According to Germs guitarist Pat Smear, upon quitting, she introduced her friend, Donna Rhia, who became her replacement. However, her time in the band was short owing to her contracting mononucleosis, and she never recorded or performed live with the Germs. She was recruited into the band by Lorna Doom, whom she had met in an art class while a student at Newbury Park High School. Ĭarlisle's first venture into music was in 1977 as drummer for the punk rock band the Germs, under the name Dottie Danger. There's no question he was a genius and way ahead of his time.Ĭarlisle on Darby Crash and her early years in the Los Angeles music scene. But he was a genius and an amazing lyricist. was always with the heroin people, and I was always with the hallucinogenic crowd. punk scene between the acid people and the opiate people. At the age of 19, Carlisle left home to pursue a career in music. She took night classes attending beauty college, but dropped out in the first year. you name it, I'd try it." After high school, Carlisle worked at a House of Fabrics store, and as a photocopier clerk at the Hilton Hotels Corporation in Los Angeles at age 18. "I ran away from home, smoked pot, dropped acid . During her teenage years, Carlisle became rebellious: "By the time I hit fourteen, I'd gone really wild," she said. The family relocated again during Carlisle's adolescence, this time to Thousand Oaks, California she attended Colina Junior High School in Thousand Oaks, where she was a 3rd-string guard on the men's basketball team, and later Newbury Park High School, where she was a cheerleader.
At age ten, Carlisle began to express interest in music, and recalled the Beach Boys, Cat Stevens, the Stylistics, and the Animals as being early musical influences. The family moved frequently during her childhood, from Simi Valley to Reseda, before settling in Burbank when Carlisle was seven years old. Her mother later remarried Walt Kurczeski, who Carlisle says was an alcoholic, and with whom she had a tumultuous relationship. In an interview with Slash magazine, she described herself as a reject from a Southern Baptist household. As a teenager, she recalled owning "like, two outfits." According to Carlisle, her mother was very religious, while her father was not. When she was five years old, Carlisle's father abandoned their family, and she has stated that she spent most of her childhood impoverished. Carlisle was the first of seven siblings she has three brothers and three sisters. She was named after her mother's favorite film, Johnny Belinda (1948). Her mother met her father, who was 20 years her senior, at age 18, and Carlisle was born nine months later. īelinda Jo Carlisle was born in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, on Aug to Harold Carlisle, a gas station employee, and his wife, Joanne (née Thompson), a homemaker. She and the band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021. In 2011, Carlisle, as a member of the Go-Go's, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The Go-Go's reformed in 1999, and Carlisle continues to perform with them regularly while also maintaining her solo career.Ĭarlisle's autobiography, Lips Unsealed, published in June 2010, was a New York Times Best Seller and received favorable reviews. Īfter the dissolution of the Go-Go's in 1985, Carlisle went on to have a successful solo career with radio hits such as " Mad About You", " I Get Weak", " Circle in the Sand", " Leave a Light On", and " Heaven Is a Place on Earth". The Go-Go's have sold over seven million records worldwide. The Go-Go's were the first (and to date only) all-female band in history who wrote their own songs and played their own instruments to achieve a No. 1 album. With their chart-topping debut release Beauty and the Beat in 1981, the group helped popularize new wave music in the United States. Raised in Southern California, Carlisle became the lead singer of the Go-Go's after the band's formation in 1978. She gained fame as the lead singer of the Go-Go's, the most successful all-female rock band of all time, and went on to have a prolific career as a solo artist. Belinda Jo Carlisle ( / k ɑːr l aɪ l/ born August 17, 1958) is an American musician and singer.