all the time. They had a big beer
Speaker 1: garden and then it would be easy just to kind
Speaker 1: of go wander in. They had concerts all the time. Uh,
Speaker 1: huge variety. I mean they might have Captain Beefheart one
Speaker 1: night and then they'd have the new Writers at the
Speaker 1: Purple Stage the next night. And I didn't even know
Speaker 1: what I was going to see half the time, but
Speaker 1: I had excess because of my mom's friends. So uh,
Speaker 1: it was just it was really great. It was really
Speaker 1: really great to see such a variety of music and
Speaker 1: to be a musician, you know, it had a huge
Speaker 1: effect give us the arc of your time in Austin
Speaker 1: playing So you had bands, were they playing gigs? Were
Speaker 1: you making any money? Um? Well, after starting that first
Speaker 1: band at at Greenbrier School, I decided number one, I
Speaker 1: was tired of going to school because by that I
Speaker 1: was sixteen. Uh, A lot of the older kids were
Speaker 1: moving on anyway, and it meant getting up really early
Speaker 1: to go to school, and I was going out and
Speaker 1: staying out late. So I stopped doing that started going
Speaker 1: to college. At age age sixteen, I lied to get
Speaker 1: into college. I just said that I had was a
Speaker 1: high school graduate. It took them two years to figure
Speaker 1: it out that I wasn't. So I had my college classes,
Speaker 1: I I had my his car, and I had my
Speaker 1: friend that I had met in the same school, Greenbrier.
Speaker 1: She and I were We started having bands and we
Speaker 1: we just networked. We went out, we we started. We
Speaker 1: found a female bass player. I couldn't believe it. And
Speaker 1: because we were a trio, we decided we were going
Speaker 1: to be like zz Top um zz Top was that
Speaker 1: was Texas is um New York Dolls or Iggy and
Speaker 1: that was our regional you know cool band was easy
Speaker 1: Top and uh so that our first songs were zz
Speaker 1: Top songs, you know. Um. I had been practicing fiendishly
Speaker 1: from the minute I learned guitar. I mean, I remember,
Speaker 1: my first goal was to be up in the pantheon
Speaker 1: of guitar greats. So I practiced like crazy. I had
Speaker 1: a handicap because I'm left handed and I played like
Speaker 1: a right handed person, so my right hand was never
Speaker 1: going to have the technical finesse of of a right
Speaker 1: hand in person. But I could play chuck Berry chords
Speaker 1: great and play like you know, jumping jack flash and
Speaker 1: all that stuff really well. The left hand down down called.
Speaker 1: So we're doing zazy top songs and UMU a few
Speaker 1: other covers and guys are and in Austin, musicians are
Speaker 1: really supportive. And this was a pattern that emerged when
Speaker 1: I'd never thought about this um but as I was
Speaker 1: writing the book, I started seeing this pattern come out
Speaker 1: where the musicians, the guys were so supportive, there was
Speaker 1: no condescension. Whether it was a virtuoso like Eric Johnson
Speaker 1: or a rock and roller guy would like you know,
Speaker 1: playing in a covers band. They they were so h
Speaker 1: supportive and and like here that's a crumby amp you have,
Speaker 1: let's go get you a good amp. Or okay, here
Speaker 1: I've heard about this person. I hear are so and
Speaker 1: So's girlfriend plays bass and so I had a lot
Speaker 1: of support for the guys. Really really grateful for that.
Speaker 1: I think it could have. I wouldn't be surprised if
Speaker 1: I didn't go forward with that whole plan. If I
Speaker 1: wasn't getting that kind of validation, I wouldn't be surprised
Speaker 1: if it wouldn't have crushed me, but maybe not. Maybe
Speaker 1: I was determined enough. So UM, that first band was
Speaker 1: a trio. Right around the same time, Doug Psalm, who
Speaker 1: was one of my very favorite performers, um he I
Speaker 1: would go see him every week. He had a standing
Speaker 1: gig and it was really there wasn't like a velvet
Speaker 1: rope or a v I P room or anything. You
Speaker 1: just everyone was hanging out and he found out that Uh,
Speaker 1: I played guitar, and he invited me to sit in
Speaker 1: with his band. So I got to play with Doug
Speaker 1: Psalm on a stage and it was terrifying. But I
Speaker 1: was the most proud I'd ever been. So I felt like, um,
Speaker 1: everyone was on my side. You know, I really felt
Speaker 1: like everyone was on my side. It was going to happen,
Speaker 1: and UM. One thing led to oh, we weren't doing
Speaker 1: professional stuff, not really at that point. We were sorry,
Speaker 1: I lost your question. We UM. We'd get gigs usually
Speaker 1: because of the kindness of guys saying you guys can
Speaker 1: open for us, and maybe the first gig was like
Speaker 1: six songs, no big deal, cover songs. It wasn't really
Speaker 1: writing that many songs by that time. But then my
Speaker 1: mom wants to go to England again. So at that
Speaker 1: point I decided this is where I'm going to make
Speaker 1: it as in England, and I'm seventeen and go off
Speaker 1: to England join a band there. Um don't while while
Speaker 1: I'm there, punk rock is happening, and I started getting
Speaker 1: hip to punk rocks. I didn't know about the precursors
Speaker 1: here in America. I was still into my zz top
Speaker 1: and my Rolling Stones and stuff I wasn't. I wasn't
Speaker 1: following any of the early uh I didn't know who
Speaker 1: the m C five were. I didn't know who the
Speaker 1: New York Dolls were. I didn't know who John Kale was.
Speaker 1: I wasn't real big into lou Reid or the Velvet
Speaker 1: Underground except for the radio hits. So I didn't have
Speaker 1: any pathway to punk rock till I was in Austin
Speaker 1: I mean till in London. Sorry. And when I got
Speaker 1: kicked out of that band due to a stomach ache
Speaker 1: and then finding someone way better than me, it was
Speaker 1: again a crystal moment. It was like, uh ha, not
Speaker 1: only do I not have to play as good as
Speaker 1: Jeff Beck to start a band and practice for the
Speaker 1: next you know, three years, six hours a day and
Speaker 1: be like, really profession proficient, I can do this now,
Speaker 1: I can do this now. And I went back to Austinson.
Speaker 1: I'm going to start the first punk band in Austin.
Speaker 1: And that's what I did. And how was the reception?
Speaker 1: It was blue people's minds. Uh. We quickly we started
Speaker 1: a scene and other bands came quickly in our wake. Uh.
Speaker 1: I started that band. The first gig was in January.
Speaker 1: Two weeks after seeing this ex Pistols at Randy's RODEOU
Speaker 1: did our first gig and by August we were moving
Speaker 1: to l A because we were convinced we were going
Speaker 1: to make it um. In that time, I had also
Speaker 1: seen the Runaways, who I for the first time I
Speaker 1: saw that there was this is before I went to England,
Speaker 1: you know. I saw, oh, there's other girls in my
Speaker 1: age that are doing this. I started feeling this urgency
Speaker 1: like I'm not the first one. I'm not the only one.
Speaker 1: Uh this this I got to go somewhere else to
Speaker 1: really make this happen. So getting to l A and
Speaker 1: taking the violators, which we thought we were going to
Speaker 1: make it in the in the business, you know, but
Speaker 1: you up quite a really dreary, upsetting picture of moving
Speaker 1: to l A. You're not twenty one. A friend moves
Speaker 1: in with a friend, they go to clubs, your left out.
Speaker 1: You have some really rat hole apartment in Hollywood. What
Speaker 1: was going through your mind? Then? It was misery? Um.
Speaker 1: For one thing, the girl that that I moved out
Speaker 1: there where there was three of us in the band,
Speaker 1: and one was very responsible, Carla Olsen, and she wasn't
Speaker 1: going to move until she had a job because she's
Speaker 1: a grown up and I'm a kid. Still, I'm a
Speaker 1: kid until I'm thirty basically, so just let's just take
Speaker 1: that for assumption. And so she doesn't get a moving
Speaker 1: to move until she has a job. My my very
Speaker 1: best friend who had started playing with, who I had
Speaker 1: been in all my bands with, she basically abandoned me.
