Kathy Valentine

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Said Podcast.
My guest today is Kathy Valentine. You know where as
a member of the Go goes that you just wrote
an amazing book all I ever wanted. Kathy, Hi, what's that, Bob? Okay?
So why did you write the book? Well, there's the
big reason, and then there's the all the little reasons.

(00:28):
The big reason was I had wanted to write a
book for a long time. I felt confident that I
could write a good book. Um, I just felt like
I didn't have a deadline and I didn't have an assignment,
and I didn't know if I had the discipline and
the motivation to actually do it every day. But I
got a book deal. So once I had a book deal,
you'd be crazy not to write a book. So there's

(00:50):
that reason. Okay, but a little bit slower. How did
you get a book deal? Um? I was doing the
Texas Book Festival. I was moderating a panel and ut Press.
A woman was there and she liked She started thinking,
I wonder if Kathy would be interested in this. And
I had been thinking about it for quite a while.
I had done a Twitter memoir starting in like two

(01:11):
thousand nine that I got in trouble for and I
took it down, not in trouble from Twitter, but from
the rest of the go Goes. So I took it down,
but it was there long enough for me to see
that that um my story was resonating with people. So
I I just I had I felt confident, and yet

(01:32):
at the same time, I wasn't sure what the story
would be. I knew I wanted to be a memoir.
I had read several memoirs, and I thought, I got
a story. I can do that, and I just kind
of went from there. How much writing had you done
before you attempted the memoir, Well, I had been to
college student for many years. I was just I have

(01:53):
a tendency when life feels kind of like I'm not
getting anywhere, which happens a lot as an artist, um
or that I was spinning my wheels or just feeling lost.
I would take college classes, and a few years ago
I realized I was very close to having enough credits
to to get a degree, so I started working towards
an English degree because part of my big plan was

(02:16):
I will write a book during an m f A program,
because then it'll be like having a an assignment and
I know I'll do it, but I got the book
deal in between. Then. So in the course of writing
for college, I was getting a's, I was getting good feedback,
I was doing creative writing classes, turning in short stories.
My first idea was to do a collection of short stories,

(02:39):
but I didn't think anyone would buy me as a
legit writer, so I thought, and plus, with short stories
or literature, you're competing with every literary genius that's also
writing books, Whereas if I wrote a memoir, it's like
my story, I'm the one that's I'm the one that's
going to tell this story the best. So it kind
of was just a smart way to try to introduce

(03:01):
myself as a writer. Okay, there are a couple of things.
How did you end up moderating that piano at the
book fair? Well, I'm in Austin and i'm a I'm
kind of a semi big fish and a semi little pond,
so you know, opportunities float my way every now and then.
And the panel was with Jessica Hopper, who had put

(03:22):
out a book called the first Collection of Rock Criticism
by a female rock critic, and so I think their
idea was that it would be a little hook to
have the woman rock critic being moderated by the woman musician.
Maybe that was the idea. Okay, So the woman who
gave you the deal from the University of Texas Press,

(03:44):
had you known her previously? No? I had not, and
she it was just a fluke. She found me. I
had had a woman had babysat my kid like years before,
and she was working at UT Press. And this woman
who had signing Capabile at Ease went to that person
and said, did you say that you knew Kathy Valentine.

(04:06):
So the former babysitter contacted me. I I I contacted
Gianna and we met for coffee and Bob, I gotta
tell you. Within an hour, I started feeling like, I
think I've got a book deal. And I said, are
you giving me a wait? Are you giving me a
book deal? And I said, you haven't even seen how

(04:26):
I can write? And she said, oh, we're not worried
about it. We're not worried about it. And I asked, well,
can I send you some stuff? I had written some
scenes the scene about me getting an abortion when I'm
twelve years old. I had written about that I had
written about some of some things in my life, and
I sent her the stuff and she I loved the

(04:46):
answer because she wrote back and said, I want this book.
I want this book more than any book. And you
could probably get another book deal. We can't offer you
a lot where a nonprofit. And I said, yeah, but
are giving me a deal, and I don't have to
shop a manuscript, so I'll go with you T Press.
Plus I liked what they had been putting out. They

(05:08):
had put out a couple of pretty cool little music books. Okay,
and you're going to give the other reason for doing
the book, I might have covered it and all that blabbing. Okay, Okay,
let's focus because you know there's the famous line on
the Springsteen Live album where his mother says, you can
always go back to college. Okay, there are most musicians,
if they went to college at all, certainly don't finish.

(05:31):
So when did you start taking college classes? I started, well,
I started when I was sixteen, and then they kicked
me out of community college because I didn't have a
high school transcript. I didn't return until I was in
l A. And I was just very frustrated. I thought
like every band I started just wouldn't get any traction.

(05:53):
And it just started feeling like everything I did didn't
go anywhere. And I thought, I mean, oh, I know
what happened. I I read a book, a historical fiction book,
and it was just a fluke. I found it on
an airplane, and my I felt like this feeling. I
was enthralled with ancient history. And I started devouring all
these books, like I mean practically like academic things about

(06:18):
ancient Rome. And that's what made me want to go
back to school. I thought, I want to I want
to get a I want to study ancient history. And
I started out with Latin because I wanted to read
all the texts in actual Latin. Of course, I didn't
realize that being a classic major just means that's all
you do is a transcribe and transpose, uh stuff. So anyway,

(06:39):
but then I realized very quickly I had to take
basic college courses that I hadn't finished. So I taught
myself algebra to get myself up to a level of college. Well,
how did you teach yourself algebra? You just go buy
books at like Barnes and Nobles, Like teach yourself algebra,
High school Algebra one. I was doing it by trial

(07:00):
and error. Then I got in trouble. They sent a
report home to my parents whatever. So I didn't see
the learning curve is flat. I saw it as relatively steep.
Well I and so, but I just did it. It
was like I had to do it to get into
college level math. And I just kept finding these wonderful things.
Like when I got into college level math, I took statistics.

(07:21):
I thought, what a what a bore and this statistic
professor And it was at Glendale Community College and he
remains to this day my favorite instructor I've ever had.
I just sent him a book. We stay in touch,
and he made mathematics seem like the language of God.
He was phenomenal. And learning is like that. It's like

(07:42):
once you once you start feeling kind of fired up,
and and just that feeling of being enthralled is all
I know. I hadn't found that since music. I never
found anything that, you know, literally like made my palm
sweat and made me my heart race and learning something
and doing well. I'm I've always been kind of an
approval junkie. So getting an A and a class feels good.

(08:04):
It gave me self esteem and validation, and I just
I like it. I just like it. So I just
started kind of haphazardly taking courses and I went on
to Pasadena City College, and then I got married and stuff,
and when I got to Austin, I started resuming mainly
so I could get that into that m f A program.
But there's a mismiss, there's a mistake. I'm not actually

(08:27):
I've not graduated yet. I'm two classes away from having
my my college degree. So do you plan to take
those two classes? I do, because one of them is
just writing a thesis. It's even in this undergraduate undergrad program,
you need to write a capstone thesis about So that's
that's one thing. And the other thing I've been trying

(08:48):
to just avoid as much as possible, um like sitting
in a classroom. Like I've done a lot of portfolio
things where I put together proof that I know the
material well enough. I've done a lot of that and
whatever I could get away with taking UH online and
then of course I've had to sit in a lot
of classrooms. But if I can do it at home,
i'd rather because I like making my own schedule. Okay. Well,

(09:12):
as I say that you cover your life pretty well
in your book, but just to hit some of the highlights,
you have rather unique upbringing. Can you amplify that? Yes,
I did, UM, and I guess I would. The basic
thing I would say is that my mom, I mean,
I could have spun it very differently. I could have

(09:33):
made her just a post sixties free spirit um, but
she was okay. I had talked to her about being
truthful and honest about my my childhood and how I
was raised. But basically, my mom had me at twenty one.
She's from England. She she divorced my dad when being
married and living in America didn't meet her expectations, and

(09:56):
she was She was very um, I thought, fearless and brave.
What she was was pretty reckless and irresponsible. UM. I
was kind of left to raise myself. My earliest memory, UM,
not as an event, but as a feeling, was the
sense that I needed to be okay, that if I

(10:18):
wasn't okay, she wouldn't be okay, and the whole precarious
thing of our relationship and my my childhood would would
fall into the abyss. So I've I very much felt
like I always had to be okay. I carried that
with me most of my life. Now, does that mean
you were faking being okay? Or you will find a

(10:38):
way to make yourself both both You just your kid,
You figure it out. You know. It meant when it
meant because there was no other kids around, It meant
being able to amuse myself, entertain myself. It meant, you know,
I had no brothers and sisters. The only child I
learned how to read. I would read books. I was

(11:00):
just on my own a lot um. And when I
got to be a certain my dad was not present
in my life. I think it was very painful. It's
not conscious when you're a kid, you know. I just
felt like I don't think I felt like I mattered
very much to him, and uh I, um, I just

(11:23):
kind of got very uh as soon as I found
something that made me feel like I could fit in,
which was drinking. And I started drinking at twelve, and
I found a group of misfits that I could kind
of fit in with. And once I started feeling like
I fit in a little bit, um that was that

(11:43):
was how I coped. So we didn't want to go
into that right away, but I got a little okay,
but your you say your mother went to college. Yeah,
my mother was a ut student. It took her twelve
years to get her degree. She uh was raising me
by herself. She had a boyfriend and she was obsessed
with for about a decade who really wouldn't give me

(12:05):
the time of day. So it was kind of dysfunctional.
I just wanted attention from him, never got it. She
was obsessed with him. I felt very very abandoned and
alone and that my job was to take care of myself.
That's what I felt. And did your mother graduate from college? Yes?
She did, so do you think that's an inspiration for you?

(12:29):
I think that the academic life has always been something
that I valued. My dad was a professor of economics.
Even though he wasn't a big part of my life,
I was proud of him because that's how he got
out of Lubbock, Texas and how he kind of separated
himself from the poverty that he grew up with was

(12:51):
through education. And school was just something until it became
something where socially it was too painful. It was something
I enjoyed. I enjoyed excelling at it. I enjoyed approval
and I enjoyed learning. So before you turned twelve and
you took a left field turn, um, did you so?

