Jane Wiedlin is an American musician, singer and actress, best known as the co-founder, rhythm guitarist and backing vocalist of the new wave band the Go-Go's. She also voices Dusk, the drummer and backup vocalist of the fictional rock band the Hex Girls. She also had a successful solo career.
The Go-Go's went on to become one of the most successful American bands of the 1980s, helping popularize new wave music with songs such as "We Got the Beat", "Our Lips Are Sealed", and "Vacation". As a solo artist, Wiedlin's "Rush Hour" peaked at number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100. As an actress, she had roles as the singing telegram girl in Clue (1985) and as Joan of Arc in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989).
As a member of the Go-Go's, Wiedlin received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She and the band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021.
Wiedlin was born in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin.[2] Her father, Robert Arthur Wiedlin Sr., an oral surgeon of German and Swiss ancestry, was born in Chicago, Illinois. Her mother, Betty Jane (née Herro),[3] was of Lebanese heritage. Wiedlin's parents met while students at Marquette University. She is one of five children, with a sister and three brothers, and was raised Catholic. During Wiedlin's early childhood, her family lived in West Allis, a suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. When she was six, her father took a job with the United States Department of Veterans Affairs at a VA hospital in Los Angeles, and the family followed.[4]
Wiedlin has said, "I remember my childhood as extremely idyllic." She has also mentioned her adolescence with angst and hope by saying, "I was a depressed teenager. I thought life was completely pointless when I was in high school, but just a few short years later I was having the adventure of a lifetime in a successful rock band!" She attended William Howard Taft High School in Los Angeles from 1972 to 1976.[5]
According to Wiedlin, she was present "pretty much from the beginning"[6] of the Los Angeles punk scene. While attending college in the Los Angeles area for fashion design, she worked at a fashion-design house where she created song lyrics by scribbling ideas on clothing patterns. Under the moniker Jane Drano, she designed and sold punk-style clothing at Granny Takes a Trip, a store on Sunset Boulevard.[6] She became part of the scene that spawned bands such as X, the Germs and the Weirdos.[1]
Wiedlin and Belinda Carlisle formed the Go-Go's as a punk band in 1978, with Margot Olaverra on bass and Elissa Bello on drums.[7]
In 1981, Wiedlin and Terry Hall of Fun Boy Three and the Specials co-wrote "Our Lips Are Sealed".[8] The song peaked on the Billboard Hot 100 chart at No. 20, where it remained until 1982.[9]
After a series of reunions during the 1990s, Wiedlin, Carlisle, Caffey, Schock and Valentine reunited in 2000 to record God Bless the Go-Go's, their first studio album in 17 years. The album's title and concept came from Wiedlin.[10]
In 2010, the Go-Go's announced their "Happily Ever After" farewell tour, which was intended to begin in July.[11] However, it was canceled after Wiedlin fell down a cliff during a nighttime hike and suffered ACL tears in both knees.[12]
The Go-Go's announced an 11-date reunion tour scheduled to begin in June 2020. It was postponed in May 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[13]
In May 2021 it was announced that the Go-Go's would be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on October 30, 2021.[14][15] The band continued touring into 2022, before announcing their break up.[16] They did a one-off reunion in 2024 after being inducted into the California Hall of Fame.[17][18]
Wiedlin has released four solo albums: Jane Wiedlin in 1985, Fur in 1988, Tangled in 1990, and Kissproof World in 2000.[19] From 1995 to 1998, she was also a member of the band FroSTed, which released one album, Cold, in 1996. In 2017, Wiedlin teamed up with the American-born Italian multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Pietro Straccia to form a new psychedelic/pop/harmony and guitar-driven duo called Elettrodomestico.[20]
Wiedlin's early acting credits include an ill-fated singing telegram girl in Clue (1985), a brief appearance as an officer seen on a Starfleet Command video screen in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), the White Fairy in Golan-Globus's Sleeping Beauty (1987) and as Joan of Arc in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989).[21] Of her 1980s acting career, she has stated, "It turned out to be much harder than it looks, and as much as I enjoyed those experiences, I don't think I'm very good at it."[22]
In 2001, she had a regular role in MTV's Spyder Games, portraying the "ex-rock chick who runs the local coffee house" where the characters hang out.[10]
In 2005, she appeared as herself on the fourth season of VH1's The Surreal Life, in which she talked about her interest in BDSM.[23]
She portrayed the role of Ursula in Steve Balderson's 2005 surrealist crime drama film Firecracker, which Roger Ebert listed among the year's best films.[24] She worked a further three times with director Balderson, in Stuck! (2009), an homage to film noir women in prison dramas.[25], The Casserole Club (2011), about married swingers in 1960s Palm Springs, and Culture Shock (2013), a crime spoof set in London.[26]
She played Tess in the 2011 independent movie I Want to Get Married,[27][28] and played a maths teacher in the 2016 horror film HoneyBee.
