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All The Rage – Belinda Carlisle.

Posted on September 10, 2023

June 1986. Brigham Young University spring term. A wonderful time to be in Utah. Warm high-altitude sunshine. Relaxed class schedules. Afternoons lounging poolside or having a lux lunch in Sundance’s Tree Room after summer institute classes. 

I was having a slice of pizza with Tookey — my female alter ego — at the Pie Pizzeria on 150 East just off the BYU campus. Tookey and I were but two of an insignificant crew of fashion victims, part of what was known about Salt Lake City and Provo as “Clubbies.” These were the the social club kids (BYU speak for frat and sorority members) who hung out in the dance clubs of SLC and Park City and were either Orange County preps or London Blitz styled out. We were a minority. But didn’t care a lick what others thought of us.  

Aside from offering a massive slice of pizza for $1.09, the Pie Pizzeria shown MTV on multi-screens 24 hours a day. Tookey and I were sitting in a booth when a music video came on. The voice was familiar. Looking up from my half devoured slice I saw Belinda Carlisle looking nothing similar to her Go Go Days.

But let me take you back four years to 1982 “Our Lips are Sealed” was on heavy rotation. I first heard it through one of those in-flight crap headsets while flying to the Bahamas to crew a marine trawler between school terms. Even in the remote Abacos, Go-Go’s blared through the tinny harbor speakers of Treasure Cay and Hope Town. I couldn’t heart enough. It was both punk and pop in a way no boy band captured it before. Well, perhaps the Fun Boy Three version is a bit more edge. I dig it as well. 

If you yet to see the Alison Eastwood Go-Go’s documentary rent or buy it on AppleTV. It is brilliance. 

By 1986, Go Go’s were out-of-mind. The band scattered. I’d moved on, heavy into New Wave.“Mad About You” appeared on the tv screen. My ears perked up. And when I saw the video I was bowled over. Belinda Carlisle’s California Punk manner was gone. She had become the epitome of style and glam in black & white and living colour. She slinked and teased Morgan Mason. Of course Belinda Carlisle was mad about him. This the son of the debonair James Mason. The son, like the father, was style. And so cool. 

Belinda was magnificent. All cheekbones and blonde bobbed hair. 80’s oversized hoop earrings. New York meets Paris style. The epitome of W Magazine. Nothing banal about her. I half expected to see Giorgio Armani riding alongside her on his vintage bicycle. She was stunning smiling or no. 

The 80’s was the MTV generation. Clubbies took their fashion queues from Joe Boxers, Haircut 100, Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet. “Mad About You” was film noir in a 3:41 music video. Within weeks of the album’s debut every blonde in the club scene was dressing in black leggings. The video’s imagery — Belinda Carlisle shot in grainy black & white and taking a drag from a cigarette, probably a Gitanes, RayBan Club-master shades hiding her eyes. In another shot Belinda sips an espresso reflectively. In still another she dances in the sand in an oversized and proper 80’s shoulder padded black sweater. Walking along a sun drenched and palm strewn seaside in a perfectly fitting little black dress, she was a true snapshot of the Summer of 1986. At the time I thought surely the video was filmed along some exotic stretch of the Côte d’Azur, I would learn years later after I moved to LA, the video was almost entirely in Santa Monica, along Palisades Park and Third Street Promenade when it was still syringe street.

Aside from the flawlessness of Belinda in this video which one cannot possibly tire, there is a brilliant guitar solo by Andy Taylor — of Duran Duran — who was in that moment in LA playing lead guitar on the Power Station album. “Bang a Gong” was another hit in the summer of ’86. There was nothing in the video by chance. It was all mint. From Belinda’s form fitting black dress to her So Cal blonde bob. Sure, it’s the epitome of 80’s fluffy pop in all it’s sunshiny delirium. 

But never mind. 

Belinda as Goddess of Love. In the back of my mind I kept that adoration of a certain style of woman. I could not have imagined that almost thirty years later I would meet by chance a certain style of woman in Valencia, Spain who I would later marry because I’m “Mad About You.”

Really, it’s truth…the journey is everything.