(13:12):
You did well in school? Were you popular? Did you
have friends? I was? Um? I was a straight A
student and very advanced and in terms of like the curriculum,
but I felt like an outsider. It wasn't so bad
at first because my mom she would work at a

(13:33):
job for like a year or two save up her
meager retirement, and we'd go to England and spend a
couple of months, and when the money ran out, we'd
come home and we'd live in a new apartment and
I'd go to a new school. So I was always
the new kid. But in the fifth grade, she decided
she wanted to give me something better. And that's when

(13:53):
it really got bad, because she moved to this this
very kind of lower middle class neighborhood wherever one was
quite conventional and it was seventy seventy one. The we
just stuck out like sword thumbs. And that's not what
you want to do when you're eleven. You don't want
to stick out, but we really did, and uh, I

(14:16):
remember being embarrassed. She would pull up in her sports
car and her mini dress, and I would be embarrassed. Uh.
I just wanted to be like everybody else, and it
was it wasn't gonna happen, just was not going to happen.
So I was kind of a mess waiting to happen.
And you talked about your mother in the book. How

(14:36):
does your mother feel about the book? Because you're very
honest in the book. She's really I've always been her
most vicarious, pride of and proof that she didn't mess
everything up. Um, she feels very very proud of me.
I she I didn't want her to be the villain

(14:58):
of the story. I mean, I really try. I too
adhere to the conventions of storytelling and that there was
an arc, there was a protagonist that was me, that
overcame obstacles and came out a changed person. I knew.
I knew the conventions of storytelling enough to want that,
but I didn't want that villain in my story. And

(15:19):
I asked her about everything before I would write about it.
I said, I'm going to write about you know, us
dating the drug dealers. I'm going to write about you
having an affair with a friend of mine, a teenage boy.
I'm going to write about this, and is that okay?
Is that okay with you? Because I wasn't going to
do anything hurtful. If she said it's not okay, I

(15:39):
wouldn't have done it. And oddly or ironically, her saying
yes and giving permission gave me a lens to see
all this stuff and through a different point of view,
because as I'm writing it, you're I'm appalled, like, how
could she do this? How could she do this? I'm
a mom, I can't imagine that, but okay. It made

(16:01):
me realize that it was more important to her that
I tell my story and tell it truthfully and honestly
than it was for her to be depicted as some
idealized great mom. And that made me realize how even
though some big pillars of parenting were missing, i e.
Guidance and boundaries, actual parenting, I realized that I had

(16:25):
gotten support and I had gotten love. And uh. She
said it's painful for her to read. It's painful, but
she said something funny. The other day. She again, she
said it was so painful. I thought I'd done a
really good job until I wrote that. So was there
anything you intentionally left out about the childhood about your mother.

(16:49):
Uh No, I I pretty much told most of that stuff.
I mean, yeah, I think I think I hit on
all the big ones. Okay, So what she anges? When
you're twelve, you're in this new neighborhood. How do you
fall in with a bad crowd? Shall Lisa? Well? I?
I remember the first time I drank, and it was

(17:10):
Boone's farm, Strawberry Hill, and I was wretching. I was
practically throwing up every time I took a gulp of it.
But it was an instantaneous like why on earth you
would continue doing something that was making you sick to
your stomach? But it seemed like instantly it was doing
something to my the way I felt, and it made

(17:33):
me feel like things were okay. And I started drinking
with a with a quite a I've drank like an amateur,
but I drank from that moment on and smoking and
um it gave me. There was a small group of
misfits and once you it was never going to fit
in with the normal kids. Ever, no way that was

(17:56):
never gonna happen. So having that little sort call of
people um that also smoke and got high and drank,
that was kind of became the thing, and then I
didn't care about school. For the first time, I got
a c you know, and I didn't care. And okay,
did you perceive smoking and drinking is being bad things? Well,

(18:20):
my mom's smoked, so I I when I was a kid,
I would always like, like, you know, ranted heard it,
quit smoking, quit smoking. Um. But yeah, once once I
did think it was bad. Yeah, it was bad because
we were we were across the street. We were considered,
you know, juveniles, and and we thought anybody that that

(18:40):
didn't drink or or smoke pot was a narc. We
called him narks. And yeah, I knew it was bad,
but that was I wanted to be bad at that point,
because being bad when I was accepted and I had friends,
it was being bad. Did that give you further attention
from your mother? No? No, my mom, Uh, she didn't

(19:01):
know what I was doing. And when she found out,
and the way she found out was I I passed
out in someone's front yard and a police cruiser found
me and drove me home and came to the door
and I they stood there at the front door when
my mom answered, and I crawled through the door. And

(19:22):
even that didn't cause a lecture. I mean, the only
thing she said was I hope you've learned your lesson,
And the lesson was like about getting drunk because my
mom wasn't a drinker. I think that was what she
thought the lesson was. But uh no, there was no
punishment ever. I was never punished ever. Okay, so does

(19:44):
the school notice that you're taking a left turn? No,
so you're basically out there on your own. So you also,
and this is really in the book, along with drinking
and smoking comes some sexual experience. Insis. Yeah, I've been
really emotional lately, so I'm gonna try hard not to

(20:05):
like start blubbering because things are a little raw just
because of everything. So I'm trying not to do that,
but some things are so for some time. One of
my most distinctive memories, uh and unpleasant things was the
fact that a young boy when I was when I
was very young, I guess twelve, it must have been twelve,

(20:29):
and he kind of cornered me. I was that his
sister was my friend. He cornered me. Uh, he paid
attention to me. As I wrote in the book, I
would go over there trying to avoid him, but get
his attention at the same time, and it was just
a matter of time before he said he loved me

(20:50):
and wanted to be with me and wanted to be
the first person and kind of just went at it
with me, pushed, pulled my bats down, and I didn't
know what was happening. I had no idea what he
was doing or if we did it. I thought maybe
we had done it regardless. He when that event was over,

(21:10):
he went and told like everybody in the school, everybody,
and the next day everyone was talking about me and
pointing at me and laughing, and other guys guys were
coming up to me or yelling things at me. And
I wrote about it in the book and it's extremely painful.
I went to my mom and tears and I told

(21:31):
her what had happened. And this is this is not
any exaggeration. My mom said, you didn't do anything wrong.
You did it with the wrong person. And her reason
for saying that was that she didn't want me to
be hung up about sex. She didn't want me to
think like, oh, I can't have sex anymore. She I mean,

(21:53):
it was just her intention was okay, it was pretty
pure as an intention, but it was just placing adult
concerns on a child. You know, It's like maybe if
I had been twenty five, she would be worried about
me not being hung up on sex, but to not
be worried about your little girl. So it was really painful,

(22:15):
it really I really amped up the drinking and stuff
after that. Well, I just know anybody in high school,
they would label people truly or falsely, and everybody would
know would be very painful for the individual involved. It
was extraordinarily painful, and especially because I had I had
friends that were guys, and then they would I thought

(22:36):
they were friends, and then they would tell people that
they had had sex with me and they hadn't, or
they would corner me and try to have sex and
I would I would fight them off and run off,
but they would say it happened anyway. So it was
probably the most painful time of my entire life. I
took my daughter ten years ago to see where I

(22:58):
grew up, and I drove with her to that where
we lived when this happened, and the school I went to,
and even my daughter said, I don't like it here.
I don't like it here. This makes me very this
this is a bad place. So what do you tell
your daughter about sex. Well, she has a very different

(23:19):
childhood than mine, and in the era, I mean, it's
very different than the seventies. I mean, as as as
terrible as some of this sounds, you have to be
of a certain age to understand what the seventies were like,
and coming right after the free love, uh era of
the sixties, and it was very there was a lot

(23:40):
of debauchery and openness um without the without the freeness,
you know. Um, so it's kind of like it was
a very different era. I haven't I haven't had to. Uh.
I mean, I've talked to her about what happened to
me a little bit. It makes her very sad. You know,

(24:02):
we're really close, and my daughter is really kind of
protective of me, and the idea of me being hurt
or being treated badly upsets her a lot. So how
old is she today? Seventeen? Has she read the book?
She's only read parts of it, and she's avoided those parts.
She's read some of the other things, and uh, she's

(24:25):
really proud. I think she'll read it when she's ready.
I don't think she's She's always been very good at
self regulating herself in terms of knowing what she's ready for. So, um,
I'm just letting her take the lead on it. And
where is she on the continuum between wild and crazy
and book smart and you know, nerd, what kind of
kid is she? She's amazing. She's all she is thinking

(24:49):
about is going to college and where she wants to
go and how to make sure her applications are great.
And she's uh, she has admitted to trying alcohol a
couple of times and says it's not her thing. And
she's never known me to drink or smoke. I mean,
I've been sober thirty one year, so uh, but I've

(25:11):
always I've planted my little seeds here and there. Like
if we or somewhere and somebody's like obnoxiously drunk, I
kind of can just go, oh, that's what happens sometimes
if you can't handle your liquor, you know it's going
to get it in when I can let her make
her own judgments. Okay, Now, since it's in the book

(25:36):
and you mentioned it earlier, ultimately you do get pregnant
at twelve, so can you tell us a little bit
more about them? Yeah, So after that horrible event where
pretty much my my course was charted. I think the
way I said in the book, it was like the
stories he told started becoming the story of my life,

(25:58):
even though there was not any truth. And some older
boys started coming around to our house. My mom worked,
I was a latchkey kid, My mom was beautiful, and
there was just something. We started being kind of a novelty,
like the wild girl with the beautiful mom and she's
not home in the day. So teenage boys much older

(26:20):
than me started hanging around. Um, one of them would
bring that would bring records over, and I wrote in
a book like bonding over music and bands is where
I really started feeling like I was connecting with people.
That was the first time nothing else had ever connected
me with people of my own age who are around

(26:43):
my own age. So, UM, one guy, he he, we
just had sex. And it was so painful that I
realized that the first time that the guy hadn't even
done anything, that he basically just poked around because and
I'm like, I mean, even at that age, and I
really like, I've had to listen to this ship all

(27:05):
year long and uh, and nothing even happened. So that
was just ridiculous. But it turns out that first time
that it did work and I did have sex. I
was very unlucky and very fertile and got pregnant and
found out within a few months. And this was, uh

(27:29):
it was two years before Roe v. Wade. We tried
to figure out a way to get this pregnancy aborted
and couldn't do it in Austin. My mom spoke to
some doctors. They said there was a clinic in California,
and that became my first trip to California, Uh, to

(27:50):
to have an abortion when I was twelve years old,
and I wrote about it, I think, pretty gritty, real
uh terms, and uh, it's hard. I was nervous about
writing about abortion. It's such a it's such a polarized issue.
If I could have have I had written about it
in the eighties, it would have been like, no big deal.

