Runaways - The Queens of Rock'n'Roll

Abused, slandered, underrated and unexpectedly seminal. Bad girls that the riot grrrl movement humbly looks up to, and who would burst out laughing at pop's "Girl Power", mistaking it for a joke.

At a time when rock was dominated exclusively by men (albeit ambiguous-looking ones), an all-female group capable of writing and playing their own songs entirely on their own would have been a revolution regardless of how young its members were.

These are years in which women can find space and credibility in folk, but not in rock. Janis Joplin is past her peak, Suzi Quatro is little known and Patti Smith has yet to make her debut. It almost seems as though women aren't capable of playing the harder side of rock. No one, up to that point, had ever dared to propose this kind of music. But now the time is ripe for an all-female rock band to break taboos, one as loud and transgressive as mid-'70s rock'n'roll demands.

The conception.

In 1975, at a party thrown by Alice Cooper, Kim Fowley (closer to being a slippery, unscrupulous hustler than an enthusiastic, if successful, record producer) meets the then thirteen-year-old Kari Krome, who is introduced to him as a songwriter. Fowley is impressed, and as the conversation continues he senses the commercial potential of a band made up entirely of teenage girls, convincing Krome to join. Kari Krome signs a contract with Fowley on her fourteenth birthday, without Fowley ever having heard her sing or listened to any of her songs.

A few days later a studio rehearsal is arranged, which Krome attends with a guitarist friend, Joan Jett (whose absolute worship of Suzi Quatro is more than obvious), and the drummer Jett was playing with at the time, Sandy West.

Energized by Jett and West, Fowley is left deeply disappointed by Krome's abilities as a performer, and sets out to find a replacement with stronger vocals and greater appeal. He tracks down Micki Steele (who will later join the Bangles) and tells her to learn to play bass, leaving Krome to take on the role of writer.

The trio, together with Krome and Fowley handling the lyrics, immediately starts writing songs, playing LA clubs, and records the demo Born To Be Bad.

Meanwhile Fowley, who deems Steele not pretty enough and soon gives her the boot, starts making the rounds of clubs in search of a new vocalist and a new bassist. He meets guitarist Jackie Fox and asks her to come in for a studio audition, but her performance on bass is disappointing and won't earn her a spot in the lineup.

Fowley then places an ad in the fanzine "Who Put the Bomp" (which Lester Bangs also wrote for), and it's sixteen-year-old British guitarist Lita Ford who shows up for the audition.

Ford is instantly adored by the girls, Sandy West especially, for having prepared a few Deep Purple songs. West and Jett welcome her warmly and bring her in right away, but Ford quits the band after just three days because of Fowley's attitude, who addresses the girls exclusively with insults. Still, those three days are enough for the rest of the band to realize that the hard rock edge Ford was bringing could add something extra to their sound, so they call her up and manage to convince her, explaining that the frustration she feels toward Fowley is shared by all of them, and that things will surely get better once success arrives.

One evening, Kim Fowley and Joan Jett head to the Sugar Shack, one of the few venues in the San Fernando Valley where entry isn't barred to under-21s, with the clear intention of going home having found a new vocalist. Fowley immediately spots a girl with the same haircut David Bowie sports on the cover of "Aladdin Sane". He walks up to her, introduces her to Joan Jett, and asks if she wants to join an all-female rock band. Cherie Currie, the girl, says yes. Just like that.

Currie shows up for the audition a few days later, and since she had prepared Suzi Quatro's "Fever", a song Ford refuses to play because it's too slow, Fowley (who by now had made up his mind) and Jett take half an hour to write a song. The result is the birth of "Cherry Bomb" and the end of the search for a new singer.

With Currie now on board, the band's potential starts to emerge in rehearsals. The project is on the right track, and Fowley calls Jackie Fox back in, convincing her to join as bassist. Apart from Currie, none of the girls are happy with Fox's performance, but given that she's very pretty and her technique will surely improve with time, Fowley puts her in the lineup.

