Alone in her hotel, Belinda Carlisle thought she was dying. What happened next changed her life

Belinda Carlisle’s first trip to Australia was, in an unfortunately literal sense, rather painful. In 1982, while performing with The Go-Go’s in Melbourne, the lead singer of the pioneering rock band snapped her ankle as she stepped offstage. “God, I heard it,” says Carlisle, visibly wincing. “I missed a stair and just went over on the side of my foot. There’s a paparazzi photo of me being wheeled through the airport by [bandmate] Gina Schock.”The year prior, The Go-Go’s made history with their debut record, Beauty and the Beat, becoming the first female group to write their own songs and play their own instruments on an album that topped the US charts. With Carlisle now hobbling around on crutches, they were forced to cancel the remainder of their tour. The band never returned to our shores – but for Carlisle, it marked the start of a special relationship with Australia. In 2013, she told a reporter she’d notched up 20 visits, and has toured three times since. “The audiences are always pretty much rabid, which I like,” she says. “There’s definitely a mutual thing going on.”Carlisle, 68, has enjoyed some of her biggest chart successes in Australia.Albert SanchezIn March, Carlisle will perform to her Australian fans for the final time. With a career spanning 50 years, the 68-year-old wants a change of pace.“I just want to say g’day and goodbye,” she says, stressing that she’s not retiring. “I’ll always be creative. In fact, I’m making a new album right now. The touring thing gets harder and harder, and I’m becoming less and less patient and more intolerant. I’ve been touring since I was 19 years old. I know at some point I’ll do little things here and there. I’ll make albums but I just won’t tour that much any more.”“I realised during that bender that I was in the throes of addiction.”Belinda CarlisleWhat began as a four-date tour, appropriately titled G’day and Goodbye, has expanded to 10 shows due to extraordinary demand. Of course, many international artists pay lip service to Australia – but Carlisle’s fondness for this country is no surprise.Our Lips Are Sealed, the opening track on Beauty and the Beat, reached No.2 here in 1981; its highest chart position globally. Australia was the only market in which her 1989 solo album Runaway Horses went double-platinum, yielding the single Summer Rain: a moderate success elsewhere, but a gold-certified smash on the ARIA charts, and one of the most-played songs on radio in 1990. (To this day, it’s her favourite track to perform live.) Not to mention the other singles that have cracked the top 10 locally, including Mad About You, Heaven Is a Place on Earth and Leave a Light On, all of which remain staples of contemporary adult radio.Carlisle, speaking via Zoom from her home in Mexico City, smiles as I recount these statistics, but what really gets her animated are the memories she’s accumulated during her many visits. She recalls a wild party at Molly Meldrum’s Egyptian-themed house (“the decor was so beautifully done, and Molly was so gracious and sweet”). The first time she heard someone mistakenly refer to Our Lips Are Sealed as “Alex the Seal” was when a baffled Australian DJ asked her to explain its meaning. (This mondegreen proved so enduring that local rock band Spiderbait recorded a version called Alex the Seal in 1995.)“We were so naughty,” she says of The Go-Go’s 1982 Australian tour. “We did some shows with the Sunnyboys but it’s all kind of a blur because we were really into the moment and having a lot of fun – too much fun.”Carlisle is dressed in an elegant white blouse with a gold necklace and pendant earrings; her strawberry hair is tucked into a low ponytail. Although it’s late afternoon in Mexico City, the singer – who famously expressed surprise at the fact she still has a nose after decades of cocaine abuse – will soon be asleep. Most nights, she goes to bed about 7.30pm, allowing her to greet each day at 3.30am. After making coffee, she listens to Buddhist teachings before meditating and reciting chants, capping off her routine with a walk at dawn.“It changes my perspective on everything,” she says. “I’m really working on being neutral with the crazy world around us, and not being caught up in all the anger and fear.”She admits she’s lucky to be alive, having lost many friends to drug overdoses. Indeed, her hedonistic exploits are legendary. There’s the time she missed five international flights in a row while stoned. The racehorse she bought while high, despite having no interest in the sport. The alcohol, acid and weed she imbibed at 14 after running away from home.Despite her escalating drug use, Carlisle managed to build a successful career after The Go-Go’s first split in 1985. (They have reunited several times over the past few decades, and were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2021.) In 1986, she released her debut solo album, Belinda. Then came Heaven on Earth featuring her signature song, Heaven Is a Place on Earth, an international chart-topper with a music video directed by Diane Keaton. This was followed by Runaway Horses (1989), Live Your Life Be Free (1991), Real (1993) and A Woman & a Man (1996).“I could be on an all-nighter and just put make-up on the next day and nobody would even know,” Carlisle says. “But it was getting to the point where it wasn’t sustainable. I was missing rehearsals and I was missing recordings.”Carlisle in 1989, when she released her Runaway Horses album.But her lowest point occurred in a London hotel room in 2005, after she saw a photograph of herself with a group of fans. “It was so weird because there was no life in my eyes,” she says. “They were blank.” Each time she glimpsed her reflection in a mirror, she saw a stranger looking back at her. Distraught, she spent the next three days snorting cocaine.