Speaker 1: She had a fake I du she had a better
Speaker 1: apartment she could hang out in, and I was incredibly lonely, um,
Speaker 1: very poor. I I have letters, I've seen letters that
Speaker 1: I wrote to my mom. I'm begging her for forty
Speaker 1: dollars um, probably not getting it. Um. The thing that
Speaker 1: that came to me in that time was songs. That
Speaker 1: was the first time I pulled out my get and
Speaker 1: I had written a couple of stupid songs, but this
Speaker 1: was the first time I pulled out my guitar and
Speaker 1: wrote a song because I needed to expressed, like the
Speaker 1: the external and internal feelings that I was having. And
Speaker 1: I was bored. You know, I didn't I didn't have
Speaker 1: a TV, I couldn't go out, I didn't have any friends,
Speaker 1: I didn't know anybody. So it was actually a really
Speaker 1: key moment to discover songwriting in that time. But what
Speaker 1: was going through my mind was I was very angry.
Speaker 1: I was resentful at my friend. And I also have
Speaker 1: like little comic strips that I would write, like I
Speaker 1: would write these like these terrible like little comic strips
Speaker 1: about me, you know, me saying terrible things and drawing
Speaker 1: these little pictures of I mean, I was really angry,
Speaker 1: really angry at her. It was I think the first
Speaker 1: time I really felt betrayed and abandoned. So you're there,
Speaker 1: and how long do you ever think about giving up God? Oh,
Speaker 1: that that did never occurred to me. Everything was just
Speaker 1: a matter of time. And when Carla came out, you know,
Speaker 1: she's got a good job. She we get a good apartment,
Speaker 1: and then I've got a mate. I was so reliant
Speaker 1: on having like that, that partner. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I was capable on my own. It's like I needed
Speaker 1: a sidekick, or not a sidekick, that's the that's a
Speaker 1: demeaning term. It's I needed a partner. I felt like
Speaker 1: I couldn't do it on my own. And starting with Maryland,
Speaker 1: the first person I had a band with it, it
Speaker 1: set up a pattern that I pretty much stuck with
Speaker 1: most of my life, which was, you know, maybe either
Speaker 1: not thinking I could do it on my own, or
Speaker 1: maybe just feeling like two people. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know what it was, but I I needed that.
Speaker 1: I don't know how far I would have gone on
Speaker 1: my own. Okay, from the moment moved to l A
Speaker 1: before the holiday gig with the Go Goes. How long
Speaker 1: a period of time is that moved to l A
Speaker 1: and Um August of seventy eight, and I'm not in
Speaker 1: the Go Goes. I don't play my first gig until
Speaker 1: eight nine New Year's Eve nineteen eight, So for two
Speaker 1: years I'm in the text tons. Okay, I have I
Speaker 1: have a job. I got a job at at a
Speaker 1: Transamerica Real Estate Tax service on Beverly and Third, right
Speaker 1: across from where the Beverly Center is now. And it
Speaker 1: was an office job, and Carla let me borrow her
Speaker 1: nice clothes so I could turn up to my office job.
Speaker 1: And at night we'd go to the Capitol Records Capitol
Speaker 1: Records swap meet, which is where everyone hung out and
Speaker 1: where you met musicians, and it was it was like
Speaker 1: it was, it was the place could be. We did
Speaker 1: that every month. We'd drive around and and and the
Speaker 1: car with a X pack of beer listening to Rodney
Speaker 1: on the Rock. We were just like so keen to
Speaker 1: to make it and find out where we fit in
Speaker 1: this incredible music scene, this organic, amazing music scene that
Speaker 1: just had every band had this character and individuality, and
Speaker 1: it really echoed what I'd grown up with in Austin,
Speaker 1: where I was used to country honk and to Hano
Speaker 1: bands and blues bands and rock and roll bands and
Speaker 1: cosmic cowboy. I was like all that stuff. And then
Speaker 1: in in l A there's rockabilly bands, and there's the
Speaker 1: Blasters and the kind of scrappier punk bands and the
Speaker 1: artsy punk bands and the new way of skinny tie
Speaker 1: guys and the power pop bands. There was so many,
Speaker 1: so much good music, and we just I couldn't wait
Speaker 1: to be part of it, could not wait. Okay, so
Speaker 1: in those two years you're optimistic, Oh yeah, okay, So
Speaker 1: you get the call to sub for the Goes because
Speaker 1: their bass player can't do it. Do you see this
Speaker 1: as a giant opportunity? You say, well, this is just
Speaker 1: something to do. Well it was. What happened was I
Speaker 1: had quit the text Tones because after uh over a
Speaker 1: year or maybe a year and a half, almost two years,
Speaker 1: I felt like we weren't moving up the ranks as
Speaker 1: quickly as like the plim Souls were, and other bands
Speaker 1: that seemed to be like The Knack and uh, all
Speaker 1: the bands that were our peers were seemed to be
Speaker 1: moving forward and we weren't, and we had opportunities. Cool
Speaker 1: things happened. I mean, l A was like this, this
Speaker 1: constant carrot dangling in front of you, and it was
Speaker 1: just around the corner and anything could happen, and sometimes
Speaker 1: anything did happen. But I just thought I started to
Speaker 1: feel like it was two bands and one so I
Speaker 1: had quit. I was out of the text Tones and
Speaker 1: it was the first time since I had been sixteen really,
Speaker 1: And I say that like at some lifetime, but it
Speaker 1: feels like a lifetime back then. Yeah. It was the
Speaker 1: first time in four years that I hadn't been in
Speaker 1: a band, and I was really at loose ends and
Speaker 1: I didn't have that partner that I had relied on,
Speaker 1: and I was like, well, what am I gonna do? Well,
Speaker 1: phil Seymour is going to do my song, and I'll
Speaker 1: just do something and I'll put a new band together.
Speaker 1: But I was kind of like, for the first time
Speaker 1: a little bit like, well, what's going to happen here?
Speaker 1: And that's when I ran into Charlotte from the Go
Speaker 1: Gos and I was at the whiskey and she um
Speaker 1: approached me and I knew who the Go Goes were.
Speaker 1: They were popular by then. They they had The first
Speaker 1: time I saw them, I dismissed them. I thought they
Speaker 1: were amateurs. I wasn't mean about it. I like seeing
Speaker 1: women in bands, but I just said they got a
Speaker 1: ways to go. I thought I was a season pro.
Speaker 1: Fast forward a year and a half later, they've played probably,
Speaker 1: you know, at least a hundred gigs um, and they've
Speaker 1: gone to England and they've got a drummer that kicks ass,
Speaker 1: and they're a very different band, so I'm aware that
Speaker 1: they're not the same band that I kind of dismissed
Speaker 1: when I first got there. But um, when when Charlotte
Speaker 1: asked me and she approached me, they knew who I was,
Speaker 1: and she just said, could you play bass? I know
Speaker 1: you play guitar, but you could you play bass? Do
Speaker 1: you play bass? Um? Because our bass player is sick
Speaker 1: and we have some shows lined up? And man did
Speaker 1: they ever? They had four nights, two shows a night
Speaker 1: at the Whiskey happening in six days. I mean it
Speaker 1: was six days, not even six days. Yeah, yeah, six days.
Speaker 1: So when I look back, it's kind of crazy that
Speaker 1: they had waited that long to start getting their sub
Speaker 1: lined up. But at the at that moment, it was like,
Speaker 1: here's something to do. This will be cool. They're popular this,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I can play bass. I'll do this. So
Speaker 1: I don't think it was like this is my destiny
Speaker 1: right away, but it very quickly it became a band
Speaker 1: I wanted to join, and that happened as I learned
Speaker 1: the songs. Because even though I knew who they were
Speaker 1: and I'd watched them take a big step upwardly mobile
Speaker 1: step and and their musicianship. I wasn't. I didn't go
Speaker 1: to all their gigs. I didn't know what their set
Speaker 1: was or what their material was. I knew we got
Speaker 1: the beat. So I'm learning their songs and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm no dummy. I know what a good song is.
