- [Narrator] Funding for "Overheard" with Evan Smith is provided in part by Hillco Partners, a Texas government affairs consultancy, Claire and Carl Stuart, and by Laura and John Beckworth, Hobby Family Foundation.
- I'm Evan Smith.
She's a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, who played bass and wrote songs for the Go-Go's, the most successful all female rock band of all time.
She's Kathy Valentine.
This is "Overheard."
(audience applauds) Let's be honest.
Is this about the ability to learn or is this about the experience of not having been taught properly?
How have you avoided what has befallen other nations in Africa.
You could say that he made his own bed, but you caused him to sleep in it.
You saw a problem and over time took it on.
Let's start with the sizzle before we get to the steak.
Are you gonna run for president?
I think I just got an F from you actually.
This is "Overheard."
(audience applauds) Kathy Valentine, welcome.
- Thank you.
- [Evan] It's great to be with you, great to see you.
This is overdue.
- Likewise.
- I wanted to talk to you when this book came out.
Congratulations on the success of your memoir.
- Thank you so much.
- And getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and everything that you've accomplished.
This has been an extraordinary career.
You have so much pride or so much to be proud of, I'm sure.
- Yes, and I feel like I'm just getting started.
I mean, it's like, I don't want that to be it.
- Yeah, well, you're not done.
And there's an enormous amount still to be done.
I wanna go back though and talk about the Go-Go's and I wanna talk about you as a musician.
By my math, you started playing in the Go-Go's more than 40 years ago.
- Yes, I was 21 years old when I joined the band.
- And you had played for some years before that.
In fact, you've been playing in bands probably closer to 50 years.
- Yeah, exactly.
And I started in Austin.
If it wasn't for Austin, I don't think I would've been a musician.
It was just so, it was prevalent and thought I was ready for the big time at age 19.
- Right, moved out to LA in 1978.
- Moved out to LA for my fame and fortune.
Struggled, struggled, struggled, it was so bad, two years.
And then met the Go-Go's and I thought, this is it.
- Well, let's talk about that moment, because to me one of the great things about your story is that night, Christmas night of 1980.
So, let's set the stage for this.
You're living in LA, your mom is living in Austin.
She comes out to LA to see you on Christmas and you exchange presents, and then she turns in.
And you decide to go out to a famous bar in LA on the strip called The Whiskey to see the band X, a great band.
Take it from there because really, if you had not gone out that night we might not be sitting here today.
- Yeah, it's one of my favorite things to consider in life is how everything can change on a certain decision.
And it's like it can really be mind boggling to think what other paths might have opened up.
But yeah, I chose to go out that night and I'd never met the women in the Go-Go's.
In my book, there's some wonderful stories about me first getting there and seeing a very early version of the band and going, "Ah, they got a ways to go."
Two years later, they were happening.
They were popular.
They'd gotten a fantastic drummer.
And as anybody in music will tell you, you are only as good as your drummer.
And so, I go to The Whiskey and I see the lead guitar player, and she goes, "Hi, I'm Charlotte, I play in the Go-Go's."
I'm like, "Yeah, I know who you are."
She goes, "Can you play bass?"
And I was like, "Yeah, yeah, I can do that."
- Funny story, you could not.
- No, I'd never.
(audience chuckles) I could not play bass.
- Right, yeah.
But you said you could, right.
- I could play guitar.
In my mind it's like, two less strings, thicker strings, you know, what's the big deal?
And she gave me the rundown.
"We have eight shows at The Whiskey."
And I'm like, "Whoa, eight shows."
"They're all sold out."
- Starting on New Year's Eve.
- Starting on New Year's Eve.
"We need somebody."
This was like, when I think about it now, like, no band would do this.
But these shows were in a week.
- And let's talk about the replacement, because I think in some ways she's been lost to history.
This is Margo, the bass player of the Go-Go's, who had gotten sick.
- Gotten sick.
