The Tragic Real-Life Story Of Belinda Carlisle

There are a ton of great bands that have left their mark on music's landscape, but not many have blazed the kind of territory that The Go-Go's did. While they might be mostly remembered for their pop-punk hits — the sort of songs that are perfect for cruising down a California highway with the top down — the BBC notes that they weren't just a force to be reckoned with, but they were the first and only all-girl group to play their own instruments, write their own songs, and hit it big with an album that skyrocketed to the top of the charts.

And they did it in spite of an industry that had been determined not to take them seriously. The Go-Go's initially failed to find any record label willing to sign them, with rejection after rejection summed up with this sample response: "Unfortunately, The Go-Go's aren't the type of band we're interested in signing. Best of luck with your enterprising girl band!"

The Go-Go's were a perfect storm of pure talent, and out in front was lead singer Belinda Carlisle. Carlisle went on to have a successful solo career after the band's break-up, but at the same time she was making hit after enduring hit, her life off-stage was anything but easy. The rampant sexism faced by Carlisle and The Go-Go's at the beginning of their career was just the tip of the iceberg, and Carlisle's story is one of struggle, addiction, and a sheer determination to overcome it all.

In her memoir (via The New York Times), Belinda Carlisle wrote that after her father lost his job and started his own carpet-cleaning business, he was rarely home. While he was gone, her mother turned to a carpenter across the street, who would ultimately become her stepfather. The rumor mill had been churning in the meantime, and Carlisle found herself ostracized from friends who had been told they could no longer play with her, because of her mother's reputation.

Walt Kurczeski came into their lives when she was young, and she would later write that, "Walt had his own demons, but I didn't know about them then."

According to The Guardian, Carlisle would eventually end up being the eldest child in a home of seven — and it was run by her stepfather, who not only struggled with alcohol addiction, but believed in physical punishments. Carlisle said that he did get sober, and "There were a lot of amends made."

When she was younger, though, she wanted nothing more than to rebel, to escape the home that never felt safe, and prove that he was wrong about her, and that she would make something of herself. By the time she was a teenager, she indicates she was "Hitchhiking, running away, [and] dropping acid."

When The Go-Go's first started, they started with zero experience — and that's not an exaggeration. Belinda Carlisle told The Sydney Morning Herald, "Our only ambition was to learn how to plug our guitars into our amplifiers. We really started from absolute zero and even by punk standards we were incredibly bad. People used to come just to laugh at us."

While they started in Hollywood, they eventually made the inevitable trip to the heart of punk: England. It wasn't easy, though, and in 2020, one-time Tops of the Pops magazine editor Peter Loraine reflected to the BBC and wondered "why they didn't come to the U.K. more often to promote their music because they could have really taken off here."

Carlisle and The Go-Go's toured England with a ska band called Madness, and Carlisle recounted just how bad it was in her memoir (via The Hollywood Reporter). She wrote that they were the target of something called gobbing, which wasn't just spitting, but spitting the nastiest of nasties — in between heckling, catcalling, and requests for a show of a different kind. "It was horrible," she said before explaining, "I remember coming off crying and covered in snot ... It was lonely and it was dangerous, five little white girls from southern California being thrown in with all these hard-core skinheads."

Belinda Carlisle's drug use lasted for three decades, and, as she told Salon, she only became clean and sober in 2005. Not everyone around her knew that, though, and she shared that for a long time, she simply sort of just lied through omission. She never outright said that she had stopped drinking and using drugs, and instead, just let everyone think that she had. "I just didn't tell the whole truth," she explained, and behind the scenes, she continued to use.

The sheer length of time it took her to seek help and get clean ended up being the basis for her memoir: "I wanted to write more of an inspirational book about how one can make changes late in life, and about how it's possible to overcome abuse, addiction, and self-sabotage." 

It took a long time and a powerful vision for her to commit to change. She wrote in her memoir (via Female First) that it was a vision of her death that finally pushed her to get treatment. It was 2005, and she locked herself in her hotel room for a three-day cocaine binge. She wrote, "When I looked at my eyes in the mirror, I didn't see anyone looking back at me. The lights were out. I was gone. It scared me — yet I didn't stop until I had an extraordinarily frightening out-of-body experience, where I saw myself overdosing and being found dead in the hotel room."

If Belinda Carlisle has been honest about her drug addiction, she's also been straightforward about the stresses and challenges that led her down that path. In 2018, she spoke with Deseret News about how the media's obsession with her weight pushed her to use cocaine as a way of staying thin.

"[The media always] mentioned how much I weighed — so I was 'cute and chubby,' 'pretty and plump.' ... It was always about my weight. ... I never had a problem with it until the media put such a focus on it. ... It really, really messed my head up."

When UC Health announced Carlisle was going to be speaking about her life's challenges in an event in Denver, they also shared some of the struggles recounted in her memoir — including the fact that when she was young, she had been taunted with the nickname "Belimpa." The spotlight only got more judgmental after The Go-Go's broke up the band, and Carlisle embarked on her solo career. In her memoir (via the New York Post), she recalled facing a rebranding as a pop star, and comparing herself to Madonna. That, she said, only escalated the addiction and eating disorders that were already there. "I never had a problem with the way I looked or with my weight ... but the media had a problem with it because I was voluptuous, I was normal. I wasn't jealous of Madonna, I was envious of her and how she looked."

If you need help with an eating disorder, or know someone who is, help is available. Visit the National Eating Disorders Association website or contact NEDA's Live Helpline at 1-800-931-2237. You can also receive 24/7 Crisis Support via text (send NEDA to 741-741).

Menopause isn't typically something that's discussed much, even though symptoms and physical challenges can be life-changing for some women. Belinda Carlisle has tried to break some of that stigma, and sat down on Hallmark Channel's "Home & Family" for a conversation not only about her own challenges, but those of her mother.

"My mom had really bad menopause, so I just assumed that I would follow in the footsteps of my mother," she explained. She went on to say that her mother had such bad depression that there had been talk of committing her to a psychiatric ward. They didn't, but she recalled that the time of not knowing what was going to happen to her mother was terrifying. She explained more to The Daily Mail, saying that "She suddenly became really agitated and very, very down and she spent a lot of time sitting in her room crying."

When it came time for her to go through it, she said that she had the irritability and mood swings, but worse than that were the hot flashes that got so bad and so frequent that she resorted to carrying around a change of clothes. She shared, "I tried not to let it get in the way of my life and tried to carry on as normal — you do the best you can."