The story of The Runaways, the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band of the 1970s.
“The Runaways are everything that’s great about teenage girls. The tough ones who never came to school because they were out too late the night before. It’s true, there have always been as many girl punks as boys. The Runaways are as real as getting beat up after school. Their songs are about juvenile delinquent wrecks, sex, growing up wrong, and parties.
“The white middle-class suburbs were bound to have their outbreak of teen troublemakers, that’s The Runaways. Their roots are TV, hanging around and going to Hollywood on weekends because it’s the only thing to do after five days of school and partying. They make you hear the frustration of teenage life, and even more, the utter bone-crunching boredom of nothing to do and nowhere to do it.
“The Runaways aren’t just ‘an all-girl band’ or an exercise in women’s lib. They’re a rock and roll band. They’re rock and roll. They’re for real.”
Lisa Francher, 16 – BOMP Magazine
When the above quotation appeared on the back of the lyric sheet for the eponymous debut album from The Runaways, it pretty much summed the band up perfectly. The Runaways were rock and roll, in its purest form and as it always should have been. Much mocked by many male critics as a ‘manufactured’ band – even by those who heaped praise on the Sex Pistols, who were every bit as much a created entity – with rumours abounding that they didn’t (and couldn’t) play their instruments, the Runaways were damned from the start – too sexualised and too American for a British punk movement determined to pretend that this was all its own idea, too rough around the edges for the rock establishment and never quite fitting into anything. Were they punk, metal or glam? The answer, awkwardly, was ‘yes’ to all three categories. The Runaways were what they were, honest and unpretentious and so doomed to be dismissed for the very reasons that people were supposed to like punk – their three-minute stabs of teenage rebellion were just too Hollywood for much of the London scene, caught up in its own anti-rock star fakery. No matter that once the initial punk boom had burned out, almost all the bands involved moved on to more commercially populist sounds and revealed the rock star ambitions that had been there all along. By then, The Runaways had burned out and faded away in the way that punk bands were supposed to, splintering off into solo projects that would not emerge until the early 1980s when both Joan Jett and Lita Ford carved out successful careers as glam rock ‘n’ roll icon (in the case of the former) and LA metal goddess (in the case of the latter). But we are, perhaps, getting ahead of ourselves.
The Runaways emerged from the LA punk scene in 1976, under the ‘guidance’ of crazed svengali Kim Fowley, a maverick manager, producer and recording artist with an eye for a gimmick and a talent for hype. As well as having some eighteen solo albums to his name, Fowley had been involved (on various levels) with artists like Kiss, Alice Cooper, The Byrds and Blue Oyster Cult. The Runaways were his finest hour, though in later years, contested accusations of sexual abuse would forever attach a large asterisk to that statement. We’ll come to that.
Fowley had been hanging around the LA rock scene for a while, taking note of the kids hanging out at clubs like Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco, listening to British glam rock acts like Sweet, Bowie, Slade and Suzi Quatro (not a Brit, admittedly, but with a recording career entirely based in the UK) – the sort of thing that pre-dated, inspired and arguably outdid punk with its rock ‘n’ roll-based three-minute songs of youthful rebellion and bad behaviour. Add to the mix a sprinkling of glam rock tunes from Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, the New York Dolls, Kiss and other acts that stood in stark contrast to the epic noodling and serious narratives of the rock gods that dominated the popular scene, and there was clearly a youth scene waiting to be tapped, one more interested in partying, fucking and dancing than spacing out to Dark Side of the Moon.