Speaker 1: And I was just like, geez, this band has really
Speaker 1: good songs. And the more I started learning them and
Speaker 1: finding my way around the base and going, hey, this
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. I can I can. I can play
Speaker 1: bass the way I want to play. I played it
Speaker 1: like it was a guitar. I used my pick and
Speaker 1: I there was room to do some cool little melodic
Speaker 1: things and add to the songs. And when I walked
Speaker 1: into the first rehearsal, I just liked them. I liked
Speaker 1: the way they looked, I liked the way they dressed.
Speaker 1: I felt like I had found kindred spirits people like me,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to be in that band from the minute.
Speaker 1: From the minute I walked in that room, I thought
Speaker 1: it was. It was. I never wanted anything more. How
Speaker 1: do they ultimately give you the green light? Well, I
Speaker 1: think there was. It says a super there's a very
Speaker 1: volatile and very uh tangible chemistry to the go goes.
Speaker 1: It's still there. You know if we if we are
Speaker 1: in a room together, the air changes. I means we
Speaker 1: we all change a little and we become this other entity.
Speaker 1: And it was evident from the beginning there was a chemistry.
Speaker 1: But also I'm a good musician. I played really well,
Speaker 1: and I you know, I I was aware of feel
Speaker 1: and and and and I just kind of instinctively knew
Speaker 1: how to do really good at that job. And um,
Speaker 1: they liked me. They liked me, and as as happens
Speaker 1: in bands, you know, they they were at a bit
Speaker 1: of a crossroads with their bass player. She was a
Speaker 1: finding a founding member. But I think there had been
Speaker 1: some I think there'd been a little bit of strife
Speaker 1: between her and the other members. So I think I
Speaker 1: think it was just probably like when a couple like
Speaker 1: they don't like each other anymore, but then somebody else
Speaker 1: has to come along to give you the courage to
Speaker 1: like move on. I think it was like that. It
Speaker 1: was like I was like the motel playing that they
Speaker 1: decided to run off with. And so how long after
Speaker 1: you played those gigs was it clear that someone was
Speaker 1: going to light the rocket for the Go Goes. Well,
Speaker 1: it wasn't very clear at first, um because even though
Speaker 1: like we started, we once I was and they asked
Speaker 1: me to join within probably about ten days. The day
Speaker 1: after the engagement ended, there was a thing in the
Speaker 1: The l A Times that mentioned me, and then there
Speaker 1: was a story the next day why can't the Go
Speaker 1: Goes get a record deal? And they mentioned me. So
Speaker 1: I'm like going, okay, I'm in the press already with
Speaker 1: this band, in association with this band. It's just when
Speaker 1: are they going to ask me? When are they gonna
Speaker 1: ask It happened very quickly. I said, I I want
Speaker 1: this really badly, but I want to be one of
Speaker 1: the songwriters. They were happy to have a songwriter joined
Speaker 1: the band as well. Um. But then it was just
Speaker 1: back down to business. It was like doing gigs. I
Speaker 1: think two weeks later we had a show at the Roxy,
Speaker 1: we did a show in San Diego. Was just business
Speaker 1: as usual. Our manager Ginger uh Oh. And the other
Speaker 1: thing was I had gone on unemployment and as soon
Speaker 1: as I became a regular member, I found out that
Speaker 1: the Go Goes. This was the first time I'd ever
Speaker 1: seen anything like this, But the Go Go's got forty
Speaker 1: dollars a week Ginger, they had a bank account and
Speaker 1: everybody got forty dollars a week. And I was getting
Speaker 1: my unemployment check, and I was living for free in
Speaker 1: Catherine Sebastian's house up on Sunset Plaza. So I thought
Speaker 1: I had arrived, just so you understand to me, this
Speaker 1: was I had made it. I had made it. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm living in the Hollywood Hills, I know rock stars,
Speaker 1: and I don't have to work, and I'm in a
Speaker 1: great band, So that it's done. Deal uh so um.
Speaker 1: But she went out and she would report back to us.
Speaker 1: I went back to I wish I could remember some
Speaker 1: of the people. I wish I could remember who were
Speaker 1: the label people she was meeting with. It would be
Speaker 1: it would be interesting to to to h out some names. Anyway,
Speaker 1: she was told by all of them, we can see
Speaker 1: that the band is popular. We can see that they
Speaker 1: have a good following. But there's never been a successful
Speaker 1: all female band, never been one pass. She has letters,
Speaker 1: she has letters where they pass. Um. So I think
Speaker 1: we had our biggest show. It was. It was just
Speaker 1: growing so quickly. And when I mean growing, this is
Speaker 1: before there's a record deal I'm talking like whiskey Roxy.
Speaker 1: And then we have a gig at Perkins Palace, which
Speaker 1: is in Pasadena and it's probably a thousand and cedar theater.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm wrong, but it was a little bit bigger
Speaker 1: than that, actually was it. So we have this gig
Speaker 1: and Um at the Roxy, Miles had come, Miles Copeland
Speaker 1: had come, and he started just pursuing Ginger, pursuing her,
Speaker 1: and she she um went back to the labels, went
Speaker 1: back again because she thought maybe it's that thing when
Speaker 1: you have it just takes one person to interested and
Speaker 1: then they'll fall in line. But they still didn't. So
Speaker 1: Miles was the only only only hope we had, and
Speaker 1: we we agreed to signing with I R S after
Speaker 1: going to I R S Records and meeting Jay Boberg
Speaker 1: and John Guinary and all the staff there were just
Speaker 1: they were so earnest and and sincere and loved the
Speaker 1: go goes, and it wasn't like we had many choices.
Speaker 1: So we signed with Miles on April Fool's Day night,
Speaker 1: and we left the next day to record our album
Speaker 1: in New York with Richard god Her. Okay, so this
Speaker 1: happens very quickly, there's a whirlwind and actually it ends
Speaker 1: pretty quickly too. What was it like being at the
Speaker 1: eye of the hurricane. Well, it was you know I
Speaker 1: talked about feeling like I'd made it when I was
Speaker 1: getting forty bucks a week. Well, that was just this
Speaker 1: sense that I kept having over and over again on
Speaker 1: a bigger, deeper, more profound, explosive way, like, Oh, we
Speaker 1: got a record deal that I had never thought about.
Speaker 1: When I thought about making it in the business, I
Speaker 1: didn't really think about what the steps were. It was
Speaker 1: just kind of making it. Um. Of course I'd seen
Speaker 1: other bands get record deals, and I knew that that
Speaker 1: was the end goal. But also just not having a
Speaker 1: freaking job was a pretty big end goal. That wasn't
Speaker 1: like not being a musician. So um, when we got
Speaker 1: the record deal, mind blown. The biggest The biggest thing
Speaker 1: in the world to me was going to record in
Speaker 1: New York City. I mean I couldn't believe I would
Speaker 1: be in a hotel room for weeks, if not months,
Speaker 1: in New York City making an album with my best friends.
Speaker 1: And I, like you said, I'd only been in the band. Um,
Speaker 1: let's see January from Ary March four months, so we
Speaker 1: were on a honeymoon. We were like newlyweds. We were
Speaker 1: in this band. I felt like it was it was
Speaker 1: an adolescence. You know, it wasn't a hurricane at all.
Speaker 1: It was a hurricane of of wonder and getting Oh,
Speaker 1: I just felt like I'm getting what's mine. Finally that
Speaker 1: felt like all the all the crappy adolescence I didn't
Speaker 1: get to have I got to have as a go
Speaker 1: go in New York City making this amazing album, and uh,
Speaker 1: it was one of the best periods of my life.
Speaker 1: I don't think I realized untill I wrote about it.
Speaker 1: How just a fema rail it was. I said that wrong,
Speaker 1: but it was just like this, like this great thing.
Speaker 1: I loved writing about it. I loved capturing that what
Speaker 1: it felt like. And um, from there, Yeah, it wasn't
Speaker 1: a hurricane until uh, it just didn't stop, you know,
Speaker 1: one thing after the next, just one thing after next
Speaker 1: for for several years. It just you know, the first
Speaker 1: time it slowed down, I was I started that having
Speaker 1: that like fear and lost, Like I think we took
Speaker 1: eight months off because we started having some problems and
Speaker 1: oh my god, like eight months like we're not touring,
Speaker 1: we're not recording an album, We're not playing shows. Uh
Speaker 1: I was lost by that time, I was completely absorbed.
