The Go-Go’s, in many ways, were the rock band equivalent of that kid in your high school who got straight As while also regularly ditching class and smoking under the bleachers. It’s easy to forget how exceptional they were because they always maintained a casual air of being scrappy and relatable.
In reality, The Go-Go’s are, to this day, the only all-female band to reach the top of the Billboard album chart while playing their own instruments and writing their own songs. Vocalist Belinda Carlisle, bassist Kathy Valentine, guitarists Charlotte Caffey and Jane Wiedlin, and drummer Gina Schock did that in 1982 with their first album, Beauty and the Beat. It stayed at number one for six weeks, went double platinum in the U.S., and is still considered one of the most successful debuts of all time. In October, the band was finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Schock marked the event by releasing a book of her photos documenting the band’s history.
If you’ve seen that book, Made In Hollywood: All Access with the Go-Go’s, you already know that Schock’s photos are amazing. They’re funny and gritty and honest. They’re images of the band at their most beautiful and their most disheveled. These are shots of The Go-Go’s clowning around, doing blow, goofing off, and scowling from the back of the van. And together, they provide a perfect snapshot of five women boldly going where few women had gone before.
As Valentine notes in the foreword: “It’s one thing to casually take pictures; it’s another thing altogether when the photographer is one of you … It’s the photos, from behind the scenes, that tell the most evocative accounts.”
To celebrate the book and the band, Saint Joseph’s Art Society—a converted Catholic church refurbished, luxuriantly, by designer Ken Fulk—is exhibiting Gina Schock: Made in Hollywood. But the way Schock’s work is presented in the space only serves to minimize it, the way that so many have minimized the work of The Go-Go’s before.