The songs start taking shape, there's constant brainstorming in rehearsal from Jett, Ford, Fox and West, and Currie starts feeling she isn't contributing properly to the project. So what now? What does a singer do besides sing? She owns the stage, she gives the band an image. One afternoon Cherie goes window-shopping, until this skin-and-bones sixteen-year-old walks into a lingerie store and comes out only after buying a guêpière. A guêpière to wear on stage. Quatro had been banned from American radio for her leather trousers, and Cherie Currie wanted to wear a guêpière on stage!

From a visual standpoint, that corset was ideal for drawing attention to the band (or for confining it for good). In reality, the attention would likely end up focused on Currie alone, and that was already starting to rub some of the other girls in the band the wrong way.

The fertile period

In February 1976, with the lineup (and Currie's image) now solidified and a shark like Fowley as manager, the band lands its first contract with Mercury Records. The agreement, which clearly funnels every last cent of income to Kim Fowley, is of course signed by the girls' parents, who are stunned and worried, but the girls themselves don't care: this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and financial matters certainly aren't going to be what ruins it.

The Runaways, recorded in just two weeks, is made up mostly of tracks already present on the demo cut only a few months earlier, duly re-recorded by the new lineup. It's one continuous explosion of energy. Nothing like it had ever been heard from girls before: taut, powerful, heavy hard rock. The guitars sound like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, while the vocals, aggressive and brazen, talk about sex and a life driven by a thirst for experience. Rounding out the sound of a genuinely excellent record are the cheeky bass lines played by Nigel Harrison (who'd already worked with Silverhead and would later join Blondie): although Fox is credited, she had in fact been pushed out of the studio sessions by Fowley.

Tracks like "You Drive Me Wild", "Blackmail", the cover of "Rock & Roll" by Velvet Underground and "American Nights" all have what it takes to be hit singles and keep the album from going unnoticed. These are songs where the guitars scratch and claw without holding back, and the vocal hooks don't hold back either. The lyrics, meanwhile, are a slap in the face to purists and the naive, because it's now clear that girls have the same desires and the same energy as boys, that they're not any more "clean" than their male counterparts. And it's the opening track, "Cherry Bomb", that over the years would become a rock landmark. A taut, gripping song, musically aggressive yet catchy at the same time. How could it not be? Starting with the obvious link between the singer's name (CHERIE Currie) and the song's title ("CHERRY Bomb"), the listener simply cannot separate what they're hearing (lines like "Down the streets I'm the girl next door/ I'm the fox you've been waiting for", the verse: “Hey street boy, want your style/ Your dead end dreams don’t make you smile/ I’ll give ya something to live for/ Have ya, grab ya ‘til you’re sore” or the chorus "Hello world, I'm you wild girl/ I'm your ch-ch-ch-ch cherry bomb") from the image of a nymphet in lingerie.

The cultural impact among their peers is instant: it means that anything is possible, that any sixteen-year-old can make music, cut records and become famous.
Now any girl can pick up a guitar, because with such a precedent set, there's not much left to fear: the limits have been pushed back, the floodgates broken down, and every form of sexist extremism becomes further fuel for rebellion: the weaker sex now turns out to be nothing more than an old urban legend.


After the album cover is approved by Fowley and the record label, the first real friction starts brewing among the girls: even though all five members are pictured inside, it's Currie alone who dominates the front cover.

The Runaways isn't given proper backing by the record label, which doesn't much trust a manipulator like Fowley and sees the Runaways as little more than his pet project. It also gets little airplay on the radio, where stations feel that a band of (genuine) teenage musicians fronted by a sixteen-year-old in a guêpière singing about sex means breaking far too many taboos.

Not only that, but Fowley's reputation — as a snake-oil salesman, a skilled manipulator, someone best kept at arm's length — works against the band getting support from some of the major fanzines.

