Bandsplain - The Runaways With Patty Schemel

Episode Date: April 9, 2026

Yasi is joined by legendary drummer Patty Schemel (Hole) to tell the story of The Runaways, the all-girl teenage band that changed the course of history. They get into the band’s lasting influence, the surprising origin of the song “Cherry Bomb,” the band’s complicated history, and why The Runaways still matter. Episode PlaylistListen to The Runaways playlist here. CREDITS:Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalekGuests: Patty Schemel @pattyschemelProducer: Rob SundermannEditor: Adrian BridgesAdditional Production Supervision: Justin SaylesTheme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's with this band anyway? I don't get it. Can you please explain? Wait, like, Bansplain? Hello and welcome to Bansplain. I am your host, Yossi Salik. This is a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or an iconic artist. Today's episode is about The Runaways. Joining me today, an icon in her own right.

Patty, I'm so excited to have you. It's Patty Shummel! Hi, I'm so glad to be back. Drummer, author. Thank you for having me. Certified, cool woman. Thanks. Yeah.

What else do we got? What else do you do? Teacher. Okay, there's that. Instructor. Yeah, yeah. Mother? Mother.

Drummer. Bich, liar. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm a child. Sorry, I was doing a little Meredith Brooks there. Yeah. Patty, this is what a dream to talk to you about the runaways.

I know. this is a gift really patty before we like dive into my 700 page document also you guys i just want you to know that i made this t-shirt if you're sorry if you're audio only but i made this t-shirt with my iron-on letter names this morning that's why it looks like garbage i tried to make it say bansplaine and then like how the runaways have their shirts but bansplaine is too many letters and it didn't fit so i just and i was in a bit of a rush it's cool thank you a ring or tea i wore a shirt to the show. You're wearing the cool runaway shirt.

Yeah. I love it in which they're wearing the shirts that I'm referencing. Yes. With the iron on gorgeous letters. Yeah. I've only seen that shirt out in the world. I think Adam Horowitz has a runaway's t-shirt. One of the originals.

Maybe. Because they didn't sell them. I think they just made them for their friends and family. Maybe somebody made him one. Wow. That's so cool. I don't know. If I was really rich, that's the kind of shit I would buy.

Right? Like I'd be like going to those office. And being like, I need that t-shirt, $400,000. I'll put it in a frame and hang it in my house. Anyways, if anyone watching is good at making iron-on-letter t-shirts and wants to make me one get in touch. Yeah. Okay, Patty, before we dive into this, story that has everything I love, T, Goss, drums, you know, launching a thousand ships of other bands. Can you tell me your personal tale of how you first came to the runaways and like how they came into your life?

They came into my life through Welcherry bomb, of course. And I think my parents had some friends come over, and they had a daughter that was a little bit older. And Holly was her name. And she brought Sweet, the record, the Sweet record. She brought that first runaways record with Cherry Bomb and like a bunch of singles. And we listened to records. So this is in real time. So this is like that runaway.

record the year it came out. Yeah, yeah, like 77, but it came out in like 76, I think. Yeah, yeah. Cherry Bomb, of course, great song. Still, I'll say one of their best. Yeah. Maybe they're best. Yeah. I love the runaways ever since. And that whole record was great. And then, but now it's a different sort of like I remember it a certain way, but now I kind of go back and I listen to it like that song, I mean, if you want to talk about individual songs, rock, roll. Yeah. They did the cover. But that cowbell just, oh, it got it. It got it. Yeah. You know, I feel about cowbells. I mean, it's too, I mean, that Motley crew record, there's too much cowbell. Someone just bought a cowbell. I just, you know, this is where we diverge. I just feel like there's never

enough cowbell. I would just put more cowbell on it is how I feel. Blue Oysterholt, you know, like, let's go. Okay, okay. They're, oh, right. Yeah. I got. I'm just kidding. I don't have any actual views on the level of cowbell. Also, you guys, if you don't know this, like, you need to leave, but Patty was obviously, and the drummer of Hull, one of the greatest drummers of my lifetime. But if you don't know that again, I don't know why you're watching this show.

So it might make me a little more particular to certain, you know, rhythm and stuff. So, not to, like, Mr. Rogers, but, like, when you saw these girls rocking, were you like, were you already playing drums? Or were you like, oh, I want to play my sister? I wasn't playing drums yet.

I was like maybe nine. Okay, yeah. I started playing drums at 11. But all I had was that record, you know, just looking at it. And so, you know, I didn't even see them playing. I didn't see them to way later. Also, on the record cover, it's just shri. Yeah, it's just shri.

I guess they're on the inside somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. And, but I mean, I knew it was all girls. Right. Yeah. And then the next record, they were all on the front. Queens of Noise. Yeah.

Did you ever get to see them play in the original? No, but I did play with Cherie Curry once. We did Cherry Bomb. It's pretty major. Yeah. From nine-year-old Patty listening to the song. To go back in time and go, yep, good job. Yeah.

Thank you. Yeah, because the runaways were only active for three and a half years, a little bit less, honestly. So they have a pretty outsized impact for what a brief career they had. Yeah. I like how they kind of got together the way, well, Kim Fowley, right? Yeah. I'm glad you to let you begin. My document does perhaps controversially start with Kim Valley.

Was organic in a way, though. They were out at a club. Totally. Okay. Just like how bands start. Let's get it. into it. Yeah.

By the way, I'm not saying Kim Fowley started the runaways because we should be really clear about that. There's a lot of, I think, miss information out there. But I think he was the connector. Yeah. And he's obviously plays a big role in a lot of the story. So I just want to start with him. Also because I think starting with him is a great way to get us in.

into Los Angeles of the 70s because he is, whatever you think about Kim Vincent Valley, he did live an interesting life. Yeah. Born in 1939, July 21st, he is a Leo in Los Angeles. His father was Douglas Valley, who was an actor, did a lot of small parts. His biggest part was playing the director and singing in the rain,

and he was also Doc Holliday on the television program, the legend of White Earp. Wow. Yeah. And then his mother was a kind of a struggling actress named Shelby Payne, but who was under contract to Warner Brothers and was employed. Kim said Shelby Payne was Dorothy Lamore meets Natalie Wood. Selfish, vain, bright but not brilliant, brooding, a spoiled bitch from Oregon State. I just wanted to put that in there, A, to show you how Kim Fowley talks. And also to show you that that's how he would speak about his mother. So like, no one is safe from the sharp tongue of Kim Pauley. Who passed away about 10 years ago. He's not with us anymore. So they lived in Beverly Hills and Bruntwood. He had a pretty fucked life. And this is just context. I'm not pro-Kim Fowley.

I'm not anti-Kim Fowley. Just here to give you the facts. He was put into foster care by his mother when his father was drafted into the Navy. According to him, because he was too smart and talked at a very early age and she was freaked out by it. Whatever the reason is, it's a pretty crazy thing to put your child in foster care when you're still there. Yeah. So he was in foster care in Culver City. He said it was like 27 kids in a one-bedroom house. It was like Dickensian, like fighting for food. And then she took him back. It's really crazy. Then his parents got divorced. They were like married like each like 11 times. So he had like 70 million sets of parents. He bounced between homes. He got paralytic polio twice. in 40 well once paralytic in 46 and once non-parallelic in 57 and it damaged his extremities pretty bad he actually walked with a cane his whole life and he was 6-5 yeah this is just crazy

looking hunched but like really handsome actually oh really yeah I thought he was quite handsome oh yeah I mean he's he's like insane looking yeah but if you just like kind of look at the bone structure good looking man um he claims he had a 164 IQ And I believe it. He claims you. Yeah, okay. Listen, he, say what you want about him. It wasn't, he wasn't dumb. Yeah.

Yeah. He certainly had away with words. He went to uni high, university high here in Los Angeles, with Nancy Sinatra, Jan and Dean, James Brolin and Ryan O'Neill. And two decades later, that's where the germs went. Oh, okay. One decade prior, that's where my aunt and uncle went. So this is the 50s?

He's at high school? 50s, yeah. Hollywood. Hollywood, Hollywood kids. Yeah. He got really into music because he heard. Beau Diddley on marijuana in the 10th grade. Hell yeah.

Then he was kicked out of high school for selling alcohol his senior year, who was already a businessman. And he moved to Hollywood on February 3rd, 1959, also known as the day the music died. Oh. The day that Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper. The plane crash. Energy balance.

Crash in a plane. This may or may not be true, but again, what a wonderful myth-making. Right. The day the music died, I came to Hollywood to resurrect it. Yeah. You know? What a good title. Such a good title.

I don't just love the details. like this is what the world was like. Like he lives in a gas station on Argyle and sunset right over here. Next to, because it was next to a recording studio called American Recording Studio. And he wanted to work in music. And he strikes up a friendship with a songwriter called Dallas Frazier. And apparently he gave him the use of the gas station's bathroom in exchange, I don't know for what.

But Dallas Frazier was like, here, you can have this novelty song I wrote. it's a doo-wop song about a comic book, Caveman. And Kim Fowley was like, thank you. Took $92, hired several musicians, recorded it, got his high school friend Gary Pax gonna sing it. They called themselves the Hollywood Argyles. And this song, Allie Oop, became a number one hit in 1960. I know it.

Yeah. There's a man in the funny papers we all know. Kim Fowley's gas station trade song. Oh my God. Kind of crazy, right? Yeah. Sorry, I love this shit. Yeah, I know.

You could just like, you could just do stuff back then, you know? Yeah. It's not like he made a bunch of money because I don't think he really made money like that on number one hit songs in 1960 or whatever. Yeah, but it's a moment. It's a moment. And he kind of cemented himself like into that world. Yeah. He also, by the way, produced Bird is the Word. And don't get me started.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. There goes the rest of my day. The ripping dance. I don't really. But he did those. God. What the hell, man?

That's good. That's good. But then across his career before and after the runaways, I mean, he worked with Frank Zappa. He did West Coast PR for the Yardbirds. He recorded the Modern Lovers album and produced it. Oh, wow. It's kind of a big joke. Yeah.

I know he wrote songs, some kiss songs. Yeah. And crazily, because the kiss songs that he co-wrote are king of the nighttime world. and do you love me off Destroyer? But they were actually written, okay, this is amazing. When the New York dolls came on the scene, 73, 74, he saw this and he was like,

we need an L.A. version. That's what I'm going to do. So that was his first, like, hairbrain scheme was like, we need a boy band. And he made one called the Hollywood Stars. Those were Hollywood Stars songs, those two Kiss songs.

But the Hollywood Stars just didn't gel, didn't come together, it didn't work. This guy named Terry Ray was in it, who was later in the Flamen Grooves. Anyways. And Mark Anthony, who will, not that one. Not Jennifer Lopez, Mark Anthony, but the one that will later write some of the runaway songs. Yeah. Besides Kiss, also one of their songs went to Bachman Turner Overdrive.

All my favorites. Down the line. Oh, God. And Escape the Alice Cooper song with also originally a Hollywood star song. Wow. Well, do you love me? It was a pretty poppy. Yeah.

His song, Nirvana covered it. Yeah. Yeah. It was one of my favorites. And started right here with Mr. Kimberly Fowley. His name is not Kimberly, but I think that's fun. I want to, so here's how he described himself. I'm everybody's worst nightmare and somebody's wet dream. I'm a horrible human being with a heart of gold or a piece of shit in a bag of diamonds.

I'm a bad guy who does nice things as opposed to a nice guy who does bad things. Wow. What a word smet. They just don't make people like this anymore is another. I mean, I guess they do. Trump is a person like this. Kind of, you know, like this sort of like... But not as clever. Not as clever, but does like kind of get some jokes off sometimes where you're like, damn, I hate against my own best judgment.

I'm laughing at this. This is funny. Yeah. Just they're like carnival characters. They're not real. The cartoons. Yeah. They live in like these little soundbite.

Totally. And they craft themselves into a fantasy, you know? Yeah. When you look at Kim Fowley and I don't want to armchair psychoanalyze, but it's like... Yeah. It makes sense. And like you had a horrendous childhood. Right. Like, of course you could never probably trust or be good to people.

And also you created a fantasy world where you couldn't escape into it and just live there, you know? Iggy Pop said about him, I have great sympathy for Kim. This is like fairly recent. It was like around when the runaways film, feature film came out. I have great sympathy for Kim. I was always into him. I was always interested in song forms that communicate lyrics by speaking, talking blues, talking cowboy songs. we'll get into Kim had a very copious solo career music output it's actually kind of cool

um Kim's vulnerable he just looked like you could just dis him and he'd die he looked physically frail he looks a lot like Boris Karloff's Frankenstein he was the kind of guy if you were into something like comics and he was too he'd be your friend over that for 47 years and always be decent to you but not a nice person and not a human being oriented person wow it's a good description yeah anyways he's not particularly successful and I said the Hollywood star fail. So then he's like, you know what, I need to put together an all-girl band. He said, I thought up a Darwinian evolutionary metaphor in a rock and roll sense. You would go from Elvis Presley doing female moves with his hips with the striptease pit type drummer all the way

to the high voice of Robert Plant into the New York Dolls, into David Bowie, into all the the glitter and glam guys, and all of a sudden you turn the page and there's a woman on the page with a vagina and a guitar looking at you right in the eye. It was inevitable that evolutionary-wise women would pick up the obnoxious rock and roll pitchfork and ram it up the ass of the world. Wow. So it's really good. Yeah. It's really good.

So he places an ad in what used to be called who put the bomp, the bomp magazine. I've been obsessed with bomb magazines since I was like 12 years old because this is one of the first L.A. music magazines that covered like all the early punk and stuff made by Greg Shaw. And it said, wanted four girls job to play pop music, purpose, to find the female Beatles, Stones, who, Shangri-Laws of the 70s, we're looking for girls who would take up where Susie Quatro and Fannie leave off. We should talk about Fannie for a second. Yes.

The kind of girls who always dreamed they were in a Phil Specter group, girls with the desire and ability to carve out a place for women in 70s rock as significant as they held in the 60s, girls who can bring hysteria, magic, beauty and teen authority to a stage. Girls with youth, energy, dedication,

wildness, discipline, dedication, and style. Teen authority? Teen authority? Oh, my gosh. Such a good band name. It is. That's exactly what I thought. I was like, should I make a band called Teen Authority?

Don't take it, you guys. I don't know how to play the instruments. I'm going to learn. 43 is not too old. The picture accompanying this ad, I'm obsessed. I couldn't find an actual image, unfortunately, but I saw it described. It was a picture of the Beatles, but he had covered each other faces with a woman's head. Susie Quatro over George, Annette Finicello, over Paul, Brigitte Bardot over Ringo, and then I could not find with the fourth one.

Nobody wrote back. No one. Didn't get any responses. Now we're going to meet a new person in the runaway stories that is also not actually a runaway. Carrie Crow. Right. Born August 1st, 1961, Aaliyo. She's actually the only girl in our story who was an actual runaway, like a teen runaway.

