Players
© Arnold Neimanis
KATHY VALENTINE, GO-GO’S
PASS GO
Go-Go’s bassist Kathy Valentine reveals high times and low points in her memoir, All I Ever Wanted, a deep dive into abuse, addiction, and redemption, as well as blazing a trail for a generation of bass players. Interview: Joel McIver Photography: Arnold Neimanis, Getty 22
athy Valentine’s autobiography All I Ever Wanted is a great book, but not an easy one to read. Although its author is now much healthier and happier in 2022 than the young musician described in its early chapters, the traumas she suffered as a kid—betrayal, rape, and abortion among them—and the subsequent addictions that she battled in later life are hard to absorb. Fortunately, Valentine is easy to talk to. Now 63 and sober for more than half her life, she looks back on the events described so vividly in her book with a clear eye. This is just as well, because even aside from the low points of her personal life, she’s been on a rocky journey. The Go-Go’s, which she joined in 1980 at the age of 21—picking up the bass despite zero previous experience of the