Speaker 1: An Kathy Valentine had existed prior to being a Go
Speaker 1: Go was obliterated. Um, I was lost. So I think
Speaker 1: that was when it started feeling a little bit like
Speaker 1: a hurricane when you're lost to yourself. Right, Okay, Now
Speaker 1: there's a lot of rep about the Go Goes and
Speaker 1: you're really the first female band to be on the road.
Speaker 1: Supposedly there was a lot of debauchery and the Go
Speaker 1: Goes there was a lot of drug use, et cetera.
Speaker 1: What was it like being a memory being on the
Speaker 1: road with the band? Well, I figured out fairly quickly that, um,
Speaker 1: that it was better to start drinking after the show.
Speaker 1: I was young, because so I had I was pretty,
Speaker 1: you know, I hearty peasant stock and uh I had
Speaker 1: the constitution that could take it. And I was, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty two years old, so and it was the eighties
Speaker 1: and I had been drinking for quite a while, so
Speaker 1: it was just par for the course. To me. It
Speaker 1: was just like, you know, that's what everybody does, uh,
Speaker 1: they drink. You know, if I had been in college,
Speaker 1: I would have been drinking probably just as much at
Speaker 1: twenty two years sold. So it was just kind of
Speaker 1: the difference was that, uh, I didn't have it didn't
Speaker 1: interfere with what I had to do if I if
Speaker 1: I woke up in the morning, Yeah it might suck
Speaker 1: to go do some interviews or go to a radio station,
Speaker 1: especially like those really early ones, that might suck, but
Speaker 1: you could still be really hungover and then fall fall
Speaker 1: into your bonk or fall into your hotel room, get
Speaker 1: a nap, and go on stage and have a great
Speaker 1: time and then you know, rinse and repeat. So uh,
Speaker 1: for me, the drugs were mainly cocaine. I didn't like
Speaker 1: other drugs And the only reason I like cocaine was
Speaker 1: it meant that I could my capacity for drinking it
Speaker 1: was was enhanced. So I mean, if I didn't get
Speaker 1: a little buzzed from drinking, I I wasn't going to
Speaker 1: go just for the heck of it. Do drugs that
Speaker 1: that they were just a tool to to uh make
Speaker 1: me a better alcoholic. So um, it was just kind
Speaker 1: of I didn't see anybody doing anything different, not in
Speaker 1: my world. That's what my friends were doing, that's what
Speaker 1: my bandmates were doing. That's what that's what all the
Speaker 1: other bands were doing. Guys were doing a contributing factor
Speaker 1: to the UH breakup of the Go Goes. I would
Speaker 1: say they were. But by the time it was a breakup,
Speaker 1: we had, UM, we had a key member who was
Speaker 1: strung out on heroin and UH was barely functioning and
Speaker 1: was probably going to die if she didn't go into rehab,
Speaker 1: a key creative member. And I'm talking about Charlotte. And
Speaker 1: I can say that because she's documented it herself very
Speaker 1: very well. UM. But so that's a big thing. And
Speaker 1: I would say it was not so much that it
Speaker 1: was the drinking. It's just that what the drinking does.
Speaker 1: And I can only speak for myself. I was a
Speaker 1: stunted emotional human being. I had the emotional maturity of
Speaker 1: a of a fifteen year old. You don't up when
Speaker 1: you when you're squishing all your feelings down and pushing
Speaker 1: them off to the side and and shoving him away.
Speaker 1: That that's not how you grow up. You grow up
Speaker 1: by by by dealing with stuff. And I wasn't dealing
Speaker 1: with a lot of big stuff. So you take that
Speaker 1: factor that you're an immature person that's incapable of having
Speaker 1: empathy or compassion for for people all I know how
Speaker 1: to do. And it's a very I'm a very lost
Speaker 1: sad person. But how do you deal with that? You
Speaker 1: don't walk around feeling like a lost sad person. You
Speaker 1: dial up how fun how much fun you're having? And
Speaker 1: I was funny and I was having a good time,
Speaker 1: and I was a party girl. So that's how I
Speaker 1: balanced that out and didn't face it. I was a
Speaker 1: sad sack, you know, basically a drunken sad sack. Was like,
Speaker 1: you can't be if you're just like the life of
Speaker 1: the party. So I'm emotionally stunted. I'm also um gotten
Speaker 1: to the point where I'm motivated by two things, which
Speaker 1: is desperation and fear. And you have to understand, Bob,
Speaker 1: that this was more by this time than a than
Speaker 1: a the culmination of my dream to make it in
Speaker 1: the business. Sure I wanted that. Sure I wanted to
Speaker 1: be in a band. All I ever wanted was to
Speaker 1: be in a band. But I was trained from I
Speaker 1: was ingrained to to take care of myself, and this
Speaker 1: was how I was going to take care of myself.
Speaker 1: This is how not only me, but I'm taking care
Speaker 1: of my mom by now and paying her bills. I
Speaker 1: bought her a place to live. I'm sending her money
Speaker 1: to live off. So I'm the caretaker of her. I'm
Speaker 1: the caretaker of me. And if anything is going to
Speaker 1: threaten that my survival, that's my survival. I was, um uh,
Speaker 1: really protective of it. And it's not That's not what
Speaker 1: being in a band is about. It's not like dealing
Speaker 1: with a band member who's like driven by fear and
Speaker 1: desperation to keep it and anything that threatened it. Like
Speaker 1: you know, Charlotte's got a drug problem, and I'm like, no, no,
Speaker 1: she's fine, she's fine. You know, we wrote crappy songs
Speaker 1: for the next record. No no, they're good. We only
Speaker 1: sold five thousand of the third record. No no, that's great.
Speaker 1: If it was the first record, we'd be happy with it.
Speaker 1: I was like this constant uh cheerleader, spending spending the
Speaker 1: things to make it okay and make people out. It
Speaker 1: was really hard work, hard hard work. So yes, they
Speaker 1: had to effect. Drugs and alcohol had an effect, but
Speaker 1: I think more than that, it's what it does to
Speaker 1: you as a person, um and as people. We we
Speaker 1: didn't know how to problem solve. We didn't know how
Speaker 1: to deal with each other's feelings. We didn't know how
Speaker 1: to um see what maybe somebody needs, like you know,
Speaker 1: that makes them feel good about being in the band.
Speaker 1: You know, like how if you're in a good band
Speaker 1: and it's a chemistry and it's working, and you're selling
Speaker 1: records and people dig your band, it's just crazy not
Speaker 1: to kind of make sure everybody's getting a little piece
Speaker 1: of what they need to stay wanting to do it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's crazy. Do you think the fact that
Speaker 1: you were the last edition in the band ultimately left
Speaker 1: you out when the band disintegrated. No, I wasn't left out.
Speaker 1: Gina and I were the ones that were kicking that
Speaker 1: were devastated. She was just as devastated by me. No
Speaker 1: I was. I was. I was as solid a band
Speaker 1: member as anybody. I mean, I was. We we started
Speaker 1: out and you know, we didn't have a record deal.
Speaker 1: We started out in that van, that horrible van. I
Speaker 1: think UM and plus I brought in a lot of
Speaker 1: musicianship and songs that that were crucial as we went on.
Speaker 1: There were no songs, you know, when it came time
Speaker 1: to do the second record, none at all, not only that,
Speaker 1: but I had UM. I had like a sense about
Speaker 1: the business that other people weren't thinking about. So I
Speaker 1: was the one that was, you know, kind of a
Speaker 1: pain in the ass, always saying, this isn't right, you guys,
Speaker 1: this isn't right. I don't know about this UM trying
Speaker 1: to make things fair, you know, like if so and
Speaker 1: so only has one song or a partial song, let's
Speaker 1: make that the B side of the single, so that
Speaker 1: they can get some extra money. I was always trying
Speaker 1: to be the diplomat and make it so everyone was happy.
Speaker 1: I don't think it had anything to do with it
Speaker 1: me being the last person in the band, because once
Speaker 1: I joined, it was the solidified lineup and that was
Speaker 1: the chemistry. That was the chemistry more than anything else.