Like she came from a pretty bad upbringing, like in Bell Gardens, Compton Downey. Okay. I also really love this story because it's so my. world of existence from here. I grew up here. So like everything we talk about, I'm like, oh my God, this is like, I love it. So she started taking the bus up to Hollywood

to go to Rodney's English disco, Rodney Bingenheimer's famed establishment that where he brought the British jams across the pond and also where a lot of teenage girls went to meet rock stars.

So she goes there, and that's where she meets Rodney Rodney is really good friends with Kim Fowley She's 13 years old She's at Alice Cooper's birthday party at the Playdeum Wow And Rodney's like you need to meet Kim Falley Because you write songs and he's looking to put together a girl band

A 13 year old girl He wanted a teenage band Okay So she was like 19, she'd be too old Okay And he's like great And she's like, okay well and then he signs her to a contract to become her publisher.

She really was like a lyricist. She wasn't really writing songs. I don't think she played an instrument as far as I could tell. But that was more of a thing back then. Yeah. She said, Kim started calling my house. He would call and call and call. He talks forever and it's all about his fucking ego.

He was picking my brain. What do you think of this? What do you think of that? I found that really interesting. I'm like, oh, he's doing market research. He wants to see what teen girls like so he can sell back to that. Yeah, yeah. Being a lonely kid, I liked the attention. He was someone who was not talking down to me, telling me to change my shirt because it was cut too short. But then later, I figured out what he was doing. By then I was already signed to him. The pressure became really intense. He was really a dick because I didn't want to fuck him. In another famed early magazine of music here in L.A., Backdoor Man. Fast Freddy Patterson, that was his magazine, described Carrie Chrome as being like an alcoholic Emily Dickie. inspired by Lou Reed and Chuck Barry on a suburban guitar punk bubble gum level.

Yes. Sounds cool as hell. Yes. 13. There's some photos and a little video of her reading her poems on the stage and she looks cool as hell. From when she was a kid? She's like 14 years old. Wow.

Yeah. Now another girl also learned about Rodney's English disco from reading an immune and melody maker. Her name was... Joan Larkin. That's right. Soon to be known as Joan Jett. Right.

Let's talk a bit about Joan Marie Larkin. Yeah. Born September 22nd, 1958 of Virgo. There's a lot of Virgoes in the runaways. Oh, okay. I think it makes sense when we get it, especially with Joan Jett and her like single-minded focus. You know, like, I'm going to do this. Yeah, yeah.

She stayed so true. So true. Nothing like, nothing diverged her. Yes. Like, yeah. So she was born in Pennsylvania in Winwood. She spent her childhood in Pittsburgh. She said, my mother had three miscarriages before me.

I'm the oldest, and I felt like whoever those kids are, I have all of them in me. I kind of felt whatever spirit or soul I got, I'm like four people. Wow. That was in her, we were talking about off mic. There's an incredible, if you can get your hands on it. Todd Oldham, the designer, made a photo book about her, but there's also a bunch of writing in it from her. It's really cool. Yeah.

she was just like really cool looking yeah she still is really cool looking um okay so by our own account she had a happy normal childhood she super close to her younger brother and sister um she said her parents told her at a young age that when she grew up she could be anything she wanted yes did your parents tell you that my mom yeah yeah my dad too yeah my parents didn't tell me they were very awesome but they were like you can you can probably be anything you want but what you will be is maybe a or doctor or perhaps an engineer will take business. These are the options. Just kidding, Mom, Dad, Love You, You guys don't listen to this podcast.

So at 11, pressured by her parents, she took up Clarinet and she hated it. But she was like starting to get into music. Alice Cooper, schools out. I'm 18. These are songs when she was 12 that were kind of popping off. Freeze all right now. And Led Zeppelin Hendricks, stuff like that. Yeah.

And then her first concert was Black Sabbath. Cool. With Blue Waster Cult. I know you were a Black Sabbath girl. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Blue Wester Cult too. You both.

But you were born about a decade later than that. Yeah. Okay. So while when Joan was 12 listening to Alice Cooper, you were two years old. Yeah. About. Right. She also, I thought this was really interesting, said, and I'm sure you read this, that besides being inspired by that music, she was extremely inspired by seeing the film Cabaret when she was 13.

Did you read this? No. Okay, so Joan Jett saw Cabaret at 13 years old and she said, it changed my life. I knew I wanted to do something in the arts. Seeing Liza Minnelli made me think, God, I hope I can do something like that one day. And I thought that was really cool because it is the like performance part. And she is a performer. She's an entertainer, you know?

Yeah. And I was thinking a lot about this while I was, like researching the runaways how it wasn't until like really punk came along which is a bit after this or you know they were but they sort of were part of that for sure for sure not musically maybe but like spiritually yes yes yeah but it wasn't like they were still part of the generation where like you you were putting on a show it wasn't about authenticity yes which is what kind of comes a little bit later thanks to like punk is like kind of levels things and is like just even though punk was kind of a show too but then it's like I kept thinking

it's like oh punk got you into like what comes in the 80s in alternative or whatever they call that like Alice Cooper kiss exactly it was theater you know and so I can see her being like oh cabaret yeah yeah so she takes some some she gets a silver tone from ceres which I know I kind of want a silver tone cute they're cute right I think it's a good starter guitar for a 43 year old teenager who's just trying to learn for the eighth time actually had a really cool guitar at China Violin that I got from the president of the jam fan club here in Los Angeles and it was like this like cream colored um squire but it was like from the 90s whoa it was really cool and it was like Craigslist by so like I got to meet the guy and he was

talking about the jam and I was like the best kind of interaction and he was a fan club president yeah that's what I mean I didn't fact check that did you have any kind of haircut did you have any kind of identification yeah do you have a a badge. Oh, did he have like, yeah, he did kind of have like a modish. Yeah, yeah. I don't, like, respectfully to him, I think he just didn't have enough hair left to really, like, really do it up.

Do you know what I mean? You kind of need quite a bit of hair to have that. Not everybody can pull it off either. I think Rodney still has that haircut. Oh. Bing and Himes. Yeah. You can still, I haven't seen him in a long time.

Me neither. But you used to be able to just catch him at canters. Right. But I think he's in poor health. So I think maybe he's not as much sitting at his booth at Cantors. It's the one when you walk in right past the desk where you pay to the left before the stairs. That's him. That's his spot.

She's playing guitar. She doesn't want to learn smoke on the water famously from the runaways film, which we'll also get into. Yeah. I didn't care for it. But it's fine. It's immortalized in there. She's not going to teach myself. She got some books on how to do chords.

and it's off to the races. She learns playing Sabbath in her bedroom. Yeah. Fucking cool. Yeah. And then in 1974, her family's like, we're moving to Los Angeles, babe. Yes.

But not Los Angeles, West Covino. It's fine. It's in general area. Close enough. And then Canoga Park. And then her father leaves the family. And then the rest of them moved to Woodland Hills. And she goes to Taft High School, for those of my Valley kids.

She said, my father left the house. My parents were going through a divorce. It was traumatic for my brother and sister. but it allowed me to get the fuck out because I think if my father was home it would have been harder for me to get out to Hollywood So look at her, so virgo She was like emotionally that was bad

But like for my plans That was very good Set it up. Mom's at work. Go to high school You come home, no one's there. No one's there. Yeah. You take four buses And you get to Hollywood. Right. People just take the bus. Spending a night with my friend, we're going to go to pizza in a movie.

Totally. I remember my dad being so mad in high school when I spent the night at a friend's house and he was like what time did you guys come home and I was like I don't know one or whatever my purfew was like 11 he was like that's a loophole in the system I was like I know that's right that is a loophole in the system and I'll exploit it she's like yeah I live in fucking L.A I'm gonna go see the New York Dolls play I'm gonna steal David Johans's beer off the stage oh the whiskey where'd she go she doesn't didn't say but like it's fucking cool man yeah i saw blink 1 82 and i was 14 to some people yeah that's the new york dolls yeah you know but at that time

it was like what like she wasn't going to donnie osmond concert no she was cool right she was cool yeah because kind of the same way like for the runaways to cross your desk at nine years old yeah it's actually kind of unusual because they did not sell well they didn't Yeah. And they weren't on the radio really. So, and obviously New York Dolls were not selling well or on the radio. So she was seeking that stuff out, you know. And she got really into, she was reading Cream and Circus and all these like cool American rock magazines. And she read about, it's very interesting because she read about Rodney's English disco.

And then through that read about what music they were playing, which was Bowie, Gary Glitter, Susie Quattro. And she started being like, what are those? And then found them. And then found them. And we said this on the germs episode, but I found it interesting. In L.A., it wasn't called glam rock. They called it Glitter Rock. Nobody said glam. Oh, cool. Yeah. Glitter Rock is cooler. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. So she starts taking multiple buses. She goes to Rodney's English Justco.

She says her parents were kind of okay because ostensibly it was like a youth-oriented club. It was like you were supposed to be young to go there. I'm not sure if it was the same. I think it was. the sugar shack, which comes a little bit later, which you literally couldn't go in if you were above 21. It was not all ages. It was only under 21. And I think Rodney's was kind of similar unless you were like, Iggy Pop or David Bowie, you were invited in. Or Rodney himself or Kim Polly. So she's like, I'm into glitter. I'm wearing satin bell bottoms. I've got platforms. People at school are fucking throwing rocks at me and going, oh, diamond dogs. And bullying her. And she was just like, yeah, like, I got really, I felt at home at Rodney's English disco. And then she also

very famously gets obsessed with Susie Quatro. Yeah. Were you a Susie Quadro fan? I mean, I liked, you know, the hits, Stumbling in. And then, you know, she was on happy days. Of course, leather, Tuscadero. Yes, leather. And that outfit was amazing. Yeah. And yeah, she was super cool. And then she had that haircut. And then Joan got that haircut. Who amongst us hasn't. been like, I want to look like that. 100%. I did it many times, as many times as I could. Justine Fisherman, I'm sorry.

I tried it many times. Yeah. She got herself a leather jacket. She was like, that's right, Susie Quattro. Because she said she was like, Susie Guadro was this huge thing to me because I had never seen a woman play rock and roll. To see her with the base, just like screaming, really inspired me.

I thought, well, if she can do it, I can do it. And if I can do it, there's got to be other girls out there. I've been thinking about doing this. Mm-hmm. We can map so much now back to like Susie Quatro. Although I haven't done Susie Quatro research, so I don't know who she looked at and said, I can do that.

Mary Unfaithful, maybe? I'm sure the leather. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I don't know. There's that great story that Susie Quattro said that she came to town in the spring of 1975 to L.A. And she was staying at the Hyatt house.

And she said, I got back from Soundcheck, and I saw this little girl in my hair cut and my leather jacket sitting in the lobby. I saw her in lobbies waiting for me every time I was in L.A. sometimes a little much, I must admit. She was obsessed with me for a while, which I'm sure she would be the first to admit. But again, always cute. This was obviously Joan.

So she meets Carrie Chrome to tie it back together. Joan Jett is at Roddy's English, Jisco. She meets Carrie Chrome. And I love that, that time at that location. And that's kind of like how it kind of comes together at a venue like that. Yeah, like authentically, you were saying like these are just... And Carrie even said she was like, I remember seeing her on the bus all the time. because like you clock

that person looks Yeah exactly That person looks like Into what I'm into Also like you're a teen girl There's another cool teen girl This is also again wrong Like LA was so small back then

You know like you could kind of Clock people Yeah The population was half of what it is now So okay so they started I got up a little conversation And Joan said Carrie said I write lyrics

I don't play an instrument But maybe you should talk to the guy Who Publishes my songs Kim Fowley So Joan gets Kim's number from Carrie and calls him. And she's like, I want to make a band. And he's like, okay, do you have a demo?

And she's like, what now? A what no? And he goes, okay, well, you can come back to me. But then apparently she goes home and calls him and plays guitar over the phone to him. And Cam Falley's head, she was John Lennon. She was Keith Richards. She had amazing timing. Joan Jett plays in time like none of these boys do.

that was nice yeah and Joan said I remember Kim being very intimidating at first but really I became great friends with him and I still consider myself

a good friend of his to this day here's a theme that we're going to get into Joan Jett will never speak negatively really about Kim Polly throughout time

there's a couple of like things yeah I've never heard any yeah once she's a teen they all kind of like razz on him in the interviews but like nothing

nothing serious you know right I think he has a great mind and is very creative and really thinks outside the box. He was another guy people called a freak, and I think we just kind of fit in, even though we were all different kinds of freaks in our own right.

So now we have, this has happened. Carrie has met Joan Jett. Joan Jett has met Kim Falley. A few nights later, Kim Fowley meets Sandy West. That's right. That's right. Sandra Sue Pesavento, born July 10, 1959, a cancer from Long Beach.

Man, Sandy West was cool. She was cool. Yeah. Yeah. She was the last of four daughters. She came from an Italian-American family. She was nine. She was like, I want to play drums. Yep. In the school band. And they were like, girls don't play the drums in the school band. She was like, I'm going to play the drums in the school band. Her grandfather loans her a drum, one drum. And she's like, hell yeah. Beep, beep, beep. And then at 10, I guess her sister was like, okay, here's your own drum. Again, they just said drum. So I'm like, is just one drum? How do you learn how do you learn how to play on? You would know, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe. Either way, she plays, she learns. She plays an orchestra. She plays in the stage band.

She plays in marching band. And she's not only the first girl drummer in these things. She becomes first chair in the orchestra. That's my girl. There she is. Yeah. They moved to Huntington Beach when she's 11. Then her dad dies out of nowhere of a heart attack.

And her sister said, Sandy early on was pretty determined that she wanted to play rock music. It was a way to translate her grief. She's a very active person. Her mother, Jerry, married a guy with three daughters, so they went full Brady Bunch mode. Just seven daughters in one house together. Wow.

Isn't that great? Can you imagine? Some of these things, when I read them back, I'm like, it would be, like, you would make a reality show about that now because it would be so unusual. In Huntington Beach. Yeah. But now, but they were like, yeah.

And then Sandy had to, like, share a room with, like, a brand new step sister, you know? Yeah. I did read in Queens of Noise, Evelyn McConnell's, McDonald's book, sorry, that Sandy's sister was also gay and they kind of realized that together. And so that was kind of cool. But it's not really, I don't know, remember who said, I think more of her sisters maybe. So it wasn't from her own mouth. So I'm just going to say that that's what it said in that book.

But she was a really cool tomboy. She played tennis, basketball, all swing. surfed, road horses. And by 13, she's playing drums and rock bands with the boys. Yep. Cool. And then by 14 or 15, this is 1975, she's like, time to go to Hollywood on the weekends. That's where the action is.

Because she loved, what, like, deep purple. Deep purple. Deep purple. Yeah. Metal, yeah. And she's like, I know the bands hang out in the rainbow parking lot after 2 a.m. And so I'm going to go hang out in the rainbow parking lot. after 2 a.m.

