Belinda Carlisle Quotes

1. I didn't want to be the singer. I wanted to play bass. Bass was already tapped. So I asked what was left and they said drums or singing. I certainly didn't want to play drums because I'm much too lazy.  



2. Shortly after the May (1990) kickoff of my world tour in the UK, I was in my hotel reading through the latest press clippings. I came across a recent review that described me as looking like a singing secretary onstage. (The reviewer) had taken exception to the Chanel-inspired suits I'd had custom-made for the tour. I took offense, but in retrospect he was right. I looked like shit. I was way too skinny, wore too much makeup, my bobbed hair was wrong, and the suits - well, they were a different issue. They reflected the trouble I'd had at the outset deciding on a look for the tour. If you have to think too much about those things, it's a sign of confusion and uncertainty - and that was me.

3. Cocaine always made me feel better no matter what else was bothering me.




4. I'm really a man.

5. Fashion is not merely clothes, nor is it just a collection of images. Rather, it is a vibrant form of visual and material culture that plays an important role in social and cultural life. It is a major economic force, amongst the top ten industries. It shapes our bodies, and the way we look at other people's bodies. It can enable creative freedom to express alternative identities, or dictate what is deemed beautiful and acceptable. It raises ethical and moral questions, and connects to fine art and popular culture.

6. My son is so straight-laced. He won't cuss - because, you know, I still curse all the time. He's so polite and buttoned-up. He's the adult. I call him "Dad" to tease him because really, he's the voice of reason.


7. During the "Runaway Horses" album period, around 1989, I had to look a certain way and be a certain way. My eating disorder was all part of the same things - eating, shopping, drugs, alcohol and sex. It's all part of the same thing - filling that hole in the soul.

8. The Eighties were a time of excess in a lot of ways. I knew I could get away with a lot of crap just by having worse people around me.






9. I just like the idea of being engaged.

10. (on lies about her) There was the stripper one last year. They said I was a stripper before the Go-Go's and that I love to see men's eyes upon my body. I saved that one, it was funny!

11. In a supermarket recently a 22-year-old came up and whispered a very rude suggestion. I was appalled— and very flattered.






12. (on Howard Stern) I love Howard!

13. I'm still amazed that I could ever buy this for myself. I walk by it and it makes me smile every day, which is what art should do. It makes me so happy. And it's really the only thing I've ever indulged in for myself and spoiled myself with.

14. (on River Phoenix) I saw him at parties. He was a member of PETA. The animal rights organization I still do a lot of work for. River was someone you never expect to die of drugs because he was a strict vegetarian and campaigned for animals. It was a sad thing.



15. I freaked out when I first went on my solo tour. I realized I was on stage without the girls. I've been working with them since I was 17. We still work together 20 years later. They're my best friends, even though we've been through some difficult times.

16. Morgan (Mason) gave me the strength I was looking for and the help that was often denied. When I met him I understood that I shouldn't be scared anymore.

17. I was like the good girl, bad girl, there were no grey areas for me.

18. We discussed this issue as a band and are, frankly, puzzled by the Catholics League's repeated calls to censor free expression.

19. My mum thought it was a great idea. I mean, Playboy is an American icon, to be on the cover was a blast. I've always been a fan of the '50s pin-up - it's a more artistic style. I wasn't confident enough to do it in my 20s. Playboy gave me a fitness regime and a trainer. He kicked my butt. It was amazing to see my body change. I don't think of Playboy as real porn. It's not offensive, especially if it's done tastefully.


20. When I see a Britney Spears video I just think of a bunch of fat men, bordering on pedophiles, sitting in a marketing room and deciding what's sexy.

21. However, if you listen to me I think you can hear years of abuse in my voice - both bad abuse and good abuse.

22. (on Sammy Davis Jnr) I went up to him and drooled all over him in Chasen's. It was a few years before he died. He knew everything about me and the Go-Go's. On his way out, he came up to my table, snapped his fingers, looked at me and said: "Baby, you're a vision of nowness." I just about died. That was the best line I'd ever had from anybody!

23. I was looking at my skin the other day. At my age I can't expect to hang on to what I had at 20. I'm trying to work on what's inside. I'm not obsessed with how I look anymore. The American media puts too much emphasis on being young and thin. It's a lot of pressure for women. Here in France women are valued differently. If I'm in LA for more than two weeks I get affected, I forget what's important. In LA you're invisible after 35. It's horrible. In France women are celebrated.

24. I'm really fed up with whole media thing where you have to be 20 years old, a size 0, and blond with plastic tits. I'm proud of who I am. I think there are few women who inspire women to accept themselves, and I want to be one of those women.


25. I mean, in rock music terms I'm like a dinosaur.

26. I always resented the label of "shock jock" that the press came up with for me. Because I never intentionally set out to shock anybody. What I intentionally set out to do was to talk just as I talk off the air, to talk the way guys talk sitting around a bar. To me, that was always the most fun, when I would get together with guys and we'd all start b…shitting about getting p..sy or that girl's tits or even political events, but doing it in a goofy way, where nobody's taking anything seriously. If I could eliminate the notion of the microphone, so that people would get loose and be real, that was the ideal.

27. I have been practicing transcendental meditation for almost 13 years. I find it a lifesaver. I make sure to make time for it twice a day for 40 to 60 minutes a day. I would do more if I could but that is the minimum. I also read and love being on my own. I go to Pilate’s 4 to 5 times a week, which is also a big stress reliever and almost a meditation for me.

