Had to Get Away

I'm sure all you fans of '80s music will remember the Go-Gos, the only pop band that I can think of that were named after a pair of boots. If you don't remember them, I'll give you a quick run down on who's who. Clockwise, starting from the top left is bassist Kathy Valentine (no relation to Karen, in case all you fans of Room 222 were curious), lead singer Belinda Carlisle (no relation to Kitty, in case all you A Night at the Opera fans, Moss Hart fans, and 1970s-era To Tell the Truth fans were curious), drummer Gina Schock (no relation to Aaron, in case all you fans of scandal-plagued former Illinois Republican congressmen with hypocritical voting records were curious), guitarist Jane Weidlin (no reason to believe she's related to anybody) and the other guitarist--they got that Rolling Stones thing going--Charlotte Caffey (ditto.) One of the Go-Gos most popular songs was "Vacation", so let's look at the official--I'm prefacing it that way for a reason--video:

Well, the song may be called "Vacation" but it was anything but for the five young ladies during the shooting of the video. Though it lasts a little over three minutes, filming took the whole day. When you consider all the different camera angles and changes of scenery involved, that's really not so surprising. In between all that moving the camera around, and taking down one scene and putting up another, the girls spent the time, according to Valentine, drinking "lots of champagne. Lots" and according to Wiedlin, "if you look at our eyes, we're all so drunk. We didn't even try to make it look like we were really waterskiing." Drinking while waterskiing sounds pretty dangerous to me, but in fact there was no danger of drowning, just falling backwards upon the rear projection screen.

 Here's "Vacation" again. That's right, I'm playing it twice. This version, though, it's from a show that the Go-Gos did at Los Angeles' Palos Verdes High School in December, 1981:

 

 
Sound a little different to you? Well, it's a live recording, so there's none of that studio polish. Not that the audience cares because there's no studio version of "Vacation" that it can be compared to. The hit single won't be released for another six months, and the album of the same name for another eight. The Palos Verdes High School crowd is getting a sneak preview. Why?  My guess is the band was trying to see how well the song went over with an audience before committing it to a studio recording.

In fact, "Vacation" has an interesting story behind it. Bassist Valentine wrote it, but not for the Go-Gos. Originally, it was performed and recorded by a Los Angeles-based punk band that Valentine and fellow Austin native Carla Olsen had formed called the Textones. If you don't mind listening to the song a third time, here's that version:

 Doesn't sound like the same song, does it? While the Textones version is credited to Valentine alone, the Go-Gos cover has Jane Weidlin and Charlotte Caffey as co-writers. They took what was musically a typically raw, edgy-sounding punk song and turned it into the fun, upbeat classic pop tune that made it all the way to #8 on the Billboard singles chart in 1982. It's easy to understand the song's appeal. Who doesn't look forward to going on vacation? "Kathy, Belinda, Gina, Jane, and Charlotte, what are you doing after the concert?" "We're going to Disneyland!' But that made me wonder, given the subject matter, why wasn't this song fun and upbeat from the very beginning? What in the world were the Textones thinking? Though I first heard "Vacation" 38 years ago--Good Lord!--I did something I hadn't done before--I read the lyrics:

Can't seem to get my mind off of you 
Back here at home there's nothin' to do 
Now that I'm away 
I wish I'd stayed
Tomorrow's a day of mine that you won't be in
 

When you looked at me I should've run
But I thought it was just for fun
I see I was wrong
And I'm not so strong
I should've known all along that time would tell

A week without you
Thought I'd forget
Two weeks without you and I
Still haven't gotten over you yet

Vacation, all I ever wanted
Vacation, had to get away
Vacation, meant to be spent alone
Vacation, all I ever wanted
Vacation, had to get away
Vacation, meant to be spent alone

Oh, my God! Now it all made sense. This is a song about a failed relationship! She's not upbeat, she's downbeat! All that lighthearted vacation stuff was meant to be ironic! That poor girl didn't go to Disneyland. She checked in to the Heartbreak Hotel! All these years I thought this tune was pure escapism, but now I find it's only about the futility of escape! How could I have been so wrong?

Quite easily. Ever since Elvis took Big Mama Thornton's song about a woman kicking her deadbeat boyfriend out of the house and made it a masculine statement all his own (though still technically sung from Big Mama's point of view), pop music has seduced us with the beat, the riff, the chord progression, and the melody to such an extent that we ignore, or are ignorant of, the meaning of the lyrics. How many people think Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" is some stirring, patriotic anthem when in actuality it's about a Vietnam vet who can't get a job? Or that Bobby Darin's version of "Mack the Knife" is about a finger-snapping Rat Pack lifeguard warning swimmers not to go in the water because a shark has been sighted, when it's really about a finger-snapping Rat Pack policemen warning people to stay inside with their doors and windows locked because a psychopathic murderer is on the loose? Even Bob Dylan once mistakenly congratulated John Lennon and Paul McCartney for slipping a drug reference into "I Want to Hold Your Hand" (instead of "I can't hide" Dylan heard "I'll get high".) Given how little attention we listeners pay, it's a wonder that songwriters even bother with lyrics anymore.

I suppose it gives the vocalist something to do. I mean, come on, you don't really want Belinda Carlisle to join that Vietnam vet on the unemployment line, do you?