You guys, the Rainbow Barn Girl, by the way, really good food. I'm a big drinker anymore, so this is where I get my kicks off. I'm like, oh, they have like mozzarella sticks and stuff. Anywho, a lot of history. So she's there not to eat mozzarella sticks. And she says Kim Fowley. Now, Kim Fowley says he approached her. There's mixed stories.

But again, remember, he's looking for teen players. And he probably was like, that girl looks like she rocks. Yeah. He said, there's Sandy staying there looking like Dennis Wilson's sister. She was with a bunch of guys in a musician's stance. One of those, hi, I bet everyone should know I'm a musician. Like Billy the kid coming to town and have a gunfight. I don't know if this is true.

Yeah. She did look cool as hell. That's cool. She had like long, middle part of blonde hair, muscular arms. Because she was jock and all spread drums, tall. Tan, totally. Lori, Sandy's sister, says actually Sandy had seen that ad that Kim placed and knew who he was and was looking for him.

So I don't know. You read this Queens of Noise, right? Yeah. So my biggest takeaway, or not biggest, but one of my biggest takeaways from Queens of Noise was that Sandy was working on a memoir that never came out. Yeah. But I guess Evelyn McDonald had access to her notes. Right. And in her

notes, she wrote, I felt like a groupie standing out there. I didn't want to be a groupie. I wanted to be in the group. Cool. Either way, they meet. It's quickly established. I'm a drummer. I want to play a band and he's like well I know a girl you should meet

and give Sandy Jones number so Kim Valley did not form the runaways as such right as the way it's sort of talked about he just he did himself want to form a girl band and then also he just put people

in touch so it's like a little column A little column B you know I know that's one thing that I read the only like things that Joan Jett seemed to really bristle at is like he did not, he was not the one. He did not make us and he did not control us. So I just want to be clear.

That was just a, just a connector. Malcolm Gladwell style. Because they had to deliver anyway. Yeah, exactly. I mean, couldn't play the music for them. Right. August 5th, 1975 should be an international holiday because that's the day Joan Jett took multiple buses

down to Sandy's house in Huntington Beach and they played together for the first time. In her house. That's so cool. I've done that too. Yeah. It's so great. Yeah.

Like you're just excited. because someone comes over and then you kind of jam in your room. You feel like kindred spirit, like a connection. Yeah. Yeah. So cool. I don't know because I'm only just now going to learn how to play that Sears guitar that I'm going to buy from Craigslist. Joan said she was great.

I mean, she could play. Oh, my God. She was powerful. What a drummer. She had experience because she played in bands. Just teenage stuff. But she played with other people. I played in my room.

Yeah. According to Kim Fowley, because Sandy was such a good drummer, she was like, she played like a 30-year-old man. She, her level of skill immediately sort of like rocketed Joan up because she was able to like improve by playing with someone really good. Which have you had this experience where you play with someone that's like good or better than you maybe or they're better. Like a really good bass player can really lock you in at a really good rhythm section. Yeah. I thought that was really cool.

They become inseparable. They're spending every weekend together. They're playing music. They're writing. They're working on songs. Maybe they're also partying and drinking and going to roller derby. They also spent a lot of time at Kim's apartment in Hollywood, learning to write songs, plotting world domination.

Yes. And one of the first songs they wrote was, Joan wrote it, You Drive Me Wild. Is this a top-tier runaway song? Not really. No. But first song.

Not bad. They're 15 years old. Right. I know. Add that to the mix. And now they're like, fuck, we need a band. And Kim is right here.

So again, they're all kind of, and Kim's like, all right, I'm going to find you some girls. He starts to prescreen prospects with his good buddy Ron Ashton of the Stooges. Wow. Kim was friends with everybody.

I didn't know that. Yeah, isn't that interesting? Imagine you're coming to like try out for the runaways and it's just Ron from the Stooges. Yeah. He's like looking at you. You suck.

I believe he was there when Jacqueline Fuchs tried out. Uh-huh. We'll come back to her because she was voted down. They said, no, we don't want her. Yeah.

Multiple other women also voted down. And then an older girl. And by older, I mean 18 or 19, named Sue Thomas auditioned. She was a good singer and she was a good bass player. And they were really great as a trio. And they were like, okay, you're in. But you have to change your name. How about Mickey Steele?

Right. Oh, yeah. We're many iterations of the runaways. The Eternal Flame. The Eternal Flame. Soon to be known as Michael Steele. What a cool. Yeah.

Anyways, Mickey Steele is in, and now they're a trio and they're a band, and they need a name. Apparently, Kim went hunting through, like, this is when he's like a bit of a man after my own heart. He, like, loved, like, junk shops and, like, places with old books and old magazine and stuff. And he found a poster with a picture of girls in silhouettes running down the streets in some gothic city, he said. It said something about teenage runaways. And I saw if you cover the word teenage and call a band the run. It's a tribute to all the girls who were juvenile delinquents and didn't have guitars and didn't have an outlet. And so they would be a monument to all the teenage girls.

It would be like naming a band Rebels Without a Cause. Yes! Yes! Can't downplay, I mean, again, Kim Fowley. Yeah. In many ways a monster, but also in many ways a genius. He really had a vision, you know? Yeah.

So they said about writing songs, The Runaways. And these five people, Joan, Mickey, Sandy, Carrie, who's still involved. She's helping write the songs and Kim. Sandy West wrote in those notes for her memoir, Rock and Roll Band Camp became Rock and Roll Boot Camp. Unfortunately, Kim came to most of the rehearsals, which I hated because when it came to artistic thinking, he did not have any.

He wasn't musical, and we did that brain time alone. This may sound strange, but even though Kim is in the music business, he's not really a musical person. He's an idea man. He doesn't play an instrument. He doesn't compose music. He just comes up with words and concepts. I hear her, but the Just is doing a lot of work there

because that's really important. Uh-huh. But not me being like a Kim Fowley truth or all of a sudden, I'm not. I know. It's not. And people are like, this woman is just. Yeah, but I could see what Sandy's saying, no. Totally.

They're just trying to write songs and he's like shouting like, what if you use this word? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or the other things that he would shout, which we'll get into. Okay, we can get into right now. Yeah. Kim Fowley had a real affection for the word dog. Right. And everything he said had a dog prefix.

Often pejoratively, Like, this is dog shit. You guys are dog cunts. Right. This is dog puke. Uh-huh. Not ideal. No, not at all.

Not a nice way to foster creativity. So he's putting them through their paces, right? By shouting? He said in, we were talking about this off-mic tune and we're going to talk about at length on the pod, the documentary Edgeplay by Future Runaway Vicky Blue. Yes. He said something to the effect of I loved boot camp. because he was in the National Guard. Fun fact.

Oh. I don't know that's a fun fact, but that is a fact. And he was like, I loved it. I thought they would love it too. Yeah. Again, kind of makes sense why he would have loved it. Like lack of structure. Yes.

You know, but they didn't not love it. Joan said about this dog shit, dog cunt, dog fuckers or whatever. I was totally amused by it. It wasn't insulting. And I didn't feel spoken down to. Because you can bet if I felt spoken down to, I would have let Kim know it.

When I see pictures of me and Kim, it just reminds me that Kim and I were friends. He taught me how to write songs. I think he saw something in me. And it was easy for us to just sit there. It was a very sort of stream of consciousness with him. I'd grab my guitar and just play stuff and things would come up. So a little different experiences with Kim. He also trained them.

This is a scene in the Runaways movie, but sort of inaccurate. Right. But he trains them to deal with hecklers. Which I thought was really funny. Throwing stuff. He brought his friends to come throw shit. at that. Which honestly, again, seems insane, but came in handy

because that happens later. Especially when they go to England. They're just being pelted with shit. It is really funny. They're rehearsing a trailer above the Rexall's drugstore on San Vessene and Santa Monica right over here. And Kim would bring friends to see them play. Like, look, like, how good

they are. Fast Freddy Patterson came from Backdoor Magazine. Rodney was just kind of always around. Ron Ashton, we said. And a guy called Denny Rosen who worked for Mercury Records. And he was like, okay. They kept auditioning, though, for a bass player because they were like, actually Mickey should just sing. And they auditioned this writer, D.D. Faye, who wrote for

Back Door Magazine's sister, Danielle. And she auditioned and they liked her, but she was like, something about this, this man I don't want to be involved with him, basically. And so she pulls out. And then D.D. Fay feels really bad because they don't have a now and she's like, I'm going to introduce you this girl I know who's like a ripper. Her name is Lita Ford. And yes, she is. Lita Rosanna Ford, born September 19, 1958, also a Virgo. She's born in London.

Her father, Henry Leonard Ford, known as Len, was British, and her mother Isabella Benvenuto was Italian. Fun fact about Len, he fought in World War I and was injured in some sort of like stick grenade blast, and he lost the two middle fingers on his hand so that his hand was permanently in the metal devil horns. I'm going to say that's cool because it's not cool to lose fingers. Does she talk about that? She talks about it.

Yeah, that's how I know it. She thought it was cool. They leave England when Lita's 4. They moved to Boston, then to Dallas, and finally in Southern California. Her father worked for century 21. He was a real estate agent. Real old heads will remember the center.

Century 21 mustard colored jackets. They had a nice house in Lakewood Village, which is a suburb about five miles outside of Long Beach. And she starts playing guitar at 10 years old. Much like Joan, she took two weeks of lessons on acoustic guitar and was like, you know what, that's not for me. Thank you so much. teaches herself. Her mom gets her a steel string guitar, but she's like, fuck, I want an electric guitar. She sees Black Sabbath at 13 years old.

A bit of a through line here, right? I'm a Black Sabbath. She said when I saw Black Sabbath, I knew I wanted to be a rock star. It became my dream and I knew I was going to fulfill it. Virgo. I walked out of that arena knowing what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I wanted to make people feel the way Black Sabbath had just made me feel. It didn't occur to me that I was a girl.

Nothing went off in my head that said girls couldn't do what Black Sabbath did. So she gets a job at the hospital that her mother works at by lying and saying she's 16, saves up enough money to buy herself a chocolate SG, just like Tony Iommi. Wow. Cool. It's so cool. I was like, why don't I have any go? when I was 13.

I sucked. I took it home and I plugged it into my father's Sony reel to reel tape player. She was so excited. So she teaches herself to play solos by Jimmy Page

and Ritchie Blackmore. Note for note. In her book she says something where she's like Jimmy Page made a lot of mistakes. She's like learning to play and she's like you fucked these ones up a little bit

like I can do this better 13 years old. That was the vibe from Lita Ford throughout all of was like, she was like so like, kind of like, I don't know, just in large and in charge kind of all the time. It's interesting because you kind of, she's the one where like, again, I'm doing my armchair psychology again. But like, yeah, she came from a really supportive, really loving, unbroken home.

So super confident. Super confident. Parents told her she could do whatever she wanted. Yeah, had their audacity to say Jimmy paid me. made mistakes. Her mom would be like, come play Santana for me. That's so cool.

You know, like, let her have parties. Like, she really was like, can't say shit to me, you know? Because she was raised that way. It's really cool. By ninth grade, she's playing in bands with all guys. She's just like, I'm ripping.

She had a boyfriend called Davy when she was 16, who also played guitar. He was more advanced than her and taught her a bunch. And he also got her pregnant. Oh. That's bad. She told her parents she was going camping with a friend and when I got an abortion,

which is like, again, she just was like, I'm, I got to do what I got to do. Yeah. And she talks about it in the book where she was like, I was a wild child and also I had this dream. And like, it just wasn't my time. Right. Anyway, word spread throughout the south of Los Angeles that there's a girl that can fucking rip on guitar. Yeah. Because she was really good.

Again, small population. and she gets this call from D.D. Faye being like, there's a span of the runaways. She gets the call from Kim. Now, not long before she gets this call from Kim, she had been in an altercation with a girl at the mall. Actually, a girl and her boyfriend that were, like, giving her a hard time.

I think threw a Coke in her car. So she came back and fucking beat their asses. And then the girl came back, and Sucker hit her in the face with her belt and the buckle cracked her nose. Girl fight. Girl fight. She like drove herself to the hospital.

70s girlfriend. Totally. So she had sort of a fucked up face when she goes to this audition. It's just what I wanted to say. It still hadn't healed. Okay. So yeah. And she was telling.

I remember one of the girls, maybe it was Jackie Fox, wrote about it or Shari. And they were like, like, already she told that story. And they were like, uh. So she gets his call from Kim Fowley. And he's like, do you want to play bass in the runaways? Or do you play bass? And she's like, I don't play bass. I'm a guitar player.

And he goes, well, do you play an instrument? And she goes, he goes, yeah, I play guitar. And he's like, okay, it's the runaways. We're going to be the biggest rock stores in the entire world, and you need to come up to Hollywood to audition. And she goes, that sounds good. I've never been to Hollywood.

I don't know. And she goes and tells her parents, and her parents are like, get in the car right now. You need to go. Imagine? Imagine I told my parents I'm fucking 16 years old or 15 years old. This strange man has called me. I've never met him.

He would like me to come to Hollywood to play a guitar and an audition. and they're like, what do you wait? Get in the car, man. So she, toot-toot goes up there. She says she remembers meeting Sandy, who was super outgoing, and Joan, who still had light brown hair, by the way, and was very shy. And of course, Kim, who she was like, that's a freak.

Yeah. Kim told her, okay, so play something. And she goes, okay, here's Highway Star by Deep Purple, solo and all. Wow. And they were all like, yeah. Sandy was like, yes. Yes. Sandy was into it. I love beautiful. I read that. Also that I read that they, maybe it was for Jackie Fox's audition. I'm getting ahead of myself, but they jammed on strutter. The Kiss song. It was. And I think that was the first audition and they didn't like her. They didn't want her. Yeah. Because of that maybe. Yeah. Yes. She was a huge. We'll get into Jackie Fox when she reenters the band, but she was a massive Kiss fan. Yeah. Lita said meeting Sandy was a breath of fresh air.

Like we locked in musically, we walked in his friends. We both came from a hard rock background. Lita Ford is hired. Now we have four runaways. Also a few rehearsals in, she noticed that Joan wasn't playing barcords. And she was like, do you want to teach you bar chords? Uh-huh. She was like, yeah.

Joan barcores. Now, here's where the stories diverge a bit. But I'm going to go with the timeline that is in Queens of Noise, because as we learn from EdgeWay, Yeah. Lita Ford's memory of things is a little off. Not that she's a liar. She seemed to be like, I don't remember that show. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I think her timeline and her book is a little bit off. Right. Lita is in the band for, I guess, a very short period of time this first round. Because she realizes that some of the runaways are gay. And she is very uncomfortable. And I'm just, I'm going to read her quote, so I'm not just saying it. I'd never been around people like the runaways. They were gay and I wasn't.