The initial origins of The Runaways remain the stuff of mystery and debate, but the ‘official’ story sees Fowley meeting 14-year-old Kari Krome at an Alice Cooper party in 1975. Well. Kari was already writing songs and had a tough girl attitude that she probably needed if she was mixing in drunken rock star circles at that age. She already knew Joan Jett and Joan knew Sandy West. There was a band right there, except Kari was a better songwriter than singer and so was slowly eased out of things, replaced by Micki Steele, who didn’t last long either (she later joined The Bangles). We’ll come back to their departures later. In their place playing bass was Jackie Fox, while vocalist duties went to Cherie Currie, accurately described by Krome as “the imaginary daughter of Iggy Pop and Brigitte Bardot”. Jett could have – and eventually did – handle vocals as well as guitar, but Fowley had taken charge and didn’t consider the leather-jacketed tough girl as front-woman material. He wanted more glamour for the glam band, and Currie provided that. Completing the line-up was lead guitarist Lita Ford. The girl gang was complete. All the members were sixteen years old except for Ford, a worldly seventeen. Fowley played the teen angle up for all it was worth, even including the age of each member on the sleeve of their debut album – perhaps as a way of relating to the target audience who would dig the idea of music made by their peers… or perhaps for other, more dubious reasons.
The idea of the band as hyper-sexualised teenage jailbait was emphasised by Currie’s stage attire of Rocky Horror-style lingerie, something that no one would’ve batted an eye at had it been worn by any of the male glam bands of the era – but to critics, it simply confirmed that this was a teenage wet dream aimed at dirty old men by a noted manipulator – a gimmick band rather than a real band. A similar double standard arose when people picked up on and criticised the sexualised lyrics of many of the band’s songs, as if every other swaggering cock-heavy band out there from Led Zeppelin to Kiss wasn’t being just as (if not more) raunchy.
“This album is for the young of age and the young of heart. It’s for those who know it’s great to be young and who enjoy their youth in the best way they know how. When you listen to these songs, you’ll be reminded of all the fun you’re having and staying young. After all, people say these are the best years of our lives. Well, we know they are and we make every minute count.
Joan Jett (sleeve notes to The Runaways)
Signed to Mercury, the debut album The Runaways was released in the summer of 1976, right at the birth of ‘punk’ as a thing. ‘Produced’ by Fowley, the album had a crude, basic sound to match the band’s attitude and the emerging punk ethos of no bullshit, no gloss. Cherry Bomb remains the great teenage rampage classic, a sexually aggressive, in-your-face slice of pure rock aggression that remains their signature song even now – if you only know one Runaways song, it’ll be this. As the opening track of the debut album, it’s a hard act to follow but the band were more than up to it. The rest of the album is a classic collection of no-nonsense rock ‘n’ roll, deliciously crude in both form and execution, with songs like You Drive Me Wild, American Nights, Is It Day or Night? and a stripped-back cover of Lou Reed’s Rock ‘n’ Roll. It’s a 1970s throwback to primitive garage rock, unpolished and unpretentious – and there is no sense that any of this is contrived or knowing, perhaps except for Fowley’s production that seems to be a case of pressing record and then releasing whatever was captured. While a lot of bands of the coming era deliberately dumbed down their playing ability and buried their actual musical influences to secure punk credibility, The Runaways seem entirely pure – this is what they like, this is what they do. It is what it is.
The album ends with, excitingly, a conceptual epic, Dead End Justice – a sleazy Women in Prison film adapted as a rock song:
“Where Am I?”
“You’re in a cheap rundown teenage jail, that’s where”
“Oh my God!”
“Yeah Blondie, you’re gonna be here till you’re eighteen so get used to it”
As well as a perfect finale to a classic album, the song became a live highlight. On an essential bootleg album that exists under several names, Currie and the band are heard pleading for the audience at the front to sit down before they perform the track, because “this next song has something that we want everybody to see”. This included Currie covered in blood as she and Joan acted out the melodrama of the song. What genius.
The album’s release was followed by an American tour, culminating in a triumphant homecoming in LA, where the band had a loyal and vocal following. Despite the blatant evidence provided by recordings of these live shows, many cynical critics – perhaps unable to believe that girls, teenage girls at that, could have the ability to match the noted music abilities of bands like The New York Dolls – suggested that the band were little more than a front for session players. For all the sloganeering of the punk revolution, women were still very much seen as singers, not musicians by many of its cheerleaders. How on earth could teenage girls be capable of playing their instruments? The irony was that many of the celebrated male bands of the time were supplemented or replaced by session players, and no one commented on that. Perhaps stung by these accusations, the next album, 1977’s Queens of Noise stated clearly “ALL INSTRUMENTS PLAYED BY THE RUNAWAYS”. As if there was any doubt.