And there had been some internal strife.
You know, in bands a lotta times somebody ends up on the hot seat and I guess it was her turn.
But all I knew was that I was asked to do this and it was perfect timing.
I was a little lost, you know, at 21 years old, a little lost.
And I thought, okay.
I mean, I don't know if I've ever maintained such an intense focus ever since, I don't even know.
But for four days I dived in, I had a cassette.
- Pharmaceutically enhanced.
- I had, I had aids, yes.
- You did have some aids, yeah, okay.
- It was pre Adderall, but there were other things.
- Right, yeah, it's rock and roll.
- Yeah, exactly.
It's the '80s, well almost.
Yeah, it is the '80s, beginning of the '80s.
So, yeah.
And as I'm learning the songs off a little cassette player, I just started thinking, this band is good.
This band's like, I wanna stay.
I mean, it was like, you know, I'm ambitious.
I'm very goal oriented.
And it was- - So, you do the eight shows and then they say to you, "Hey, would you stick around and be our bass player," and then you're off.
- Yeah.
- Right at that point.
- Yeah, and I never met the bass player.
I took her place, I never met her.
- Well, these things happen, right?
As you say, it's rock and roll, these things happen.
Bands change, people change and that's it.
- Yeah, and the thing is, I mean, it altered the course of the band.
I mean, having another songwriter, having- - So, let's talk about that because you could not play bass, but you learned how to play bass.
- Mm hmm, I was good.
- You absolutely could write songs.
At that point in 1980, 1981, you had come off of being in a band called the Textones in Los Angeles.
And you had written a few songs for the Textones including "Can't Stop the World" and "Vacation."
- Mm hmm.
- Which did not originate as a Go-Go songs, but you brought them over with you and you and Charlotte worked on those songs.
- Well, we worked on "Vacation."
- On "Vacation" and revised them.
And so, you actually brought over with you some amazing songs that became some of the biggest hits that the band ever recorded.
- Yeah, and songwriting had become important to me in my first months in LA when I felt very abandoned and friendless and I turned to my guitar.
And before that, my focus had been on, I wanna be the best lead guitar player in the world.
You know, I wanted it to be like Jimmy Page and Kathy Valentine.
And that was like my dream.
But when I turned to songwriting to express my loneliness and sadness and spirit like, "Can't Stop the World," it's all so from the heart.
- Right.
- And I think this is one of the reasons these songs have sustained.
They're real, they're authentic.
People they know, they can smell if it's authentic.
- And I think the process of writing songs is so interesting, because I think we all have this glamorous idea of what it's like to be a successful songwriter, and the process that you go through to come up with a great song.
I love the anecdote in your memoir of exactly how "Vacation" came to pass.
So, you are living, it's in that period of time when you've moved to LA but you come back to Austin.
- Yeah, my mom was here.
- Your mom was here.
- So, I've seen Austin change over the years 'cause I kept coming back.
- And you came back to see your mom, but also you went out and saw some music, as the story goes, you went to Raul's.
Anybody who is from Austin or knows Austin is watching the show, that's one of the great clubs of the heyday of Austin.
- Which my band started.
- Your band started.
- Yeah.
- And you met a guy.
- Yeah, and it was just like one of these things where, you know, I was a teenager in the '70s.
There was two routes to go and I took one route, which meant I didn't have relationships that lasted more than, you know, they weren't long.
(Kathy chuckles) (audience chuckles) And so, this was the first time that I like, for a week.
I mean, in my mind it was like months, but like, for a week.
And I felt like I was really seen and liked and appreciated.
And it just kind of stuck with me.
And I got on the airplane and I got the little square napkins and I wrote, I can't seem to get my mind off of you.
Back here at home there's nothing- - Now that I'm away, I wish I'd stayed.
- Wish I'd stayed.
- Which becomes then one of the most famous lyrics of one of the most famous songs in that period of time.