It was wild to me. My parents had never explained to me that people are gay. When I met them, I was like, you like girls, but you're a girl? I didn't figure it out. I didn't like it and I didn't want to be around. That's in Queens of Noise. In her own book, she said, I'd never been around an openly gay person before. I know it sounds crazy now, but that back then my parents never talked about it with me.

Why didn't anyone discuss it? If not my parents, that my teachers. Kim, it was 1970. Being gay or bisexual is considered wrong, quote unquote, by mainstream society, period. Sorry to say that it fucked with my head. I was so freaked out that I quit the band, but I blamed it on Kim. I mean, honestly, good for her for, like, owning it and being honest about it and being like, yeah, like... Kind of like, what?

I was young and didn't know anything. Yeah. But again, she's very sheltered, right? Yeah. Everything we talked about with her upbringing. Totally sheltered. Totally sheltered. But, like, she was so upset about it.

She quit. But interestingly, didn't name names, though. She didn't name names. She just said them. In her book, she says Shri, but her timeline is off because Shri wasn't in the band yet. Joan Jett, but I will say, by the way, has never publicly said one word about her own sexuality. She said, I'm not discussing personally who I'm doing anything with. As far as addressing sexuality, I'm singing to everyone and always have been since the runaways.

I think I'm being pretty blatant. I think anybody who wants to know who I am, all they've got to do is listen to the music. like Sandy West did come out in her lifetime. I'm not really sure when, but I know that she did because her mom talks about it and was like, it's okay. Sandy also dated Penelope Spiris's sister Linda. Really? Mm-hmm.

Is that interesting? It's a good little back. Kind of early on. According to Carrie Chrome, Joan was her first girlfriend. So whatever. It doesn't really matter. Yeah. The point is Lita was like, nope.

I'm out of here. Yeah. So they went back to being a three-piece because they were like, okay. And they played their first ever show as a thing. three piece. August 12th, 1975, in Torrance, California, my hometown. Wow, I was born there. Oh, you're Torrance Memorial? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whoa. This is why we're connected. It was at Fast Freddy Patterson's parents' house. They were out of town. Oh, cool.

3726, West 171st Street in North Torrance. Okay. About just five miles from where my house was. Can you imagine, can you believe? Writer Don Waller was there. He was D.D. Faye's boyfriend. He said, they played a brief set that included two trog's covers. Wild thing and come now, which Joan introduced as this is a song about fucking. And I'm not sure what else, because we're all as high as Dumbo's crows. And God knows only how or why the Torren's place didn't show up and shut it down. It was just like a wild house party.

It's depicted, I think, in the runaways movie where they're throwing all the stuff at them at the house party. But again, it was only the trio back then. And they played a bunch of house parties, this trio. And this is Joan. Mickey. Mickey. And Sandy. Okay.

These are just the three of them. Yeah. Mickey's singing and playing bass. Joan is not singing yet. On September 27th, they played their first ever theater show in Tunga, opening for the rats with a Z. And then they played the whiskey, the 28th and 29th. They dedicated a song to a girl called Devil Worship. Her name was actually Lisa Curland.

She later also plays in a band, but she was allegedly Joan's girlfriend at the time. Oh, okay. worship is what Kim Fowley called her. The song was voodoo. Meanwhile, Lena Ford is regretting her decision. She was like, I had a dream. I came really close.

These girls were playing shows, and she said, I thought about it. I sat there and thought, they're not bothering me. They're cool. There's nothing wrong with them except their sexual preference. I don't know if I would have said it like that.

I think there's nothing wrong with them. Just period would have been fine. Two weeks later, I thought, I want to go back. And they called her. She was just thinking And she was like, great On my way, threw my amp in the back of my car

Let's go, gave everyone a hug, we're back. So now it's Sandy, Lita, Mickey, and Joe. Play the whiskey again with this lineup. And then Mickey Steele is Sayonara. Sionara. She says early on this thing with Kim, this sordid personal angle.

He was enamored of me in a way I found very uncomfortable. I'd been raised in a sheltered manner and wasn't savvy enough to know I could say, come on, Kim, fuck off. My performance went down the tubes. I started going kind of nuts from it. Sandy said, when Kim would say inappropriate things or yell at us during rehearsal, Mickey never stood up to him, whereas Joan and I would tell him to fuck off. She was a nice girl who always seemed uncomfortable. I think of the time it seemed

to me that she really lacked the personality that you need to survive in a band situation. Fowley remembers her always having migraines and complaining, bringing down the vibe. Joan Jett said, the vibe was that she didn't like the song. She seemed very unhappy after shows, almost to the point of tears. Like the shows are depressing. She just didn't seem to be at all on the same page. And it wasn't because she wasn't a nice girl or a talented person. She was a great singer, a really good musician. We were younger than she was. Maybe we were too young for her. Listen, just sounds to me piecing it together. Kim's advances or whatever they were were making her feel terrible. She didn't feel that she could stand up to him, like the other girls.

and it was causing her. Because they were gay. I thought about that. I thought about if like, to them they're like, yeah, no. Cool. I mean, I did think about it. But you know what?

But also Lita didn't bother her. You know? Oh, yeah. So. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if it's just like, not okay. Yeah.

It's not okay. But I'm interesting. I want to play music, but I don't want to compromise my. Yeah. Or like, it's interesting because she even says it. But like it's like you're 18, 19. 19 is still really young. I think she didn't realize that like almost like he was just saying it and she could say, fuck you.

And so he kept saying it, you know? And they fucked with her too much and she couldn't have fun and she couldn't enjoy it and it sucks. And he also famously, I guess he's the one that got rid of her because they were like, you're bringing down the vibe. he said you have no megalo you have no magic this is the only chance you'll get to be a rock star

and you've blown it and then look okay she did go on to become much more successful well maybe not than Joan Jep but like Orlita probably more than both of them actually

she was in a great band she was in a great band and made a lot of money yeah bengles they're called the bangles but that doesn't happen until much later

she doesn't even join them until 83 and they don't form until 1980 but anyways she did just fine Michael Steele Didi Faye said she thought, this is very interesting, that they were actually the best as a trio with Mickey because they were like a female Aerosmith.

Oh. Like a real rock band. It was more than a... I mean, it's 1975. So I thought that was interesting. Another reason I think Kim wanted Mickey out of the band, besides that her, she had a bad vibe, quote unquote, was that he had decided we need a blonde girl.

We will not succeed without a blonde girl. He'd been reading a book called Blond and Cinema. He said it talked about how blonde women conduct light in a photo or a scene. So I realized I needed to have my Brigitte Bardot up in front of those girls. The truth is, he's not wrong that people love to look at a blonde girl. There have been like studies on this. Like you could have two women of equal attractiveness, like walk by a person and people will look more. Just like your eye is more drawn to the blonde for some reason.

I don't know that they needed it. But again, back to the theater of it, right? Right. You know, like they're trying to put together an act and sell it, you know? According to some other lore, Denny Rosencrantz from Mercury had also come to one of those whiskey shows and told Kim that he would sign the band if they had a few more good-looking women, particularly a blonde. Right. So it's time to find a blonde. Yeah.

Another really quick fun part of the Rosencrantz lore, Denny Rosencrantz, is that he went to high school with Jimmy Hendricks. Oh, it's, yeah. I guess so. And shortly before Jimmy Hendricks died, Rosencrantz had gone to see him perform in Phoenix, and Jimmy said to him, Denny, someday girls with guitars are going to play rock and roll, and they're going to be just like spacemen.

They're going to be like aliens. And when they show up in the rock and roll climate, you need to beware. If you come across a girl band, you need to sign them. Wow. Yeah. And that's like a big part of the runaway's lore. kind of obsessed with this idea

that Jimmy Hendricks was like tapped into the future or that Denny Rosencrantz took this like proclamation so seriously that it caused the runaways to get signed. Yes. Love it. Okay, so it's time to find the blonde girl like I said. We're going to the sugar shack in North Hollywood

because Rodney's has closed. It's no longer functioning. And this was the new, one of many new underage clouds for glitter. Kim and Joan go together and this is where they find Sheree Curry. Knock knock, who's there? Knock, knock, who's there? It's Shari Gritty. Born November 30th, 1959 of Sagittarius and Encino, California to Don Curry and actress Marie Harmon, who had appeared in gunsmoke. She's a twin famously. Marie. It's really crazy that you would name your daughter Marie Curie when Marie Curie exists. I just can't get over it. I'm like, because she, like, you know

what I mean. I can't I every it's like such a fucked up name like and shiric curry. Yeah, Shari Curry a cool name. Marie Curie the lady who invented pasteurization.

Like I don't know. I mean it's not the same name because it's a but even in her Wikipedia it says if you're looking for Marie Curie it's this like so people enough people type it wrong. They also had an older sister named Sandy and a younger brother named her baby Donnie when she's 12

Shuri's father leaves home and this is like a really emotional and painful thing for her. Her best friend Paul puts her on to Bowie and glitter music and takes the girls Maria and Shri to Rodney's for the first time. And so by 15 she's obsessed with Bowie. She's like, my hair

is in a feathered shag. It's dyed different colors. I'm wearing the Aladdin insane makeup. Right. That's so much in that book. So much in that book. The books are, the tone of all of each of the books is so interesting.

Tell. What do you mean? Okay, so the runaway's film, the feature film, is based on neon. On Shurries. Yeah. And you can tell, right? Because it's like, well, I mean, there's a lot to unpack and perhaps criticize about that film.

But, like, one is that, like, the basest figure is fake. Uh-huh. That wasn't, that's why, that's why Aaliyah Shalkat never speaks in that film. Right, right, right. Because Jackie Fox. At this point, I had gone to Harvard Law School and was a lawyer and was like, I'm not selling you my life rights. Or maybe, I'm not really sure. She was like, not down.

Yeah. And Vicky Blue, by the time I think Vicky Blue came back to do it, they were like, oh, we already wrote it, wrote you out of it. Like, but Sandy had sold them her life rights. So it doesn't actually make sense why Sandy barely ever speaks. And Lita also never speaks. Like, not never, but like there's like, it's really focused on Shuri and Joan. And when they made that film, it was Shuri and Joan were there when we were making the film. Yeah. On set. Yeah. And at the time, well, this is getting ahead, but Shari and Joan had the same manager who was kind of like.

Kenny Laguna. Kenny Laguna. Yeah. It's very interesting to me, and we all do it. And I would do it too if I wrote my life story. But like when you look back, you're self-mythologizing. So I'm not saying that anyone's lying. Right. But you're seeing it, you're the main character. And also, you know, you are bringing to the stories, the experiences that came after them, right?

So it's like you kind of have to read between the lines, I feel like to get down to it. There's one line from Kim that I found was so interesting much later where he was talking about the Runaway's film and about Al Fanning's performance of Shari. And I'm getting a little head because Shuri's not even the band yet. But he was like, yeah, it was really great. She really did the, like, vulnerable part of Shri Great, but she missed the part where she was, like, Courtney Love, Tasmanian Devil on steroids. And I was like, and that's interesting, right? Because she doesn't, that part of her is not in her book, right? Yeah.

I mean, she says things like I was a wild child or whatever. Right. But she was always, like, trying to root for the underdog in her story. Yeah. And she was the weird freak, but she had kind of gathered the weird freaks with her in her story. Totally. Which I'm sure is partly true, right? Or like, you know, one version of looking at it.

Yeah. Anyways, I thought it was interesting. Although, but Sherey Curry's story is really, in general, really interesting and really sad. You know, all the runaways have pretty tragic details to their life arcs in different parts, like some earlier and some later. Right. But Shurie's earlier was just gnarly. Like the dad leaving is one thing, horrible. He was a pretty bad alcoholic.

Yeah. But loving. It seemed like a really loving dad. But one of the more terrible. And I even got the earlier version of Neon Angel. Okay. I found. Because there was too, like after the film, right?

Yeah. They re-released it. They re-released it. And it's a little bit different. Not too much. But anyways, one horrible biographical detail that I've, feel is important to share because obviously she felt it was important to share is that when she was, I guess, 14 or 15, her sister Marie had this much older boyfriend.

It was like, he was like 30 or something named Derek and he raped her. Oh. I only bring it up to just like we understand the character of 15 year old Shri Curry and how, like, for example, she's different than 15 year old Lita Ford. Uh-huh. It's coming into this situation with a different background and a different set of baggage and a different level of self-esteem and solidity or whatever. Right.

Okay, so her father's moved off to Texas. Her mother has a new boyfriend named Wolfgang who lives in Indonesia. Seems fake, but is absolutely totally true. Yeah. And she was like always overseas visiting him. So she's also much like Joan, like anything goes, babe, do whatever you want. So her and Maria are regular at Sugar Shack. She said the Sugar Shack is the closest thing I had to a stable family life.

DJ Chuck E. Star. He was a DJ at Rodney's that then was like the main DJ at Sugar Shag. He said, I'll never forget the first time I saw Marie and Shri walk in. Rodney just stood there and his mouth hit the floor. You couldn't tell them apart. They were the most perfectly beautiful specimens of a 14-year-old girl you've ever seen in your life. I don't like it. No, not at all.

I don't love it. No. Anyways, now we're at the Sugar Shack. Kim walks in. He sees Shri Curry, sitting at the bar, sipping a Coke. There's no alcohol at the Sugar Shack. he approaches her. In her book, she said he looked like a tangerine lurch

because he always wore an orange suit. She says she didn't really know who he was, but was star-struck by Joan because Rodney used to talk about Joan Jett all the time to her like, oh, there's this girl, Joan Jett. She's a star, like, you know. And she recognized Joan from Rodney's English years ago.

And Kim was like, do you play an instrument or sing? And she's like, yeah, I sing. Uh-huh. She was lying. Totally. Yeah. But good for it. Yeah, totally.

That's what you do. Yeah. And he's like, good. Come audition this Saturday, learn a Susie Quattro song. And she tells her friend Paul, and Paul's like, yeah, I know who Kim Fowley is. That's, yeah, you've got to go. Let's talk about the myth of Cherry Bomb. The audition is probably the most heavily mythologized, I feel like, in The Runaway's Story. She shows up.

What song did she learn, Patty, for the... Fever? Yeah, which is a cover song by Susie Crotrow. Later, of all the songs. ...covered by Madonna and The Cramps. Great song. Yeah. Not what they were looking for, per se.

No. The most famous version is probably Peggy Lee's 1958 cover version. It came out in 1956, little Willie John. That's not important. Anyways, the runaways are like, no. No, that song. Get this shit out of here. Yeah.

Lita Ford in particular, I was like, we do not play this fucking bullshit. No. It's too slow. You give me fever. When you kiss me, fever. I think Lita called it M-O-R shit. We don't play that fucking M-O-R shit middle of the road.