(28:13):
But now you just say the word and it's like,
you know, I'm probably gonna get like a zillion uh
messages about being a baby killer or something. So it
was hard. It was scary to write about it. But
having an abortion at that age obviously the a lot
of things happened to you at a young age a

(28:33):
little different from the average citizen. UH did it. How
emotionally did it affect you having an abortion or it
was all such a crazy time, It was all mixed together.
I by that time I was very uh adept at
not feeling my feelings. So what I saw it as

(28:53):
was a problem that had to go away. That was
my my most uh driving sent it about. It was
just that I just want this problem to go away,
I said. There was a planned parenthood social worker. She
told my mom. She asked me how I felt about it,
and I just said, I want to I want to
deal with it, That's all I said. And she told

(29:14):
my mom, I was obviously repressing my feelings, and you know, yeah,
of course I was repressing my feelings. That's like, whatever
it took to survive and be okay was what what
I did. And um when I what I remember more
than anything was the relief, the relief after because I

(29:36):
was put under I went under general anesthesia, and when
I came out of it, there was that glorious moment
where I was a clean slate and remembered nothing, and
then I remembered everything, and that was quickly just I
was washed over with this enormous relief that this horrible
problem horrible problem. I mean, I had never heard of

(29:59):
an a Shan. I didn't know anybody that else I
knew I did. It was not like my girlfriends and
I were sitting around talking about having sex. I didn't
really have any girlfriends, and the ones I did have,
I don't think we're doing that. So I was really
glad it was over with and I went on the
pill from twelve when I was on the pill. And

(30:21):
now you mentioned that there was a time when your
mother was dating a friend and then when you were
both dating the drug dealers, Uh, can you tell us
about that? Yeah, well, I had one one of my
good friends. Um, well, he he was somebody I thought
really happy about. And we connected on Facebook not too

(30:43):
long ago, and I said, what do you remember from
that time and and he said, I remember you were
funny as ship. You're so funny. And then I said,
I know what happened with you and my mom. And
he just ignored it. He just ignored it. He wouldn't
wouldn't talk about it, because what the deal is, my
mom had an affair with this guy. I had no
idea at the time. I cannot even imagine how it

(31:07):
started or how it happened. In the book, I kind
of pieced together that it probably started when I went
to visit my dad um. When I came back, they
were hanging out together, and it kind of crossed my mind,
like why would my friend and my mom be hanging
out without me being there? And I have to say
she was smoking pot by then with me and my friends.

(31:28):
My mom was smoking pot with me and my friends.
And she didn't tell me about this affair until my twenties,
and we were high, We were high on drugs. We
were like nin nin n like talking like you do
all night or and she said, you know, well, you
know I had an affair with James Hits, a pseudonym,

(31:50):
And I said, and I was shocked. But at that point,
I'm still in my twenties, and as I wrote in
my book, like she was my pal, Like you don't
get mad at your pal for having an affair with
your other pal. And it came up again when in sobriety,
and I think I brought it up, and then it
came up again. And the cool thing about writing a
memoir is that I get the luxury of sometimes going

(32:13):
into the present and being able to write with the
reflection and the insight. And there's this scene in the
book where I'm saying to my mom because I'm looking
at my daughter and I'm like coming, I said, what
were you thinking? It's just the enormity of it really
sunk in from writing about it was and I said,
I could have been taken away and put in foster care.

(32:35):
You know, I always say, oh, my childhood was crazy,
but at least I wasn't in foster care or or
beaten with a broom or locked in the closet. But
it could have happened. I could have been put in
foster care. And this realization was very enormal. It was,
it was profound. And I said, what were you thinking?
You had you were smoking pot with us, You could

(32:56):
have been thrown in jail, you had an affair, you
could have been charged with statutory rape. What were you thinking?
And I got to write that scene in my book
because as I was questioning her this, I realized that
I was wanting her to say, yeah, I don't know
what I was thinking. It was wrong. I made a mistake,

(33:17):
and no she didn't. She didn't. She's a deflector. Okay,
then what about the drug dealers? They were dating. That
was a happy period. Um My mom met a young
drug dealer. Are our closest friends. By this time, I'm
out of public school. We're done. We don't fit into

(33:39):
this scenario at all. My mom found a commune, hippie
commune that had an uncredited school, So I'm going there
for the first time. I'm happy as can be. Uh,
you can do whatever you want at this school, and
you can learn whatever you want. Most kids want to learn,
so it's not a disaster. Um and I and guitar there.

(34:01):
So but I'm doing this by the day, but in
the evenings, we're spending time with this couple and their
drug dealers, and I think they're fabulous. They love me,
they love my mom. They live in a fancy house.
Um and one of their friends, one of their dealer friends,
started dating my mom. He was a young twenty four
year old. He was an escapee from Leavenworth Prison. He

(34:21):
was a dope dealer and a biker and a junkie
and charismatic and kind of wild and fun. And it
was exciting to know him and these people. And he's
the first person that brought an electric guitar and an
app into my house. He's the person that showed me
the very first time I plugged a guitar into an

(34:42):
app was to this guy. So I think of him
with very warm feelings. Um. But one day his friend,
his partner pulled up a thirty six year old I'm fifteen,
and uh I started an affair with him. My mom's
with the other guy. And I write about this time
because it really felt like, um, well, she was my

(35:03):
best friend at that point in time, and it was
it was really being lifted out of a place where
you know, we just my mom had such a mindset
of the rules don't apply to her. She doesn't be her.
She's much more forward thinking and much more out of
the box. And these straight people in this neighborhood or

(35:25):
this convention that the rules don't apply to my mom
still to this day. So um, she loved, you know,
having these kind of counterculture. And when I say drug dealers,
I mean I'm talking big time, like flying private jets
around with kilos of of pot and you know, thousands

(35:46):
and thousands of dollars and it was it was made
of on a major scale. So yeah, that happened. And
when I wrote about this, I try not to do
it in a sensational way. It's just it's it's pretty
matter of fact. It just that you do though it's
not sensationalized in the book. And Okay, let's get a
couple of things down. At what point do you how

(36:07):
old are you when you stopped living with your mother? Um?
I moved out from her, probably at age seventeen, and
for money to find a place. What's that? What do
you do for money? For rent? Oh? I got jobs.
I got jobs from We were poor. If I wanted anything,
I had to get a job and work for it.

(36:28):
So I had been. I was babysitting when I was
nine years old for money to buy the toys I wanted.
I I had started. Um, I started working. Um what
was my first job? I wrote about it? But anyway,
I the smartest thing I did was take the United
States Civil Service exam and I could get jobs at

(36:50):
at the the Census Bureau, the I R S they had.
They had a center in Austin, so I was getting
well paid. I worked in a bear distributing distribution warehouse. Um.
I just I was working. I was making money. So
when I moved from her, I was working at a

(37:11):
health spa okay, So was there always music in your
household or how did you get turned onto music? Music
was was not a big part. We didn't even have
a stereo until I got one. But what it was
was like the jukeboxes, the TV shows, UM, the table

(37:35):
jukeboxes at the coffee shop, UM. And once I got
and it was in school too, and the radio. I
was just your average you know. And I didn't have
brothers or sisters like bringing records home and stuff, so
I really was dependent on the radio. One of my
favorite stories was writing about how when I heard Cream
Sunshine of Your Love and in Lubbock, Texas, I was

(37:58):
sent there for the summer. My sixteen year old cousin
was playing this song and it was the first time
I had realized that music elicited a response that was
quite different than what I was used to, more pop
music and singing along and feeling uplifted, and this was
a more primal response. And it kind of instilled in

(38:19):
me of real love of kind of bluesy rock for
for for from then on. But music had just always
been there for this just like most people, I think
it it soothed me, It took me out of myself
and when there was rock stars that I looked up to,
that was key, because you know, I'm in a in

(38:41):
this place where I don't fit in and there's no
way I'm going to fit in. And then I would
see David Bowie or Mark boland or and I would
just go, there's no way these guys would fit in either,
And it just it felt like it felt like it
was evidence that there was a world away from where
I was so between music and then my mom kind

(39:02):
of carding me off to angle in every couple of
years or so, I really held on tight to that
this was temporary. This was a temporary place. This horrible,
painful adolescents and these mean, disgusting, terrible people, and they
really were. They were bad people, bad kids. Um, We're temporary,

(39:26):
and music was was how I was gonna Once I
started finding music as being a musician, that I was like,
this is how I'm going to get put as much
my ledge between me and this circumstances as I can now.
They teach you how to play guitar at the alternative school.
At what point do you say, Hey, I want to

(39:46):
play guitar, I want to form a band. Well, I
didn't think of it until I was drawn to music
from a young age. I mean I felt a pull.
I joined the orchestra. I had taken piano lessons, but um,
when I started playing guitar, it felt like the right instrument.
But it didn't occur to me that I could be
in a band. I had never seen a woman in

(40:09):
a band other than being a rock singer like Janice
Joplin or I think in Austin we had a we
had a great Marsha Ball was from New Orleans, a
great keyboard player, but other than her, I had never
seen women and bands playing electric instruments or drums or
anything and just didn't think it was done. Um. It

(40:30):
was going to England with my mom. I was I
was fourteen, and there's three channels on the BBC and uh,
Top of the Pops came on and Susie Quatrow was on,
and it literally was a life changing, life defining moment
to see her. It was like, Oh, okay, and this

(40:53):
is this is what this is what I wanted. From
that moment, I knew I wanted to do music. I
knew I wanted to have a band, and I wanted
to have a band with other gals like me. I
wanted it to be, and part of that was because
I hadn't seen anyone else doing it, and I wanted
to do something extraordinary. I wanted to feel like I
mattered and that I had value because I didn't feel