- Yeah, if you had told me on that plane 19 years old, that I would still be making a living off it at 64, I would've like never and probably 'til I drop, you know.
I would've been like (chuckles).
- Right.
I love the fact that in this book you are very clear that you saw yourself when you started out as a musician, as a punk rocker.
And in fact, the Go-Go's, the origins of the band pre Kathy Valentine, they viewed themselves also as coming out of the punk scene.
Right?
This was a very big through line for this band.
- It was and before punk, I was really into the bands, the classic rock bands.
I loved the Faces and the Stones and the Who and the Yardbirds and the Beatles.
Like, that was my- - What a great time to grow up listening to music.
- Yeah, right?
I mean, you always love the music you grew up with.
But that was what I aspired to.
So in my mind, I was years away from being able to be in a band.
You had to be Jeff Beck.
You had to be, you had to be... - Well, you had to be a guy.
- Yeah, that was the other thing.
- Which we're gonna come back to in a second.
- Yes, exactly.
So, when punk rock, I happened to be in London and that was my first taste of punk rock, it was in 1976 or '77, somewhere there.
- Visiting your mom's family?
- Yeah, visiting my family.
And I was like, mm.
And I saw some punk bands.
And when I ended up back in Austin, I was like, "I think I can do this now."
And a year or two later in LA the Go-Go's the same thing.
"All our friends are in bands.
Why can't we do this?"
So, punk rock really leveled the playing field for women, for, you know, minorities, people of color.
- Because it was kind of a come-as-you-are genre wasn't it?
They took you no matter who you were.
Individuals, we respect individuals, right, there was no conformity, that was the opposite of punk.
- Yeah, the whole antithesis was fitting in, you know.
So, the misfits were welcomed.
- But of course, over time, Kathy, one of the tension points in the story of the Go-Go's is when the band really goes from being, you know, an outgrowth of the punk scene to a real pure pop band, or at least the music emerges more on the pop side of the line.
Our perception on the outside that that was a topic of conversation inside the band is probably right, isn't it?
- Well, not really.
I mean, we were all very ambitious.
We wanted hit records, we wanted to tour.
- So, it didn't make a difference?
- Not really, we were just more focused on whether it was a good song, - Punk rock, pop or- - We were disappointed in the sound of the album, which is kind of part of our mythology, but true lore.
Because we wanted to sound like, you know, the Buzzcocks or the Ramones or just like, really... And it was more, as it turns out, timeless.
You hear this stuff on the radio now and you don't go, "Oh, that was obviously recorded in 1981."
- No, it still feels great to listen to it right now.
- So, thank goodness we weren't running the show for the way it sounded.
- You know, speaking of 1981, something significant happened in 1981.
We've talked about this before, and that is the launch of MTV, which was August 1st, 1981.
And I swear, one of the iconic images from the early days of MTV are the five of you in that band on those water skis.
The "Vacation" video, right.
That's an image that is absolutely imprinted on my brain.
Martha Quinn, who was one of the hosts on MTV, said that MTV and the Go-Go's were a match made in heaven.
Hard to argue with that, right?
- Absolutely.
We worked so hard.
Our record came out in June and it took nine months of touring for our first single to crack the top 30.
Nine months of going to radio stations.
And the reason it did was because of MTV.
We were being beamed in people's living rooms.
And the younger set we were, you know, a natural fit for too.
They weren't going to the nightclubs.
We were like playing the, you know, all the punk clubs across the country traveling around in our van.
But young girls, 12 and 13 could turn on their TV and see the Go-Go's.
I mean, I've heard from people, not only women, but all walks, like, "Seeing you on there made me feel like my life could be anything."
- It transformed for a lot of people a sense of what the world out there was like.
- Which is one of the best things I've been hearing ever.
- So, on this question of gender, again.
I've said, most successful all female rock band of all time.
The way you often hear it said is most successful all female band where they all play their own instruments and they all write their own songs.