Oh. She said it herself, actually. She said, I want to play some rock and roll, God damn it. That's what she said in her book. Cool. So both Lita and Sheree say, Kim and Joan were like,

well, why don't we just go write or a song? They step out. They step out. And they write Cherrybaum on the spot and come back. And they're like, here, learn this. That seems insane. It does. Because it's arguably their best song.

And that was, okay, who is writing that? That's Joan. Just Joan and Kim. Wow. Yeah. They have the songwriting credit on it. I think, I believe it was how Joan described, right? She would sit kind of probably how it was in the movie, although there's nothing I hate more in music biopics than when they show the writing of a song.

Like pencil and paper? Yes. Yes. Because 90 times out of. 100 that didn't happen that way. Right, right. This one, I guess maybe it probably did, but she was just like riffing and he kept coming up with words and he said, Cherry, because like, Cherie. Oh, right, right, that's right. Hello daddy, hello mom. Right. What a great song. What, like, sometimes they just come, they show up like that, those songs, right? So, that was like divine. Totally. Full divine. And again,

you got to give Kim some credit on this one. Right. Well, or maybe you don't. Maybe you don't got to hand it to him. But the Cherrybaum lyrics are pretty sick. I mean, they're kind of crazy that they're about a 15-year-old girl supposed to sing them and say. It's their story, though. It's them. Can't stay at home, can't stay in school. Old folks say you poor little fool. Down the streets, I'm the girl next door. I'm the fox you've been waiting for. The lyrics are good. Yeah. Totally good. Have you and grab you until your sore is pretty explicit. for a 15-year-old. And I think in the film, she's like, I can't sing that.

And they're like, you have to. And so she does. Joan's like, it's just a song. According to her book, they voted right in front of her. You're in. Well, actually, Lita was kind of like, no. And then she was like, okay, I guess. And now they had their blonde.

They had their cherry bomb and their best song. Yeah. All in one second. They needed a bassist still, though, because nobody, because she was like, I don't know how to play anything. Yeah.

He calls Kim, he calls the local musicians union, and he's like, I need a basis. And they're like, okay, well, here's this 19-year-old in North Hollywood

named Peggy Foster. Peggy Foster didn't join the band, but I just wanted to bring her up because she had long blonde hair and she showed up, and Kim was like, I don't like your hair. You need to cut it and get a perm.

And she did. And they still didn't put her in, well, she was in the band for one show. They played a show in Manhattan Beach. And then she said, she hated her hair. And she'd be with Shree and said there was too much drama in this band. And so she left. So they were like, we're going to call that other girl that auditioned for us, played the kiss song.

Jackie. Jackie Fox. Jacqueline Louise Fox, born December 20th, 1959, Sagittarius also in Los Angeles. She grew up in Woodland Hills, Valley. Sister Carol, later would marry. Castle Rock Entertainment co-founder Martin Schaefer. Also, I believe Carol is like a poker champion.

Oh. Fascinated. So random. Yeah. She was a gifted child with extremely high IQ. Fowley has said that Jackie Fox's IQ was higher than his. That's saying something. I know. She was really smart.

We'll get, well, I mean, there's great interviews with her, but we'll also, there's like one great quote which I'll read later, which I was like, it's insane that a 16-year-old girl said this in an interview. She was quarterfinals for Miss Teen USA, babe. She was beautiful. She was a surfer. She was on student council.

She played piano. She could read music. She loved Kiss. She loved Kiss. Wow. Got her first guitar at 9 and was like, I want to be like Kiss. That's cool. She was also high school friends with the future drummer of the NAC, Bruce Gehry,

and Helen Killer and Trudy Argules, who would go on to become very iconic L.A. Punks. the germs. Right. Like, this, this is the shit that I live for. That like Jackie Fox of the runaways was high school friends with Trudy and Helen Killer and they would take the bus to go to Rodney's together. Totally. That's where she, or the Starwood, actually, but she met Rodney at the Starwood and he introduced her to Kim. Jackie said, Kim always liked me. He was a weirdo, but I was hanging out in Hollywood. My parents had friends who were alcoholics and actors and gays. Three, three categories. He didn't phase me. He was just another California weirdo.

Maybe a little weirder than most. So she takes a bunch of bucks. And, buses once again to audition. They voted again right in front of her face. Sandy yes. Joan yes. Sheree yes. Lita? No. Yeah. And Kim was like, to his credit, was like if it's not unanimous,

we're not putting someone in the band. Yeah. So he wasn't just like, you have to have her. And so Sheree convinced Lita to let Jackie in. And Lita was like, okay, if she'll get us a record deal. And guess what? That she did.

She did. December 1975, Mercury signs them after one rehearsal, sing, Shiree. Jackie was also very beautiful. I think that's what Denny Rosencrantz wanted. He wanted two more hot girls in the band. And he got it. Yeah. He said, the first time I saw them, they were a power trio, and I didn't really like them.

Whatever they were trying to do, they couldn't quite pull it off. But when they added the lead singer and the bass player and made it into a regular band, I fell in love with them. So they renamed her Jackie Fox. she is the longest running basis of the runaways 18 months. Yeah. So she would be kind of like the founding member. Yeah, she's the one you think. I mean, Mickey Steele was technically the first basis, but like she's the iconic line of the runaways is this one, right?

Shuri, Joan, Lita, Jackie and Sandy. Yeah. T-shirts. That's it. Yeah. Jackie said the real thing that happened with the addition of Shuri and me is that the very strong personality. that made up the band were suddenly in balance. The chemistry worked.

There was this pentagram. Each of us had two people in the band, not the same, that we got along with best, than someone further away. Lita and Joan had really nothing in common except the desire to be in a band. Lita and Sandy liked hard rock. Yeah.

Lita and I were the only completely straight girls. We had overlapping taste and clothes, and we go shopping and check out guys together. Shuri and I were the two nice ones. I thought that was really interesting, because one main factor of the runaways that we're going to get into is like classic thing that happens

when you put five girls together. Yeah. There's some fucking girl-on-girl crime, babe. Yeah. Some of them do not fucking get along and they hate each other. And they call it. There's some drama.

Right. I've been in, you know, like I've known Alita. I've known, totally known Alita. I've known a Cherie. Of course. Yeah. Right? I'm sure you have.

Kim put it differently. He was like, now we have a blonde bombshell. Shari. The girl and that. next door, Jackie, heavy metal anger volcano, Leda, John Lennon, Keith Richards, and Natalie Wood with some Susie Quadro, Joan, and Dennis Wilson. That was cute. Then it's time to sign contracts.

Uh-oh. Oh, no. You already know what happens when some 15-year-old girls and their parents who don't have any experience in an entertainment world signed contracts. Sign it all away. It's not bad. Yeah, basically they have a contract directly with. Fowley, which is a partnership agreement, which gives him the rights to the name of the

Runaways, all merchandising, all songwriting, and ownership of the masters. Yeah. It's bad. Yeah. And then they have one directly with Mercury. Anyways, it's a bad deal. But they sign them because they don't, they just want to be in a band. One thing I want to say about this five-piece lineup that I'm so obsessed with in the story of

The Runaways is this is such an L.A. band in the sense that they basically come from all stretches of suburbs outside of. These are not girls who grew up in Hollywood. Like, for example, the Red Hot Chili Peppers grew up in Hollywood.

You know, these are like suburban teenagers. Yeah. Which is kind of what was so special about them. Like, they're real suburban teenage girls just from the sprawl around L.A. that were able to come into the nucleus of Hollywood and kind of make this, like, magical thing happen. Yeah.

I just think it's so cool. Yeah, and they're not pros. I love that they're not, like, musicians. Well, I mean, they're 15. How could they be? Right. Yeah. They're like, well, Lita.

I mean, Lita was as pro as it gets, I think. Yeah. So, okay, so they signed these deals, bad deals. And right around this time, I believe, right before maybe, Shuri's mom is like, hey, me and Wolfgang are moving to Indonesia. And Shari is like, again, 15 years old. Marie, 15 years old.

She's like, Donnie's coming with us. Do you want to come with us? And Shri is like, I just signed a record deal. Like, I'm going to be in a band. And mom's like, that's okay. You can go live with your aunt and grandma and your dad will come back. And Marie was like, I guess I'll stay with Shari. And the craziest part about this is not that, which is pretty crazy.

Like, can you picture, again, a modern day. mother leaving her 15 year old girl at home to move to Indonesia. Yeah. No. The craziest part is that, and this is in Sharia's book, so this is what she said,

but that she comes home from the studio because they're starting to record their first album, the day that her mother's supposed to leave to say goodbye, but her mother's already left for the airport without saying goodbye. Wow. And Marie's like, she was like, well, she was supposed to, it was so much later. And Marie's like, she was afraid that you were going to serve.

her with papers to make her stay and take custody of you. Whoa. And Sheree, like, drives to the airport to try to catch her, and she sees her mom, like, in disguise, running away from her. Again, this is all in Shere's book, so I don't have her mother's side of the story.

Either way, it's very dramatic, and she doesn't see her mother for two years. Wow. She's 15. Yeah. Okay. We have a record deal. Yeah.

Wow. Our mother has moved to her. One of our mothers is a movement to Indonesia We're in the wind We're in the wind. We're living with grandma and Aunt Evie

and our dad who is again a bit of a terrible alcoholic They're very loving and it's time to play our first show as the fabulous five

as Kim would call them It's New Year's Eve in Orange County in a place called Wild Sams Okay this is Do you remember in Sheree's book where she describes

the pretty harrowing moment where it's in a motel room and Kim Fowley invites them in for sex education class. Yeah. Likely it's this show because they would have had a motel room to change and get ready into before Orange County. Yeah. There.

I know. I'm like, I don't want to too into detail about this because it's so terrible. But TLDR is like he has like a very drunk baby underage girl. Not sure. Did Cherie say how old she was? She was definitely a. young girl. I remember exactly.

And he makes the runaways, like, stand in the room and is like, I'm going to teach you how to fuck and, like, has sex with this girl in front of them. It's so gross. Doesn't Jackie talk about this Jackie talk about? Jackie talks about, well, okay, here's what they had said later. So Shari describes it in pretty, like, chilling detail. Fowley denies it ever happened. Joan Jett has not denied it, but also says she does not remember it. Lita Ford says she was not there and didn't hear anything about it until 26 years later.

In notes from her memoir, though, Sandy has a very... Detailed... Very similar to this. So Sandy kind of did corroborate it. Carrie Chrome remembers it. She said she was there and she saw it. Yeah. And Jackie Fox says if it did happen, she also didn't know about it until years later because she wasn't there.

Huh. That's what she said in the book. I don't remember what she said in Edgeplay. Either way, it would be a kind of crazy thing to make up. Yeah. I'm not saying it happened or didn't happen, but like two band members said it did. This is fucking disgusting. Yeah, it is.

And it's like they're 15, 16 year old girls. And to feel like you can't leave and how uncomfortable it is, you feel trapped because this is your dream. You just signed the, it's your first big show together, and then you're like, oh, no, this is also part of it. Yeah. Being in a band to me, it's like going on a group vacation. You know how like when you go on a group vacation? Yeah, get have a, like, you have to have a buddy. Yeah.

And also in bands, like when you're auditioning or whatever, like besides playing well, you have to be a good hang too. You know, it's like certain things. like, you know, like there's a, like, it's okay to be a vegan, you know, but, you know, or whatever, you know, like, but like, I don't know if that's a good example, but like, like, like, you know, high maintenance, complaining too high maintenance, complaining too much. Yeah, because you have to spend so much time together and you're traveling. Yeah, it is, I always think of it as, like, when you go on a trip with some friends and you've, like, come back and be like, never going on a trip with that fucking person again. Well, that's that. We do not. Yes. Travel in the same vibe. Yeah.

I'm done. But this is just that at the most intense level. Yeah. And spoiler alert, some of these girls do not travel altogether. Yeah. And they have a lot going on, given that they're 15 and 16 years old. They have a just kids. A lunatic involved.

Running the show. Owning kind of a lot of their shit. But also helping write the songs, got them the deal, booking the show, like really embedded and meshed. Okay. So in January 76, they have their Hollywood debut. the Starwood. I think this is that show that is on your t-shirt where they get

all these cute t-shirts made with their names on them. Super cool. I love things with my name on it. Terrible. But I did it. Robert Plant was there and Kim had made him a runaway shirt too that said runaways Robert Plant. Wow. He's a genius. Psychotic

freak, but also genius. Ace Really was also apparently at this one of these shows. Yeah. This is written up in the LA Times by Richard Cromlin. He said sooner or later, I actually love this, rock senility problem will reach the crisis stage and then it will be

solely up to the teenage audience to reject both father figure rock stars and corporate bred bubble gummers and produce its own new wave. It's kind of like for seeing punk, right? Yeah. And I get, it's 76, so like you already have some youth movement stuff, right?

I mean the stooges have come out. Yeah, stooges and. Bowie's youngish. Velvet Underground. Belved Underground, totally. I guess, again, much like the runaways never really had a big commercial impact, but yeah, it's bubbling up, you know, because we kept, we've been talking about Kiss and Deep Purple and all these, these are kind of older men. Yeah. So he said, The Runaways, which played the Starwood Wednesday and Thursday, might be it,

notwithstanding ample room for musical improvement. Okay. Okay, fair enough. All right. Okay. Well, again, you know, it wasn't cool yet to not be able to play your instruments. Yeah. The Runaways' lack of contrivance results in some awkwardness at this stage of the game, but the basic image

five Southern California Beach and Valley girls strutting and posing as if as they've seen their rock heroes do it is immediately striking. It's not so much what they do as who's doing it. It's kind of right. It's the fact that they're teenage girls that's like kind of the novelty of it. The show is, I guess it's success, right? They're like, okay, we've debuted. Robert Plant was there. We got a right-up. Then it's grueling rehearsal time. I thought this was really interesting. Kim hires Kenny Ortega. Kenny Ortega is now best known as the director of all the high school musical movies

and choreographer of those and newsie. He also directed newsies at Hocus Pocus. Oh my God. Incredible. Wow. I know. And choreographed Madonna's Material Girl video. Michael Jackson Tours.

I don't talk about that. But at the time, he was just a young choreographer who was working with that band The Tubes. Okay. And he was like, help. I need you to help the girls with stage choreography. And he did. That was his, like, job.

And Lita Ford has said in her book that she owes a great deal to him of how she learned how to move on stage. Cool. Yeah, kind of cool. Again, back to like, this isn't the Ramones. You know, like they were in many ways doing theater. They have a choreographer, you know, when we get into dead end justice. It's like a rock opera play happening. Yeah.

They're doing an act. Kim hires a 25-year-old guy named Scott Anderson at this point to be his assistant. it's some bad news but we'll get into that later just want to point out that he was hired and most of the girls have moved to Hollywood now Sandy's living with her sister Terry Lita gets her own apartment with the help of her parents like near the whiskey

Joan lives with Kim in his spare room okay yeah and she always speaks very highly of it Lita says that Kim finally one day though called Joan's parents and was like listen your daughter's doing too much drugs I don't want her to die at my house.