There's also another obstacle threatening to sink the upcoming tour, and that's the girls' parents. Fowley has never handled anyone with much delicacy, least of all them, and his bad reputation certainly doesn't put at ease the parents of young girls wanting to go off and play shows all across the United States. Fowley nonetheless manages to win them over, explaining that the venues the girls would be playing would be packed arenas, and that the Runaways would come home practically rich. For their part, the girls promise their parents they'll always look out for one another.

Of course, none of these expectations hold up: the band ends up staying in run-down motels, eating nothing but McDonald's, and small warring factions start to form among the girls.

So even though this interesting record goes largely unpromoted, the Runaways, Kim Fowley and Scott Anderson — who co-manages the band alongside Fowley, despite a clear conflict of interest given that Fowley writes some of the songs, produces them, sets up contacts and books the dates — set off on a long tour of American clubs, and sales finally start to pick up toward the end of the year, from the night the band plays the famous CBGB's in New York.

Halfway through the tour, things are already out of control: Fox gets "scolded" for being the only member of the group who hasn't slept with Anderson, Currie starts to "get distracted", getting sexually involved with Fowley and romantically involved with Jett (in an interview she would later rightly comment: "I was at an age when everyone's curious, and back then everyone was experimenting with everything: why shouldn't I have done the same?"), and Ford grows increasingly on edge as she watches her dreams of success and money get chipped away. On top of that, the band was never really united, and Fowley and Anderson actively encourage the rifts, jealousies, rivalries and competitiveness within the lineup.

Fowley, meanwhile, starts abusing the girls without ever paying them anything. He also keeps addressing them in offensive terms, and the psychological abuse soon escalates into emotional and physical abuse. Fowley is such a manipulator that the girls come to believe they have no choice but to go along with all his bizarre demands and behavior that would have landed anyone else in prison.

Alarmed by how hard it is to get in touch with their daughters, and by what they could only guess at when they finally managed to, the girls' parents — Cherie's father in particular — start digging into Fowley's background. Once he finds out, Fowley verbally attacks Cherie in front of the other girls and drags them into it too, threatening that if Don Currie doesn't immediately stop investigating, the whole project will be considered over.

Fowley gets what he wants, and the entire band turns on Cherie, freezing her out, while Don Currie stops investigating.

Meanwhile the tour carries on, pushing all the way into Europe by which point the girls are practically already drug addicts. The shows are held in clubs so freezing cold that the girls' hands go numb and they can barely play, with hard liquor as the only cure for the cold.

In Scotland, alcohol abuse leads to a massive brawl with the audience (made up exclusively of angry punks who kept lobbing bottles at the stage as a sign of approval), and in England things go even worse, ending with the band's arrest for possession of cocaine.

Cramps

With the tour barely over, without even a few days to catch their breath, the Runaways immediately get to work on their second album, Queens Of Noise.

Exhausted from the tour, the girls enter the recording studio now addicted to alcohol and drugs. They're increasingly adrift, increasingly subjugated to Kim Fowley and, above all, increasingly unable to stand one another.

Cherrie shows up at the studio after a few days in hospital following an abortion. She can't wait to record "Queens Of Noise" (a concept already tackled more than once on the debut album), only to discover not only that recording has already begun, but that the song she thought had been written for her has already been recorded and sung by Joan Jett.

In the studio, then, the atmosphere is dreadful, and at home things are certainly no more relaxed, with the parents fully realizing that their daughters are drugged up, drunk and the victims of an opportunistic adult.

The band's second record follows in the footsteps of the first and stands as a worthy continuation of it.

Songs that could have been written by Kiss or Aerosmith, with the same scratchy guitars and the same subject matter: casual sex, endless nights spent wandering from party to party, and experiences with drugs. But while that kind of material is expected from Kiss and Aerosmith, partly because their average age at the time is 27, not all the members of the Runaways could even claim to be eighteen yet.