(41:15):
like that inside, and doing something extraordinary seemed like the
way to do it. And I thought, I'm going to
be the best guitar player ever. It's gonna be. It
sounds so silly now, but I I was like, there's
gonna be Jimmi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck,
and Kathy Valentine. That's what I thought. And uh so

(41:36):
I was really excited after I saw Susie and had
that become very crystal clear what I was, what I
was meant to do in life, and so what were
the steps you took to achieve that. I came back
and I pretty much twisted my best friend and his
arm into becoming a drummer. And I was still at

(41:57):
my commune school and there was other kids played, so
we put together a band right away, and we got
access to playing right away because the school was dirt
poor and always was having benefits and local Austin bands
would play at the benefits, So we got to do that,
and I was often running. From the minute I saw

(42:17):
Susie Quatro, I knew what I wanted to do, and
I was off and running. Now you paint a picture
of really seeing everybody in the clubs in Austin. Now,
was this after seeing Susie quatrow that you felt, Hey,
I want to go see these musicians. What what instigated that? Well,
music has always been a big part of Austin. You know,

(42:39):
way before it branded itself as um as a music city.
It was just by by nature and organically one so
um and my mom was a young either college student
or you know, kind of hip person. So I had
gone around to certain places there was you know, there
was a lot of music around in the clubs, but

(43:01):
it was really lax. Once once I started wanting to
kind of go out and see bands, I was doing that.
I would say probably from the age of um, sixteen sixteen.
I was going to clubs and uh, really really grateful
for what I got to be exposed to in Austin
and the variety and the spectrum of music and just

(43:24):
how how lax it was. I think they just figured
you wouldn't be there if you shouldn't be. And also
the Armadilla World Headquarters was like this amazing venue and
my one of my mom's friends worked there, so we
would go all the time. They had a big beer
garden and then it would be easy just to kind
of go wander in. They had concerts all the time. Uh,

(43:48):
huge variety. I mean they might have Captain Beefheart one
night and then they'd have the new Writers at the
Purple Stage the next night. And I didn't even know
what I was going to see half the time, but
I had excess because of my mom's friends. So uh,
it was just it was really great. It was really
really great to see such a variety of music and

(44:11):
to be a musician, you know, it had a huge
effect give us the arc of your time in Austin
playing So you had bands, were they playing gigs? Were
you making any money? Um? Well, after starting that first
band at at Greenbrier School, I decided number one, I

(44:32):
was tired of going to school because by that I
was sixteen. Uh, A lot of the older kids were
moving on anyway, and it meant getting up really early
to go to school, and I was going out and
staying out late. So I stopped doing that started going
to college. At age age sixteen, I lied to get
into college. I just said that I had was a
high school graduate. It took them two years to figure

(44:54):
it out that I wasn't. So I had my college classes,
I I had my his car, and I had my
friend that I had met in the same school, Greenbrier.
She and I were We started having bands and we
we just networked. We went out, we we started. We
found a female bass player. I couldn't believe it. And

(45:16):
because we were a trio, we decided we were going
to be like zz Top um zz Top was that
was Texas is um New York Dolls or Iggy and
that was our regional you know cool band was easy
Top and uh so that our first songs were zz
Top songs, you know. Um. I had been practicing fiendishly

(45:40):
from the minute I learned guitar. I mean, I remember,
my first goal was to be up in the pantheon
of guitar greats. So I practiced like crazy. I had
a handicap because I'm left handed and I played like
a right handed person, so my right hand was never
going to have the technical finesse of of a right
hand in person. But I could play chuck Berry chords

(46:02):
great and play like you know, jumping jack flash and
all that stuff really well. The left hand down down called.
So we're doing zazy top songs and UMU a few
other covers and guys are and in Austin, musicians are
really supportive. And this was a pattern that emerged when

(46:23):
I'd never thought about this um but as I was
writing the book, I started seeing this pattern come out
where the musicians, the guys were so supportive, there was
no condescension. Whether it was a virtuoso like Eric Johnson
or a rock and roller guy would like you know,
playing in a covers band. They they were so h

(46:46):
supportive and and like here that's a crumby amp you have,
let's go get you a good amp. Or okay, here
I've heard about this person. I hear are so and
So's girlfriend plays bass and so I had a lot
of support for the guys. Really really grateful for that.
I think it could have. I wouldn't be surprised if
I didn't go forward with that whole plan. If I

(47:08):
wasn't getting that kind of validation, I wouldn't be surprised
if it wouldn't have crushed me, but maybe not. Maybe
I was determined enough. So UM, that first band was
a trio. Right around the same time, Doug Psalm, who
was one of my very favorite performers, um he I
would go see him every week. He had a standing

(47:29):
gig and it was really there wasn't like a velvet
rope or a v I P room or anything. You
just everyone was hanging out and he found out that Uh,
I played guitar, and he invited me to sit in
with his band. So I got to play with Doug
Psalm on a stage and it was terrifying. But I
was the most proud I'd ever been. So I felt like, um,

(47:52):
everyone was on my side. You know, I really felt
like everyone was on my side. It was going to happen,
and UM. One thing led to oh, we weren't doing
professional stuff, not really at that point. We were sorry,
I lost your question. We UM. We'd get gigs usually
because of the kindness of guys saying you guys can
open for us, and maybe the first gig was like

(48:14):
six songs, no big deal, cover songs. It wasn't really
writing that many songs by that time. But then my
mom wants to go to England again. So at that
point I decided this is where I'm going to make
it as in England, and I'm seventeen and go off
to England join a band there. Um don't while while

(48:36):
I'm there, punk rock is happening, and I started getting
hip to punk rocks. I didn't know about the precursors
here in America. I was still into my zz top
and my Rolling Stones and stuff I wasn't. I wasn't
following any of the early uh I didn't know who
the m C five were. I didn't know who the
New York Dolls were. I didn't know who John Kale was.

(48:58):
I wasn't real big into lou Reid or the Velvet
Underground except for the radio hits. So I didn't have
any pathway to punk rock till I was in Austin
I mean till in London. Sorry. And when I got
kicked out of that band due to a stomach ache
and then finding someone way better than me, it was

(49:18):
again a crystal moment. It was like, uh ha, not
only do I not have to play as good as
Jeff Beck to start a band and practice for the
next you know, three years, six hours a day and
be like, really profession proficient, I can do this now,
I can do this now. And I went back to Austinson.

(49:39):
I'm going to start the first punk band in Austin.
And that's what I did. And how was the reception?
It was blue people's minds. Uh. We quickly we started
a scene and other bands came quickly in our wake. Uh.
I started that band. The first gig was in January.
Two weeks after seeing this ex Pistols at Randy's RODEOU

(50:02):
did our first gig and by August we were moving
to l A because we were convinced we were going
to make it um. In that time, I had also
seen the Runaways, who I for the first time I
saw that there was this is before I went to England,
you know. I saw, oh, there's other girls in my
age that are doing this. I started feeling this urgency

(50:24):
like I'm not the first one. I'm not the only one.
Uh this this I got to go somewhere else to
really make this happen. So getting to l A and
taking the violators, which we thought we were going to
make it in the in the business, you know, but
you up quite a really dreary, upsetting picture of moving

(50:46):
to l A. You're not twenty one. A friend moves
in with a friend, they go to clubs, your left out.
You have some really rat hole apartment in Hollywood. What
was going through your mind? Then? It was misery? Um.
For one thing, the girl that that I moved out
there where there was three of us in the band,
and one was very responsible, Carla Olsen, and she wasn't

(51:09):
going to move until she had a job because she's
a grown up and I'm a kid. Still, I'm a
kid until I'm thirty basically, so just let's just take
that for assumption. And so she doesn't get a moving
to move until she has a job. My my very
best friend who had started playing with, who I had
been in all my bands with, she basically abandoned me.

(51:30):
She had a fake I du she had a better
apartment she could hang out in, and I was incredibly lonely, um,
very poor. I I have letters, I've seen letters that
I wrote to my mom. I'm begging her for forty
dollars um, probably not getting it. Um. The thing that

(51:50):
that came to me in that time was songs. That
was the first time I pulled out my get and
I had written a couple of stupid songs, but this
was the first time I pulled out my guitar and
wrote a song because I needed to expressed, like the
the external and internal feelings that I was having. And

(52:12):
I was bored. You know, I didn't I didn't have
a TV, I couldn't go out, I didn't have any friends,
I didn't know anybody. So it was actually a really
key moment to discover songwriting in that time. But what
was going through my mind was I was very angry.
I was resentful at my friend. And I also have
like little comic strips that I would write, like I

(52:34):
would write these like these terrible like little comic strips
about me, you know, me saying terrible things and drawing
these little pictures of I mean, I was really angry,
really angry at her. It was I think the first
time I really felt betrayed and abandoned. So you're there,
and how long do you ever think about giving up God? Oh,

(53:00):
that that did never occurred to me. Everything was just
a matter of time. And when Carla came out, you know,
she's got a good job. She we get a good apartment,
and then I've got a mate. I was so reliant
on having like that, that partner. I don't know if
I was capable on my own. It's like I needed
a sidekick, or not a sidekick, that's the that's a

(53:24):
demeaning term. It's I needed a partner. I felt like
I couldn't do it on my own. And starting with Maryland,
the first person I had a band with it, it
set up a pattern that I pretty much stuck with
most of my life, which was, you know, maybe either
not thinking I could do it on my own, or
maybe just feeling like two people. I don't know. I

(53:47):
don't know what it was, but I I needed that.
I don't know how far I would have gone on
my own. Okay, from the moment moved to l A
before the holiday gig with the Go Goes. How long
a period of time is that moved to l A
and Um August of seventy eight, and I'm not in

(54:08):
the Go Goes. I don't play my first gig until
eight nine New Year's Eve nineteen eight, So for two
years I'm in the text tons. Okay, I have I
have a job. I got a job at at a
Transamerica Real Estate Tax service on Beverly and Third, right

(54:29):
across from where the Beverly Center is now. And it
was an office job, and Carla let me borrow her
nice clothes so I could turn up to my office job.
And at night we'd go to the Capitol Records Capitol
Records swap meet, which is where everyone hung out and
where you met musicians, and it was it was like

(54:51):
it was, it was the place could be. We did
that every month. We'd drive around and and and the
car with a X pack of beer listening to Rodney
on the Rock. We were just like so keen to
to make it and find out where we fit in
this incredible music scene, this organic, amazing music scene that

