What’s left to be said about them? Not a hell of a lot. Rolling Stone, as I recall, christened them America’s Sweethearts one day. There was no formal ceremony, they just worked the phrase into everything they wrote about the band, every chance they got. That lasted for three or four issues, until it became obvious that they weren’t, and that nobody else in America was ever going to refer to them as such. I resented it--Rolling Stone is read around the world. What will the other countries think? I didn’t want it said of me that they were My Sweethearts. Fortunately, the thing blew over in a matter of weeks; the whole world kept its head. I always wondered what the deal was--perhaps it was their agent getting his rocks off, making a magazine jump through hoops. As in, “the only way you’ll get the cover story you want is if you refer to them as America’s Sweethearts for the next three (3) issues, no matter what it does to your waning credibility.”

That would make them trailblazers of a sort--paving the way for Michael Jackson to blackmail MTV some years later. “The only way I will allow you to play any of my videos is that you may never refer to me by name, but only as ‘The King Of Pop.’ What are you laughing at?” Further on down the royal road to redundancy, there was Prince, trying to ram that damned symbol down everybody’s throat. Then he insisted on being referred to as The Artist Who Goes Out Of His Way To Inconvenience The Rest Of The World For No Particular Reason. Or something just like it. The world decided to give him a cookie, pat him on the head, and send him on his way. To keep him from having a hissy, he’s usually referred to as The Artist nowadays, but not by me. The reason for that is obvious: there are millions of artists in the world, and this particular one has never done anything to earn the honorific of The Artist. Considering what a big deal he ultimately isn’t, one syllable seems just about right. Besides, most people (most canines even) never get called anything so handy-dandy as Prince in the first place, and most who do have the good sense not to throw it all away.

Speaking of throwing it all away, that brings me right back to the Go-Go’s. I recently had the chance to chat with someone who used to work for them; a roadie or somesuch. He’d worked for several bands in the 80s, and had a particularly low opinion of this one. “Stuck-up, not very nice, not too bright, either” was about the gist of it. “Half of them hated the other half, one or two of them were OK as human beings, but not most.” Belinda didn’t rank among the better ones.

Hey, I have no idea, I’m merely passing it on. Still, who are you going to believe first, a former employee or some P.R. rep? You can’t get a more accurate assessment of someone than from a guy who used to do their menial labor. Do they pay well? Do they say thank-you? Do they say hello? Do they take a cellular phone with them into the bathroom? Do they stink the place up and leave the cap off the toothpaste? These are Our Sweethearts, after all, and America Wants To Know.

I brought up the “America’s Sweethearts” riff, and he found it amusing too. “There was a ton of coke and smack around the band back in the ‘Sweethearts’ days.” Tsk. Imagine that. Obviously I have nothing against people getting high, and we’d all be better off if all these things were legal. (I don’t even have anything against junkies; ahead of time anyway. Not even junkie musicians, so long as they’re honest about it. Far better to flaunt it than to sneak into closets to get high, so as not to spoil the image of America’s Sweethearts.) Not all drugs are created equal, though. Hallucinogens are the most exalted, then marijuana. Right in the middle is alcohol, then there’s pills, then the miscellaneous category for things like nitrous oxide and cough syrup. With that, things start to get seriously tacky. I could never quite make up my mind whether white powders and needles go above or below huffing airplane glue. It’s a race to the bottom either way, and that’s exactly where the Go-Go’s found themselves.

Has anyone ever escaped from the Valley of the Go-Go’s? Not within living memory. Everybody who needed it went through rehab, and one or two of them did the 12-Step Shuffle in public. They drink herbal tea now, most likely. What does it matter? This was not a band for the ages, and their time has long since passed. They’ve done the solo thing, the Greatest Hits, the reunion, the boxed set. There’s nothing left to do but practice for the next 35 years, until they get the call from David Lee Roth. Van Halen will be playing their first Nursing Home Tour in the year 2033. What better choice for an opening act? Going, going, gone.