The songs retain the same grit as those on the debut album. Tracks like "Neon Angels On The Road To Ruin" (the most representative song of the record and of the band), "I Love Playin' With Fire" and "California" are rousing, catchy and powerful, standing out in a genuine and once again excellent record, albeit with a few mild production rough edges. Other tracks, on the other hand (such as "Midnight Music", "Queens Of Noise" and "Heartbeat"), come across as slightly slower without being sugary ballads or any less powerful: they simply have a less driving rhythm, but a sound that's still very hard-edged. Lita Ford remains, within the lineup, the member most inclined toward hard rock, and tracks like the wildly reworked cover of "Take It Or Leave It" by the Rolling Stones and the bluesy "Johnny Guitar" give her the chance to show off virtuoso solos that have nothing to envy in those of older, more testosterone-fuelled colleagues.

The real novelty on this record is Joan Jett's move toward the microphone, now sharing the role of lead vocalist in the band with Cherie Currie.

Queens of Noise comes out at the start of 1977. The reasons to keep boycotting the Runaways are starting to dwindle, and the record gets greater support from both the label and radio stations, managing to chart well.

After a brief but extremely intense run of shows in the United States, opening for Tom Petty and Cheap Trick, in June 1977 the Runaways land in Japan for a handful of dates. Doubtful about the point of the trip and worn out from an extremely long flight, the girls are stunned by the reception they get at the airport: hundreds of screaming fans held back by police, and at least thirty photographers blinding them with flashes the moment they step off the plane.

At the hotel, they find a towering stack of magazines covering them. In one of these, on the article's first page, there are a few photos of the whole lineup, but on the following pages there are only photographs of Cherie Currie in her corset, shots that Jackie Fox will describe as "semi-pornographic". The girls are furious about it, especially because they had no idea Cherie had ever posed alone for that shoot. The situation grows more and more tense, and it takes days before anyone speaks to Currie again.

The long Japanese tour had yet to even begin, and it was already clear it wouldn't end well.

The Runaways are exhausted, and every setback or disappointment gets blown out of proportion. On top of that there are the individual drug addictions, the relationship Fowley has struck up with Currie, and management's utter lack of control.

In the middle of the tour, just days before their performance at the Tokyo Music Festival in front of 80,000 spectators, someone breaks Jackie Fox's bass. What could easily have been contained was instead allowed to spiral out of control. Fox has a nervous breakdown, and the other girls, though wanting to stay close to comfort her, are systematically turned away from the door of her hotel room. Currie manages to get into Fox's room and finds her cutting deep gashes into her arm with a piece of glass. Cherie manages to wrestle the glass out of her hands, but gets hurt in the process. Fox pushes her out of the room, locks herself in, and calls a friend in the United States. Randy Rhoads, the friend on the other end of the line, advises the girl to call her parents, drop everything, and come home immediately.

Fowley shows no interest whatsoever in the situation; Fox, as expected, doesn't even have a dime because Fowley never hands any money over, and the only thing the Japanese promoter can do is give the bassist a bus ticket and vague directions to get to the airport.

On the stage of the Tokyo Music Festival, the Runaways are reduced to a four-piece, with Joan Jett taking over the bass parts.

During the Japanese tour, the band's only live album, Live In Japan, is recorded, and it will be released exclusively in the Land of the Rising Sun. The record showcases the musicians' grit, energy and undeniable technical skill, as well as Currie's vocal abilities. In a well-balanced setlist drawn from The Runaways and Queens Of Noise, the cover of "Wild Thing" by the Troggs blends in nicely.

The Runaways come back from Japan battered: exhausted, increasingly dependent on alcohol and drugs, with a new album to make, European dates already booked, and a new bassist to find.

Jackie Fox is replaced by Vicki Blue, and the moment she walks into the room, everyone braces for more trouble from Ford: Vicki physically resembles Jackie, and Lita, who had systematically targeted and exploited Jackie in every situation, seems to be looking for a new outlet. Instead, Ford becomes her friend, takes her under her wing and teaches her all the songs. Somehow, Lita Ford, who clearly sees Vicki Blue as a breath of fresh air in a horrible period, ends up feeling responsible for the newcomer.