“Each nite alone I dream
That I’m a rebel rocker queen
I’ll be a star that shines
I can make the whole world mine”
from HOLLYWOOD (words and music K. Fowley/J. Fox/J. Jett)
Queens of Noise is a more polished affair than its predecessor, in the fact that it has a proper producer, Earl Mankey – Fowley still takes co-producer credit but he clearly had little to do with it, an early sign that he was losing his grip on the band. There’s more musical adventurousness here, with more considered slower numbers like Heartbeat and Midnight Music, the stop-start Born to be Bad, the proto-NWOBHM-flavoured Neon Angels on the Road to Ruin and album closer Johnny Guitar, a blues number designed as a showcase for Ford as a guitarist. Around these are classic punk-glam numbers like the title song, Take It or Leave It, I Love Playin’ with Fire, California Paradise and Hollywood. It’s not as pure and single-minded as the first album, but there is a more consistent quality here and it also introduces Joan Jett as lead vocalist on a few songs, which perhaps hinted at the change to come.
Despite praise from elements of the British music press, The Runaways were not selling many records. They were probably suffering from being neither fish nor fowl for many people and while there was a devoted fan base, it wasn’t a very big fan base. Except in Japan. The phrase ‘big in Japan’ might as well have been coined for The Runaways, and the band were mobbed by adoring, screaming fans there. What was it about The Runaways that appealed to Japanese fans? Who knows, but they were a very big deal over there and so following in the footsteps of Deep Purple, the band recorded a live album in Tokyo, initially for Japanese release only. Live in Japan includes several songs that don’t appear on any albums (Wild Thing, All Right You Guys, I Wanna be Where the Boys Are, C’Mon, Gettin’ Hot) and while the handful of blisteringly raw Runaways bootlegs like Live at Starwood are better (because official live albums are never quite as ‘pure’), this is a great recording of the band at their peak.
The band were also the subject of a Japanese TV special, also called Live in Japan, which exists in terrible quality versions online. It’s worth gritting your teeth and getting past the picture and sound quality for this rare footage of the band at the end of the classic line-up:
“This next song is about being screwed over, being used… by whoever. It’s very simple. If you’re in that kind of situation, you just tell ’em, you just say – don’t abuse me.”
Live intro to Don’t Abuse Me, Starwood Los Angeles 9.13.76
While the Japanese album and video seem to show a band at the height of their powers – and, indeed, they do, because the band never quite reached the same levels of success as they had here again – things were not well. We need to get into the world of rumour and accusation here because this is relevant. Jackie Fox left the band during the Japanese tour, with the final breaking point being – in her own words – that she could no longer stand the personality clashes within the band that Fowley encouraged in a weird mission to keep them edgy. There was something else too: in 2016, she claimed that Fowley raped her at a party in 1975 when she was spaced out on Quaaludes, in the presence of Joan Jett and Cherie Currie. Both alleged witnesses have denied this version of the story, with Jett stating that the story was untrue “as described”, an interestingly ambiguous statement. Kari Krome backs it up while Currie at one point claimed that Fox was a sniggering witness to someone else being raped by Fowley (she later edited this story from her autobiography after Fox threatened legal action). Fowley, of course, always denied ever having done anything with any member of the band – and while you might say ‘of course he would’, he was hardly quiet otherwise about his taste for teenage girls. He seems the sort of man who would boast about having fucked the girls, whether they consented or not. We should also note, though, that Krome filed suit against Fowley’s estate in 2023, claiming multiple sexual assaults when she was fourteen and fifteen and Miki Steele also claims that she was fired for refusing his advances. The truth seems difficult to pin down, a Rashamon of different memories and interpretations – but at the very least, you probably wouldn’t want Fowley managing a band of teenage girls if he was still alive.
Let’s move on.