She has also provided voices for characters in television and film animation, such as Miranda Kane and Shannon in The New Batman Adventures, Gwen in Mission Hill, and Dusk of the Hex Girls in the Scooby-Doo franchise.[29]
In 2000, Wiedlin and fellow Go-Go's member Charlotte Caffey co-wrote Keith Urban's first number one song, "But for the Grace of God". Wiedlin contributed quotations to Girls Against Girls by author Bonnie Burton.[31] Wiedlin was a contributing writer to the Los Angeles punk rock books Under the Big Black Sun (2016) and More Fun in the New World (2019) by John Doe and Tom DeSavia. In April 2009, Wiedlin was photographed as Bettie Page by Austin Young for the "Heaven Bound" art show.[32] A number of her songs were featured in the 2018 debut of the Broadway musical Head Over Heels, with a story suggested by Philip Sidney's Arcadia set to the songs of the Go-Go's and Belinda Carlisle.[33]
A long-time animal rights activist, Wiedlin has worked with PETA since as far back as 1989 when she performed as part of a "Rock Against Fur" concert in New York City[34] and is a friend of PETA executive Dan Mathews.[10]
Wiedlin has discussed her struggles with depression and mental health, and how it affected her at several stages of her life, including a suicide attempt in high school, and the effects fame (and a lack of healthy coping mechanisms) had on her wellbeing.[35]
During Wiedlin's time in the Los Angeles punk scene, her first real boyfriend was Terry Bag (Terry Graham) of the punk band the Bags and later the Gun Club. She later had what she called a "short but dramatic romance" with Terry Hall of the Specials during a 1980 British tour. Hall later sent her some lyrics prompted by their relationship, inspiring Wiedlin to write "Our Lips Are Sealed",[22] a song on which Hall has co-writer credit and recorded with his own band, Fun Boy Three. In the 2020 documentary The Go-Go's, bandmate Gina Schock stated that she and Wiedlin were "girlfriends" for a time until Wiedlin broke up with her. Wiedlin also had a brief relationship with Russell Mael of the band Sparks.[36]
Wiedlin identifies as bisexual.[37][38]
In addition to acting and singing, Wiedlin is an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church, a mail-order religious organization that offers anyone semi-immediate, no-cost ordination as a ULC minister. Wiedlin identifies herself as "Reverend Sister Go-Go", primarily officiating at weddings.[39]
Wiedlin was married to Ged Malone from 1987 to 1999.[citation needed]
She was married to David Trotter from 2004 to 2005.[citation needed]
Wiedlin became engaged to her boyfriend Terence Lundy in October 2022.[40] They were married in February 2023. She announced their divorce in April 2024. [41]
Wiedlin has spent her adult life living in various places: Mendocino, Costa Rica, Panama, Wisconsin, San Francisco, and Hawaii.[42]
In December 2023, in an exposé by Rolling Stone, Wiedlin alleged that rock DJ Rodney Bingenheimer sexually assaulted her at his English Disco nightclub in Los Angeles when she was around 15 in about 1974.[43]