Before work begins on the new record, the girls are booked for a photo session with Barry Levine (responsible for some of the most famous shots taken at Woodstock, and the man who made Kiss famous).

The day doesn't go smoothly: Ford, angry at Currie for not taking the career she'd started seriously, and at the manager for being more concerned with sleeping with the singer and keeping her supplied with whatever drugs she wanted than with pushing her to act professionally, flies at Currie and violently attacks her, leaving her with scratches, cuts and plenty of bruises.

Currie, who had been receiving all the media attention and therefore believed she could easily launch a solo career, leaves the band.

Two weeks later, the Runaways go into the studio to record Waitin' For The Night. Cherie Currie's departure is obviously a delicate situation, and the burden falls mostly on Jett's shoulders, as she takes on all the vocal parts.

Although there's a clear musical continuity with The Runaways and Queens Of Noise, Waitin' For The Night turns out to be slightly less powerful. Guitar riffs that are more "street", more immediate, and more in line with the hits of Alice Cooper and Aerosmith than those of Black Sabbath or Deep Purple, underpin catchy, driving tracks ("School Days", "Don't Go Away" and "Wait For Me"). Jett's voice is more measured and more "adult" compared to the brashness Currie's had accustomed us to. The record is nonetheless enjoyable and amply proves that the Runaways can exist even without Jackie Fox and, above all, Cherie Currie.

Commercially, as expected, the results are positive: the album sells very well in Japan and Australia, but without much enthusiasm in the United States. The girls embark on a tour lasting a little over three months, and although Joan Jett is a fine singer and an excellent front-woman, audiences remain unsettled.

Meanwhile, the Runaways finally realize that while Kim Fowley had created the hype, the connections and the success, and had brought them to where they now stood, the band was made up of them and no one else. They turn to the record label and manage to break Fowley's contract, finally ridding themselves of him.

Taking his place will be the managers of Blondie: Toby Mamis and Peter Leeds.

Buoyed by these changes, the Runaways go into the studio to record their new album. To make And Now... The Runaways (released everywhere except the United States, where it will only come out in 1981 under the title Little Lost Girls), producer John Alcock is hired (having already worked with Thin Lizzy and Alice Cooper), but while the idea might have worked on paper, in the studio it proves to be a terrible choice. Alcock develops a personal dislike for Jett and focuses exclusively on the sounds of Ford and West. He even goes so far as to suggest that Jett and Blue simply not show up at the studio, planning to have Ford play bass too and to handle the keyboards himself. Given the obvious response to that idea, secret sessions are then scheduled so that Jett and Blue won't turn up at the studio.

The friction created by John Alcock and his obvious conflicts of interest made the girls' various dependencies even worse, and Blue - new to a situation she could never have been equipped to handle - thought it best to pack her bags halfway through the recordings, leaving Ford to handle the remaining bass parts.

And Now… The Runaways is a thoroughly superfluous record, one that adds little to what had already been heard on previous releases. It remains the first album not produced by Kim Fowley, and - sad to say - it shows. Alcock's production is pointless, and his presence in the studio does nothing but seal the definitive end of a line-up that many thought was dispensable but that was, in fact, needed.

Worth mentioning, though, are the covers of the Beatles' "Eight Days A Week" and Slade's "Mama Weer All Crazee Now", as well as Lita Ford's debut as lead vocalist on the track "I'm A Million".

With the band pared down to the bone and yet another manipulator running the show in the studio, the girls start talking to each other only to fight. The huge musical differences (Jett's more glam leanings versus Ford's more hard rock ones) that had until then been the Runaways' greatest strength have become impossible to reconcile and keep coexisting.

Joan and Lita start feeling the urge to play something more personal, and they go their separate ways. The band breaks up in 1979.

After the Runaways

Cherie Currie releases an album on Capitol in 1979. Written with Kim Fowley and produced by him, it's a record that even I haven't had the urge to listen to.