As well as Jackie Fox, the Japanese tour was the final straw for Cherie Currie, who found being away from home difficult and who clashed with the other girls, particularly with Lita Ford who seems to have had a spiky personality and a ruthless desire to succeed at all costs that made her difficult to deal with. Vicki Blue was hastily drafted in to replace Fox, but rather than find a few singer, the band simply cut themselves down to a four-piece, with Joan Jett taking vocal duties – a bit like Genesis did after Peter Gabriel left. This version of the band is not the classic line-up but their next album, Waitin’ for the Night, might well be the best Runaways LP of the lot. Although Fowley claims sole production duties, the sound is a lot meatier and tougher than on the first album, leading to suspicions that other hands may have been involved – that or simply that the band were a lot more confident by this stage and had solidified their sound. Behind the scenes, everything was fraught – the band were tiring of Fowley’s control freakery and manipulation and were about to kick him to the kerb, while those pesky musical differences were coming to the fore. As the new frontwoman, Joan Jett wanted to take the band into a no-nonsense punk-glam-rock ‘n’ roll direction, while Lita Ford and Sandy West were much more interested in a heavy metal sound. Vicki Blue, as the new girl, simply did as she was told, essentially being hired to make up the numbers for live shows.
“I come in late and you throw a fit
You sit me down and give me some lip
Well, I don’t have to waste my time
A wimp like you ain’t worth a dime”
from You’re Too Possessive (words and music Joan Jett)
Despite all this conflict, the album is a solid, consistent effort that is arguably their best, somehow managing to combine a punk rock bad-ass attitude with the thunder and aggression of metal. Jett took over most of the songwriting duties and the album is an all-killer, no-filler effort that opens with the punchy Little Sister and works through classics like Wasted, Gotta Get Out Tonight, School Days and Trash Can Murders before winding up with the aggressive You’re Too Possessive (and I wonder who that was aimed at?). The album is one of the great unsung great rock LPs of 1970s rock and would surely be hailed as a classic if recorded by anyone else.
Shortly after the LP was released in August 1977, the band finally got rid of Fowley, the man whose toxic presence had effectively ensured that they would never be taken seriously by the critical elite. While we can’t underestimate his influence in the band coming together, he had long been a millstone around their necks; even long before the sexual assault allegations came to light, Fowley was seen as a sleazeball svengali and so many assumed that the band must have been nothing more than manufactured jailbait, not to be taken seriously. With the connection severed, there was every possibility that they could finally break free of the sniggering and the suggestion, finally proving their worth as an authentic rock band. Except that by this point, the musical differences had reached a point of no return and the record contract with Mercury had expired. Having seen little domestic success with the band and no longer needing to oblige Fowley, the label was in no mood to continue with them. The next album, And Now… The Runaways had been recorded before the contract was up, but Mercury declined to release it. Step up fledgling British label Cherry Red, who made a deal with Jett and new manager Toby Mamis – who had worked with Suzi Quatro and Blondie – to release the album in the UK.
And Now… The Runaways has all the feel of a contractual obligation album, with four cover versions (running from Slade’s Mama Weer All Crazee Now to the Sex Pistols’ Black Leather) and a lack of consistency with original tracks that makes it sound like a collection of leftovers. Even the cover is a world away from the tough, take no shit girl gang images of previous LPs. A problematic recording which saw John Alcock attempt to sideline Jett in favour of Ford and West, It wasn’t the album to relaunch the band with and within a fortnight of its UK release, the band had finally called it a day. The personality conflicts that Fowley had encouraged as a warped way of keeping things edgy had cooled but the split over musical direction remained as big as ever. Rather than splinter once again, the four members decided to bring the band to a close and go their separate ways. Vicki Blue had already gone, briefly replaced by Laurie McAllister for the final shows before the band split in April 1979.
In the years that followed, the band members began solo careers with varying degrees of success. Jackie Fox reverted to her birth name Jackie Fuchs and left the music industry; most recently, she worked as an entertainment lawyer. Vicki Blue – real name Victory Tischler-Blue – did not play on any Runaways albums, being replaced by session musicians on Waitin’ for the Night and Lita Ford on And Now…, though she did play live with the band. After the split, she moved into movie production. She is the director of the 2004 Runaways documentary film Edgeplay. The film is interesting – but only part of the story, notable for Joan Jett’s complete refusal to be part of what she saw as “a Jerry Springer fest” as she described it to The Montreal Mirror.
