Caffey Go-Go’s Back to an All-Girl Group

When Charlotte Caffey left the Go-Go’s in 1985, she vowed that she would never be part of another all-girl band.

So who’s heading the Graces, the new all-women band whose debut album, “Perfect View,” comes out next week? That’s right: Caffey.

“So maybe I’m a glutton for punishment,” quipped the singer-guitarist, whose new partners are singer Gia Ciambotti and singer-guitarist Meredith Brooks.

For Caffey, memories of the Go-Go’s hadn’t been all sweet until two weeks ago, when the five former Go-Go’s--Caffey, Belinda Carlisle, Jane Wiedlin, Gina Schock and Kathy Valentine--got together for the first time as a unit since the 1985 split.

Carlisle and Schock organized the reunion at an Italian restaurant on Melrose Avenue. And, Caffey reported, it was joyous.

“We were like a bunch of sailors getting together after years of being apart. Getting together was like officially closing a chapter on something--but we all had to get together to close the chapter. We remembered the good times. That day even the bad times we’d gone through didn’t seem so bad.”

Caffey said that they even discussed the possibility of reuniting for benefit dates.

Carlisle, a pop/dance-music star on MCA Records, is the most famous of the ex-Go-Go’s. Wiedlin has had some success on EMI Records, but Schock was recently dropped by Capitol Records.

Since the split, various members had stayed in contact with each other. Carlisle and Caffey, for instance, remained friends. In fact, Caffey worked on Carlisle’s two solo albums.

Those two also engineered the breakup.

The Go-Go’s career was slipping by 1985. The group was signed by I.R.S. Records in 1981, several years after it was formed by Wiedlin and Carlisle.

“We struggled for years before we got that record deal,” Caffey said. “It was tough because we were girls. People were slamming doors in our faces for years. It was incredibly satisfying to have a hit on our first try.”

The debut album sold more than 2 million copies, but sales slipped on the next two. The final Go-Go’s album, “Talk Show,” didn’t even go gold (sales of 500,000).

“We had a lot of problems with each other and we just weren’t getting along,” Caffey said. “One of the problems we had was trying to live up to this bubbly image. All the music was supposed to be bubbly. That’s what people expected from us. But that was very limiting. We were caught in this trap.

“There were incredible internal problems. It got very ugly. That’s why we stayed away from each other for so long. Those wounds needed a long time to heal.”

It’s noteworthy that the Graces even have a contract, considering that record companies usually avoid signing all-women bands. The excuses haven’t changed. They range from “females can’t rock as well as men” to “female fans would rather see male groups.”

Once out of the Go-Go’s, the last thing on Caffey’s mind was facing the hassles of an all-female unit.

“I was scared of working with women again,” said Caffey, 35, in an office at the Hollywood headquarters of A&M; Records, her new label. “I didn’t want to face the problems women bands have to go through. Things are a lot better for women bands now. The Go-Go’s success helped make things better. But I had a block against working with females.”

Since she had rejected the idea of working in a women’s band, Caffey decided to front a male group. Producer Jimmy Iovine, best known for his work with U2, took her demo tape to A&M; Records, which signed her in 1987. But it turned out that singing with a male band wasn’t the answer.

“It didn’t feel right,” Caffey said. “Being in a band with guys didn’t feel like what I should be doing. Lead singing didn’t feel right in that situation.”

Working solo, she said, didn’t feel right either. Another all-women band seemed to be the only answer.

“Nobody at the record company had a problem with it,” she said. “By then I was past my block about working in an all-women band. It seemed like the right thing to do then.”

While searching for male musicians, she had seen Brooks and Ciambotti in their own bands. “I didn’t know them and they didn’t know each other but I called them to ask about the possibility of forming a band,” Caffey said. “Since I had seen them work in clubs, the bands they were in had broken up. They were looking for something to do.”

The Graces even had a woman co-producer, Ellen Shipley, in the studio, though executive producer Iovine was still in charge of the project. While writing with Ciambotti, 27, and Brooks, 31, Caffey wanted to do more of a rock album this time.

“The Go-Go’s were a frothy pop band,” Caffey said. “I wanted to do music that had a harder edge. I wanted to do harmonies that had a harder edge. The Go-Go’s harmonies were homogenized.”

No one could ever accuse Caffey of blowing her own horn. In assessing her talents, she is surprisingly self-critical:

“In this group we each sing leads, but vocally I have a very limited range. I wanted to be with people who could really sing. I can’t carry that burden myself.”

She isn’t any more positive about her guitar skills: “I’ve never been a great lead guitar player. I play one style and that’s it. Meredith plays much better than me. I play a few leads on the album but she plays the majority of them.”

Caffey, a Los Angeles native, started playing the guitar by default. Back in the mid ‘70s, she played bass in local bands before joining in the Go-Go’s in 1978.

“They asked me to play lead guitar,” she said. “There was only one slot open in the band. I had never played lead guitar but I did it because I wanted to be in the band.”