I'm not going to deal with a dead 16-year-old. You got to fucking figure this out. And Joan was like, okay, I'll get my own apartment. So she moved out into her own apartment, the iconic place across from the whiskey that she lives for a long time and all the parties happen at. Yeah, that's the one of heard about it. Yeah, and Lida moves into Joan's room in Kim's house.

Weird. I know. Lita said, when I was eating my cereal in the morning, Kim would be on the phone talking business. I listened to how he worked, heard him sell these people the rap of a lifetime. He promised them that the runaways were the greatest thing to happen to music in a long time, that we were going to save rock and roll and would be international superstars. Because he said it over and over again, he truly believed it.

And he made everyone else believe it too. Then because everyone believed it, it began to come true. Yep, that's it. I love that. Yeah. Again, Kim Fowley, insane. Very despicable behavior. Yeah.

still had a thing that he was like they don't make him like that anymore where he was like I'm just going to speak this into existence and now it's time to record the first album okay let's get into it you guys I'm just going to be honest with you I had not really spent a lot of time with the music of the runaways prior to this

I will probably not be spending much time with it in the future I don't think the runaway's importance as a musical act lays in their musical But what do you think? Yeah, I agree. I agree. But also, you know, I wasn't, it didn't come to me in the time that I think it would have made a bigger impact.

Okay. First Runaways album. It is called The Runaways. It comes out May 17th of 76. First song, Cherry Ball. Okay, I mean, Cherry Bomb. Great song. And you know what I'll say?

I was, Sheree does not sound 15 years old. No, she doesn't. It's pretty strange. her singing voice. Totally does not. And I guess they recorded it like live, but in different, you know, you know, sections of the studios so that, like, you know, they wouldn't bleed into each other. There's the song Secret, which sounds like, like the rips are cool.

It sounds like, it sounds like Substitute, like it's that Who riff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there's like those vampy songs that I'm just not into those. No, like, no, no, no, the titles. Like, Thunder? Yeah, where they start out with, like, they're sort of like these sort of like bluesy vampy things. Yeah. It's, I'm not down with it. It's not your thing.

Yeah. No. I mean, American Knights, I quite like. Oh, yeah. I like that one. Yeah. Mark Anthony wrote that one. Right.

That's like a pretty, that's the one where the phrase queens of noise, not. Yeah, comes from. It comes from that song. And they do, they, don't they do it like harmony in that? Yeah. And it's so cool. I'm a sucker for dead injustice because I just like. that like the drum while they're like talking. It's like a story. Yeah, I love that. Like,

Hey, Joan. Yeah. Come on, Sheree. Joan, let's break out tonight. Okay, Shri, what's the plan? Which one has a, there's like a talking like photo shoots. Yeah. I hate them. Love that. Yeah. Love that. We used to say that at photo shoots. Me and Courtney. Photos shoots. God. Hate them. Yeah. They just sound, they sound so cool. Yeah. Like when they're talk singing like that. By and large, a lot of this music, is forgettable with love and respect to the runaways. Yeah.

Also, we should say Jackie Fox did not play one note of music on this album because Kim Valley was like, we, we, I don't know if I said it clearly enough, but Jackie Fox was a guitar player. Uh-huh. So she kind of just switched to bass to be in the runaways, but that's not her real instrument. And I don't think she, I think she was proficient. Yeah. But Kim was just like, you're not good enough.

And he had Nigel Harrison from Blondie, uncredited, play all the bass parts on here. Yeah. The promo to me is very interesting. This is the press release said. Mercury Records has the new stooges. The buzz on the street says the runaways are going to happen big. Think about it. 16-year-old beautiful girls playing hard rock. If you can't relate, you're dead. Oh, fucking sick. Meanwhile, Joan and Leder are already 17, but we don't need to talk about that. The premise of the runaways, though, like, someone didn't think it through. Because you're, you're, you. You're only, how long can they be teenagers? Right. Oh, yeah.

Like, I know everyone bemoans that they ended after three and a half years. You know, it's like minuto. Exactly. Well, and then you have to start switching them out. Yeah, they got to start switching. But it's like, it's not like this band could have had like a pearl jam length career where like they're like singing songs about being teenagers and they're 38 years old. Right. So, you know.

Yeah. It was baked in. Yeah. The end of the run was baked into the premise. Yeah. An expiration date. Yeah. This is what the band bio said.

There are two minutes. that exist in rock. Neither teenagers nor females can rock. Bull. Who do you think Chuck Barry, Brian Wilson, and Paul McCartney have been singing to all these years? Male collegians. Rock and roll exists because teenagers exist. It's fucking true. Yeah. No lies detection in that one. That's true. The cover is just a photo of Cherie. This is going to start a trend. Yeah. It does not. How did that happen? I think Kim. I think it was Kim Fowley's decision. But the rest of the band was cool with that? No, I don't think so.

They don't think so. They don't think we're cool with it. And they would have liked to also be on the cover. So this is going to start a crack that will continue to permeate the runaways, which is that Shuri is made to be like the front focal person. Yeah. And she says that she didn't want that, but it wasn't really up to her. And the band resented her for it, even though it wasn't really up to her.

and it starts here with this cover being I mean it's a cool photo but like yeah but also I don't really get that thing because as Robert Hilberin said in the LA Times like the novelty the interest of this is that it's like five teenage girls why would you not put all of them on the cover and they're all gorgeous it's not like

it's like oh we don't want to show those ones yeah so that's a bit confusing did not sell well I think it hit 194 on the Billboard 200s just cracked in there didn't really get radio play I think like Cherrybaum was played on like two stations really fun fact

their radio promo guy Cliff Bernstein future Metallica manager also wasn't he your manager yeah clip was their their radio promo guy at Mercury we never talked about it

now you can call them up and be like hey just learn tell me well he might remember it as a struggle because again he could not get these putting people on the radio for the life of them. Tons of press, though. Because they're a teenage girl rock and roll band.

Jackie said something really interesting, which is that the thing that gets lost in the aura that surrounds the runaways now is how big of a joke we were considered back in the 70s. Oh. And I was reading a lot of the articles, and I get what she's saying.

Yeah. Jackie just really, she puts it all, like, she's really honest about it. Yeah. It makes sense because it's, she, I don't think, again, fast forward, Jackie Fox is the first of these five to leave the band. She goes to Harvard Law School, she's a genius with Barack Obama, becomes like a record label lawyer, I think. I don't know what she does now. She won Jeopardy.

Anyways, I don't think it's in her, I don't want to say interest, but it doesn't seem like it's important to her to be the steward of the legacy of the runaways. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And the way that it is more for Joan. One part of her life. Yeah.

She has many parts of success. Yeah. So she's just kind of like, well, let me tell you fun facts. Yeah. This happened. People thought we were a joke. Yeah. Here are a few sentences from the reviews.

Cashbox. This album contains 10 of the hottest, sweatiest, nastiest, most straight-ahead rock and roll songs we've ever heard. That's a bit of hyperbole. Yeah. in the LA Times. Flawed, but not nearly enough to keep the album from being a most inviting introduction to a delightfully promising female band that is firmly entrenched in the quattro-sweet New York Dolls tradition. Oh, it's good.

Yeah, that's, yeah, gentle. Gentle. Gentle, true. Yeah. Not mean. No. But not lying and saying it's amazing. Yeah.

Enemy said, by the looks of the sleeve, and quite a sleeve it is, these girls are more interested in eliciting good old-fashioned lust than musical respect. Well, that should see them through a couple years at least. Do they play their own instruments? Does it matter? Well, no session man I've ever heard could possibly sound as lame and unimaginative as they managed to be. Ouch. You know.

And I mean, really hit them in every place that it hurt. All of it. Yeah, that's bad. We're going to get into this about what it meant for them to be positioned as sex objects. Well, there was a moment that it all kind of... Yes. And obviously it's there from the... beginning, even in the

songs all have pretty lurid lyrics. And I think just Joan has said this before and I think she's absolutely right. Rock and roll is sexual. Right. Like Mick Jagger, you know, Led Zeppelin, it's libidinal music. You know? Right. So it's like, just because they're teenagers doesn't mean they're going to opt out because they

weren't trying to be like some cutesy. Even the Shangri-laws have kind of like sexual sounding music, you know? They maybe took it a step further. But then, yes, we're going to get into the other step further. I just want to read this zigzag review so I can shame the man who wrote it Chris needs. I mean it was a long time ago

but I'm sure he's atoned since then but oohie. That's the first caps. This platter boasts one of the most fetching sleeves I've had the pleasure to mass dot dot dot ogle at. On the front

the glitteringly attired shri casts a seductive eye over her shoulder while outstretched hands caressed the mic. She's on stage, you see. Open it up and you're confronted by all five runaways. On the left their sultry Joan jet, complete with chain hanging out of her gene pocket. In the middle is tree again, hand and hip and blouse unbuttoned to the waist. Their delectable teen dream cohorts, Sandy West, Lita for, and Jackie Fox pout provocatively alongside. All the girls look

exceedingly tanned and healthy. There's more picks on the back and we even get to find out the girl's ages. All 16 except lead guitarist Lita, who is the old lady of the group at 17. As I said, oohie. There's not one word about the music. It's gross. Yeah. Georgia Criscoe, sister of Robert Criscoe. Oh, really? Who is also a music critic.

Not all the people talk about her. She is also very smart. Wrote in Circus that the album is more complicated than it is great. On record, the band sings everything as if I wrote. There's nothing to indicate that they have asked to be seen as they see themselves. I really liked that. Yeah. Clepper. Circus.

It makes sense what she's saying, though, because, like, Well, I think what Joan said is totally true, right? I don't think that they did anything they didn't want to do. But there is such a thing as like not realizing because you're 16 or 15 that you're being pushed in a direction that maybe isn't. Like I had that when I was a teenager. Like a lot of what I looked back on as a teenager is like I wish I had known more what I actually wanted because it made it too easy to do the things I didn't want. You know? Yeah, yeah.

And I wonder if that was a bit at play here, you know? Right. Robert Criscoll, the brother of Georgia Criscoll, said, don't let misguided feminism, critical convolutions, or the fact that good punk transcends ordinary notions of musicality tempt you. This is Kim Fowley's project, which means that it is a tuneless, it is tuneless and wooden as well as exploitative. How can anyone hang around L.A. for so long without stealing a hook or two,

defies understanding. Maybe it's just perversity, which would make it the only genuinely. perverse thing about the man. It's mostly him hating Kim Pelley. I can understand that for somebody like Sandy West who's such a great musician and to be stuck in that

all in a novelty of the runaways and to be looked and to be not respected. And like musically speaking which is going to really come into play later again as they get a little bit older and a little bit into their own skin. These are not five girls

who have the same musical background. Yeah. Like, like you said, Lita Ford and Sandy West love metal. Yeah. You know? Joan was more glitter clam. Joan loved glitter glam.

And then once punk crosses her desk, just like, let's fucking go. And pop, you know? Sheree kind of, she loved Bowie, obviously. Yeah. But she seemed to be a little more into just pop music.

Yeah. And like she chose fever because she likes like more sultry, you know. And Jackie loved Kiss, but she didn't love heavy metal. She loved Kiss. It is important, though, that, like, everybody kind of has a similar vibe.

Sure. Once you start writing your songs and want them to sound a certain way. Yeah. I do love Dead on Justice, though. I'm sorry, I already said that, but it's seven minutes long, and it's like, it's really a vibe. Lita Ford, I have to say it, is such a ripper. She's so good. What must it be like?

So great. And that, like, I know that, you know, they had to have been, like, like, just so excited to be able to play these songs, you know, in their first record, to record them. Of course. And to, like, this is, this is us, you know, like, pretty amazing for 16-year-olds. I can't imagine being 16 and looking at Bowie or looking at Rishi Blackmore or looking at Susie Quattro and being like, I want to do that, I want to do that. And then five minutes later, you are doing that. Yeah.

You know, what a trip. Yeah. I wanted to ask you when you first did it, what did it feel like? Amazing. I mean, and yeah, that's, I mean, there isn't enough, I couldn't, you know, what, there's not enough words to describe in the English language. Like, there's so many things. Yeah.

Oh, cool. And I will learn that too at the tender age of 47 when I finished learning the four bar chords that I need to put together. Okay. We've been referencing this hinge moment in, the way that they're perceived, particularly as sex objects, and now we're going to talk about it. This is right after the album comes out.

They have a show at the Starwood. Now, Sheree Curry, she said in the Edgeplay documentary, she didn't play an instrument, right? So she was like, I didn't really know what to do on stage. So I thought costume changes were like a good way to like kind of be occupied

and keep it interesting. She had walked past Bradfix of Hollywood and seen, still there, you guys can go visit. She spied a white satin corset with black bows. Now, I think this is really interesting because most people think this was Kim's idea. Yeah.

This is where like it gets, there's a lot of this. Yeah. Yeah. He, I mean, he loved it, of course, but this was 100% Cherie's idea. She loved it. She said, as I pressed my nose against the glass, that corset set my brain on fire.

Man, how cool would it be if I wore that on stage? Kim was always screaming that I lacked. to rock and roll authority. I imagine standing in front of the audience dressed in that get up. That would blow people's minds. Yeah, but she did it in such a... I mean, it was her choice, but...

It's complicated, right? Yeah. It's really... That's why I'm, like, so interested to talk about it because it's... Also, I forgot, mentioned on that first record, there's, like, maybe two songs where she plays piano.

Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. And it's, like, not even a full section. It's like a few little, like, two songs. And it's-classics with the girl on keys moment. Or like she didn't feel like she was part of this. Contributing in us. Yeah. And it's like really not needed.

But I mean, no offense to you, Sherry Curry and your piano playing. But like, I kind of get it, though. I'm like, I'm such like a child of the 90s. So like the idea that you would just be the singer of a band is so like, especially as a woman. Oh, yeah. I'm like, oh, you got to play guitar. Yeah, you have to. You got it.

Like, come on, you know? Yeah. So, again, I'm upset. This is one of my, like, obsession points on the runway because I'm dying to talk about it. Because, again, it was her idea. She wanted to do it. Right. Another layer of this is the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Oh. Because it's important to talk about the Rocky Horror Picture Show was huge amongst young, glitter and glam teens and then punk teens. It stayed like fucking every week or every day in Los Angeles. Yeah. They would always go see it. They were obsessed with it. It was transgressive.

It was cool. And she was like, I can look like Frankenfurter. Right. That was one of the inspirations, which you don't think about, right? I don't. I didn't. But that, she said it, you know, like.

Okay. And he has, especially the fishnet thigh highs. Yeah. That's very much that look. Kim loves it, like I said. Right. Lita. Not so much.

Hates it. Yeah. She only wore it on stage for the one song, for Cherry Mom. She would change on stage. However, it becomes sort of associated with it. I'm, again, I'm just fascinating. And like, you can track a lot back to this. Like, you can track, I'm Madonna later and Britney Spears later and all pop in in these, like, really.