(55:13):
just had every band had this character and individuality, and
it really echoed what I'd grown up with in Austin,
where I was used to country honk and to Hano
bands and blues bands and rock and roll bands and
cosmic cowboy. I was like all that stuff. And then
in in l A there's rockabilly bands, and there's the

(55:34):
Blasters and the kind of scrappier punk bands and the
artsy punk bands and the new way of skinny tie
guys and the power pop bands. There was so many,
so much good music, and we just I couldn't wait
to be part of it, could not wait. Okay, so
in those two years you're optimistic, Oh yeah, okay, So

(55:57):
you get the call to sub for the Goes because
their bass player can't do it. Do you see this
as a giant opportunity? You say, well, this is just
something to do. Well it was. What happened was I
had quit the text Tones because after uh over a
year or maybe a year and a half, almost two years,

(56:17):
I felt like we weren't moving up the ranks as
quickly as like the plim Souls were, and other bands
that seemed to be like The Knack and uh, all
the bands that were our peers were seemed to be
moving forward and we weren't, and we had opportunities. Cool
things happened. I mean, l A was like this, this
constant carrot dangling in front of you, and it was

(56:39):
just around the corner and anything could happen, and sometimes
anything did happen. But I just thought I started to
feel like it was two bands and one so I
had quit. I was out of the text Tones and
it was the first time since I had been sixteen really,
And I say that like at some lifetime, but it
feels like a lifetime back then. Yeah. It was the

(57:01):
first time in four years that I hadn't been in
a band, and I was really at loose ends and
I didn't have that partner that I had relied on,
and I was like, well, what am I gonna do? Well,
phil Seymour is going to do my song, and I'll
just do something and I'll put a new band together.
But I was kind of like, for the first time
a little bit like, well, what's going to happen here?

(57:22):
And that's when I ran into Charlotte from the Go
Gos and I was at the whiskey and she um
approached me and I knew who the Go Goes were.
They were popular by then. They they had The first
time I saw them, I dismissed them. I thought they
were amateurs. I wasn't mean about it. I like seeing
women in bands, but I just said they got a

(57:43):
ways to go. I thought I was a season pro.
Fast forward a year and a half later, they've played probably,
you know, at least a hundred gigs um, and they've
gone to England and they've got a drummer that kicks ass,
and they're a very different band, so I'm aware that
they're not the same band that I kind of dismissed

(58:03):
when I first got there. But um, when when Charlotte
asked me and she approached me, they knew who I was,
and she just said, could you play bass? I know
you play guitar, but you could you play bass? Do
you play bass? Um? Because our bass player is sick
and we have some shows lined up? And man did
they ever? They had four nights, two shows a night

(58:24):
at the Whiskey happening in six days. I mean it
was six days, not even six days. Yeah, yeah, six days.
So when I look back, it's kind of crazy that
they had waited that long to start getting their sub
lined up. But at the at that moment, it was like,
here's something to do. This will be cool. They're popular this,

(58:44):
so yeah, I can play bass. I'll do this. So
I don't think it was like this is my destiny
right away, but it very quickly it became a band
I wanted to join, and that happened as I learned
the songs. Because even though I knew who they were
and I'd watched them take a big step upwardly mobile
step and and their musicianship. I wasn't. I didn't go

(59:08):
to all their gigs. I didn't know what their set
was or what their material was. I knew we got
the beat. So I'm learning their songs and you know,
I'm no dummy. I know what a good song is.
And I was just like, geez, this band has really
good songs. And the more I started learning them and
finding my way around the base and going, hey, this

(59:28):
is pretty cool. I can I can. I can play
bass the way I want to play. I played it
like it was a guitar. I used my pick and
I there was room to do some cool little melodic
things and add to the songs. And when I walked
into the first rehearsal, I just liked them. I liked
the way they looked, I liked the way they dressed.
I felt like I had found kindred spirits people like me,

(59:52):
and I wanted to be in that band from the minute.
From the minute I walked in that room, I thought
it was. It was. I never wanted anything more. How
do they ultimately give you the green light? Well, I
think there was. It says a super there's a very
volatile and very uh tangible chemistry to the go goes.

(01:00:16):
It's still there. You know if we if we are
in a room together, the air changes. I means we
we all change a little and we become this other entity.
And it was evident from the beginning there was a chemistry.
But also I'm a good musician. I played really well,
and I you know, I I was aware of feel

(01:00:38):
and and and and I just kind of instinctively knew
how to do really good at that job. And um,
they liked me. They liked me, and as as happens
in bands, you know, they they were at a bit
of a crossroads with their bass player. She was a
finding a founding member. But I think there had been

(01:01:00):
some I think there'd been a little bit of strife
between her and the other members. So I think I
think it was just probably like when a couple like
they don't like each other anymore, but then somebody else
has to come along to give you the courage to
like move on. I think it was like that. It
was like I was like the motel playing that they

(01:01:21):
decided to run off with. And so how long after
you played those gigs was it clear that someone was
going to light the rocket for the Go Goes. Well,
it wasn't very clear at first, um because even though
like we started, we once I was and they asked
me to join within probably about ten days. The day

(01:01:43):
after the engagement ended, there was a thing in the
The l A Times that mentioned me, and then there
was a story the next day why can't the Go
Goes get a record deal? And they mentioned me. So
I'm like going, okay, I'm in the press already with
this band, in association with this band. It's just when
are they going to ask me? When are they gonna
ask It happened very quickly. I said, I I want

(01:02:06):
this really badly, but I want to be one of
the songwriters. They were happy to have a songwriter joined
the band as well. Um. But then it was just
back down to business. It was like doing gigs. I
think two weeks later we had a show at the Roxy,
we did a show in San Diego. Was just business
as usual. Our manager Ginger uh Oh. And the other

(01:02:26):
thing was I had gone on unemployment and as soon
as I became a regular member, I found out that
the Go Goes. This was the first time I'd ever
seen anything like this, But the Go Go's got forty
dollars a week Ginger, they had a bank account and
everybody got forty dollars a week. And I was getting
my unemployment check, and I was living for free in
Catherine Sebastian's house up on Sunset Plaza. So I thought

(01:02:48):
I had arrived, just so you understand to me, this
was I had made it. I had made it. You know,
I'm living in the Hollywood Hills, I know rock stars,
and I don't have to work, and I'm in a
great band, So that it's done. Deal uh so um.
But she went out and she would report back to us.

(01:03:10):
I went back to I wish I could remember some
of the people. I wish I could remember who were
the label people she was meeting with. It would be
it would be interesting to to to h out some names. Anyway,
she was told by all of them, we can see
that the band is popular. We can see that they
have a good following. But there's never been a successful

(01:03:33):
all female band, never been one pass. She has letters,
she has letters where they pass. Um. So I think
we had our biggest show. It was. It was just
growing so quickly. And when I mean growing, this is
before there's a record deal I'm talking like whiskey Roxy.
And then we have a gig at Perkins Palace, which

(01:03:54):
is in Pasadena and it's probably a thousand and cedar theater.
Maybe I'm wrong, but it was a little bit bigger
than that, actually was it. So we have this gig
and Um at the Roxy, Miles had come, Miles Copeland
had come, and he started just pursuing Ginger, pursuing her,
and she she um went back to the labels, went

(01:04:19):
back again because she thought maybe it's that thing when
you have it just takes one person to interested and
then they'll fall in line. But they still didn't. So
Miles was the only only only hope we had, and
we we agreed to signing with I R S after
going to I R S Records and meeting Jay Boberg
and John Guinary and all the staff there were just

(01:04:42):
they were so earnest and and sincere and loved the
go goes, and it wasn't like we had many choices.
So we signed with Miles on April Fool's Day night,
and we left the next day to record our album
in New York with Richard god Her. Okay, so this

(01:05:06):
happens very quickly, there's a whirlwind and actually it ends
pretty quickly too. What was it like being at the
eye of the hurricane. Well, it was you know I
talked about feeling like I'd made it when I was
getting forty bucks a week. Well, that was just this

(01:05:26):
sense that I kept having over and over again on
a bigger, deeper, more profound, explosive way, like, Oh, we
got a record deal that I had never thought about.
When I thought about making it in the business, I
didn't really think about what the steps were. It was
just kind of making it. Um. Of course I'd seen

(01:05:48):
other bands get record deals, and I knew that that
was the end goal. But also just not having a
freaking job was a pretty big end goal. That wasn't
like not being a musician. So um, when we got
the record deal, mind blown. The biggest The biggest thing
in the world to me was going to record in
New York City. I mean I couldn't believe I would

(01:06:11):
be in a hotel room for weeks, if not months,
in New York City making an album with my best friends.
And I, like you said, I'd only been in the band. Um,
let's see January from Ary March four months, so we
were on a honeymoon. We were like newlyweds. We were
in this band. I felt like it was it was

(01:06:34):
an adolescence. You know, it wasn't a hurricane at all.
It was a hurricane of of wonder and getting Oh,
I just felt like I'm getting what's mine. Finally that
felt like all the all the crappy adolescence I didn't
get to have I got to have as a go
go in New York City making this amazing album, and uh,

(01:06:55):
it was one of the best periods of my life.
I don't think I realized untill I wrote about it.
How just a fema rail it was. I said that wrong,
but it was just like this, like this great thing.
I loved writing about it. I loved capturing that what
it felt like. And um, from there, Yeah, it wasn't

(01:07:17):
a hurricane until uh, it just didn't stop, you know,
one thing after the next, just one thing after next
for for several years. It just you know, the first
time it slowed down, I was I started that having
that like fear and lost, Like I think we took
eight months off because we started having some problems and

(01:07:39):
oh my god, like eight months like we're not touring,
we're not recording an album, We're not playing shows. Uh
I was lost by that time, I was completely absorbed.
An Kathy Valentine had existed prior to being a Go
Go was obliterated. Um, I was lost. So I think
that was when it started feeling a little bit like

(01:08:00):
a hurricane when you're lost to yourself. Right, Okay, Now
there's a lot of rep about the Go Goes and
you're really the first female band to be on the road.
Supposedly there was a lot of debauchery and the Go
Goes there was a lot of drug use, et cetera.
What was it like being a memory being on the
road with the band? Well, I figured out fairly quickly that, um,

