The Go-Go's are back again, still real, raw and ready for Coachella and Cruel World

Perhaps nary 1 is much excited astir the reunited Go-Go’s upcoming slate of high-profile gigs than Gina Schock. The 67-year-old drummer missed the band’s past large Los Angeles shows — successful 2022 astatine the Crypto.com Arena and a three-night basal astatine the Hollywood Bowl successful 2018 — owed to wellness issues that required country connected her thumb and to fuse 3 vertebrae unneurotic successful her neck, respectively.

Now, however, Schock is steadfast and looking guardant to powering the set done a nine acceptable astatine 1 of their aged haunts, the Roxy, connected April 9, and past April 11 and April 18 astatine the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. After playing dates successful San Francisco and Las Vegas, they’ll wrapper it up astatine the Cruel World festival successful Pasadena connected May 17, making the Go-Go’s 1 of the fewer bands to play the larger, much eclectic and existent Indio, Calif., festival and the ’80s-leaning Pasadena fest successful the aforesaid calendar year.

Their Coachella dates are headlined by Lady Gaga, portion Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds apical the measure astatine Cruel World. It each seems to marque consciousness since the Go-Go’s span the spread betwixt the popular leanings of Gaga and the L.A. punk country that shared akin sensibilities with Cave’s aboriginal enactment with the Birthday Party.

Four-fifths of the set reunited for a rehearsal successful Los Angeles successful mid-February that near Schock pumped up. “I was precise excited to beryllium playing due to the fact that I’ve been practicing for months. I haven’t played with the set for 8 years,” she says via Zoom from San Francisco, her location since 2005.

Over the years, the Go-Go’s person reunited from clip to time. In 2016, they staged what was billed arsenic a farewell tour, leaving the doorway unfastened to occasional aboriginal unrecorded dates, but nary much afloat tours.

The past clip they played a festival comparable to Coachella was successful January 1985 astatine Rock successful Rio successful Brazil, erstwhile the set was connected their past legs aft their incredibly palmy archetypal run. They exploded retired of the Los Angeles nine scene, scored a grounds woody with the then-fledgling IRS Records and topped the medium illustration successful 1982 with their debut album, “Beauty and the Beat,” which blended their punk vigor with popular sensibilities successful the hits “Our Lips Are Sealed” and “We Got the Beat.” Incredibly, it remains the lone medium by an all-female set that plays their ain instruments to apical the Billboard medium chart.

Yet by 1985, aft 2 different palmy albums, 1982’s “Vacation” and 1984’s “Talk Show,” the set was falling isolated owed to jealousy implicit songwriting credits, compensation, substance maltreatment and mismanagement.

Wiedlin, who had a deed collaboration with Sparks connected the opus “Cool Places” successful 1983, near successful October 1984, truthful Valentine slid implicit to guitar and the set recruited Paula Jean Brown to play bass for their 2 sets astatine the Rock successful Rio festival successful Brazil, which drew much than 250,000 radical each day. After those shows, the remainder of the set flew home, but guitarist-songwriter Charlotte Caffey stayed successful Brazil for a week, attempting to enactment done her cause addiction. “It was specified a weird feeling that full week,” Caffey says of that clip successful Rio. “I got home, and I dropped my ain aforesaid disconnected astatine a cause and intoxicant infirmary successful South Pasadena,” she recalls.

Four decades later, she’s inactive sober. “That’s the astir important happening ever that I did successful my life,” she says. “All the radical that worked determination took bets connected who would spell retired first,” she says of the unit astatine the rehab facility. “Of course, I was No. 1, and I’m the lone 1 that stayed sober.”

The astir backstage Go-Go, Caffey isn’t connected societal media similar her bandmates. “The worst imaginable thought successful my caput is having radical pursuing me,” she says successful a Zoom interrogation from her Los Angeles location that she started with her camera off.

“I ever loved penning the songs and performing,” she adds, “but I didn’t emotion each the stuff, similar the fame. I’m not that nationalist person. I emotion looking astatine what the different girls are doing. I find retired erstwhile we’re not moving together. I look astatine their socials and I’m like, ‘Oh, that looks truly fun.’ I’m conscionable much private.”

The Go Go’s are gearing up to execute astatine the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival arsenic good arsenic Cruel World.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

It’s not astonishing that the Go-Go’s usage societal media to support up with each different these days. Caffey, who penned the band’s 1982 No. 2 deed “We Got the Beat,” is the lone set subordinate inactive successful L.A., wherever she lives with her hubby since 1993, Redd Kross guitarist Jeff McDonald. Singer Belinda Carlisle, 66, has lived with her hubby Morgan Mason, a erstwhile governmental advisor and amusement executive, successful Mexico City for 4 years and extracurricular the U.S. since 1994. Valentine precocious relocated to St. Alban, England, adjacent London, portion Wiedlin was surviving connected the large land successful Hawaii but precocious relocated to Berkeley successful hunt of amended attraction for the agelong COVID that has been dogging her for much than a year.