And I kind of cringe saying it because it feels like it's so qualified that it diminishes you.
- Yeah.
- But the reality is you were pioneers at that time.
It's not wrong to say that you were the outliers as far as that went.
- We wrote our own songs and we played our instruments and it was, there were other bands that did that though.
Bands Fanny, there was bands in the '60s.
My thought when I was growing up was that women in rock and roll, they were either groupies or they were like, watching the guys and going, "Ah!," and freaking out.
- Yeah, right, yeah.
- Like, it didn't occur to me that they were, but they were.
There were young women that would see the Beatles and go start their band.
But we didn't have Google, we didn't have internet, we didn't have, you know, anything, so, I didn't know about them.
One of the things that hurts me is that how many more amazing female bands there would be if we'd had access more teenagers.
I went to England, I saw Suzi Quatro, 1973- - And she was a huge influencer.
- She was huge.
- Right.
- But imagine all the young girls that would've started bands if they had seen.
- Didn't get the same opportunity.
- Yeah.
- But you know, I wanna go back in a moment to Austin in those days, but if you go forward from that point to today, is it that much better?
- No.
- Is it as better as it ought to be as it relates to gender parity or gender equity in rock and roll?
- Well, we're visible.
You go see Beyonce or Harry Styles or Pink and you're gonna see a woman on stage holding her own with a major artist, which I never saw when I was 15 years old.
I didn't see that.
So, young girls, it's like, "Oh, maybe I could be in Harry Styles band one day."
That's what I'd be thinking if I was, you know, 13 years old.
But we didn't have that.
So, that to me is a huge thing.
How many fantastic players and musicians there are.
There aren't as many that are starting bands, which I'm not sure, I think it's an interesting issue.
I mean, there's lots of young ladies that go into college and join sororities because they wanna be part of a sisterhood, but they could join a band.
- Well, that's a sisterhood, right?
Rock and roll's a sisterhood, right?
- Exactly, yeah.
- All right, let's go back to the very beginning.
So, you are the child of an English mom and an American, a Texan dad.
Your dad was from Athens, Texas, also spent some time in Lubbock, right?
- Yes.
- Your parents split up, you stayed in Austin with your mom.
And growing up you were interested, as you say, in music and you played in bands.
Like, this was a playground of sorts for somebody with your interest, the Austin of that era.
We do romanticize things out of proportion with reality, but the Austin of that era was cool.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- Say a few words about that.
- Well, I mean, let's put it this way.
When I was probably 13, I went to a place called the Soap Creek Saloon and saw John Lee Hooker.
I mean, how many 13 year olds get to see John Lee Hooker?
- Right, and then two years later, I think, you played with a band at Soap Creek.
- Yeah, with my little teenage band.
- Childhood band.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, right.
- And you know, I got to see Freddie King and Bobby Blue Bland and, oh, God, I mean, by the time I was a teenager I was just hitting the clubs.
I mean, what the heck.
I mean, they would let me in.
- Right.
We had a bouncer problem in Austin at that stage.
- I guess so.
I mean, it was like Mecca, it was crazy.
- And so, you went to see music, you started bands, and you had the time of your life.
And you and your mom were very close.
You kinda hung out together.
But then at 19, you made the decision, as much as you loved being in Austin for most of those years, except for some travel to go see family overseas, you made the decision that you wanted to take a stab at success in LA?
- Yeah, at that era it seemed like it was New York or LA.
And like, even, you know, even like Doug Sahm and the Thunderbirds and Stevie, they were still very regional at that time.
And so, it seemed like you had to leave.
And we picked LA because it seemed like an easier place to be poor and struggle.
'Cause I thought there would be a little bit of that.
- And you did for awhile, but as you say, eventually things come together.
So, the Go-Go's are actually as a band only together for five years.
You know, we think about the Go-Go's as so present in the conversation around the modern history of rock and roll, but 1980 to 1985, that's it.
There've been some reunions a couple times in the years since?
