Go-Go member relives rock, rocky times in memoir

Before musician Kathy Valentine had the opportunity to sniff lines of cocaine in backstage dressing rooms with her bandmates in the Go-Go's, she'd already experienced the so-called rock 'n' roll lifestyle as a teen doing the same things in less glitzy Texas apartments.

Raised in a single-parent household in Austin and London by a mother who treated Valentine as a drug buddy as much as a daughter, Valentine, now 61, recalls the ride up and down the charts in "All I Ever Wanted," her louche memoir on life before, during and shortly after the Go-Go's ascended to become the darlings of the MTV generation.

"It's a story that hasn't been told enough, the one about a young girl who decides she wants to be in a rock 'n' roll band and then does just that," writes Valentine. "There aren't many of us, and there are even fewer who stick with it their whole lives."

During a recent FaceTime conversation from her home in Austin, Valentine said that for teenage girls growing up in the early 1970s, to envision a career in rock was a ridiculous notion, as her disapproving, absent father made clear at nearly every opportunity but her thrill-seeking, oft-absent mom accepted.

"Even though I was playing the guitar, it never occurred to me to plug it into an amp and be in a band," Valentine says.

Throughout the memoir, Valentine recounts in vivid detail the gloriously debauched path of the Go-Go's through early rock success. As record sales pile up, she shoplifts six-packs during all-night Sunset Boulevard benders with her soon-to-be-dead friend John Belushi, pals around with Brat Pack heartthrob Rob Lowe, goes on overnight LSD trips at the most inopportune of moments and outpaces Rod Stewart during coke binges. She falls in love with Blondie drummer Clem Burke, who tries to rein in Valentine's drug use.

In contrast with groupie-collecting dudes like Stewart, Jimmy Page and David Bowie, the consequences of the rock life are not created equal for female musicians: Valentine learned she was pregnant while on the road during the band's breakout tour. She stole away to get an abortion, and immediately returned to the grind.

Valentine held her first electric guitar when her British-born mom's then-boyfriend moved in with them. After she watched a leather-clad Suzi Quatro perform on the BBC show "Top of the Pops," the Texas teen's world was upended.

"When I picked up a guitar, I thought I was the only one in the world," she said, and after seeing all-female rock band the Runaways soon thereafter, Valentine understood: "Oh, of course, there are girls my age out in the world that also have this idea."

Valentine, who led the writing of "Vacation," the title track of the band's follow-up album after the megahit "Beauty and the Beat," captures both the carefree bliss of being young, beautiful, rich and talented, and the darkness that such freedom can breed.

Sober for 31 years, Valentine concludes "All I Ever Wanted" five years, and a few failed bands, later in 1990, a decision that she made for narrative reasons. "It felt like a natural story arc, and I didn't want to write an autobiography," she says. She adds that she has long considered the memoir to be a springboard into more narrative writing, both fiction and nonfiction, and hopes one of her next projects will be about legendary women musicians who haven't been given their historic ovations.

"My first idea for a book was going to be called 'Rare Birds,' telling stories of women musicians that I don't feel have been told enough," she says. "I borrowed the phrase from my own idea."