But what about Wendy O'Williams, you know? Uh-huh. A lot of, you know, like, you didn't see this before Shuri Curry that much, right? Even like Susie Quattro was wearing a full body situation. Okay. I'm not, yeah. It's not even that I'm saying it's good or bad. No, no, no.

It's interesting. Yeah. Okay. That she sort of started this thing that before that didn't really, and I'm sure I'm going to get a million animals like, this lady did it. And I'm like, I'm not thinking of somebody. Right, right. I'm just, I mean, I'm also interested in like who gets to be sexual on stage. Who gets to own their sexuality?

Men can do it because they're innately granted respect. and they don't have to prove why they have to be on stage. So Mick Jagger can wear extremely tight pants and Robert Plant because no one's going to question their authority, as Kim said, you know? Yeah. But a girl, the premise is already like you don't deserve to be up there and now you're tarting it up to. Right. Yeah. Tip of the iceberg. It's just the tip of the iceberg. Yeah. Again, I don't have a dog in this fight. I'm just interested in like what it means.

Wow. Yeah. And what it happens because of it. Fast Freddy. This is actually very interesting. Patterson. Patterson. And Lisa Fanser.

So these are two very early runaways, acolytes and friends and journalists. Lisa Fangro wrote for bomb. Fast Friday said the corset was a very cheap attempt to reach the lowest common denominator. Didi and most writers knew that, Didi Faye. Women definitely knew it. I believe the runaways may have been taking. and more seriously if Shuri wasn't all tarted up.

Lisa Fancher said they were a good rocking band, but I thought the whole corset thing was really sad. It was just creepy to see a 16-year-old girl wearing a corset. It detracted from being a Joan Jek kind of kick-ass band. I don't even know how much Shuri was into music before that, but I don't think she liked music that much. I think she more liked to look the part. So girl and girl crime, babe, woman-on-woman crime, you know?

But I think she's right. She might be. I mean, again, like, I don't know where to put it because I'm like, well, not to bring up one of my favorite bands. You might have heard of them called The Hole. I loved seeing Courtney up there in like pretty provocative clothing, you know? I mean, she wasn't wearing a corset and thigh eyes, but she kind of was not wearing a, you know, ripped little girls. It was like, part of the allure of being on stage and playing rock and roll is being sexy, right?

Yeah. Yeah. It's just, it's like how far can you take it? Kathleen Hannah said something interesting. It was, she read it this way. She was like, it was so awkward and weird and drag-like. The way she mood was so weird and almost mocking pornography poses. Sheree looked like a little kid playing dress-up, a skinny boy in drag.

When I watch videos of them, I'm like, oh, she brings out the idea that being a woman is a role. It's something you can put on and take off. Yeah, and this might have been applying a little too much. But who knows? You know? Yeah. I'm not sure that. I like that, though.

I like that. I like, like, like, like, like, like, but maybe subconsciously,

again, whatever it is. I don't think there's, she's in backlash or anything. Yeah. Exactly. It's, it's just really fascinating.

Yeah. So, so to you, you think it's like, cheap. Yeah. Yeah. Like,

it was like a cheap ploy to get. Yeah. Which is interesting because, like, it already, they were already wearing these,

custom jumpsuits made by Siri, I think her name was. Yeah. It's already pretty sexy, you know? Lita had that whole one-piece spandex, the black. Yeah, I mean, Lita played in like Daisy Dukes and thigh high boots, you know? Yeah. Again, that's one level down, though, from like underwear. And yeah, it's really interesting.

And it did, I think it damaged how they were perceived. That's the issue. Yeah. And then it even goes farther. than that. Oh, right. When we get to the later photos. Yeah. The photos.

The photos. It even goes back to the question of like, oh, Shari's decision. Okay, you're 15. Should you have been allowed to make those decisions? Right. What level do you get to have agency, you know? And for what decisions? Complicated, right?

Yeah. And also I feel like maybe she felt, I don't know, maybe I'm reading into it, but I think she felt like she wasn't seen enough because she wasn't playing it. She's not playing an instrument. Yeah. Who knows? But it's there. And this is going to be forever sort of like associated imagery of the runaways.

Yeah. All right. So they go on the first tour. We pack up the corset. It's in the back. We get in the station wagon with a trailer and we're heading the road. Right. The road was really stressful for Shari in particular.

She loses a ton of weight. She thinks she'd dropped to like 90 pounds because she's really homesick. Oh. Which makes sense. Yeah. She's 15. Kids. She also didn't really have a stable home anyway.

She's living with grandma and Evie and her sister and her dad. There's that really great bit that's in both Lita and Shari's books, and I believe it's in the film too, where she's like talking to Lita about being homesick. And she's like, aren't you homesick? And Lita says, yeah, of course I'm homesick too. I get home, I want to be someone. So good. Yeah. And Sheree said that like really like kind of like changed her.

Yeah. This is also the tour that Joan and Sheree grows super close on. Shri said when I think back on Joan in our relationship, I can still feel a distant quaking inside. Our friendship was a godsend to me. I believed in her and the dream that had driven her this far. I felt safe when I stayed close to her. Sometimes we'd look at each other and I'd get that tingling in my stomach.

She was my anger. How do I explain about a person? that was my best friend, someone I would confide in like a sister, someone who, to me, became a strong sexual attraction. Well, it's easy, just like how easy it was to be that way with her. Sweet. Yeah. She's taking a bunch of quailudes, Cherie, on this tour.

Uh-huh. Often provided by Scott Anderson, who was working for Kim. Assistant. Who, Kim doesn't go on the road, no interest, sends Scott. The other girls, I think, are parting a bit, too, except for Jackie, who didn't do drugs. And then Scott Anderson, I think it's 28, maybe 29, sets his sights on Shari Curry and starts a relationship, a sexual relationship with her. I believe she's maybe 16 now, 15 or 16. I don't like it.

No. I don't care for it. I believe it's illegal. No, I believe it is. There's some speculation that he also slept with the other girls, too. Oh. I know. Well, I mean, there's also that Cherie slept with...

She slept with Joan. She says. I mean, Joan has never said anything. Yeah. Yeah, she said she slept with Joan, Sandy. Yeah. Joan and Sandy. And Joan and Sandy also had a thing, according to Carrie Chrome.

Oh, that doesn't... That doesn't add up. That Carrie Chrome said it? No, no, that Joan... In the early days, they had a thing, apparently. That's what Carrie said. Okay. Because Carrie and Joan were dating, and then she says Joan jump ship for Sandy.

Oh. Again, this is, I'm just reporting the news. I wasn't privy. I'm just like. Teenage girls, a bunch of hormones. Like style-wise. I was like, don't think they wouldn't. I mean, but I'm imagining again, I'm not a person of gay experience, but maybe in the 70s.

Yeah. The only other gay girl is not a huge dating pool. Right. Yeah. Right. Sheree was in love with Scott Anderson. She was like, which again makes sense. You start having sex with a man who is nearly twice your age and you're vulnerable and young and you're going to be like, yes, that's going to be my husband. Yeah. And he's giving you qualoons. And he's fucking feeding you quailudes left and right.

He sucked at his job by all accounts and the tour was a mess. Jones had something interesting. It's really easy to have 20-20 hindsight and go, where was the supervision? I didn't see the girls going, where's our supervision back then? No one was concerned. We may have been kids. We were also professionals. We wanted to play the gigs.

But the whole point of supervision is that it's for people who don't know they need it. They're not going to ask to be super. Teenagers, of course, are not going to ask to be supervised. But they needed it. Yeah. In the signing of all the deals, Kim Fowley promised all their parents there would be supervision. There would be tutoring. Because they're still in high school.

Yeah, their parents talk about that in edge play. In edge play, yeah. None of that. They were supervised by Scott Anderson who was like feeding them drugs and sleeping with them. Right. Again, some conflicting stories. The TLDR is the same. Shuri gets prescribed placidils for either tonsillitis or fatigue.

I don't think it could be fatigue because they are heavy downers. They're like what Elvis used to take. Oh, okay. Yeah. And then she gets addicted to placidels and starts taking them every day. She was a real like one pill makes you smaller One pill makes like to wake up to go to sleep You know

Here's a fun little Excer for an ad-a-be interview at the time Girls Come on now let's not get carried away You're presumably always getting hit with questions about feminism right Joan looks as if she wants to puke We don't even think about it We're not even part of it

It doesn't have anything to do with what we're doing And he goes I imagine you'll get people saying you're a feminist this rock band. If we do, we'll just tell him to piss off, says Sheree. Sandy says, shit, man, how many teenage girls really care about women's rights? Not too many. It was the 70s. Also, it was kind of like a bad word. Right. Yeah. Like you were like, you didn't shave your armpits. Right. You were like a hippie. Like it was like not cool, you know? I think this is interesting on Patty Smith. Well, because there's just that, in that great story where Kim, I think it was

Kim. I can't remember was Kim takes them backstage at a Patty Smith show in LA and is like, or maybe it was Lenny K. One of the band people was friends with them and Patty did not want to meet them. It was like, get those girls the fuck out of here. And

in front of them. So the interviewer goes, it almost goes without saying that they all knew about the Ramones. Shri wasn't too sure of them. They don't have the charm the dolls did. I don't like them. Their whole album sounds like one long song. Shri Curry, you're wrong. this is important to point out how it's already diverging, right?

Shari's like, I think the Ramones suck. Yeah. The idea of thinking that the New York dolls are better than the Ramones. Absolutely not. Like, musically? Not in, not in... Perhaps spiritually in some senses. And again, like, that's more glam and the Ramones is punk.

Yeah, it's a whole different thing. And Joan said, and the dolls at least wrote great songs. When the entire words to Ramon's songs are, now I'm going to sniff some glue. All the kids want to sniff some glue. Now I'm going to sniff some glue. All the kids want something to do. I mean, that's pretty tacky. But then Patty Smith.

Hey, Patty Smith. A chorus of hate her. Hate her fucking guts. And Sharia says, Kim Fowley took me to stare at the Roxy to see if I could see how she performed on stage. And she was such a, ugh. I mean, she was so disgusting with those saggy tits.

Wow. And Lita goes, she looks like if she's coming down off four qualoids. And Sandy goes, and she's really a drag. Here's the, this is the real thing. We went back to her dressing her with Rodney to meet her, you know, very friendly, and she goes, you girls, out. Which I think is a true story because that's a couple of times. Oh, that was funny. Wow.

Inner woman drama. Yeah. Why, Patty, though? Well, you know, what we like to talk about on here is the queen of self-mythologizing is Patty Smith, and I'm obviously a huge fan. But there's a lot of stories from the early days where she was kind of mean to blondie, to. But also, like, again, like, I think it's important to remember that it wasn't easy back then to make your mark. And, like, I was just talking to some about this the other day where I was like, how come only men get to be ruthless? Not the feminism re-entering my body.

But, like, it comes across, it's spoken about in different tones when a man does it and a woman does it, right? Yeah. Like, it's funny to people when, like, Kim Thales means. to Billy Corgan. Yeah. Which was really funny. Or Jack White. Or Jack, yeah.

And the guy from. I honestly don't. Hourbach. Dan Arrbock. Oh, Black Keys. Yeah. Or like if there's a million probably examples of like,

you think fucking Gene Simmons was like shaking hands and kissing babies? Axel Rose. Right. Right. They wrote songs about each of them. But anyways, I thought that was funny. Yeah. Then they do an interview for a teen magazine.

I think it's just called like teen women or something. Uh-huh. This is the quote of Jackie's that I was obsessed with. She goes, kids today have the same problems. Kids had way back when Socrates wrote about how uncouth youth was. Okay, Jackie Fox. Yeah. She's dropping some Socrates references in a teen magazine.

Obsessed with her. Okay, so then the wheels are starting to create. off here. I mean, again, Shuri is addicted to pills and sleeping with a 30-year-old man. People retire. They have no, they're not getting any money. So they come home. They're scraping by. They come home and then they're sent to Europe. Jackie's mother, Ronnie, accompanies them as their chaperone. This is where they kind of start to see, because it's 76, right? They start to see punk. Sex pistols is happening. Shari said, in Europe, I saw the future of rock music and I didn't like it. Punk rock was everywhere in the UK. And suddenly our shows were packed with scrawny kids.

wearing dog collars and leather with safety pins shoved through their noses, ears, and even their cheeks. She didn't like it. Joan loved it. Yeah. Let me ask you. Where do you place the runaways in the history of punk music? I consider them involved in it, but they are like maybe not, they're not the stooges. No, exactly. But they're like antecedents in a way that is really important.

Yeah, I mean, because kind of like David Bowie Glitter Rock, but not David Bowie. Right. They're not in his sphere. But, you know. I think attitudinally, just by being teenagers, that was punk, right? It was punk to be teenage girls in a band. Whether or not the music was punk, the runaways were spiritually punk. Entirely.

Kind of the same way I always think the doors are spiritually punk because of how Jim Morrison related to the world and the thing, but their music has nothing to do with it. But obviously they had huge impacts, both these bands, right? The Doors inspired Iggy to start the stooges. Yeah. And the runaways directly inspired the germs. Yeah.

The germs formed because they saw the runaways, and they were like, we can do that. So they, in my Mount Rushmore of punk music, they have a big space. Okay. Mount Rushmore is maybe not the right term because that was like four heads, but, you know, in my Ken,

Burns history. That's where they belong. Okay, so Sherey's hating punk. They're pelted by cans. So Kim Fowley's earlier training is coming in handy. Okay. They're told by the promoters, that's a sign of love. Joan is stoked. Right. Joan is like, I love the sex pistols. I love the clothes. I love the attitude. I mean, obviously, very early on, Joan loves it. She's wearing her little leather jacket from the beginning, my queen. She's so punk rock. Also, I think that has to do with gay, being gay. Also very punk. Right. At the time, right?

Right. Shri is unhappy. Joan is thriving. Shri is on placidals. Scott Anderson is also providing cocaine. In her book, Sheree says on this tour, Scott starts to sort of like pull away and like flirt with the other girls. And she's going like crazy, you know, because she's like, that's my husband.

I'm going to marry that. I love him. So she's spiraling, she's taking all these pills, she's drinking, again, losing weight. And so they get home from the European tour and Sharia is like really sick. She's so tired. She's puking every day. She doesn't understand what's going on. But like they're like, it's time to, this is another thing.