- Well, actually we were apart from '85 to '90.
We did a tour and put out a record.
We were apart again for three or four years.
And then we basically toured every summer from '95 'til about 2011.
- But you didn't think of yourselves still as an active band?
- No, we did.
- You did?
- Yeah.
I sure did.
- So, in your mind- - I was like, counting on it.
- The story that we all have of the band breaking up in '85 it's just more of a pause.
- Well, there was a break up.
It was a horrible break up, it was devastating to me.
And it was probably the most, the first difficult, it was the biggest loss I'd ever endured.
It was everything to me.
It was not only my dream, it was my surrogate family, my sisters, it was my financial security.
It's how I was, you know, taking care of my mom.
So, it was the whole ball of wax.
And to lose it was just, I mean, plus I'm like, how many bands get to do this?
You know?
- Right.
Well how many bands get to do this at the level of success?
- Yeah, at that level.
- And the visibility.
- So, I just thought it was nuts.
- Was it, I mean, all bands break up for different reasons.
Was it, it stopped being fun, it became too commercial and less about the art, was it we couldn't stand each other?
What was it personal problems?
What was it?
- It was a lot of, it was a lotta things, but I think they can all fall under one big umbrella in that we were all not very emotionally developed.
So, you know, we were kind of stunted.
- You were all pretty young at that time, right?
- We were young and we didn't communicate.
We had no empathy for each other.
It was just like, if it was fun everything was cool.
But if it wasn't fun, we weren't really equipped very well to handle that.
And you know, egos and drugs and alcohol, all that, but it all falls under that one thing of just not being very mature and equipped to handle all of that.
- And there was no adult in the room - No.
- to necessarily guide you all.
- No, no, no, no.
- Right, yeah.
- The poor tour managers, you know?
- Right, kinda go through a series... - Yeah.
- Yeah.
Do you talk to the women in the band now?
- Yeah, yeah.
- You get along well with everybody?
- Yeah, I mean, it's like, I was thinking about it today.
It's like, there's like, there's always, this band for me it's like, it's equal parts the best thing that ever happened to me.
And everything good goes back to having succeeded in the Go-Go's and finding sobriety.
Everything good in my life is 'cause of those two things.
But it's also on the other side of the scale, it's one of the most frustrating things because- - Say more about that.
- Well, because in my mind I wanted to be like the Rolling Stones, where you just go and go and you evolve.
Or U2 where you just keep doing it.
And maybe somebody does a solo record and it bombs and they come running back to the band.
Or maybe, you know, you improve, you get better, you just keep doing it.
And that's what I thought it was supposed to be.
- Of course, the danger is that you keep going on so long that the level of quality drops, only you're the one who doesn't know it.
- Who does that?
- Have you listened to a Rolling Stones record released in the last 10 years?
- Well, they got, there's some here and there.
(audience chuckles) Diehard fan.
- I understand that.
- We'll debate that another time.
- We'll debate that at another time, all right, yeah.
So, in October of '21, you all are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
- Yes.
- How was that?
What must that have been like?
What a small club, a cool club to be in.
- Oh my God, I could go on about that night.
So, it was like, it always mattered to me.
Not because, I don't like those things, but it exists.
So, if it's gonna exist, even though I don't like it, it does, so I wanna be there.
I wanna be in it.
And I also thought we warranted it.
I thought, you know, the reasons that we were given from the gatekeepers, none of them applied to some of our male counterparts.
Oh, they only did three albums.
Well, Iggy and The Stooges or the Sex Pistols, you know.
So, none of the reasons applied.
And I just kept thinking about the template, the punk/pop thing that we were a part of that begat Green Day and Blink 182, and just a whole host, and all the women, like, Hole and Veruca Salt and all the bands of the '90s that grew up seeing us, and it's about influence.
So, we deserved it, I thought.
But I have to say, when we were there and I'm like, watching Carole King go up and then Tina Turner, I started like, sitting there going, "We don't deserve this.
