Belinda Carlisle is optimistic of a future reconciliation between herself and former The Go-Go’s star Margot Olavarria.
Carlisle and Olavarria starred in the original line-up of the Los Angeles new wave group, but the bassist left was forced out just two years in, amid a battle with hepatitis A.
In her memoir, Lips Unsealed, Carlisle stated that Olavarria’s dismissal was the result of her frequently missing rehearsals, due largely to her dissatisfaction with the band’s move away from punk and toward pop, with Olavarria later suing the band for wrongful dismissal (a settlement was reached in ’84).
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, the Heaven Is A Place On Earth singer, who reunited with Jane Wiedlin, Gina Schock, Kathy Valentine, and Charlotte Caffey for The Go-Go’s new self-titled documentary film, lamented that there wasn’t any reconciliation between her and Olavarria.
“No,” Carlisle responded when asked if the two had been in contact. “But you know something, I’ve always had a big soft spot for Margot and I haven’t seen Margot since then.
“There was a lot of things that went on that we couldn’t really go into in the documentary, but I always felt that Margot was really authentic and she was definitely a Go-Go in spirit,” she reflected. “I think that there came a point in the band where there was a real creative schism where four people wanted to go one way and she wanted to go the other way, and that does happen.”
The Leave A Light On star continued: “I would love to see her again one day, although I don’t know if she’d love to see me. But I have really fond memories of her. We had a lot of great times together and I wish we had done things differently.
“It was kind of a chicken’s way out by making [former manager] Ginger [Canzoneri] do the dirty work, but we were scared. Now as adults, I think we probably would have handled something like that differently, but we did the best we could back then.
“Margot really was great. She was very funny too, she was a larger-than-life character.”
While Olavarria features in the movie, which documents the group’s rise to fame, and the tensions that tore them apart in the ’80s, she does not appear on new single Club Zero – The Go-Go’s first new music in almost 20 years – which is out now.
