Belinda Carlisle exploded onto the music scene in the early 1980s as the lead singer of the powder-keg group the Go-Go’s. Light years away from the manufactured girl groups of the 1960s, the Go Go’s were musical pioneers in the then-virgin territory of women in rock who wrote their own songs and played their own instruments. The band was also the first female group to achieve a No. 1 album by utilizing these talents.

Carlisle spoke with the Gay & Lesbian Times about her latest project and the band’s heady heyday.

“The Go-Go’s was really an amazing experience. It was, as cliché as it sounds, the ‘American Dream’ of overcoming obstacles and having a dream and really working towards that dream and making it happen. And it was crazy and it was fun,” Carlisle reminisced.

The group not only racked up hits with “Our Lips are Sealed,” “We Got the Beat,” “Vacation” and “Head Over Heels,” it also became notorious for off-stage partying and sexual antics that rivaled those of its male musical counterparts.

Sadly, the party ended in 1985 due to infighting betwe-en group members. But Carlisle persevered and carved out a successful solo act for herself, hitting it big with the singles, “Mad About You,” “Heaven is a Place on Earth,” “I Get Weak,” “Circle in the Sand,” “I Feel Free,” “Leave a Light on” and “Summer Rain.”

In 1994, the splintered group reunited for the two-disc retrospective Return to the Valley of the Go-Go’s and, in 2001, God Bless the Go-Go’s. It also has toured together, most recently in 2006 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Beauty and the Beat, the record that started the group’s success.

“We get along. We’ve had a relationship with each other, pretty much, for the last 30 years, with the exception of from about 1985 to 1990; there were five years where we weren’t talking that much.” Carlisle said. “It’s like being married to four other people; it’s complete dysfunction. Sometimes there’s a lot of tension, but at the end of the day we love each other very much.”

Carlisle knows a thing or two about maintaining a healthy relationship in her personal life as well. She and husband, Morgan Mason, have been married for more than 20 years and have a son, James Duke Mason. In a time when there’s a celebrity divorce every other day, Carlisle says “giving each other a lot of space” is the secret of her marital success. “That’s probably it,” she laughed. “My husband and I get along so well, it’s scary. I mean, knock on wood (I’m knocking on wood right now). But, we do have a lot of separations where I go off and do my thing and he goes off and does his thing, and then we get together and we’re one big happy family. I think that’s the key, to not be breathing down each other’s necks and saying, ‘No, you can’t do this and you can’t do that.’ We let each other be who we need to be.”

Carlisle has taken a new musical direction with her latest compact disc, Voila, a project that consists of French pop standards that are both haunting and evocative. This is Carlisle’s seventh solo CD and her first release in more than a decade. While her choice of songs might seem a musical 360 to some, it makes perfect sense to Carlisle, who now lives in both London and France.

“I’ve been pretty much living in France for the past 14 years and I listen to a lot of French radio and became really familiar with a lot of French artists and music and icons,” she explained. “About two years ago, I was at a music conference in town and I was approached about making another album, and I said, ‘No, I don’t really have any interest, but (and the idea just came out of my mouth) I’d love to try to make an album of French pop and classics.’ It was challenging and exciting and something I’d never done before.”

Carlisle says the change from walking along the Pacific Ocean as a native Southern Californian to strolling along the Seine in her new homeland was quite an adjustment.

“It was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. When we first got there, I think I kind of freaked out, but it was a little bit too late because all of the furniture was packed and on some ship in the middle of the ocean somewhere,” she laughed. “My husband and I thought, ‘Let’s give it six months; we can always go back.’ And we gave it six months and six months turned into 13 years. We love living in Europe and this life that we have here. It’s interesting all of the time. And I love coming back to the States, too. But I feel like my life is in Europe now.”

Carlisle has also seen the music world change dramatically in the last three decades.

“I don’t think that music is that healthy right now … and I think that shows like ‘American Idol’ have kind of tainted the music industry too. It’s not so much about having real, organic talent nurturing arts; it’s more about marketing,” she explained. “But, also, record companies get greedy and don’t know the first thing about music anymore. And they think about how much money they make each quarter, their profits, and if something doesn’t make money, but it has talent, it doesn’t matter – they just drop it. There’s no more nurturing the young artist.”

Yet despite her view of the industry, Carlisle intends to stay true to her artistic vision.

“I could never see myself making another pop album in the same vein that I’ve made in the past. It’s just not interesting to me, and it’s not challenging and my heart would definitely not be in it; so it’s like why bother? I’m at the point in my career where I really don’t have to work within commercial constraints and think about the chart position. That’s past, and I am really not interested in competing in that way anymore. For me [recording Voila] was a really freeing, exciting experience and one where I could experiment and do whatever I wanted to do, and it was great.”