From cocaine binges to yoga teacher — how pop star Belinda Carlisle turned her life around
SHE once lived a life of pop music, cocaine and parties. But incredibly, Belinda Carlisle has turned her life around.
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THE Belinda Carlisle of 1995 would scoff at the Belinda Carlisle of 2015.
Back then, Carlisle was decades deep into a drug addiction that began when she fronted trailblazing female rock band The Go-Go’s from 1978.
As she straddled the charts with solo hits Heaven Is a Place on Earth, Leave a Light On, Summer Rain, I Get Weak and Live Your Life Be Free, Carlisle still battled with cocaine and alcohol binges.
Cut to 2015 and Carlisle is ten years sober and a teacher and student of Kundalini yoga and runs an animal shelter in Calcutta that pays impoverished women to care for street animals.
Indeed next year she’ll release her first album since 2007’s Voila — a record filled with yoga mantras.
“You can teach an old dog new tricks,” Carlisle says of her sobriety. “It’s not easy, but you can. If anybody would have told me 30 or 40 years ago I’d be making a yoga album and have a spiritual base to live my life on, which I do, and I’m proud of it, I would have laughed in your face. I was anti all that stuff.”
Carlisle is realistic enough to know her yoga album won’t be topping the charts any time soon.
“It’s a mantra but not in a classical way you’d think of yoga music. They’re pop songs but they’re repetitive mantras. I’ve been studying mantra for quite a few years. It’s not just singing, it’s a science.
“Right now I’m really into experimenting musically, I know it’s not commercial but that’s OK. I did my French album Voila (in 2007), that was the first time in my whole career I actually worked from the heart. There was no pressure, I did what I wanted to do, I loved everything I did. After working like that I never want to work any other way again.
“For the moment there’s no plans to return to pop but if a bunch of songs came in that I love of course I’d do them. But it’s not really where I’m at right now. I haven’t been there for a while. I love pop music but I’ve been there, done that.”
Carlisle, 57, also knows the reality of modern pop — something Madonna (who is one day older than Carlisle) has been vocal about this year.
“Pop music is all about youth,” Carlisle states. “There is a rare exception when someone can get played, that’s great. I never tried to compete on that level. When I turned 40 I was like ‘Phew, I’m off the hamster wheel, I can do what I want’. I don’t want to compete.
“I’m sure if I made a new song that was just as good as Heaven Is a Place on Earth I’d have a hard time getting it on radio because there is ageism. Pop music is, was and always will be about youth. That’s just the way it is.”
While she’s finishing her mantra album, Carlisle is still touring regularly as a solo act but she knows what people are buying tickets for.
“They want to hear the old stuff, and that’s pretty much what I give them,” she says.
“I might put one new song in, but I can almost guarantee they don’t want to come and hear my new album they’ve never heard that’s in a different language! Maybe some would, but mostly they want to hear a couple of Go-Go’s songs and my solo hits. And so that’s what I do. I’m lucky I’ve got a big catalogue to draw on and I love those songs.”
Five years ago Carlisle released one of the most warts and all pop autobiographies in Lips Unsealed. She spoke about challenging male celebrities with her chemical intake and the niche world of male rock groupies as well as her battles for sobriety and her marriage.
“I got into yoga around the time I got sober,” she says. “I needed all the help I could get. I needed a very stringent, dedicated practice. There’s a reason it’s been around for thousands of years. There’s a lot more I could have written about in the book, I did edit myself! People always say I’m honest, I guess I just don’t know how else to be.”
The book contains anecdotes like Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees telling her to wipe the cocaine falling out of her nose. “That was at the Grammys,” Carlisle recalls. “We were really off our heads that night. That was sweet of him to say that.”
In the early `80s John Belushi, who would later die of an overdose, tellingly took Carlisle aside one night to tell her to calm down on the drugs.
“We’d bottom out at some club, he gave us a big lecture about the evils of drugs and how it was easy to spend a lot of money on them when you were making a lot of money. Unfortunately he went that way and I went that way and I was lucky by the grace of God I was able to pull it together. It seems like a lifetime ago now. It didn’t ten years ago.”
Carlisle, who moved to France in 1994, now also has a home in Bangkok and is about to give up her Los Angeles home permanently.
“I’ve been away from the States so long it’s just hard to be there,” she says. “I prefer living in Europe and the Far East, so that’s where we’re living. I always knew I’d end up in the East in my later years. I love the life, I love the smells, I love that it’s close to India, I’ve got my animal charity in Calcutta that takes up a lot of time. I love the people in Bangkok. There’s a lot to love about living in the Far East.”
For starters, no celebrity obsession. Carlisle, a prolific Tweeter, used her feed to slam the Kardashians.
“There’s so many other horrible things going on, for me to lash out on something trivial is a waste of my time and it’s not a nice thing to do. I’m not a fan of them, I’ll leave it at that.”
There’s also no paparazzi in Bangkok, which suits Carlisle fine.
“I’m totally anonymous in Bangkok. You can run out in sweats and no make up. In LA it’s pretty intrusive. Many times I’m loading groceries into my car and the paparazzi come out. Even for me. I’m not really the most newsworthy person but they make a nuisance out of themselves for everybody. It’s completely intrusive and it’s not fun.”
Carlisle married Mason Morgan in 1986, their son James Duke Mason is now a politician and gay rights activist.
“He was a surrogate for Obama and travelled around the country speaking to LGTB youth and motivating them to get out and vote. We do a lot of P-Flag stuff together. He gets me active. I’ve always been active in gay rights in the `80s with the AIDS awareness, but having a gay son you pay even more attention to what’s going on out there for LGTB people.”
While she initially left LA due to the earthquakes, watching Donald Trump’s presidential campaign makes Carlisle even less keen to return.
“It’s so depressing. I’m reading the Diary Of Anne Frank right now — he should read that book. History does repeat itself. The idea of a data base for people is so scary. He’s like the orange clown. Don’t get me started. He could be president, that’s the scary thing. I really fear for America in a lot of ways anyway, but it’d be a disaster for America if he makes it.”
The Go-Go’s, who made history as the first all-female group who wrote their own songs and played their own instruments to top the US chart, split in 1985 after hits including We Got the Beat, Vacation and Our Lips Are Sealed.
Since then they’ve reformed several times as well as performing multiple ‘farewell’ tours. However Carlisle says after a US tour next August they’ll officially be done, although she’ll continue to tour as a solo act “until it’s not fun anymore.”
“The Go-Go’s are breaking up next year. We have a tour in August 2016 and that’s it, last tour, kaput. It’s just time. Everybody feels it’s time. I want to leave on a high note. I don’t really want to be 60 years old singing We Got the Beat on stage honestly. I said that at 50 too.
“But I want to bow out with my dignity intact. I think the other girls feel the same way. If you talk to some of the other girls they probably wouldn’t agree 100-per-cent with me, but we’ve done it for 40 years, let’s go out with a bang and not have it turn into this thing of pathetic old women on stage. I don’t want to do that. That’s not my idea of fun.”
Belinda Carlisle. Rooty Hill RSL February 26. The Cube Campbelltown February 27. The Astor Perth March 1. Thebarton Theatre Adelaide March 2. Jupiters Casino Gold Coast March 4. Eaton’s Hill Brisbane March 5. Newcastle West March 8, SC Club Canberra March 9, Enmore Theatre Sydney March 11, Melbourne Zoo March 12.
Originally published as From cocaine binges to yoga teacher — how pop star Belinda Carlisle turned her life around
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