All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir

Quick, interesting memoir by the Go-Go's bassist. Valentine is very insightful in recognizing that the alcohol and drugs she used from an early age were a way of suppressing the feelings she had about her father's abandonment, her mother's failure to establish any boundaries or limitations on her behavior, several early abortions, and a rape at age 14. Pretty harrowing stuff, but I felt like she was still describing it slightly from a distance, so it didn't quite have a full emotional impact.

The book's highlights, obviously, are the chapters that portray her life as a Go-Go. The story is pretty familiar (and if you can watch the recent Showtime documentary I highly recommend it) - after several years of struggling, the band had a #1 album with “Beauty and the Beat,” and then everything started to fall apart. Considering the amount of drinking and drugs consumed by the members, I'm amazed that none of them died young. And the pressures of their record company and management, plus increasing tension about payment inequities and the exhaustion of constant touring, spelled an early end to the band after only 3 albums.

The rest of the book is bit of a let-down. We know that Valentine never achieved commercial success after the band broke up, and she only mentions the recent Go-Go's reunions, her firing from the band and subsequent lawsuit, in the book's final paragraph, so the ending feels rushed and incomplete, although her journey to sobriety is well worth honoring and celebrating. We also never learn the identity of the father of Valentine's teenaged daughter who is mentioned in the book's introduction, although I respect her desire to give her some privacy (a quick Google can answer those questions).

Not the best music memoir that I've read, but a good one about a band that meant a lot to me and other women who came of age in the early 1980s.