We don't deserve this."
- Yeah, imposter syndrome.
- Oh, God, it was awful.
And like, backstage I'm like, oh my God.
And then Paul McCartney's sitting in the audience and Jay-Z and it was, and we've done some, we did a little period of time where we did these big corporate shows where it's like Muhammad Ali and all these, like, we've done shows where there's like, you just can't even look in the audience 'cause you- - But nothing like this.
- No, this was a little different, yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, it was crazy.
And the band asked me give the speech.
Which was like the honor of my life.
I was so, just so excited.
- From Soap Creek to that, right?
- Yeah, that I got to say it and got to- - Pretty amazing.
- Yeah, it was good.
I liked it and I think I did a great speech.
- I think you did too and you deserved it, and they can never take it away from you.
Once you're in that's it.
So, we just have a couple minutes left.
I wanna roll forward to what happens now for you.
- All right.
- By the time the world sees this interview, what I'm about to say will be public, it's not public yet, but you are about to become the musical director at Zach Scott Theater for a production of "Head Over Heels."
- Yeah.
- The show that was on Broadway in 2018 and 2019, it was kinda like Shakespeare meets the Go-Go's, they're gonna mount a production of this and you're gonna get to be the musical director.
- That's exactly right and not only that, I'm gonna be in the band.
I'm gonna be showing up like a real job.
- You're gonna pick the band members, but you're gonna also play, you're gonna do all that.
- I'm gonna play.
Because I thought, I gotta play bass, you know.
It's not gonna sound like the Go-Go's without... - Without you, of course.
- Yeah.
But it doesn't really need to sound like the Go-Go's, but it needs to sound, I mean, this is Austin.
And Zach Theater they were like, "This is Austin.
When people see a rock musical, it better sound like rock and rock roll."
- Sound like rock music.
- Yeah.
- So, that's about to happen.
So, when is that gonna happen roughly time wise?
- I'll be trapped in Austin all through the month of August.
And basically, it's part of a whole new lifestyle thing.
One of my big things, the book opened a million doors for me.
I have to say, if you're ever lost in life, write a book.
Write a book, 'cause opportunities came to me.
I do speaking now and I do things like, hybrid events where I play some songs, read, engage with the audience.
And one of my biggest messages is what it's like when everything you've defined yourself by is kinda gone.
I'm not really a Go-Go anymore, but I'm still very much a musician and I'm a mom, but I'm not a parent, I don't need to be- - Your daughter's in college.
- Yeah, my daughter's in college.
So, finding your place in the world again in your 60s, when you've always known what you wanna do and you've been very driven, it's an odd thing.
So, I'm kinda hustling for work all the time, so, this gig as the musical director is amazing.
It's challenging and exciting to be a Go-Go in a whole new different way.
- Well, I'm excited to see what comes next, acclaimed author Kathy Valentine.
- Thank you.
- It's great to get to talk to you and to hear all the great stories.
And really again, congratulations on all your success.
We love you and we're pulling for you to do even more.
- Oh God, you're making it hard to move.
(Kathy chuckles) - Kathy Valentine, thanks so much.
- Great.
- Great.
(audience applauds) - Thank you.
(audience applauds) - [Evan] We'd love to have you join us in the studio.
Visit our website at klru.org/overheard to find invitations to interviews, Q&As with our audience and guests and an archive of past episodes.
- When the Go-Go's asked me to join, this is one thing, I wanted to be in the band really bad, but I also knew what was what and I said, "I will only join if I can be one of the songwriters."
And I meant it because I just didn't wanna be in a band where I didn't get to participate in that.
And they were really happy to have another writer.
- [Narrator] Funding for "Overheard" with Evan Smith is provided in part by Hillco Partners, a Texas government affairs consultancy, Claire and Carl Stuart, and by Laura and John Beckworth, Hobby Family Foundation.
(playful flute music)