Speaker 1: So Jane leaves and was that really the beginning of
Speaker 1: the band? Could the band of survived without Jane? Really?
Speaker 1: I don't think so, because it was based on chemistry.
Speaker 1: But at the time everyone was so unhappy, and like
Speaker 1: I said, I couldn't I couldn't fathom anything, uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: part of it was very logical. I was just like
Speaker 1: one in a million gets to this point, is you'd
Speaker 1: be crazy to let this go so as a just
Speaker 1: a mode of survival. I'm like, maybe this will be
Speaker 1: a new chapter. I My template was the Rolling Stones,
Speaker 1: you know. I wanted to be in a band that
Speaker 1: that did twenty albums over decades that um evolved and
Speaker 1: grew and changed and maybe they had a dud one
Speaker 1: here and there, but or a dud single, but they
Speaker 1: always came back with something that you liked. That was
Speaker 1: my template. And I I just thought, okay, we're just
Speaker 1: this is like you know, Brian or mc taylor or
Speaker 1: somebody is just a change in lineup and we're going
Speaker 1: to go on and it's a new chapter. And um,
Speaker 1: but it was, as I wrote in the book, I
Speaker 1: didn't see that. That was like the thing I had
Speaker 1: been fighting so hard to keep was had kind of
Speaker 1: splintered beyond repair right in front of my eyes. I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that. But it was the beginning of
Speaker 1: the end. And then when Linda left and Charlotte ultimately
Speaker 1: went with Or, did you feel betrayed? Yeah? I felt
Speaker 1: betrayed because we we got a new person. I moved
Speaker 1: to guitar, which was my little agenda. Once Jane left,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh good, I can go back to guitar,
Speaker 1: which is what I should be doing because that's what
Speaker 1: I do best. And uh so I got my little
Speaker 1: agenda in there, and we got a bass player, and
Speaker 1: uh we play this massive concert in in Rio called
Speaker 1: Rock and Rio to like something like three dred thousand people,
Speaker 1: and I'm just like, Okay, this is proof, this is proof.
Speaker 1: We we're gonna we have a new chapter. We're gonna
Speaker 1: make it. But instead, um, Charlotte hit her bottom there
Speaker 1: and ended up going into rehab. And so what I'm
Speaker 1: thinking is like, oh good, now we're going to have
Speaker 1: our fully functioning person back and we'll really start the chapter.
Speaker 1: And Mike Chapman had signed on to do the fourth album,
Speaker 1: which I thought, this is this is how you launch
Speaker 1: a new chapter. As with Chapman producing the record, this
Speaker 1: is how you do it. To me, it was like,
Speaker 1: but there was just something about Charlotte and Belinda that
Speaker 1: they I could They're like they're like talking or I
Speaker 1: don't know. I just felt like, why aren't they weren't
Speaker 1: they excited? Weren't they excited about this record? Why is
Speaker 1: Charlotte not all like happy to be out of rehab
Speaker 1: and being in the band again. I mean I was
Speaker 1: really really immature and focused on myself, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: I was. I felt really betrayed. Gina and I both did.
Speaker 1: Gina was we were like minded people. We we were
Speaker 1: hard workers. We'd come out there to make it in
Speaker 1: a band. And we both said when they broke up
Speaker 1: the band, we said, this is insane. You know, go
Speaker 1: go off for a year, go make your solo album,
Speaker 1: Go do your thing, do what you want. But why
Speaker 1: break up the band? And the manager that was overseeing us,
Speaker 1: I was like, why are you letting this happen? You know,
Speaker 1: why are you letting this happen? Just tell them to
Speaker 1: get our solo deal, let her go make a record.
Speaker 1: This is stupid. I just didn't understand it. Okay, So
Speaker 1: ultimately the band UH does break up or disintegrate. You
Speaker 1: try to make it as a solo artist that is
Speaker 1: not working. Mike Chapman is not ultimately interested in the
Speaker 1: demos you make. How do you handle this? Emotionally? I
Speaker 1: drink and do drugs and UH have a good time
Speaker 1: and and just don't accept it. I don't. I just
Speaker 1: don't acknowledge it. I don't acknowledge anything that's painful or
Speaker 1: or frightening, and I just keep thinking, it's a matter
Speaker 1: of time. It's just a matter of time. And you know,
Speaker 1: the band I put together was good. It was a
Speaker 1: good band. Um, I know what a good band is.
Speaker 1: I know what chemistry is. It wasn't our time. It's
Speaker 1: so much more that you can't even control. You can
Speaker 1: put together a super cool band with charisma and good
Speaker 1: songs and great players, but you can't put together timing
Speaker 1: and the zeitgeist of of just being in the right
Speaker 1: place at the right time. You can't. You can't make
Speaker 1: that happen. You can't make MT puts you in people's
Speaker 1: living rooms, which is what happened with the Go Goes.
Speaker 1: The Go Gos might not have launched if it hadn't
Speaker 1: been for MTV. You know, that was that was That
Speaker 1: was a fluke. There's there's things you can't control. So
Speaker 1: nothing's happening. And I'm but I just think if I'm
Speaker 1: not don't have a band. If I keep drying and
Speaker 1: I keep trying to keep trying, and people were believing
Speaker 1: in me. You know, I had some heavy hitters that
Speaker 1: helped me and supported me. That that kept me thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe you know, maybe this you know, whether it was
Speaker 1: Mike Chapman thinking you could do something with me, or
Speaker 1: you know, somebody putting up money for for demos, or uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a musician, a successful musician hooking me up
Speaker 1: with players. It's like there were things happening that that
Speaker 1: always felt. It's that l a kool aid, you know,
Speaker 1: you're just they're thinking that it could happen. It could happen,
Speaker 1: but meanwhile, you know, meanwhile it's taking its toll. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm muh, I'm not liking myself. I'm finally the
Speaker 1: person that I've been I've been just since I was
Speaker 1: a teenager getting stoned and drunk and being disliked and
Speaker 1: that person. It's like it's all there, and it's all
Speaker 1: It just gets to a point where I just felt
Speaker 1: like I felt beaten down, like I can't seem to
Speaker 1: get anything going. But I wasn't gonna stop. I was
Speaker 1: I was never going to stop. I just couldn't seem
Speaker 1: to get but something had to change, something had to change.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was looking back, it was really hard.
Speaker 1: But at the time I was just operating, operating, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to do anything else. I couldn't imagine.
Speaker 1: Is this what ultimately send you to a Yeah, I
Speaker 1: I think that I I woke up after a blackout
Speaker 1: and I wasn't a black drinker. I I had happened
Speaker 1: twice in my drinking. Most of the time I would
Speaker 1: end up with a bad hangover, and I certainly was
Speaker 1: very lucky that I didn't hurt somebody as a as
Speaker 1: a driver who had drank too much. But there was
Speaker 1: I had a way of because it was so essential
Speaker 1: that I couldn't imagine not drinking, that I kept it
Speaker 1: as controlled as I could, and I would give up
Speaker 1: for like I'm not going to drink for two weeks,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to drink for a month, and then
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna So is this constant trying to control
Speaker 1: it so that I wouldn't have to stop. But one
Speaker 1: night in New York City blackout, and I woke up
Speaker 1: and there was just like the little, the little magic
Speaker 1: moment where something pierced through all of the all of
Speaker 1: that desperation and denial and just said, you know, something's
Speaker 1: got to change, and I don't know how to do it.
Speaker 1: I can't make a band happen, and I can't make
Speaker 1: anything happen. Keep screwing up. You know, I screwed up
Speaker 1: my relationship, and I was screwing up opportunities, and not
Speaker 1: because I was not showing up, but I just it
Speaker 1: just was wasn't happening. And I thought, if I quit drinking,
Speaker 1: that's one thing it'll change. That will change, and if
Speaker 1: one thing changes, maybe everything will change. So what was
Speaker 1: the year of the first Go Goes reunion? Okay? So
Speaker 1: from two to do you ever have to get have
Speaker 1: to get a street job? Nope? I didn't have a
Speaker 1: job since nineteen Okay, so you had written vacation. Were
Speaker 1: you essentially living on royalties for those ten years? No?