The Go-Go with the astir palmy solo vocation with hits “Heaven Is a Place connected Earth,” “I Get Weak” and “Mad About You,” Carlisle precocious announced unrecorded dates successful Germany, Belgium and the U.K. for fall, aft playing successful Australia and England past year. Yet, she acknowledges she owes it each to the Go-Go’s.

“If it wasn’t for the Go-Go’s, I wouldn’t person a solo career. That’s conscionable a information and I cognize that,” she says successful a Zoom interrogation from Mexico City. “The full communicative of it adjacent happening is thing that I deliberation is extraordinary,” she says of the set she co-founded successful 1978 with Wiedlin and archetypal bassist Margot Olavarria and drummer Elissa Bello. “I’m truly arrogant of that due to the fact that we truly worked hard. The set happened against each odds.”

Perhaps thing sums that up amended than the band’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame successful 2021. Foo Fighters, which see guitarist Pat Smear, different exile from the L.A. punk scene, were besides inducted that year. Before Carlilse joined the Go-Go’s, she had a little stint arsenic the vocalist of the Germs with Smear connected guitar. “I person a representation of me, Jane, Pat Smear and Belinda lasting there,” Caffey says, “And we were looking astatine each different like, ‘You recognize this was ne'er a thought successful our minds backmost then.’”

Caffey past flashes backmost to a representation with Smear and his bandmate, frontman Bobby Pin, who had not yet adopted the caller moniker Darby Crash. They asked her however aged she was. She can’t callback her reply but remembers Smear’s effect backmost successful 1978: “You’re excessively aged to beryllium a punk.”

At 71, Caffey is the oldest Go-Go, but erstwhile she does crook connected her Zoom camera, she has a youthfulness that belies her age. Like many, she says the COVID “lockdown messed with my mind” and she stopped focusing connected euphony for a stretch. Yet playing the Go-Go’s songs successful her downstairs location workplace “has opened up this full originative happening for maine now. I consciousness similar I’m acceptable to make again,” she says.

Over successful the U.K., Valentine, 66, is besides going done a originative renaissance. The songwriter-bassist-guitarist who brought the Go-Go’s the apical 10 deed “Vacation,” is performing arsenic a solo artist. She’s besides started a caller all-star, all-female set with Baseball Project drummer Linda Pitmon, singer-guitarist Brix Smith of the Fall and Pogues bassist-singer Cáit O’Riordan called Psycher, and is getting acceptable to commencement penning a sequel to her acclaimed 2020 publication “All I Ever Wanted: A Rock ‘n’ Roll Memoir.” “I consciousness similar I’m 16 and I’m gonna marque it successful the euphony biz,” she says during a Zoom interview.

She’s besides travel to admit the afloat interaction of the Go-Go’s bequest aft a caller travel to Vienna to sojourn Lenny Kravitz and his guitarist and her erstwhile roommate Craig Ross.  “Lenny was introducing maine to a younger idiosyncratic conscionable going disconnected astir the Go-Go’s. ‘No, you don’t understand. They were the biggest set successful the world!’ And I’m like, ‘No, we weren’t.’ And helium goes, ‘Yes, you were the biggest set successful the world!’ I’m conscionable benignant of ever inactive amazed astatine the taste scope of the Go-Go’s.”

Reached by telephone successful San Francisco, Wiedlin, 66, is besides pleasantly amazed by the renewed involvement and enactment surrounding the set implicit the past decade, including the 2018 Broadway philharmonic “Head Over Heels” featuring their songs and the 2020 debut of the documentary “The Go-Go’s” astatine the Sundance Film Festival, which led to the band’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame successful 2021. “And present Coachella and Cruel World, which I ne'er thought we’d beryllium asked to do,” she says.

Since she’s undergoing attraction for the lingering effects of agelong COVID, Wiedlin was incapable to marque it to the band’s L.A. rehearsal successful precocious February, but has been getting unneurotic to play with chap Bay Area nonmigratory Schock and plans to reunite with the set for rehearsals earlier the Roxy gig.

She, similar different members of the band, is pleased to spot caller acts similar chap L.A.-based all-female rockers the Linda Lindas transportation the torch, and hopes that others originate to support stone ‘n’ rotation alive.

“You person the full improvement of groups that don’t constitute and don’t play instruments, and it’s much astir dancing and looking good,” she says. “That’s fine, but being an older person, I truly admit stone ‘n’ roll, large guitars and radical playing instruments. That’s thing I love, and I would hatred for that to spell distant entirely.”

“I’m precise arrogant of our band,” she adds. “We’ve ne'er utilized backing tracks oregon anything. We’re precise earthy unrecorded and we’re precise real.”