(01:08:27):
that it was better to start drinking after the show.
I was young, because so I had I was pretty,
you know, I hearty peasant stock and uh I had
the constitution that could take it. And I was, you know,
twenty two years old, so and it was the eighties
and I had been drinking for quite a while, so

(01:08:49):
it was just par for the course. To me. It
was just like, you know, that's what everybody does, uh,
they drink. You know, if I had been in college,
I would have been drinking probably just as much at
twenty two years sold. So it was just kind of
the difference was that, uh, I didn't have it didn't
interfere with what I had to do if I if
I woke up in the morning, Yeah it might suck

(01:09:11):
to go do some interviews or go to a radio station,
especially like those really early ones, that might suck, but
you could still be really hungover and then fall fall
into your bonk or fall into your hotel room, get
a nap, and go on stage and have a great
time and then you know, rinse and repeat. So uh,
for me, the drugs were mainly cocaine. I didn't like

(01:09:32):
other drugs And the only reason I like cocaine was
it meant that I could my capacity for drinking it
was was enhanced. So I mean, if I didn't get
a little buzzed from drinking, I I wasn't going to
go just for the heck of it. Do drugs that
that they were just a tool to to uh make
me a better alcoholic. So um, it was just kind

(01:09:54):
of I didn't see anybody doing anything different, not in
my world. That's what my friends were doing, that's what
my bandmates were doing. That's what that's what all the
other bands were doing. Guys were doing a contributing factor
to the UH breakup of the Go Goes. I would
say they were. But by the time it was a breakup,

(01:10:17):
we had, UM, we had a key member who was
strung out on heroin and UH was barely functioning and
was probably going to die if she didn't go into rehab,
a key creative member. And I'm talking about Charlotte. And
I can say that because she's documented it herself very

(01:10:38):
very well. UM. But so that's a big thing. And
I would say it was not so much that it
was the drinking. It's just that what the drinking does.
And I can only speak for myself. I was a
stunted emotional human being. I had the emotional maturity of
a of a fifteen year old. You don't up when

(01:11:00):
you when you're squishing all your feelings down and pushing
them off to the side and and shoving him away.
That that's not how you grow up. You grow up
by by by dealing with stuff. And I wasn't dealing
with a lot of big stuff. So you take that
factor that you're an immature person that's incapable of having
empathy or compassion for for people all I know how

(01:11:22):
to do. And it's a very I'm a very lost
sad person. But how do you deal with that? You
don't walk around feeling like a lost sad person. You
dial up how fun how much fun you're having? And
I was funny and I was having a good time,
and I was a party girl. So that's how I
balanced that out and didn't face it. I was a

(01:11:43):
sad sack, you know, basically a drunken sad sack. Was like,
you can't be if you're just like the life of
the party. So I'm emotionally stunted. I'm also um gotten
to the point where I'm motivated by two things, which
is desperation and fear. And you have to understand, Bob,
that this was more by this time than a than

(01:12:04):
a the culmination of my dream to make it in
the business. Sure I wanted that. Sure I wanted to
be in a band. All I ever wanted was to
be in a band. But I was trained from I
was ingrained to to take care of myself, and this
was how I was going to take care of myself.
This is how not only me, but I'm taking care
of my mom by now and paying her bills. I

(01:12:26):
bought her a place to live. I'm sending her money
to live off. So I'm the caretaker of her. I'm
the caretaker of me. And if anything is going to
threaten that my survival, that's my survival. I was, um uh,
really protective of it. And it's not That's not what
being in a band is about. It's not like dealing
with a band member who's like driven by fear and

(01:12:49):
desperation to keep it and anything that threatened it. Like
you know, Charlotte's got a drug problem, and I'm like, no, no,
she's fine, she's fine. You know, we wrote crappy songs
for the next record. No no, they're good. We only
sold five thousand of the third record. No no, that's great.
If it was the first record, we'd be happy with it.

(01:13:11):
I was like this constant uh cheerleader, spending spending the
things to make it okay and make people out. It
was really hard work, hard hard work. So yes, they
had to effect. Drugs and alcohol had an effect, but
I think more than that, it's what it does to
you as a person, um and as people. We we

(01:13:34):
didn't know how to problem solve. We didn't know how
to deal with each other's feelings. We didn't know how
to um see what maybe somebody needs, like you know,
that makes them feel good about being in the band.
You know, like how if you're in a good band
and it's a chemistry and it's working, and you're selling
records and people dig your band, it's just crazy not

(01:13:55):
to kind of make sure everybody's getting a little piece
of what they need to stay wanting to do it.
You know, it's crazy. Do you think the fact that
you were the last edition in the band ultimately left
you out when the band disintegrated. No, I wasn't left out.
Gina and I were the ones that were kicking that
were devastated. She was just as devastated by me. No

(01:14:19):
I was. I was. I was as solid a band
member as anybody. I mean, I was. We we started
out and you know, we didn't have a record deal.
We started out in that van, that horrible van. I
think UM and plus I brought in a lot of
musicianship and songs that that were crucial as we went on.

(01:14:40):
There were no songs, you know, when it came time
to do the second record, none at all, not only that,
but I had UM. I had like a sense about
the business that other people weren't thinking about. So I
was the one that was, you know, kind of a
pain in the ass, always saying, this isn't right, you guys,
this isn't right. I don't know about this UM trying

(01:15:02):
to make things fair, you know, like if so and
so only has one song or a partial song, let's
make that the B side of the single, so that
they can get some extra money. I was always trying
to be the diplomat and make it so everyone was happy.
I don't think it had anything to do with it
me being the last person in the band, because once

(01:15:23):
I joined, it was the solidified lineup and that was
the chemistry. That was the chemistry more than anything else.
So Jane leaves and was that really the beginning of
the band? Could the band of survived without Jane? Really?
I don't think so, because it was based on chemistry.
But at the time everyone was so unhappy, and like

(01:15:45):
I said, I couldn't I couldn't fathom anything, uh, I mean,
part of it was very logical. I was just like
one in a million gets to this point, is you'd
be crazy to let this go so as a just
a mode of survival. I'm like, maybe this will be
a new chapter. I My template was the Rolling Stones,

(01:16:07):
you know. I wanted to be in a band that
that did twenty albums over decades that um evolved and
grew and changed and maybe they had a dud one
here and there, but or a dud single, but they
always came back with something that you liked. That was
my template. And I I just thought, okay, we're just
this is like you know, Brian or mc taylor or

(01:16:28):
somebody is just a change in lineup and we're going
to go on and it's a new chapter. And um,
but it was, as I wrote in the book, I
didn't see that. That was like the thing I had
been fighting so hard to keep was had kind of
splintered beyond repair right in front of my eyes. I didn't.
I didn't realize that. But it was the beginning of
the end. And then when Linda left and Charlotte ultimately

(01:16:52):
went with Or, did you feel betrayed? Yeah? I felt
betrayed because we we got a new person. I moved
to guitar, which was my little agenda. Once Jane left,
I was like, oh good, I can go back to guitar,
which is what I should be doing because that's what
I do best. And uh so I got my little
agenda in there, and we got a bass player, and

(01:17:14):
uh we play this massive concert in in Rio called
Rock and Rio to like something like three dred thousand people,
and I'm just like, Okay, this is proof, this is proof.
We we're gonna we have a new chapter. We're gonna
make it. But instead, um, Charlotte hit her bottom there
and ended up going into rehab. And so what I'm

(01:17:35):
thinking is like, oh good, now we're going to have
our fully functioning person back and we'll really start the chapter.
And Mike Chapman had signed on to do the fourth album,
which I thought, this is this is how you launch
a new chapter. As with Chapman producing the record, this
is how you do it. To me, it was like,
but there was just something about Charlotte and Belinda that

(01:17:57):
they I could They're like they're like talking or I
don't know. I just felt like, why aren't they weren't
they excited? Weren't they excited about this record? Why is
Charlotte not all like happy to be out of rehab
and being in the band again. I mean I was
really really immature and focused on myself, and so yeah,

(01:18:17):
I was. I felt really betrayed. Gina and I both did.
Gina was we were like minded people. We we were
hard workers. We'd come out there to make it in
a band. And we both said when they broke up
the band, we said, this is insane. You know, go
go off for a year, go make your solo album,
Go do your thing, do what you want. But why

(01:18:38):
break up the band? And the manager that was overseeing us,
I was like, why are you letting this happen? You know,
why are you letting this happen? Just tell them to
get our solo deal, let her go make a record.
This is stupid. I just didn't understand it. Okay, So
ultimately the band UH does break up or disintegrate. You

(01:19:00):
try to make it as a solo artist that is
not working. Mike Chapman is not ultimately interested in the
demos you make. How do you handle this? Emotionally? I
drink and do drugs and UH have a good time
and and just don't accept it. I don't. I just

(01:19:21):
don't acknowledge it. I don't acknowledge anything that's painful or
or frightening, and I just keep thinking, it's a matter
of time. It's just a matter of time. And you know,
the band I put together was good. It was a
good band. Um, I know what a good band is.
I know what chemistry is. It wasn't our time. It's

(01:19:42):
so much more that you can't even control. You can
put together a super cool band with charisma and good
songs and great players, but you can't put together timing
and the zeitgeist of of just being in the right
place at the right time. You can't. You can't make
that happen. You can't make MT puts you in people's
living rooms, which is what happened with the Go Goes.