Speaker 1: The royalties dried up. They dried up. There was nothing,
Speaker 1: and I used to pray. I used to like pray like,
Speaker 1: oh God, use vacation and a commercial this or that.
Speaker 1: I And the other thing was I couldn't seem to
Speaker 1: get a publishing deal like everyone else in the band.
Speaker 1: Gina Gina the drummer got a publishing deal, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: what the heck? Why can't I get a publishing deal?
Speaker 1: And I remember one guy, Um I went in to
Speaker 1: Warno Chapel and he's like, this is a great catalog.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you two hundred fifty thou dollars. And
Speaker 1: I was like like cloud nine, cloud nine out of
Speaker 1: that place. And and then like I didn't hear anything back.
Speaker 1: And then I started calling. I'm like, what's going on,
Speaker 1: and and they like I could hear the secretary like no,
Speaker 1: he's not in, and I was just like, wow, you know,
Speaker 1: this is just like the stories you hear about. So
Speaker 1: I was I was going just going crazy. But what
Speaker 1: I did, I had right before the Go Goes, And
Speaker 1: this is how much I believe that the Go Goes
Speaker 1: weren't going to break up. After that Rock and Rio
Speaker 1: concert in January of eighty five, I came home and
Speaker 1: I bought a house at the top of Sunset Plaza,
Speaker 1: and uh, it was two and dollars and it was
Speaker 1: the last house on the street and it was all
Speaker 1: I could afford. But it was like, had this amazing view.
Speaker 1: And so I had that house. Then the band breaks up,
Speaker 1: and that's part of my my uh freak out is
Speaker 1: that I've got this house and I don't have a
Speaker 1: job anymore. But what I started doing was um taking
Speaker 1: equity out of the first thing I plowed through my
Speaker 1: my retirement money where they had set up a little
Speaker 1: retirement fund. I plowed through all that because I'm I
Speaker 1: me at the beginning, I'm like, it's just a matter
Speaker 1: of time, and I'm spoiled and I'm grandiose, and I'm okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna rehearse it. S I R and da da
Speaker 1: da done. Oh my god. So I just plowed through
Speaker 1: all this money, and then I would start refinancing my
Speaker 1: house because when I got it, like interest rates people
Speaker 1: should take note, were like eleven percent, and then they
Speaker 1: started going down and I would refinance the house, I
Speaker 1: would take out. It never occurred to me that I was,
Speaker 1: you know, spending the money that I would make on
Speaker 1: the house. So that's how I lived. That's how I lived.
Speaker 1: And there was there was probably some royalties here and there, okay,
Speaker 1: but you in any event, you weeked it out. When
Speaker 1: they say the band is going to get together, everybody's
Speaker 1: on the same page, everybody's involved, everybody's being called. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We started, uh, the we started getting in touch with
Speaker 1: each other. And Belinda had been had an enormous success
Speaker 1: as a solo artist. Charlotte was kind of her right
Speaker 1: hand person, writing songs and I reached out to Charlotte
Speaker 1: and after I had four months of sobriety and we
Speaker 1: we we kindled our friendship. Gina and I had stayed friends.
Speaker 1: Um Belinda Uh invited everybody to come sing on one
Speaker 1: of her records, and that was the first time we
Speaker 1: hung out, and it just felt different. It felt different
Speaker 1: to be sober, and I was very grateful to just
Speaker 1: get to be around them, because really I just I
Speaker 1: really missed it, you know, I wanted to make it
Speaker 1: in another band, I really did, but I also missed
Speaker 1: I missed them. I missed the band. Um the Blenda's
Speaker 1: manager approached us about doing a reunion concert, and everybody
Speaker 1: was on board, even though she was still in the
Speaker 1: middle of having a thriving solo career. She she was agreed,
Speaker 1: she had agreed. I think we all thought it had
Speaker 1: ended in a bad way and this might be a
Speaker 1: way to um uh put a nicer bow around that
Speaker 1: little package. Okay, So once the band reunites in how
Speaker 1: often does it go out after that? Well, they we
Speaker 1: did a tour because I r S put out a
Speaker 1: Greatest Hits record, So we we actually did a tour
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety and I got to do all of
Speaker 1: the stuff that we had done. We played on the
Speaker 1: TV shows and we played the places and whatnot, and
Speaker 1: uh did the press and everything. So I got to
Speaker 1: do it sober, which was was really great. But then
Speaker 1: we had a falling out again, and we had a
Speaker 1: falling out that lasted until it had a lawsuit involved.
Speaker 1: It was all to do with money and songwriting royalties,
Speaker 1: um and stuff like that so um. And then that
Speaker 1: got resolved and we got back together because Ted Demi,
Speaker 1: the director, wanted to do a film about us and
Speaker 1: his wife reached out to us all and I think
Speaker 1: everyone had email by that time. Email was a big
Speaker 1: help because you didn't have to like get on the phone.
Speaker 1: Uh So uh, email started getting exchanged in about talking
Speaker 1: about this possible movie, and once again we kind of
Speaker 1: came back to each other. And a lot of people think, oh,
Speaker 1: they just do it for money, and the thing I
Speaker 1: you know, I certainly done mind making money with the
Speaker 1: go Goes anytime. But that's really not what brings us
Speaker 1: back together because let's face it, Belinda doesn't need the money,
Speaker 1: so she can choose whether the go Goes work or not.
Speaker 1: It's really it's really within her power and she does
Speaker 1: not need the money when she is open to it.
Speaker 1: That's when we play. It's really been a lot of
Speaker 1: people think that's what happens. But from up until uh
Speaker 1: the recent past, you know, we we played pretty regularly. Okay,
Speaker 1: So since so you survived on income from the go
Speaker 1: goes primarily live touring, you personally, well, I mean I
Speaker 1: had really cheap rent because because here's the deal. I'm
Speaker 1: you know, I was living in the house that I
Speaker 1: was gonna marry, uh get married and be in and
Speaker 1: when we broke up, the house had gone down in
Speaker 1: value from the crash, and uh so I was just
Speaker 1: paying rand. I got some roommates. I mean, I drove
Speaker 1: an old El Dorado and I was paying four hundred
Speaker 1: bucks a month. You know, I didn't need a lot
Speaker 1: of money. I really didn't need, and I made some
Speaker 1: good investments. That's another thing. I finally took my little
Speaker 1: nest egg and made a couple of good investments. And um,
Speaker 1: you know, I just I cut my Michael, when I
Speaker 1: say I cut my cloth to fit my scissors or
Speaker 1: whatever the heck that thing is, I I lived. Okay,
Speaker 1: So let's let's say right now, you never earned another dollar.
Speaker 1: Do you have enough money to get to the end.
Speaker 1: I don't know, depends what kind of and you want.
Speaker 1: I mean, uh yeah, I mean I I could go live.
Speaker 1: I like more, I would like more. But I think so.
Speaker 1: I think I do because I'm pretty well invested. And
Speaker 1: I lost some money in this last crash, but my
Speaker 1: house went up in value, so it kind of went
Speaker 1: up and down. Uh some years, vacation just brings in
Speaker 1: a windfall, you know, some years, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I've been really blessed. You know, I had a wonderful
Speaker 1: marriage for seven years. And uh so I don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about paying for my daughter's college because her dad,
Speaker 1: you know, is going to do that. So I've been
Speaker 1: really lucky. I've I've always managed to get even when
Speaker 1: I was poor growing up, there was always enough. I've
Speaker 1: never really worried about money too much. I don't. I
Speaker 1: just don't think about it that much. I just there
Speaker 1: always seems to be enough, and if there's not, I
Speaker 1: just kind of scale down. I mean, for years, like
Speaker 1: I said, I drove an old. I drove an old
Speaker 1: El Dorado, and I lived in a cool little house
Speaker 1: with cheap rent and I was happy. Okay, Now there
Speaker 1: was this lawsuit where they seem to want to kick
Speaker 1: you out of the bean one more time in the
Speaker 1: last decade. What was that about? What was that about?
