Earlier this year I read the Belinda Carlisle biography. Click here for the book. This was my response.
I love the Go-Go's, who doesn't? I also love punk rock and reading about both the participants in the subculture and about the art and music it spawned. Although I realized that Belinda Carlisle left her punk rock roots many decades ago I kind of hoped she would have kept some of that punk rock credibility and honesty. This memoir is about Belinda and her decades long dance with cocaine and excess. She lied, scammed, cheated, and was a downright shitty human. Her child was always a secondary consideration in the book, as was her husband. Her pronouncements that the relationship, ''while unconventional'', works for them got to be really old. The book was interesting for the first third maybe, and then ceased to hold my attention. I wanted to finish as quickly as possible.
Issues I had that could have been addressed were manifold. The thing that perplexed me the most was the lack of detail she paid to any relationships other than the one she had with cocaine. How about how she really felt about the fellow members of the Go-Go's, how they grew from girls to women, her family of origin.....did she never interact with them after she became famous, her biological dad....did she talk to him again ever?
Instead I got lunches with Deepak Chopra, let's buy Prada, move to the south of France, wash our dirty feet in five star hotels in India.........
I love music and biography in general. In this case I wish I knew less of Belinda, or maybe it's that I want to know more about her feelings; not a glossy, I was an addict pity party commentary. I think these people who life seems to hand out the golden ticket to, always seem to wallow in the dirt of their own making. We all had shitty childhoods to some extent, you went on to make millions and snort cocaine, and all the others work in factories making plastic key-chains listening to your albums maybe hoping to have one small weekend getaway to some fantastical place you visit on a regular basis. If you are handed a golden ticket don't waste it. Belinda, unfortunately seems to have wasted hers to some extent.
I love the Go-Go's, who doesn't? I also love punk rock and reading about both the participants in the subculture and about the art and music it spawned. Although I realized that Belinda Carlisle left her punk rock roots many decades ago I kind of hoped she would have kept some of that punk rock credibility and honesty. This memoir is about Belinda and her decades long dance with cocaine and excess. She lied, scammed, cheated, and was a downright shitty human. Her child was always a secondary consideration in the book, as was her husband. Her pronouncements that the relationship, ''while unconventional'', works for them got to be really old. The book was interesting for the first third maybe, and then ceased to hold my attention. I wanted to finish as quickly as possible.
Issues I had that could have been addressed were manifold. The thing that perplexed me the most was the lack of detail she paid to any relationships other than the one she had with cocaine. How about how she really felt about the fellow members of the Go-Go's, how they grew from girls to women, her family of origin.....did she never interact with them after she became famous, her biological dad....did she talk to him again ever?
Instead I got lunches with Deepak Chopra, let's buy Prada, move to the south of France, wash our dirty feet in five star hotels in India.........
I love music and biography in general. In this case I wish I knew less of Belinda, or maybe it's that I want to know more about her feelings; not a glossy, I was an addict pity party commentary. I think these people who life seems to hand out the golden ticket to, always seem to wallow in the dirt of their own making. We all had shitty childhoods to some extent, you went on to make millions and snort cocaine, and all the others work in factories making plastic key-chains listening to your albums maybe hoping to have one small weekend getaway to some fantastical place you visit on a regular basis. If you are handed a golden ticket don't waste it. Belinda, unfortunately seems to have wasted hers to some extent.
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