“I realised during that bender that I was in the throes of addiction,” she says. “What did it for me – what was so scary – is that I had an auditory hallucination. For me, [the voice] was real … it was basically saying, ‘You’re going to die; you’re going to end up dead in a hotel room’. I just finished what I had and that was it. I was sick and tired of feeling like shit, of feeling guilt and shame from that whole cycle of addiction.”After Carlisle broke her ankle in Melbourne, The Go-Go’s were forced to cancel the remainder of their 1982 Australian tour.Staff photographerShe signed up to a 12-step recovery program and has been clean ever since.Carlisle was born in Southern California in 1958, to an 18-year-old mother and a father who left when she was five. Her mother remarried but her stepfather was in the grip of alcoholism, and it fell to her to help raise her six younger siblings.“It made me not want to have a big family, that’s for sure,” says Carlisle, who has one son, James Duke Mason, with her husband of 40 years, Morgan Mason. “As tough as it was, I think most people who come from dysfunctional families know that it does give you some gifts.”The Go-Go’s (from left): Carlisle, Jane Wiedlin, Gina Schock, Charlotte Caffey and Kathy Valentine.GettyAlthough she is progressive, and James is a prominent gay rights activist, Carlisle enjoyed spending time with former US president Ronald Reagan in the ’80s, when Morgan worked as the State Department’s deputy chief of protocol. She laments the fact that in 2026, we’re quick to label those we disagree with as “bad”.“There is such division,” she says. “It’s a shame because you used to be able to agree to disagree. I have friends who voted for Trump, who have opposite views to me. We don’t talk about it, but I’m still friends with them! For somebody to disown a friend or family member over a difference of opinion is a loss for everybody.”To casual observers, Carlisle seemed to have it all: a loving marriage, a succession of hit records and global profile. But her confidence, which took years to cultivate, is much younger than her career.“I definitely had imposter syndrome,” she says. “When Beauty and the Beat went to No.1, we were the biggest band in America and on the cover of every magazine. But I just felt kind of undeserving, I guess because of the way I grew up. It didn’t feel real. But with sobriety, I realised that I do deserve it. I worked really hard from when I was 17. My career has been up and down and not linear at all, and it took a lot of work to get [to where I am today].”As a girl, Carlisle sought refuge from her chaotic home life in music, spending summer days singing along to hit singles with her best friend, Christina. “Her mom worked, so we’d lie in front of the speakers and listen to California radio from 8am to 6pm,” she says. “Those songs are part of my cellular make-up. I had a stack of 45s I bought with money I’d saved from babysitting. Music was everything to me; it was an escape and I was really good at creating fantasies of being a singer.”Last year, Carlisle released her ninth studio album, Once Upon a Time in California. Largely comprised of covers, it’s a tribute to the artists who forged the distinctive “West Coast sound” such as Burt Bacharach, Harry Nilsson and Karen Carpenter. “There’s a frequency inside her voice that kind of gets you,” she says of Carpenter, who was sneered at by critics in the ’70s but is now regarded as one of the era’s greatest vocalists. “When I hear Barry Gibb, it affects me in the same way. It’s just something I can’t put my finger on.”Their influence on Carlisle is obvious, from the sunny vocal stylings of Our Lips Are Sealed to the shimmery vibrato of Leave a Light On. Yet, her music spans several genres including punk, rock and new wave. She has recorded albums in French and Punjabi, the latter inspired by her devotion to Kundalini yoga. And she remains a fan of New Zealand band Split Enz. “I still listen to their albums because they’re some of the best albums ever made,” she says.Like many of her peers, Carlisle used to be horrified at the thought of being sober on stage. When she got clean, she assumed her live performance days were over.She was stunned, therefore, to discover a newfound connection with her audiences. When I saw Carlisle perform at Melbourne’s Palais Theatre in 2024, she was barefoot, occasionally closing her eyes while tapping her body like a percussive instrument. At times, she appeared to be in a meditative state.“Eckhart Tolle, who wrote The Power of Now, talks about how art comes out of stillness and being able to connect to pure consciousness,” she says. “Now, I’m most comfortable when I’m tapping into that. I find it so much easier being on stage sober … I’m just in the moment.”Belinda Carlisle plays in Perth on March 3; Melbourne on March 5 and 6; Adelaide on March 9; Sydney on March 12 and 13; Thirroul on March 15; Newcastle on March 17; and Brisbane on March 19 and 20. Tickets: abstract.net.auWant more music?Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard made another divorce album. This time, he wanted to get it right.‘It’s totally depressing’: Richard Tognetti on the state of music education.Can opera change the world? These young artists are keen to try.What happens when Australia’s angstiest alt-rockers find love? Great things.By all means, pay tribute to musicians – just spare me the wigs.