In 1980 she makes her acting debut in the dreadful film "Foxes". The cast also includes Jodie Foster and Scott Baio, directed by Adrian Lyne ("Flashdance", "Fatal Attraction", …). She returns to acting in 1983, taking part in the film "Twilight Zone: The Movie", and reportedly appears in an episode of "Murder, She Wrote".

In 1989 her autobiography, Neon Angel, A Memoir Of A Runaway, is published, in which - alongside romanticized episodes and others invented out of whole cloth - all the focus goes to her personal problems, leaving aside the band's true essence: the music, the rock'n'roll.

From this book, Our Lady of Disturbia, Floria Sigismondi, made the film that marks her own feature debut, "The Runaways". The film is therefore focused on Currie and her invented stories, on her relationships with drugs and with Joan Jett. Very little emerges of what the Runaways actually were in those years. Sandy West's and Lita Ford's characters get a couple of lines in the entire film, and Jackie Fox's - who doesn't even get one - mysteriously becomes "Robin". In short, a film that has nothing of the Runaways but the title.

Cherie Currie now makes her living creating wood sculptures with a chainsaw.

In 1980 Joan Jett records her solo album (featuring, among others, Steve Jones, Paul Cook, Dee Dee and Marky Ramone), which is turned down by twenty-three record labels.

She moves to New York, and in 1981 forms Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, with whom she records a handful of albums before disbanding the group in 1986.

Over the years she has produced records for Germs, Bikini Kill, Circus Lupus and Vacancies; written songs for Alice Cooper and Keel; and appeared on stage in productions of "The Rocky Horror Show", in a few films, and in an episode of "Law & Order".

She has said she stayed angry with Cherie Currie for years over her decision to leave the Runaways.

She rarely spoke willingly about her time in the band until just a few years ago, and even now, when she agrees to discuss it, she does so in an overly measured way. While "The Runaways" was being made, she acted as a consultant to Kristen Stewart, who plays her in the film.

Back from Japan, Jackie Fox enters a rehab clinic, enrolls at Harvard (she attended some classes with Obama) and is now a lawyer.

Sandy West never managed to get clean, and was arrested multiple times for drug possession and dealing. She kept playing until 2005, the year she was diagnosed with lung cancer. She died in Los Angeles on June 21, 2006.

Lita Ford launches her solo career and manages to land a few hits in the Eighties, most notably the duet with Ozzy Osbourne, "Close My Eyes Forever".

Adored by some for the technique and energy she brought to records and to the stage, considered by most to be a fine musician but a poor songwriter, and despised by many women for achieving commercial success by trading on her looks and dismantling, album by album, video by video, the very lesson the Runaways had taught: that girls can be just as strong, determined and capable as men, and that if they want something, they can get it themselves rather than whine for a man to win it for them.

Victory Tischler-Blue became a photographer and television producer. In 2003 she made the documentary "Edgeplay – A Film About The Runaways".

The Offspring. Or rather: what good are balls to me when I've got ovaries?

In the Seventies, then, the Runaways burst into the reality of their time without passing through fantasy. Thanks to them, the Eighties would see the arrival on the music scene of the decidedly mediocre Bangles, Vixen, Girlschool, and the slightly-less-bad Go-Go's, fronted by Belinda Carlisle.

It would instead be the Riot Grrrl movement of the Nineties that picked up the legacy in the best possible way, both musically, with a raw, aggressive, assertive sound, and in attitude, cocky and pissed off. Bikini Kill, L7, Babes in Toyland and Courtney Love's Hole.

These days I see plenty of women fronting bands or going solo with an irreverent attitude, but, with the possible exception of The Donnas (whom I still find unlistenable), probably Juliette Lewis and definitely Katie-Jane Garside — who learned a great deal, and learned it well, from Currie — I don't see in Pink, Gwen Stefani, Beth Ditto (whom I admire) or others that same energy generated by that big-bang that the Runaways were. The approach is different, the music is different, and probably the priorities and intentions are different too. Thank God my turntable still works, and there isn't a single scratch on my Runaways vinyl.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google