Sandy West, who you rather suspect lived, breathed and ate The Runaways, struggled to move on after the split. Attempts to carry on in the music business were unsuccessful – while female singers or even guitarists were acceptable, no one wanted a female drummer it seemed. She formed her own band but it had little impact, and she later became a drum teacher. West bitterly complained that Fowley had never paid the band what they were owed, a highly believable management trick. Her life after the band seems to have increasingly been a series of dead-end jobs and criminal activity – she served more than one prison sentence. Her story, out of all the members of the band, seems particularly tragic – she was a great drummer, up with the best of the time, and deserved better. She died of lung cancer in 2006, aged 47.
Cherie Currie recorded the solo album Beauty’s Only Skin Deep in 1977 to fulfil her record contract and then teamed with twin sister Marie (who had been sensible enough to tell Fowley to “fuck off” when he approached her to join The Runaways before he hit on Cherie) for one album and an on-and-off live partnership that continued into the 1990s. She appeared in movies (Foxes, Parasite) and in more recent years has become a chainsaw sculptor. Cherie still records and tours from time to time today. I saw her in London a few years back and she was great.
Lita Ford finally got going as a solo artist in 1982 with a couple of underrated albums – Out for Blood and Dancin’ On the Edge, which sold badly and almost killed her career entirely However, a new, more commercial sound in the hair metal era brought her back to stardom and made her a mainstay of the LA metal scene into the 1990s.She took a break to raise a family after the 1995 album Black, not returning to recording and live performance until 2008.
Lita always seemed the odd one out of the band, a position that she has acknowledged. On the one hand, she was the most ruthlessly determined of the lot, on the other she seemed to have no connection with the rest of them; the common factor in claims of band alienation from other members was Lita’s behaviour towards them. Oddly though, she seems the most integral part of the band after Joan Jett – her guitar work is immediately recognisable and her bad attitude – while no doubt hard for other members to deal with – seems entirely appropriate to the band image. She might have been hard work, but I suspect that this worked in her favour. Let’s put it like this – you can’t imagine Fowley pushing her around in the way he did the others.
Kim Fowley – a man who, outside the accusations and controversies was an eccentric musical maverick whose career is worth an article in itself – attempted to launch a new version of The Runaways in 1984 with Gayle Welch, Missy Bonilla, Denise Pryor and Kathrine Dombrowski, none of whom played any instruments. Most people saw this as a shameless cash-in on the success of Joan Jett and Lita Ford; he still owned the name. The new band recorded one album, Young and Fast, in 1985 before breaking up. As power-pop, it’s not entirely awful but of course, it isn’t The Runaways by any stretch of the imagination. You can check out the title track here:
“Okay, so she had a tough image and a guttermouth but she’s a nice girl. Sure she has her bouts of insanity but she’s never been into drugs and all she wants out of life is to play rock ‘n’ roll.”
Kenny Laguna, Joan Jett’s manager talking to Kerrang! in 1982
Joan Jett, always the heart and soul of the band, travelled to England in 1979 to mix with the London punk scene and fulfilled her Runaways contractual obligations by taking part in a vague biopic called We’re All Crazee Now! where the rest of the band – Lita and Sandy having walked from the project while it was still in the planning stages – were replaced with actors, including cult movie queen Rainbeaux Smith and twins Karen & Kathy Fallentine. Smith, at least, had genuine musical aspirations and in another world, the film would have been the launch of a new line-up for the band but instead, Jett became ill during the shoot and the project was abandoned. In 1984, the surviving footage appeared in the film Du-beat-eo, a shameless attempt to cash in on Joan’s subsequent success. Legal action from her kept the film from seeing any sort of release. You can enjoy clips here, alongside Joan’s performance of What Can I Do For You.
