Nardwuar: Who are you?Jane Wiedlin: Oh, Jesus! (laughs) I don't know! Can you be a little more specific?
You are Jane Wiedlin!
Oh, okay. I thought you wanted, like, some analysis of myself.
You are Jane Wiedlin!
Okay, that's an easy answer. I'm Jane Wiedlin.
But, Jane, you were once known as Jane Draino, and had pink hair!
Uh, yeah, I've actually had every colour hair.
Well, we used to be bleach our hair out and use this stuff called Crazy Colour that was like a temporary dye, and it would look good for about a week, and then it would start looking really nasty and you would have to redo it.
Are you going to be using any of that in your upcoming reunion tour, Jane Wiedlin?
Mmmm, probably not. The last reunion tour, which was 1994-1995, I had my hair green and then blue and it's such a pain in the ass and it leaves colour everywhere you go so I think in every hotel I was in I just ruined every room and, it's kind of not really worth it.
Jane, The International New Wave Discography Volume II describes you this way under the Go-Go's entry, "...used to be called Jane Draino, before the band became terminally 'cute'."
(laughs)
Terminally cute? How dare they!
Yeah, that's pretty typical I guess.
Because in the early days of the Go-Go's, you were full-on punk rawkers!
Yes.
Like, didn't you have a song called "I Wanna Kill Robert Hilburn"?
Well, it was called "Robert Hilburn" and it didn't actually say we wanted to kill him. We just said, "It was burning time for the Times" because he wrote for the Los Angeles Times. But, yeah, I'm pretty sure we were cute then, too, Nardwuar. I mean, we were, you know, these eighteen year old girls. It's easy for people to look back on the past and go, "Look how cute that looks," sort of like if you look back on suffragettes and they look so quaint and cute in their little corset dresses, like marching to get the vote, and you think, "That's so sweet," but at the time that was probably pretty radical, and I think the fact that we were the first successful all-female band that played their own instruments and wrote their own songs was pretty radical at the time too.
Was there any time, Jane, that you went to see the Germs that Darby Crash's
sweat ended up over you?Well, probably, because when we would see them there would only be like fifty people in the audience, so it wasn't like we were in an arena or something. (laughs)
How far did you take your "Germdom," Jane Wiedlin? Did you ever get a "Germs Burn"?
No. I refused to do that. I was never really a follower of the Germs. I mean, I knew them socially, but I was never one of their minions.
Yeah.
Do you have any special Darby Crash memories? Like, Jello Biafra once told a story of hanging out with Darby, and how Darby and the Hollywood punks would break into people's houses, eat people's food, wait for owners of the house to come home, and then scare them!
(laughs) That's a very cute story. I didn't realize that. I guess the weirdest memory for me is, I saw- the night before he died, I saw him at a club, and we were hanging out, which we never normally did, and we sat there and like had a great conversation for like a half an hour, and he said, "You know what, this is so stupid that we've never become friends. We should get together more." And I'm like, "That would be great." And we traded phone numbers and then the next day he was dead.
Jane Wiedlin, from The All Music Guide: "Even as they became America's darlings, the Go-Go's lived the wildlife of rockers, swallowing as many pills and taking as much cocaine as possible, trashing hotel rooms and generally just being bad." "...swallowing as many pills... taking as much cocaine as possible, trashing hotel rooms." Tell me more, Jane Wiedlin!
Where are you quoting that from?
That's from The All Music Guide.Oh. Is that also the one that says we're terminally cute?
No, that was actually from The International New Wave Discography Volume II, published in 1982
(laughs) Geez. You did your research, huh? Well, you know, in the '80s there was a lot of drugs around and, you know, when you're in a band, people just give them to you and, we always liked to party, that's for sure, which ended up getting some of us in trouble, you know, and ending up in rehab and stuff. But, I'm just glad we all survived the '80s and we're all healthy and happy now!
No, that's not true, actually. (laughs) Some of the Go-Go's did, you know, go out with Rob, not me, but it was never on video. I think you are confusing our Rob Lowe stories with the infamous Go-Go's video that is so boring that I can't believe people keep talking about it.
But you're not in that video, are you? This is like a videotape of the band, a drunken band harassing a roadie? What is that all about?
(laughs)
You were not there, were you?
I walked through for like two seconds, but that's the extent of my involvement in the video. It was just one of those stupid nights when everyone was drunk and high and we had a video camera and we had this brilliant idea that we were going to make an art film, like an Andy Warhol movie, and we were trying to get some girl to have sex with one of our crew, and it was just a big stupid drug disaster mess, and I feel sorry for that guy because it is pretty humiliating or whatever, but it was just an example of, you know.... typical excess!
So it wasn't a roadie that passed out that you videotaped doing stuff to him, because I heard he got the tape later and he threatened to sue the band, and that's why the Go-Go's broke up, Jane Wiedlin! Over that videotape!
No, that has nothing to do with anything. That videotape was like from 1980 or something and we didn't break up until 1984. It had nothing to do with that.
Oh, people can buy it everywhere. Al Goldstein (Screw Magazine) sells it.
What's it called, "The Go-Go's Video"?I don't know. We always called it "A Very Attractive Man." That was our title but I think he just called it "Go-Go's Video."
More of Jane Wiedlin's debaucherous discussion with Nardwuar!
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