Speaker 1: That started? Okay? I feel like there should be a
Speaker 1: little context that nobody really thinks about that it's been
Speaker 1: People reduce it down to this thing like she she
Speaker 1: quit and sued the band, and that's really not the story. Uh. Basically,
Speaker 1: there had been a lot of dysfunction and and and
Speaker 1: strife and resentment, and other people had been in the
Speaker 1: hot seat and had been it had been discussed to
Speaker 1: kick other people out. And I'm not going to go
Speaker 1: into too who and names and what, but but I
Speaker 1: was not the first person. I was just the one
Speaker 1: that actually worked on So what happened was I a
Speaker 1: tour and they were a couple of people were mad
Speaker 1: at me anyway, because I had done this Twitter memoir
Speaker 1: and they didn't like it. I took it down. I cried,
Speaker 1: I said, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt anybody
Speaker 1: very sincere. I don't mean to rush over it like
Speaker 1: like it was meaningless. It was a horrible time, but
Speaker 1: I thought it was I thought it was water under
Speaker 1: the bridge, but it wasn't. Sometimes people you know, didn't
Speaker 1: take much to pick the scab off, and then it's
Speaker 1: a gaping wound again. So when I broke my wrist
Speaker 1: and had to miss a tour, uh, I got on
Speaker 1: the hot seat. Just stop one second. Was the was
Speaker 1: the corporation while these bands are incorporated such that even
Speaker 1: though you did not go on the road, did you
Speaker 1: share an any of the revenue? I'm not. I'm not
Speaker 1: at liberty to disclose that, Okay, So in any event
Speaker 1: you break your risk, you don't go on down the road. Continue. Well,
Speaker 1: well that when I broke my wrist. Yeah, anytime somebody
Speaker 1: was out for for and it had happened a few
Speaker 1: times when I was pregnant, someone took my place for
Speaker 1: a handful of shows when Charlotte was pregnant, Vicky Peterson
Speaker 1: from the Bengal. So we had president that if you
Speaker 1: couldn't perform, you got your equal share as a member
Speaker 1: of the corporation. And I could just freaking fall down
Speaker 1: and worship at the business manager's feet. That set up
Speaker 1: that corporation. So thank god we had it saved me.
Speaker 1: But um, so we had a president, I I fall
Speaker 1: break my risk the President's in place where the tour
Speaker 1: goes on without me, and yes, I'm getting my equal share.
Speaker 1: You you pay your substitute out of your equal share.
Speaker 1: What what happened though, was the being away and out
Speaker 1: of the picture and the dysfunction and the demonizing and
Speaker 1: by from August to January, I was completely cut out
Speaker 1: and uh, nobody would speak to me, and I knew
Speaker 1: it was bad. Um. Fortunately, my my ex husband is
Speaker 1: also my best friend is a litigation attorney. And I said,
Speaker 1: from the minute it started happening, I said, something bad
Speaker 1: is happening. You know, I think they're going to try
Speaker 1: to kick me out. So I had a lot of
Speaker 1: legal advice from the beginning of how to conduct myself
Speaker 1: and two that would be advantageous. And when they fired me,
Speaker 1: it was kind of like, okay, I was. I was
Speaker 1: really devastated and hurt that they I couldn't even go
Speaker 1: talk to everybody. And I kept saying, I begged, I begged,
Speaker 1: I said, can I come and hang out and let's
Speaker 1: talk this out? And and I was rejected to do that.
Speaker 1: It was one of the most careful experiences of my life.
Speaker 1: But um, the thing that went wrong was to start
Speaker 1: a new corporation, Like I would have just said, Okay,
Speaker 1: you don't like me anymore, let's figure out how to
Speaker 1: do this. You know, either either guys are going to
Speaker 1: retire soon or let's figure out how to do this
Speaker 1: in a fair way. But that isn't what happened that.
Speaker 1: What happened instead was another corporation was was was created
Speaker 1: and the name was licensed to that corporation so that
Speaker 1: I could uh supposedly legally be cut out. And at
Speaker 1: that point my legal advice was you you don't that's
Speaker 1: not that's not something that is is uh can be done.
Speaker 1: You know, partners can't do that to another partner. So
Speaker 1: that was the legal action and it was not anything
Speaker 1: that I relished doing at all. It was protecting thirty
Speaker 1: five years of building a business interest in protecting that.
Speaker 1: So that was a horrible. But what was more horrible was,
Speaker 1: you know, having to be the subject of of very
Speaker 1: uh horrible that the legal advice that that the legal
Speaker 1: people they had were just hell bent on destroying me.
Speaker 1: And you know, luckily I had the cavalry and I
Speaker 1: just kind of um got through it. And it was painful,
Speaker 1: and I don't really like talking about this at all,
Speaker 1: as you can tell. But but I will say that
Speaker 1: there was a silver lining. There was an enormous and
Speaker 1: sometimes the best gifts come in the most hideous, disgusting,
Speaker 1: ugly packages. But I gotta tell you, being home with
Speaker 1: my daughter for the next five years from the age
Speaker 1: of nine to fourteen or whatever it was, it was
Speaker 1: five years nine nine to fourteen, Uh was fantastic. Some
Speaker 1: thing's happened in my life that wouldn't have happened if
Speaker 1: I had been doing that. And I'll tell you I
Speaker 1: wasn't happy in that band at that point. I wasn't
Speaker 1: happy and I was actually kind of glad not to
Speaker 1: be doing it. I felt that it was a really
Speaker 1: toxic and dysfunctional band, and I was I was glad
Speaker 1: not to be doing it, but I still liked everybody.
Speaker 1: I want to say that there was times where I
Speaker 1: really saw who I was in that period. And I
Speaker 1: think when we anytime we go through something that's horrible
Speaker 1: and and terrible sometimes or difficult, that's when you really
Speaker 1: do see who you are. And one of the there
Speaker 1: was a lot of things that showed me who I
Speaker 1: was in that time, and I ended up being really
Speaker 1: proud of how I conducted myself and who I was,
Speaker 1: how I felt because I didn't hate anybody. I didn't
Speaker 1: hate them. How long from the moment they went on
Speaker 1: tour without you until the lawsuit was settled. Um, the
Speaker 1: lawsuits started, like I would think, it was filed and
Speaker 1: May of of twelve we settled. I think by they
Speaker 1: did a tour in twelve, they did one in fourteen,
Speaker 1: I think they did. I think they did four tours
Speaker 1: without me, maybe three, three or four tours. Okay, so
Speaker 1: where does this leave you now? Does it go back
Speaker 1: to the first corporation where you are remembered just like
Speaker 1: you were before? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I mean we didn't
Speaker 1: have to go to court. We settled and and this
Speaker 1: the settling. You know, all of our corporate entities were
Speaker 1: intact on settling. That's not that's not um what do
Speaker 1: they call it. No, that's not that's not nondisclosure stuff.
Speaker 1: That's just anyone can look up a corporation. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: everything was was good. I mean just okay. After being
Speaker 1: out of the band for four years and a number
Speaker 1: of years and having the lawsuit, did that impact your
Speaker 1: relationship with the four other girls? Well? I didn't speak
Speaker 1: to them, and then little by little it started thawing out.
Speaker 1: Like I think Belinda sent me an email and said
Speaker 1: she was sorry and that she wished it hadn't happened
Speaker 1: like that, and um, there was a musical that was
Speaker 1: being underway before I even uh was was kicked out.
Speaker 1: And part of my settlement was that I would be
Speaker 1: involved that that that I couldn't be cut out of that.