A 1980 solo album called Joan Jett – later reissued as Bad Reputation – was recorded with former Sex Pistols Steve Jones and Paul Cook. An early version of The Arrows’ I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll was recorded as the B-side of a Dutch single. As I’m sure everyone knows, she later had a huge hit in 1982 with another version of the song, recorded with her new (male) band The Blackhearts – I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll spent seven weeks at the top of the US charts, making her a star with people who had never heard of The Runaways. Ironically, she’d tried to persuade the band to cover the song shortly before they broke up. The music press seemed befuddled by her reappearance and sudden stardom, especially in an era of pop star posturing where image was everything. But she became an important symbol for girls who wanted a rock ‘n’ roll role model that could be relatable. She might never have had quite the same level of commercial success again, but who cares? Her career since has been impressively single-minded with a solid series of albums reaching into 2023, and she is now a bona fide rock icon for young women in a way that her fellow Runaways have never quite been.
1982 is where I come in. The Runaways were before my time but I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll appeared right in the middle of my teenage musical explorations when my tastes were varied and older bands seemed more interesting than anything coming out at the time. The success of the single saw a revival of The Runaways LPs – at least And Now… The Runaways, which was opportunistically reissued as a picture disc, now titled I Love Playing with Fire, rather misleadingly pitched as a compilation album complete with three extra live outtakes from Live in Japan, credited to ‘Joan Jett and The Runaways’. Given that the first Runaways LP had a solo shot of Cherie on the front cover, it was perhaps fitting that this release had a photo of Joan alone on the front. It wasn’t the best entry point to the band, but was enough to get me hooked and the next year or two was spent tracking down the rest of the albums in second-hand shops (not to mention suffering through a live Rainbow gig just to catch Lita Ford as the support act). The Runaways seemed, to me, to be the epitome of no-nonsense rock ‘n’ roll. That critics in the right-on 1980s still tended to sexualise the band and see them as something of a joke – even after Joan Jett had surely laid that to rest – was a sign of the times, but there were those of us who knew better and recognised their back catalogue for the essential genius that it was.
Even now, The Runaways are woefully overlooked – and you have to assume it is because no one wants to take them seriously. After all, they were teenage girls riding on enthusiasm more than musical ability – though isn’t that what punk was supposed to be all about? Even after a Hollywood biopic, a documentary film and careers that have lasted long beyond those of most of their male contemporaries, the band is still seen as a strangely guilty pleasure by too many people. Their recordings never appear on classic album lists and the band are effectively ignored by modern critics and musical commentators – while Joan Jett was inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame a few years ago, the band that launched her is still overlooked – and perhaps always will be. Doesn’t that seem odd? While I get that the whole Fowley connection leaves a bad smell, should we really be punishing the band – including the woman he allegedly raped – for his actions? If anything, they ought to be hailed as great rock ‘n’ roll survivors. Chances of a reunion with the surviving members seem slim – Lita Ford and Joan Jett’s manager Kenny Laguna seem to have an unsolvable problem with each other. Perhaps that’s for the best – The Runaways were of a time, a place and an attitude that none of them can possibly still be a part of. Let it be, I think (though a one-off reunion tour is still something I’d be keen to see; even for the band to just get together for a photo shoot would be something).
In the end, above the public image, the controversies and even the pioneering role model status that allows every girl to get up on stage as a valid part of a band rather than just as a frontwoman, it’s the music that ultimately counts. That’s what really matters and what is still shamefully overlooked even by those who otherwise acknowledge their importance. What joys people are missing with their assumptions and their smugness. This is great, raw, pure teenage rampage rock ‘n’ roll, the sound of a generation by that generation, more honest than most cock-swinging male rock rebellion by blokes already long past the age that their records were being targeted at. If you haven’t given the Runaways back catalogue the time of day, it’s time that you did. The recently released Cherry Red CD box set Neon Angels on the Road to Ruin 1976 – 1978 pulls together all five albums and is probably the most essential musical purchase you can make this year. Hop to it and have your life changed by rock ‘n’ roll.
DAVID FLINT
BUY NEON ANGELS ON THE ROAD TO RUIN 1976 – 1978 (UK)
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