The first trailer for The Go-Go's documentary has been released.

The movie about the groundbreaking '80s band made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, and will make its broadcast debut on Showtime on Aug. 1 at 9PM ET.

The trailer - which you can watch below -  shows how the band went from the Los Angeles punk scene to chart-toppers in just a few years. "We were pretty crappy in the beginning," lead guitarist Charlotte Caffey says. "But we had these songs that were just coming together."

That turned out to be 1981's Beauty and the Beat, which became the first - and still the only - album by a group comprised entirely of women that wrote and performed their own material to top the Billboard album chart. But success quickly took its toll on the group, which broke up after 1984's Talk Show,.

The Go-Go's have had several reunions since. "We didn't communicate," singer Belinda Carlisle remembers. "And then when we did communicate, we didn't do it in a respectful way."

Alison Ellwood, who previously directed History of the Eagles and Laurel Canyon: A Place in Time, uses archival performance and interview footage in the film, as well as newly conducted interviews with band members.

“I’ve always been a huge Go-Go’s fan,” Ellwood said in a press release. “When the band asked me to direct this film, I was thrilled. Like a lot of people, I thought of them as this wonderful, bubbly, all-girl pop band from L.A. What I’ve discovered is a much more complex and deeper truth.”

“We lived it and we survived it,” the Go-Go’s noted. “Now, looking back on our history through this film, we get to relive our journey as a band: the fun, the adventure, the highs and the lows. We hope this documentary will show the world that we were pioneers, and how our experience paved the way for many other female (and some male!) musicians.”

The day before the documentary airs, the group will release "Club Zero," their first new music since 2001's God Bless the Go-Go's album.

 

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