28. (on reality TV) No! I avoid it like the plague. I hate it. Hate it! "Survivor" and "Big Brother" and all that? Agh! I think it's all hideous. It's like, how low can you go? And, England's the worst with all of that.

29. I never saw myself having a wedding. I decided that when I was about five years old. I thought it was silly. I always knew I would elope, which is what I did. I got married at Caesar’s Palace in Lake Tahoe. As soon as the vows were made, I headed straight for the crap tables.

30. I had a great time and really enjoyed myself but I was so glad I left when I did. It wasn't Gordon Ramsay himself that was the problem; it was the cameras. Just having them there all the time was something that was very hard to get used to - it was absolutely exhausting. The whole thing was actually a lot more difficult than it looked. I've been kissing the ground since I got home and sleeping 12 hours a night!

31. I tried out for my high school choir and I wasn't accepted! I completely blanked out, and I'd forgotten what song I was supposed to sing and I sang: "Happy Birthday". 'Cos I got so nervous, I couldn't even sing "Happy Birthday"! Oh, it was awful. A big blow to my confidence and ego.

32. It will shock many - I've lived a full life and really enjoyed my time as a pop star.

33. (on The Go-Go's) It was a Cinderella story, we didn't even know how to play our own instruments when we started it was just unknown forces that propelled us to a point where we were big stars at one point.

34. It was just a drug-fuelled night of stupid debauchery that I'm very ashamed of, I have to say. I can't watch it. It makes me uncomfortable, I think I'm creepy on it. I was fuelled up on many different drugs. So it's the most anti-drug film that you'll ever see.



35. (on Madonna) I think she's a pioneer in her own way in terms of using her sexuality, individuality, in a very positive way, I think. She does a great job.

36. Life's too short to be a Go-Go for twenty years.

37. I think Madonna is definitely a workaholic and that's probably part of the reason why she's so successful because that's her life. Maybe she doesn't have anything else.

38. As for fashion mistakes, I think I pretty much invented the off-shoulder, Flash dance look. And I don't say that with a lot of pride.

39. I broke my foot on stage last time I was hear. We had to cancel a couple of shows. And my foot was broken in a way where I couldn't wear a cast, so we had to fly to Japan from here and my foot was this big and it was green. And we had to fly, and when you fly…you swell. So my foot got from this big to this big.




40. I'm not super, super, super successful and I don't want to be. I'm not a prisoner of my success - I mean, I live comfortably but I can still walk along the street. You can't stay up there forever. The peak of my career is over - that was back in the eighties and early nineties. I worked non-stop from the age of 17 and I'm just not that driven any more. When I turned 40, I decided it was time to switch gears and enjoy all those things that I had always worked so hard for.

41. The first thing I remember is being two or three and banging on the horn of my mother's car and laughing. I didn't have a very happy childhood until I left home. I came from a divorce. I've blocked out from between the ages of five and seven completely. I'm very good at blocking things out. If I don't want to remember something I don't. I had my own private world my own secret, happy world. I had a very vivid imagination and I think I had the tendency to stretch the truth a bit. I look back at my childhood and still can't remember if some things really happened or not.

42. He was definitely from the wrong side of the tracks. There was nothing to make me think we had a chance of getting along.

43. There's a point when you get into magic where it gets rather touchy and sometimes dangerous. I was very intrigued by it - and I still am - but I felt that I was taking it a bit too far, just doing it all the time. So I stopped. I mean, the theory in white magic is that when you want something and get it, you give up something in return.



44. You don't have to be age 20 and size zero to be sexually viable or viable as a woman.

45. (on posing for Playboy) Well, the money. Honestly, there was a lot of money. For most of my career, I had been approached to do something like that. But I always thought I would need more than just taking the money and running to do it.

46. I had a dream two nights in a row about insects. It had worms and moths and weird things everywhere. I dreamt that Morgan brought home four more dogs and a cat and I looked in the front yard and the cat was eating itself.

47. I had no musical training at all.


48. (on being in trouble) Oh yes, very much so. I you, know, it's been pretty deep. I can't go into it too much, but it was pretty deep and very recent. No further details.

49. We were getting ready for a concert in Rio and it just didn't feel right. I remember it real clearly because I started to cry. It wasn't fun anymore. We were going through the motions, pretending to have all the fun on stage that we really did have in the beginning.

50. I looked up and saw this shape in the form of a mist towering above me. As the room got colder, yet clammier, it pinned me down on the bed and, try as I did, I couldn't move, scream or breathe. I remember thinking: "So this is how it's going to end".




51. (on drug abuse and the Go-Go's) We never took ourselves too seriously - that's part of our appeal. But we were so young and so famous so quickly. I had three years of heavy drug use. Take it from me, drugs are hell. It could have been life threatening, I could have died. It was an intense, bizarre time. I think there was an element of self-sabotage for all of us.

52. I was so unhappy that I hated seeing new artists because I knew I couldn't be one of them. I couldn't share their freshness or excitement. I was sort of envious.


53. (on Jon Bon Jovi) I saw him once and we were calling him Jon Anchovi. We were shouting: "Oh, my God, it's Jon Anchovi!"

54. (Janet Jackson's Boob Blunder at the Superbowl) It was ridiculous. First of all, America is just so ridiculously puritanical these days but I just thought it was an ugly boob. It looked horrible. If she wants to show her tits, I have no problem with that. It was just the way it was done. There really is a time and a place for that kind of thing.


What do you think of Belinda Carlisle's quotes?


Feel free to comment and share this blog post if you find it interesting!