(01:20:03):
The Go Gos might not have launched if it hadn't
been for MTV. You know, that was that was That
was a fluke. There's there's things you can't control. So
nothing's happening. And I'm but I just think if I'm
not don't have a band. If I keep drying and
I keep trying to keep trying, and people were believing
in me. You know, I had some heavy hitters that

(01:20:23):
helped me and supported me. That that kept me thinking, Okay,
maybe you know, maybe this you know, whether it was
Mike Chapman thinking you could do something with me, or
you know, somebody putting up money for for demos, or uh,
you know, a musician, a successful musician hooking me up
with players. It's like there were things happening that that

(01:20:45):
always felt. It's that l a kool aid, you know,
you're just they're thinking that it could happen. It could happen,
but meanwhile, you know, meanwhile it's taking its toll. You know,
I'm I'm muh, I'm not liking myself. I'm finally the
person that I've been I've been just since I was

(01:21:09):
a teenager getting stoned and drunk and being disliked and
that person. It's like it's all there, and it's all
It just gets to a point where I just felt
like I felt beaten down, like I can't seem to
get anything going. But I wasn't gonna stop. I was

(01:21:30):
I was never going to stop. I just couldn't seem
to get but something had to change, something had to change.
So yeah, it was looking back, it was really hard.
But at the time I was just operating, operating, you know,
I didn't know how to do anything else. I couldn't imagine.
Is this what ultimately send you to a Yeah, I

(01:21:54):
I think that I I woke up after a blackout
and I wasn't a black drinker. I I had happened
twice in my drinking. Most of the time I would
end up with a bad hangover, and I certainly was
very lucky that I didn't hurt somebody as a as
a driver who had drank too much. But there was

(01:22:17):
I had a way of because it was so essential
that I couldn't imagine not drinking, that I kept it
as controlled as I could, and I would give up
for like I'm not going to drink for two weeks,
I'm not going to drink for a month, and then
I'm just gonna So is this constant trying to control
it so that I wouldn't have to stop. But one

(01:22:38):
night in New York City blackout, and I woke up
and there was just like the little, the little magic
moment where something pierced through all of the all of
that desperation and denial and just said, you know, something's
got to change, and I don't know how to do it.
I can't make a band happen, and I can't make

(01:22:58):
anything happen. Keep screwing up. You know, I screwed up
my relationship, and I was screwing up opportunities, and not
because I was not showing up, but I just it
just was wasn't happening. And I thought, if I quit drinking,
that's one thing it'll change. That will change, and if
one thing changes, maybe everything will change. So what was

(01:23:22):
the year of the first Go Goes reunion? Okay? So
from two to do you ever have to get have
to get a street job? Nope? I didn't have a
job since nineteen Okay, so you had written vacation. Were
you essentially living on royalties for those ten years? No?

(01:23:45):
The royalties dried up. They dried up. There was nothing,
and I used to pray. I used to like pray like,
oh God, use vacation and a commercial this or that.
I And the other thing was I couldn't seem to
get a publishing deal like everyone else in the band.
Gina Gina the drummer got a publishing deal, and I'm like,

(01:24:07):
what the heck? Why can't I get a publishing deal?
And I remember one guy, Um I went in to
Warno Chapel and he's like, this is a great catalog.
I'm gonna give you two hundred fifty thou dollars. And
I was like like cloud nine, cloud nine out of
that place. And and then like I didn't hear anything back.

(01:24:28):
And then I started calling. I'm like, what's going on,
and and they like I could hear the secretary like no,
he's not in, and I was just like, wow, you know,
this is just like the stories you hear about. So
I was I was going just going crazy. But what
I did, I had right before the Go Goes, And
this is how much I believe that the Go Goes

(01:24:49):
weren't going to break up. After that Rock and Rio
concert in January of eighty five, I came home and
I bought a house at the top of Sunset Plaza,
and uh, it was two and dollars and it was
the last house on the street and it was all
I could afford. But it was like, had this amazing view.
And so I had that house. Then the band breaks up,

(01:25:12):
and that's part of my my uh freak out is
that I've got this house and I don't have a
job anymore. But what I started doing was um taking
equity out of the first thing I plowed through my
my retirement money where they had set up a little
retirement fund. I plowed through all that because I'm I
me at the beginning, I'm like, it's just a matter

(01:25:32):
of time, and I'm spoiled and I'm grandiose, and I'm okay,
we're gonna rehearse it. S I R and da da
da done. Oh my god. So I just plowed through
all this money, and then I would start refinancing my
house because when I got it, like interest rates people
should take note, were like eleven percent, and then they
started going down and I would refinance the house, I

(01:25:55):
would take out. It never occurred to me that I was,
you know, spending the money that I would make on
the house. So that's how I lived. That's how I lived.
And there was there was probably some royalties here and there, okay,
but you in any event, you weeked it out. When
they say the band is going to get together, everybody's

(01:26:15):
on the same page, everybody's involved, everybody's being called. Yeah.
We started, uh, the we started getting in touch with
each other. And Belinda had been had an enormous success
as a solo artist. Charlotte was kind of her right
hand person, writing songs and I reached out to Charlotte
and after I had four months of sobriety and we

(01:26:40):
we we kindled our friendship. Gina and I had stayed friends.
Um Belinda Uh invited everybody to come sing on one
of her records, and that was the first time we
hung out, and it just felt different. It felt different
to be sober, and I was very grateful to just
get to be around them, because really I just I

(01:27:00):
really missed it, you know, I wanted to make it
in another band, I really did, but I also missed
I missed them. I missed the band. Um the Blenda's
manager approached us about doing a reunion concert, and everybody
was on board, even though she was still in the
middle of having a thriving solo career. She she was agreed,

(01:27:22):
she had agreed. I think we all thought it had
ended in a bad way and this might be a
way to um uh put a nicer bow around that
little package. Okay, So once the band reunites in how
often does it go out after that? Well, they we
did a tour because I r S put out a

(01:27:42):
Greatest Hits record, So we we actually did a tour
in nineteen ninety and I got to do all of
the stuff that we had done. We played on the
TV shows and we played the places and whatnot, and
uh did the press and everything. So I got to
do it sober, which was was really great. But then
we had a falling out again, and we had a
falling out that lasted until it had a lawsuit involved.

(01:28:07):
It was all to do with money and songwriting royalties,
um and stuff like that so um. And then that
got resolved and we got back together because Ted Demi,
the director, wanted to do a film about us and
his wife reached out to us all and I think

(01:28:29):
everyone had email by that time. Email was a big
help because you didn't have to like get on the phone.
Uh So uh, email started getting exchanged in about talking
about this possible movie, and once again we kind of
came back to each other. And a lot of people think, oh,
they just do it for money, and the thing I

(01:28:49):
you know, I certainly done mind making money with the
go Goes anytime. But that's really not what brings us
back together because let's face it, Belinda doesn't need the money,
so she can choose whether the go Goes work or not.
It's really it's really within her power and she does
not need the money when she is open to it.

(01:29:11):
That's when we play. It's really been a lot of
people think that's what happens. But from up until uh
the recent past, you know, we we played pretty regularly. Okay,
So since so you survived on income from the go
goes primarily live touring, you personally, well, I mean I

(01:29:36):
had really cheap rent because because here's the deal. I'm
you know, I was living in the house that I
was gonna marry, uh get married and be in and
when we broke up, the house had gone down in
value from the crash, and uh so I was just
paying rand. I got some roommates. I mean, I drove

(01:29:58):
an old El Dorado and I was paying four hundred
bucks a month. You know, I didn't need a lot
of money. I really didn't need, and I made some
good investments. That's another thing. I finally took my little
nest egg and made a couple of good investments. And um,
you know, I just I cut my Michael, when I
say I cut my cloth to fit my scissors or

(01:30:18):
whatever the heck that thing is, I I lived. Okay,
So let's let's say right now, you never earned another dollar.
Do you have enough money to get to the end.
I don't know, depends what kind of and you want.
I mean, uh yeah, I mean I I could go live.
I like more, I would like more. But I think so.
I think I do because I'm pretty well invested. And

(01:30:41):
I lost some money in this last crash, but my
house went up in value, so it kind of went
up and down. Uh some years, vacation just brings in
a windfall, you know, some years, and uh, you know,
I've been really blessed. You know, I had a wonderful
marriage for seven years. And uh so I don't have
to worry about paying for my daughter's college because her dad,

(01:31:05):
you know, is going to do that. So I've been
really lucky. I've I've always managed to get even when
I was poor growing up, there was always enough. I've
never really worried about money too much. I don't. I
just don't think about it that much. I just there
always seems to be enough, and if there's not, I
just kind of scale down. I mean, for years, like
I said, I drove an old. I drove an old
El Dorado, and I lived in a cool little house

(01:31:27):
with cheap rent and I was happy. Okay, Now there
was this lawsuit where they seem to want to kick
you out of the bean one more time in the
last decade. What was that about? What was that about?
That started? Okay? I feel like there should be a
little context that nobody really thinks about that it's been
People reduce it down to this thing like she she

(01:31:49):
quit and sued the band, and that's really not the story. Uh. Basically,
there had been a lot of dysfunction and and and
strife and resentment, and other people had been in the
hot seat and had been it had been discussed to
kick other people out. And I'm not going to go
into too who and names and what, but but I

(01:32:11):
was not the first person. I was just the one
that actually worked on So what happened was I a
tour and they were a couple of people were mad
at me anyway, because I had done this Twitter memoir
and they didn't like it. I took it down. I cried,
I said, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt anybody
very sincere. I don't mean to rush over it like
like it was meaningless. It was a horrible time, but

(01:32:35):
I thought it was I thought it was water under
the bridge, but it wasn't. Sometimes people you know, didn't
take much to pick the scab off, and then it's
a gaping wound again. So when I broke my wrist
and had to miss a tour, uh, I got on
the hot seat. Just stop one second. Was the was
the corporation while these bands are incorporated such that even

(01:32:57):
though you did not go on the road, did you
share an any of the revenue? I'm not. I'm not
at liberty to disclose that, Okay, So in any event
you break your risk, you don't go on down the road. Continue. Well,
well that when I broke my wrist. Yeah, anytime somebody
was out for for and it had happened a few
times when I was pregnant, someone took my place for

(01:33:19):
a handful of shows when Charlotte was pregnant, Vicky Peterson
from the Bengal. So we had president that if you
couldn't perform, you got your equal share as a member
of the corporation. And I could just freaking fall down
and worship at the business manager's feet. That set up
that corporation. So thank god we had it saved me.

