On an early trip from Baltimore to San Francisco in 1978 to perform with Edie and the Eggs, Gina Schock walked into the legendary Mabuhay Gardens—and felt like she had landed in another universe.
“Well, I was 21 and showing up at the Mubuhay Gardens with [John Waters actress] Edith Massey,” says Schock, who later found international fame as the Go-Go’s drummer. “Every character in San Francisco was there! I was beside myself. My head was spinning. So many people were talking to me, I was being pulled in every direction, and loving it.”
Decades later, Schock is returning to San Francisco with a very different kind of stage. In honor of Women’s History Month, the Haight Street Art Center will host A View from the Throne (March 14–May 16), an immersive exhibition built from her personal archive—hundreds of photographs, artifacts, and tour ephemera documenting the rise of The Go-Go’s from punk outsiders to global pop icons.
The title carries a double meaning. For drummers, the stool behind the kit is literally called the throne. But for Schock, it also describes the vantage point she held while watching—and documenting—the band’s history unfold. “My perspective from that throne is all-encompassing,” says Schock. “I see and feel everything. I’m basically guiding the band. That’s a woman with power!”
The exhibition unfolds like a tour diary brought to life. Visitors move through spaces evoking backstage dressing rooms, concert halls, and life on the road, surrounded by walls of posters, handwritten letters, stage costumes, and hundreds of photographs Schock shot herself while the band traveled the world. The result feels less like a conventional museum show and more like stepping inside the lived memory of a band.
Schock first experienced San Francisco’s music scene when the city’s punk underground was still exploding. By the early ’80s, bands from Los Angeles frequently drove north to play venues like the Mabuhay Gardens. For Schock’s new band—the Belinda Carlisle–fronted Go-Go’s—the scene felt like an extension of the scrappy LA community they came from.
“We were just learning and experiencing the punk scene here in SF,” she says. “And it felt like an extension of our LA family. We all had the same objectives—get high and have fun. You don’t have to be the best player on the planet to grab the attention of a group of music lovers.”
Today, The Go-Go’s story is legendary, but the band’s early years were defined by skepticism from the music industry. Formed in Los Angeles at the tail end of the ’70s punk explosion, the group struggled to convince labels that five women could write their own songs, play their own instruments, and sell records.
“When we were trying to get a record deal,” Schock says, “the labels wouldn’t give us the time of day because we were an all-female band. There had never been a hugely successful all-female band, and no one wanted to take the chance.”
Eventually, I.R.S. Records took the gamble, releasing the band’s debut album Beauty and the Beat in 1981. On the strength of hit singles, “Our Lips Are Sealed” and “We Got the Beat,” The Go-Go’s quickly made history as the only all-female band to write their own material, play their own instruments, and reach No. 1 on the charts. Follow-up albums Vacation (1982) and Talk Show (1984) continued the success, reaching the Top 10 and Top 20, respectively.
Four decades later, that achievement was formally recognized when the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021. Still, Schock says the group’s influence was often minimized at the time.
“For many years, The Go-Go’s weren’t taken seriously,” says the drummer. “A lot of folks were playing it safe by not fully acknowledging the impact that we could and ultimately did have as a good investment. Looking back, it’s evident we made our mark.”
San Francisco has remained part of that history. The band’s early shows at Mabuhay Gardens helped introduce them to Bay Area audiences, and the city later became a regular stop on their tours.
More recently, their music returned to the city in a different form. In 2018, the musical Head Over Heels, featuring Miss Peppermint and built around The Go-Go’s catalog, premiered at the Curran Theatre before transferring to Broadway. The exuberant Elizabethan comedy—powered by hits like “We Got the Beat” and “Vacation”—became one of the decade’s most unusual jukebox musicals, celebrating identity, freedom, and self-expression.
For Schock, the Haight Street Art Center exhibition is another way of telling the band’s story—this time through the images she quietly captured along the way.
“I have always carried a camera with me,” she says. “There’s so much I photographed before The Go-Go’s, like on my drive to LA in my dad’s pickup, I was documenting the whole drive. I’m all about visuals. So I was always carrying a camera because I wanted to document all that I was seeing and doing, so that at a later date I could share it, look back at these photographs, and press the refresh button.”
Over time, those photographs grew into an enormous personal archive—one that even Schock was surprised to see assembled into a single exhibition. “First, I love San Francisco, and I’m really grateful to be able to show it here,” says the drummer. “This city has always felt open and welcoming to me, and I want to pass that feeling along.”
Looking at the materials now—old tour posters, backstage snapshots, handwritten notes—she’s struck by just how much she preserved. “I am knocked out by the amount of ephemera, memories, and history that I have documented and stored over the decades,” Schock says. “Now, the band definitely has historical value in the music industry.”
Fans visiting the exhibition will see artifacts from the band’s earliest tours alongside intimate photographs of everyday moments—hotel rooms, rehearsal spaces, dressing rooms before a show.
“Anything and everything,” says Schock when asked which pieces she’s most excited for people to see. “There’s so much that will be seen for the first time by old and new fans. If you want to get your fill of what it was like to be in a punk rock band in the early ‘80s and then become something much bigger—take a close look.”
But the show isn’t only about revisiting the past. Schock hopes it sends a message to younger musicians—especially women who may still feel shut out of parts of the industry.
“That you, too, can do this and that anything is possible if you’re truly dedicated,” she says. “With all the work, it’s a helluva lot of fun and a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Being a woman is not a deficit.”
Schock eventually chose to make San Francisco her permanent home. After years of touring, the city’s culture and open-minded spirit drew her back. “I love the weather here,” says the drummer. “It’s my favorite in the whole country. I love the music scene. It was so vibrant and alive—and it still is.”
What keeps her here, she says, is the city’s willingness to embrace change.
“People here are willing to give you a chance, no matter your endeavor,” Schock says. “Always unafraid of change, and you cannot have enough of that in the world.”
In many ways, A View from the Throne reflects the same spirit: a celebration not only of rock history but also of persistence, documentation, and perspective.
A VIEW FROM THE THRONE Sat/14-May 16. Haight Street Art Center, SF. Tickets and more info here.
