Go-Go’s Drummer Gina Schock’s Rare Photos

Edie and Gina

Gina Schock grew up in Baltimore, where actors from John Waters movies were fixtures of her neighborhood. “Edie lived down the street from me,” Shock says of Edith Massey, featured in Pink Flamingos, Desperate Living, Polyester, and other Waters films. “She had a thrift store in Fell’s Point called Edith’s Shopping Bag, and I would go visit her because I just loved her. One day I went in and she said, ‘Oh, gee, I’m going to put together a punk rock band. You want to be in it?’ And I said, ‘Sure, of course.’ I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this might be my chance to get out of here.'”

Schock, pictured here with Massey in 1978, toured all over the country as drummer for Edie and the Eggs. “She was just a sweet little old lady, really,” Schock says. “I would have to strap her in, get her all ready in that leather outfit. And she would cry. She hated that, but she did love all the attention. She was just sweet. I remember whenever Edie was in the car, every sign that we passed, she would go, ‘Oh, Hardee’s, Hardee’s.’ ‘Oh, KFC.’ ‘Oh, California.’ Every sign she would read it when we passed it.”

Schock doesn’t remember what their repertoire was; she did not play on the version of “Big Girls Don’t Cry” that Massey recorded. But that’s not the point. “[The band] wasn’t that good, but it didn’t matter,” Schock says. “It was all about letting Edie have the time of her life.”

Touring helped Schock decide that she wanted to move to New York, San Francisco, or L.A. She ended up staying in Los Angeles. “If it wasn’t for Edie, who knows what would’ve happened with the Go-Go’s and who knows what would’ve happened to me?” Shock says.