(01:33:40):
But um, so we had a president, I I fall
break my risk the President's in place where the tour
goes on without me, and yes, I'm getting my equal share.
You you pay your substitute out of your equal share.
What what happened though, was the being away and out
of the picture and the dysfunction and the demonizing and

(01:34:04):
by from August to January, I was completely cut out
and uh, nobody would speak to me, and I knew
it was bad. Um. Fortunately, my my ex husband is
also my best friend is a litigation attorney. And I said,
from the minute it started happening, I said, something bad

(01:34:25):
is happening. You know, I think they're going to try
to kick me out. So I had a lot of
legal advice from the beginning of how to conduct myself
and two that would be advantageous. And when they fired me,
it was kind of like, okay, I was. I was
really devastated and hurt that they I couldn't even go

(01:34:49):
talk to everybody. And I kept saying, I begged, I begged,
I said, can I come and hang out and let's
talk this out? And and I was rejected to do that.
It was one of the most careful experiences of my life.
But um, the thing that went wrong was to start
a new corporation, Like I would have just said, Okay,

(01:35:09):
you don't like me anymore, let's figure out how to
do this. You know, either either guys are going to
retire soon or let's figure out how to do this
in a fair way. But that isn't what happened that.
What happened instead was another corporation was was was created
and the name was licensed to that corporation so that

(01:35:29):
I could uh supposedly legally be cut out. And at
that point my legal advice was you you don't that's
not that's not something that is is uh can be done.
You know, partners can't do that to another partner. So
that was the legal action and it was not anything
that I relished doing at all. It was protecting thirty

(01:35:52):
five years of building a business interest in protecting that.
So that was a horrible. But what was more horrible was,
you know, having to be the subject of of very
uh horrible that the legal advice that that the legal
people they had were just hell bent on destroying me.

(01:36:15):
And you know, luckily I had the cavalry and I
just kind of um got through it. And it was painful,
and I don't really like talking about this at all,
as you can tell. But but I will say that
there was a silver lining. There was an enormous and
sometimes the best gifts come in the most hideous, disgusting,

(01:36:37):
ugly packages. But I gotta tell you, being home with
my daughter for the next five years from the age
of nine to fourteen or whatever it was, it was
five years nine nine to fourteen, Uh was fantastic. Some
thing's happened in my life that wouldn't have happened if
I had been doing that. And I'll tell you I

(01:36:58):
wasn't happy in that band at that point. I wasn't
happy and I was actually kind of glad not to
be doing it. I felt that it was a really
toxic and dysfunctional band, and I was I was glad
not to be doing it, but I still liked everybody.
I want to say that there was times where I

(01:37:19):
really saw who I was in that period. And I
think when we anytime we go through something that's horrible
and and terrible sometimes or difficult, that's when you really
do see who you are. And one of the there
was a lot of things that showed me who I
was in that time, and I ended up being really
proud of how I conducted myself and who I was,

(01:37:41):
how I felt because I didn't hate anybody. I didn't
hate them. How long from the moment they went on
tour without you until the lawsuit was settled. Um, the
lawsuits started, like I would think, it was filed and
May of of twelve we settled. I think by they

(01:38:03):
did a tour in twelve, they did one in fourteen,
I think they did. I think they did four tours
without me, maybe three, three or four tours. Okay, so
where does this leave you now? Does it go back
to the first corporation where you are remembered just like
you were before? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I mean we didn't
have to go to court. We settled and and this

(01:38:25):
the settling. You know, all of our corporate entities were
intact on settling. That's not that's not um what do
they call it. No, that's not that's not nondisclosure stuff.
That's just anyone can look up a corporation. So yeah, yeah,
everything was was good. I mean just okay. After being
out of the band for four years and a number

(01:38:47):
of years and having the lawsuit, did that impact your
relationship with the four other girls? Well? I didn't speak
to them, and then little by little it started thawing out.
Like I think Belinda sent me an email and said
she was sorry and that she wished it hadn't happened
like that, and um, there was a musical that was

(01:39:07):
being underway before I even uh was was kicked out.
And part of my settlement was that I would be
involved that that that I couldn't be cut out of that.
So when there was when there was anything going on
with the musical, I would go and and you know,
we would have to say hi and and UH talk

(01:39:29):
to each other. And little by little I think, Um,
I think there's things I'm not really at liberty to say,
but I think some people came to the realization that
they didn't like what had happened and what they what
they had done, and I certainly didn't like it. But
what happened was the musical was made it to Broadway

(01:39:52):
and the producers wanted to have a show. This was
at the end, it was a beginning of They wanted
a show to um play for all the investors and
key people. And they contacted me and they said, we
want to do a show. We want you to be there,
and I said, that's good. Do they do are they

(01:40:13):
kind of let me play and they said yeah, and
I said, okay, if I can play, And I gotta
tell you, Bob, that was the most That was the
scariest thing I've ever done, was to fly to New
York and show up in that rehearsal room. Oh man,
I was so scared, uh, like what were they going
to be? Like? What were they? And it was this
crazy thing where where it's a it's a very weird

(01:40:37):
bond that we have, like the ugliest, most disgusting, horrible
things can happen, but once we're together, it was just
like something I could see it. I could almost see
it happened. I could see them going, what, well, this
is good. This is how it should be, and it
certainly felt like how it should be to me. And

(01:40:58):
pretty quickly all was right in the world, you know,
pretty quickly after that. Okay, So since the lawsuits been settled,
has there been a tour that you've been involved in? No,
we went um we played the first shows I did
as if like we want you back in the band.
Uh was four nights at the Hollywood Bowl with the

(01:41:18):
l A. Phil. So here's me. I've been playing like
the club down the street for five years and and
then I'm like at the Hollywood Bowl with the Philharmonic
behind me. So I was a little nervous and felt unprepared.
But we did that and we did a few warm
up shows. That was a drag though, because Gina had
had next surgery and was dealing with UH family stuff

(01:41:41):
and couldn't play. So my first time in five years,
and it's not with Gina on the drums. My my
rhythm section mate isn't there. So the exciting thing pre
UH coronavirus was that we were going to go on
tour this summer and all the shows were sold out.
We had some big ones, really big gigs, along with

(01:42:01):
just the regular usual stuff. So huge disappointment. This was
going to be an amazing year. And the documentary happened,
the document um. We did the documentary over two thousand
and eighteen, and some more things happened. In January, I
went to the premier and I've been back in the

(01:42:22):
band for a year at this point, but it's still worse.
There's still levels of of healing and forgiving that that
are still going on, and as women in our sixties,
it's much more than the story of a band. Now
it's it's really the story of well, I guess it
is the story of a band, but it feels like
more than a band when when women are are coming

(01:42:45):
to terms or recognizing what these other people are in
their lives and what they mean. I really I love
everybody in this band, I really really do. We've been
in touch a lot talking about this bad stuff with you.
As you know, I get triggered and it stirs up
and I started feeling really gross. But I can replace

(01:43:07):
it pretty quickly by remembering what it felt like to
hug everybody. After that documentary premiered, and last week it
was supposed to premier at Tribeca and there was going
to be a big announcement from a major theatrical for
a theatrical release, and it's all Corona Away, you know,
along with my book tour. Okay, but didn't the Go

(01:43:28):
Goes go on a farewell tour saying it was the
last tour they did in and I was, I was
so annoyed because I thought, you know, do let me
come on that tour at least? So it was really
I was, Oh, there was two things they did that
was like the biggest ouches of all when I was
not in the band, and one was the farewell tour

(01:43:48):
without me, and one was they got like this private
party thing that that looked really fun and I heard
about it. I was like, ah, so it wasn't like
I was like, I mean, I'm just like a man.
You know. It's well, I guess a relative you personally.
Now Motley Cue recently did this, but they signed in blood.
It's kind of interesting that they did a farewell tour

(01:44:10):
and then you go back on the road. Does anybody
think about the well, I think, um, what they said,
the go go said was we are retiring from touring.
We're not breaking up, We're retiring from touring. We don't
want to do big tours, but if something special comes along,
i e. The Hollywood Bowl with the l A Philharmonic,

(01:44:31):
we what we reserve the right to do special, cool things,
because let's face it, this band has gotten amazing opportunities
in the nineties, stuff that are's not in the public eye.
I mean, we've played for Mohammad Ali and at the
Kennedy Compound, and we've were on a Mardi Grass float
and played at the Superdome. A lot of cool private

(01:44:52):
stuff happens, and so the band wasn't saying we're breaking
up and we're done. They said in we're done touring,
and that was pretty much gonna stick. Except for this
was the release of the documentary constituted a reason to
go out. So as far as I know, nothing will
ever happen again. You know, fans always say why don't

(01:45:13):
you do this? Why don't you that, And it's like, well,
it's not really one person's choice. Collectively, the band has
decided they don't want to tour anymore. Okay, So talking
about you personally, in the hopefully thirty years you have
left on the planet, what would you like to achieve
or what do you foresee? Um, I'm always gonna play
more music, and uh, I like playing in a band.

(01:45:36):
I still like playing in a band. I have an
amazing rock and roll band here in Austin called the
Blue Bonnets, and it's just a cool rock and roll band.
Everybody plays great, very fulfilling on that level. Um, And
but I'm not making a living at it. So what
I'd like to do is right, write more books. Um,

(01:45:57):
I'd like to write a second memoir. I don't know
what else I want to write. I did a pretty
good job with my short stories, and I think I
could handle some fiction. But I'm kind of at that
place where it's always in the back of my head
and I feel like like if I don't do it,
it's like I'm still like where do I start? Where
do I start? And I'm very uh close to getting

(01:46:18):
to that point whereas like you just start anywhere, that's
what you do. You start anywhere, because it's kind of
in the back of my mind all the time. So
I want to write more. I love doing the soundtrack
to my book. I really liked creating music that had
uh a story to go with it that was really
interesting to me. I will continue to do more of that,

(01:46:39):
and I want to move and live other places. I
want to I want to experience living in other places.
And I want to finish my degree to take those
last two classes, and I'll probably do more uh graduate
school because I like going to school. I'd like to
do women's studies. I'd like to do um religious studies.
There's a lot of I think I could just collect.

(01:46:59):
I think like collect master's degrees. That sounds good, or
maybe you become a maybe you become a like Dr. Valentine,
that might be awesome, get a PhD. Right, Well, I
want to reinforce that this is not all I've ever wanted.
Is not a traditional rock memoir. Of what I mean
by that is, yes, it covers all the hotspots, but

(01:47:20):
it's written in a literary fashion. It's just not a
pastiche of the events. And that's one of the things
that stuck out for me and why I wanted to
do this with you, Kathy. But this has been wonderful.
It's really been great hearing all these schools. Until next time,
it's Bob left side.

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Host

Bob Lefsetz

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