Speaker 1: So when there was when there was anything going on
Speaker 1: with the musical, I would go and and you know,
Speaker 1: we would have to say hi and and UH talk
Speaker 1: to each other. And little by little I think, Um,
Speaker 1: I think there's things I'm not really at liberty to say,
Speaker 1: but I think some people came to the realization that
Speaker 1: they didn't like what had happened and what they what
Speaker 1: they had done, and I certainly didn't like it. But
Speaker 1: what happened was the musical was made it to Broadway
Speaker 1: and the producers wanted to have a show. This was
Speaker 1: at the end, it was a beginning of They wanted
Speaker 1: a show to um play for all the investors and
Speaker 1: key people. And they contacted me and they said, we
Speaker 1: want to do a show. We want you to be there,
Speaker 1: and I said, that's good. Do they do are they
Speaker 1: kind of let me play and they said yeah, and
Speaker 1: I said, okay, if I can play, And I gotta
Speaker 1: tell you, Bob, that was the most That was the
Speaker 1: scariest thing I've ever done, was to fly to New
Speaker 1: York and show up in that rehearsal room. Oh man,
Speaker 1: I was so scared, uh, like what were they going
Speaker 1: to be? Like? What were they? And it was this
Speaker 1: crazy thing where where it's a it's a very weird
Speaker 1: bond that we have, like the ugliest, most disgusting, horrible
Speaker 1: things can happen, but once we're together, it was just
Speaker 1: like something I could see it. I could almost see
Speaker 1: it happened. I could see them going, what, well, this
Speaker 1: is good. This is how it should be, and it
Speaker 1: certainly felt like how it should be to me. And
Speaker 1: pretty quickly all was right in the world, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty quickly after that. Okay, So since the lawsuits been settled,
Speaker 1: has there been a tour that you've been involved in? No,
Speaker 1: we went um we played the first shows I did
Speaker 1: as if like we want you back in the band.
Speaker 1: Uh was four nights at the Hollywood Bowl with the
Speaker 1: l A. Phil. So here's me. I've been playing like
Speaker 1: the club down the street for five years and and
Speaker 1: then I'm like at the Hollywood Bowl with the Philharmonic
Speaker 1: behind me. So I was a little nervous and felt unprepared.
Speaker 1: But we did that and we did a few warm
Speaker 1: up shows. That was a drag though, because Gina had
Speaker 1: had next surgery and was dealing with UH family stuff
Speaker 1: and couldn't play. So my first time in five years,
Speaker 1: and it's not with Gina on the drums. My my
Speaker 1: rhythm section mate isn't there. So the exciting thing pre
Speaker 1: UH coronavirus was that we were going to go on
Speaker 1: tour this summer and all the shows were sold out.
Speaker 1: We had some big ones, really big gigs, along with
Speaker 1: just the regular usual stuff. So huge disappointment. This was
Speaker 1: going to be an amazing year. And the documentary happened,
Speaker 1: the document um. We did the documentary over two thousand
Speaker 1: and eighteen, and some more things happened. In January, I
Speaker 1: went to the premier and I've been back in the
Speaker 1: band for a year at this point, but it's still worse.
Speaker 1: There's still levels of of healing and forgiving that that
Speaker 1: are still going on, and as women in our sixties,
Speaker 1: it's much more than the story of a band. Now
Speaker 1: it's it's really the story of well, I guess it
Speaker 1: is the story of a band, but it feels like
Speaker 1: more than a band when when women are are coming
Speaker 1: to terms or recognizing what these other people are in
Speaker 1: their lives and what they mean. I really I love
Speaker 1: everybody in this band, I really really do. We've been
Speaker 1: in touch a lot talking about this bad stuff with you.
Speaker 1: As you know, I get triggered and it stirs up
Speaker 1: and I started feeling really gross. But I can replace
Speaker 1: it pretty quickly by remembering what it felt like to
Speaker 1: hug everybody. After that documentary premiered, and last week it
Speaker 1: was supposed to premier at Tribeca and there was going
Speaker 1: to be a big announcement from a major theatrical for
Speaker 1: a theatrical release, and it's all Corona Away, you know,
Speaker 1: along with my book tour. Okay, but didn't the Go
Speaker 1: Goes go on a farewell tour saying it was the
Speaker 1: last tour they did in and I was, I was
Speaker 1: so annoyed because I thought, you know, do let me
Speaker 1: come on that tour at least? So it was really
Speaker 1: I was, Oh, there was two things they did that
Speaker 1: was like the biggest ouches of all when I was
Speaker 1: not in the band, and one was the farewell tour
Speaker 1: without me, and one was they got like this private
Speaker 1: party thing that that looked really fun and I heard
Speaker 1: about it. I was like, ah, so it wasn't like
Speaker 1: I was like, I mean, I'm just like a man.
Speaker 1: You know. It's well, I guess a relative you personally.
Speaker 1: Now Motley Cue recently did this, but they signed in blood.
Speaker 1: It's kind of interesting that they did a farewell tour
Speaker 1: and then you go back on the road. Does anybody
Speaker 1: think about the well, I think, um, what they said,
Speaker 1: the go go said was we are retiring from touring.
Speaker 1: We're not breaking up, We're retiring from touring. We don't
Speaker 1: want to do big tours, but if something special comes along,
Speaker 1: i e. The Hollywood Bowl with the l A Philharmonic,
Speaker 1: we what we reserve the right to do special, cool things,
Speaker 1: because let's face it, this band has gotten amazing opportunities
Speaker 1: in the nineties, stuff that are's not in the public eye.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've played for Mohammad Ali and at the
Speaker 1: Kennedy Compound, and we've were on a Mardi Grass float
Speaker 1: and played at the Superdome. A lot of cool private
Speaker 1: stuff happens, and so the band wasn't saying we're breaking
Speaker 1: up and we're done. They said in we're done touring,
Speaker 1: and that was pretty much gonna stick. Except for this
Speaker 1: was the release of the documentary constituted a reason to
Speaker 1: go out. So as far as I know, nothing will
Speaker 1: ever happen again. You know, fans always say why don't
Speaker 1: you do this? Why don't you that, And it's like, well,
Speaker 1: it's not really one person's choice. Collectively, the band has
Speaker 1: decided they don't want to tour anymore. Okay, So talking
Speaker 1: about you personally, in the hopefully thirty years you have
Speaker 1: left on the planet, what would you like to achieve
Speaker 1: or what do you foresee? Um, I'm always gonna play
Speaker 1: more music, and uh, I like playing in a band.
Speaker 1: I still like playing in a band. I have an
Speaker 1: amazing rock and roll band here in Austin called the
Speaker 1: Blue Bonnets, and it's just a cool rock and roll band.
Speaker 1: Everybody plays great, very fulfilling on that level. Um, And
Speaker 1: but I'm not making a living at it. So what
Speaker 1: I'd like to do is right, write more books. Um,
Speaker 1: I'd like to write a second memoir. I don't know
Speaker 1: what else I want to write. I did a pretty
Speaker 1: good job with my short stories, and I think I
Speaker 1: could handle some fiction. But I'm kind of at that
Speaker 1: place where it's always in the back of my head
Speaker 1: and I feel like like if I don't do it,
Speaker 1: it's like I'm still like where do I start? Where
Speaker 1: do I start? And I'm very uh close to getting
Speaker 1: to that point whereas like you just start anywhere, that's
Speaker 1: what you do. You start anywhere, because it's kind of
Speaker 1: in the back of my mind all the time. So
Speaker 1: I want to write more. I love doing the soundtrack
Speaker 1: to my book. I really liked creating music that had
Speaker 1: uh a story to go with it that was really
Speaker 1: interesting to me. I will continue to do more of that,
Speaker 1: and I want to move and live other places. I
Speaker 1: want to I want to experience living in other places.
Speaker 1: And I want to finish my degree to take those
Speaker 1: last two classes, and I'll probably do more uh graduate
Speaker 1: school because I like going to school. I'd like to
Speaker 1: do women's studies. I'd like to do um religious studies.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of I think I could just collect.
Speaker 1: I think like collect master's degrees. That sounds good, or
Speaker 1: maybe you become a maybe you become a like Dr. Valentine,
Speaker 1: that might be awesome, get a PhD. Right, Well, I
Speaker 1: want to reinforce that this is not all I've ever wanted.
Speaker 1: Is not a traditional rock memoir. Of what I mean
Speaker 1: by that is, yes, it covers all the hotspots, but
Speaker 1: it's written in a literary fashion. It's just not a
Speaker 1: pastiche of the events. And that's one of the things
Speaker 1: that stuck out for me and why I wanted to
Speaker 1: do this with you, Kathy. But this has been wonderful.
Speaker 1: It's really been great hearing all these schools. Until next time,
Speaker 1: it's Bob left side.