It's time to record the next album because they were on like the most psychotic schedule as per Mercury. Right. They were worked like dogs, you know? Yeah. Nobody recorded this much. Like the idea now where you're like, Rihanna, could I have one more album plays in the next? decade like people were putting out two albums a year right you were just always yeah you were either on tour or in the studio there was no other is shir like benzo withdrawal like or is she oh i'm glad you

asked well we find out while we're making the next album right her dad finally takes her to the doctor she's pregnant um Scott Anderson got her pregnant yeah this is a rough time for shri so she's gotten pregnant by her 28 year old tour manager um her father ends up her father sounded so wonderful like yeah she went and told him he took care of her took her to you know get her abortion even though she was like really conflicted about it but she was like i can't you know she her father was like you need to call him and tell him and also like make him pay for it and so he called yes i think also she was like living with him like she was like 15 16 years old living with this man anyways whatever absolute trash disgusting trash jail

This is also the making of the album, which is memorialized in... Have you seen this Runaways movie? I've seen it, yes, but I can't remember. I just remember why is it not Leia Shawhat talking. Not allowed to speak because she's a fake person named Robin who didn't exist. Not a real character. Also, I can't watch, I especially can't watch music biopics once I've done the research, I'm like, that wasn't, there wasn't a different place.

I know. That person wasn't there. And I know that's not the point. Yeah. I can't. I can't either. It gets under my skin. Well, what I was getting at is that it's the making of this album.

Not only is Shari like ill and soon to find out she's pregnant, they're in the studio and she's handed a copy of Crawdadi magazine. Had a big piece about the runaways. And she reads this nice little quote about herself from Kim Fowley. Handling Shari's ego is like having a dog urinate. in your face. The best thing that could happen to this band would be of Shri hung herself from a shower rod and put herself in the tradition of Marilyn Monroe. Wow. So again, Shri Curry, addicted to pills. Mentally ill. Really sick. Yeah. Really being put through the ringer. I mean, he's mentally ill. He's mentally. Yeah. She's not. She's unwell. Right. I think on many levels.

And then you see this. And then she sees this. After the work, you know, even though there is drug addiction, you're sleeping with the man, you know, to be so disrespected. So that's just to begin. She gets super upset, obviously, as anyone would. Right. Now, I want to point out, Lita at this point, is sick of Shuri's shit anyways because she's like, she's sleeping with the fucking manager. He's giving her all this special attention.

I feel like, she has a short fuse for everything. Everything. And just like, from reading their books, diametrically opposite kinds of human beings. Yeah. like could not be more different. Right. And so Lita's like, are you going to fucking sing?

Are you going to fucking cry? I'm paraphrasing by something. You cry like a baby. Right. Shri says in her book that Lita was in an extra horrible mood because she hated the direction of this album. It was too soft.

And Kim comes over and's like, what's the fucking problem? And Shere's like, what the fucking hell man with this quote? And he's like, this idiot wanted to hear some inside gossip on the runaways. So I manufactured some for him.

You should be glad, Shuri because of that little quote, we got an article twice as long and most of it's about you. In his mind where everything is a fantasy and a story and a production, he doesn't hate Shari. Yeah. Or he does. It doesn't matter. That's not relevant. What's relevant is that he

made a fun story for them to write about. And she's like, I'm hanging on by a thread and I have to read that you want me to kill myself in Crawdadi National Music Magazine. And he he's like it's called selling records and she's just like, no.

This is Queens of noise, right? Queens of noise. This is all the making of queens of noise. Right. Comes back to learn that they have given her vocals on the title track to Joan. Right. And she was pissed. She was upset.

Yeah. I can imagine. I'm putting myself in her shoes. Right. But it's sort of like, you know, like a sign of things to come. Oh, totally. But you already feel like

I have not contributing enough. Yep. I had to put on this corset to get some respect, which backfired. I had to go get an abortion for my 30-year-old. I keep giving him different ages because it doesn't really matter.

But I'm addicted to pills. Kim Pauley is being extremely mean to me. Lita Ford hates me. And now my best friend has taken my vocals on this song that was, according to her, written for her. Right. By Billy Bezoe of the Quick.

Who wrote it on acid, the way. Oh, apparently. Kim Fowley said, Joan opened her mouth and she had a radio voice. Sheree did not have a radio voice. Whoa. I know.

So that's Queens of Noise. What were you going to say? That I was going to say that record was, I guess Lita and Sandy loved that record because they liked working with Earl Manky, who was the producer. Yes. Who had done like Beach Boys, but...

Play guitar was Sparks. Yes. Yeah. And the drum sound on that, I mean, is so, I can't. I mean, maybe for one song, it's okay, but the drum sound is so like, like, roomy, but gated, like, like, maybe he wants it to sound like a big glam rock drum sound. And it's so wrong. It's like, I can't get through it. I'm going to keep it 100 with you. This album is a ruffing. Yeah. It was, it's hard to listen to. But they loved it, I guess, Lita. Because it was, I think, speaking their language with...

Hard rock or whatever, yeah. So, yeah, we're not, we won't go to the weeds of the music on Queens of Noise. Right. It's not my favorite. You can hear the, like, divergence of the different styles a little bit. where like Johnny Guitar, for example, is like the Lita Ford song where she really wants like a hard rock and blues you, you know, and Jackie Fawkes was like, I'm sorry. It's the worst song on the record, according to Jackie. Yeah, Jackie was like teenage girls from the suburbs should not be playing the blues.

Yeah. I love playing with fire, which I kind of like is Joan Jett's favorite, which you can kind of see where she wants to do. Sheree liked midnight music, which is like the crony one. Yes, ballady. Yeah. The reception is not much better. Still no radio hit, 172 on the. the billboard 200 album cover has all the girls on it is that where they look like they're

in jail or they called it stripper poles too is that the one is okay wait this is this is this the one where they did the smoke yes yes yes yes and then so they the original idea was like different parts of their bodies like only shown like and they couldn't do it so they had to switch the cover Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know about that. Whatever. That's okay. Here's a really mean line from a review by Cream. These bitches suck despite what the West Coast blowjob coordinator would say. Oh my God. Chris Gow gave it a C-minus. I'll tell you what kind of street rock and roll these bimboes make. When the title cut came on, I thought I was hearing Evita twice in a row, only I couldn't figure out why the singer wasn't in tune. call people Bimbos back then. You could all through the 90s pretty much too.

They did it then too. Now you couldn't do it. NME said one good thing. Not good thing, but one accurate thing. One example of what's wrong with this album is the way the tempo has been pulled back on just about every track. Somebody must have decided that slowing everything down makes for a sultry pouting feel. In fact, the end product merely comes out sluggish.

I think he's really right because I was thinking about what I react to in the runaways songs, particularly on the first album, which is Cherry Bomb and Dead Injustice, is that they're kind of propulsive. Yeah, the energy. They're young. They're teen. Like, it is like, Joan is kind of right. And like, they should have been making kind of punky poppy music, you know? Yeah. It doesn't as much work when they're doing these sort of like, whatever it is. The latest sandy vibe. Yeah. All right. That came and went. They do another tour. again, we're only a year out from being formed.

We put out two albums. Yeah. And are on our second or third tour. Iggy Poppin, David Bowie come to see them at the Rat in Boston. Okay. Which still existed back then. And well through the 90s, I believe. Iggy said, I went strictly to see them. I thought it was important to see their work. I was most impressed by Joan Jett. She was a real competitor. None of the other girls put a foot wrong, but she was the one. A roadie of theirs is quoted in Evelyn's book saying

by this tour it was really like the Shari show and like the rest of the band. There's a couple of, again, this is what I'm talking about the tone of each of their books being maybe different than what some other people say. Right, right. Jackie Fox in Edgeplay is like

Shri was the most selfish person I had ever met at that time. Yeah. And also in Shari's defense, she was an addict. An addicts are the most selfish people than anyone knows. So kind of lines up, right?

Yeah. And then they go. to Japan. Yes. June. They go to Japan. Big. One of the greatest visual parts of the runaway story is like them in kimonos.

Right. And with like tons of like teenage Japanese girls like fawning and fainting over them like they're the Beatles. You know, any band that went to Japan in the 70s, all the photos are amazing. Like when Kiss went. Yeah. So cool. Yeah. But definitely.

Was that like that when you guys went to Japan? Yeah. I mean like when when, um, when, um, Lita was talking about how they bring you gifts and stuff. That's true. And then they'll bring you like, you'll like do a picture. And then they'll come to the next show and bring you a copy of the picture of you and them. That's so cool.

Yeah. That's really nice. Too bad. Bandspan is in English and I'm not going to be. I got to get that. I can get that Sears telecaster popping right now. Do you think there's a market for 45-year-old woman music? Oh, yeah.

Totally. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Japan is their biggest tour today. It's huge. They're there to play the Tokyo Music Festival at the end of this, like, I think it's at least a month.

But they also play a bunch of shows, doing what to press. Fans are insane, like we said. Thousands of these Japanese school girls just like, ah. They got to go to Susie Quattro's wedding. Right. She got married in Japan. Meanwhile, tensions are continuing to flare up in this band. Right.

The promoters would put all the. magazines that had press about them in their rooms. And this is when they opened the magazine and see these insane photos of Shri Curry in her corset and panties. Provocative. Provocative. Yeah. It's funny because by today's standards, if you look at those photos, you're like, we've seen way worse stuff. Right.

But it was the 70s. Yeah. And again, she's still only 16th. Right. And she did it without anyone knowing. It was sort of secrety. But she didn't know, according to her, she didn't know no one else knew. So Kim told her that they were each doing individual photoshoots.

And she was like, okay, I'm doing my individual photo shoot. She had no idea. This is what she says. And the other girls, like, lose their shit. And again, they're still, I think they're trying to be taken seriously, right? Right. And this is just furthering the narrative, like, sex pot narrative. Yeah, the tag on to that. Yeah. And I think on top, also they're probably like,

back to like, why is it only, the Shri Show? What about us? You know? Yeah. They don't talk to her for like a week in Japan. I know that vibe too. Like you're on tour. I can't have met. And then it's like, everybody's like mad at someone. And so, yes. Oh, it sounds hell. Yeah. Because there's the only people you're with and then they're not even talking to you. Yeah. So you would think like it would be Shari that gets out of the band during this tour?

No, it's actually Jackie. Yeah, she's had it. She's had it. She's super burnt out. She's sick of being abused by their new Rodey tour manager, Ken Smyth, Scott Anderson, was fired. And by Lita,

according to Jackie. Lita and Shari say that Jackie was a hypochondriac and I don't know it all. And super annoying. And Lita kept saying an edge play. She wanted to go to her own gyno.

Oh, yeah. She wanted to go to her own gyna colgast. I was like, okay. I mean, it might have been true, but it's like. I mean, girl and girl crime again. Full girl and girl crime. Jackie says that she confided in Joan in Japan and was like, I want to leave. And she says that Joan got down on her hands and knees and started weeping.

And was like, please don't go. Yes. She goes back to the thing where I'm like, if you could point to one person, It was pure and it was true and was going to go take it to the end. And it was the most important thing to me. Come hell or high water. I need this to work. Joan.

And Lita was kind of like that too. But again, but Lita was went about it a bit differently. Right. Right. Like Joan wasn't a mean girl in that sense, right? She wasn't, she was a little more shy and kind of a little more like, I just want everyone to, I just want to, I don't want to deal with drama. Yeah, you're right. I just want to make the music.

Totally. And Jackie said it was such an outpouring of me. emotion that I stayed. But then after this full month of like nonstop craze, they had a show. Jackie was like the stand for my base is wobbly.

Please replace it. It's, it's, I need a new base stand because she had this very nice 1966 Thunderbird base. It was like her pride to enjoy it. Kim Gordon plays one. Oh, she does. Beautiful.

Yeah. So gorgeous. They never fixed the wobbly stand. And it got knocked over. and the neck snapped off. And she just also snapped. She lost it. She says, when my base broke, I was so upset,

I realized there was no one looking out for us, and I had no allies in the band. This sucks. Get me out of here. I did not just freak out and leave. What I had was an anxiety attack. I was a teenager, and I was alone. I had ordered a Coca-Cola from room service,

and I threw it against the wall. I was so angry. And then I was angry at myself because I was being a pussy, and I was scared to leave. So I saw this piece of broken bottle And I was not trying to kill myself I was not doing it consciously

But I was angry and I wanted to hurt something So I picked this up and cut myself She's like cut herself all the way down the arm Crazy Not she's been crazy but that's like a crazy visual Yeah And ultimately it was Shari Who like kept being like

Is Jackie okay? Is Jackie okay? And Kent Smyth who by all of the girls' accounts Was a villain Was like she's fine Stop it you're bringing in and she was like I'm sure she's not fine like pushed past him in shri's book she like grabbed the it's very more dramatic grab the glass out of her hand and jackie was like no I had already finished doing it but still she was like it was really like shri had such a big heart that she's the only one that like thought about me and knew that I would be so upset that my base broke and checked on me she goes to the hospital because she has a huge yeah gaping wound and then in the documentary did you notice in the edge play documentary that she said she she came home and called Randy Rhodes. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, because they were like best friends. Yeah. He was in quiet, right, still at the time. It was like four in the morning. And he was like, babe, come home. Yeah. I really like that little detail. I know.

And so she says, I want to go home. And they're like, cool, take the bus. Here's 700, yeah, and take the bus to the airport. And she said no one said goodbye to her. In the liner notes of Live in Japan, which, by the way, I think is low-key, the best runaway's album. because it's like you can kind of feel the energy of the live show.

Kent's My Throat, we thank ourselves for spending the 700 yen. So mean. Wow. Whenever there's a live record, that's always like a filler. Like they, you know, broke up or whatever. So then they fill it in with a live record. But weirdly, this one I think is their best album. And besides.

Maybe because of just what you were saying about the last album, the way that was produced. Right. They should have been just produced live. Right. With the energy, you know. This is an amazing tid. According to Evelyn's book, Joan had this t-shirt that you have probably with all their faces on it. And after Jackie left, she took her cigarette and put it out on Jackie's face and burned a hole through the face.

Joan. She also said to bump and grind magazine that year, not familiar with it. But in Tokyo, Jackie wanted to go home. And we said, no, you can't. She had obligations to fulfill. She had to finish the fucking tour, but she didn't want to. So she did the most outrageous things she could think of to get attention. That stuff's going to happen when you're in a band.

Misunderstandings, hurt feelings, this and that. But when you make what you consider a war move and you quit, it's like, come on. Okay, you quit. You're out. Don't play games. This is serious. This is my life. I read it not to show that Jonah being mean because it's not about that.

It's more like how important this was her. You know, like at the time she wasn't even able to see the forest for the trees to be like this girl is like, struggling. She was just like, you're compromising our dream. Yeah. This is our dream. And didn't, did Joan play bass and then Lita? So yeah, because they still had that huge festival. Okay. And Joan took over on bass and Lita played her guitar. Yeah. And now they're back home and guess what? They need another

bassist. ASAP because they have tours and obligations as before mentioned. It's always just a rotating bass player. Is that common? Yeah. Yeah. Why? I don't know. So replaceable. Yeah.

I don't know. That's what I'm going to learn. It's not hard. They tried to hire Charlotte Caffrey. Oh, really? The go-go's, but she was like, no, thank you. Yes, she was. Oh, my God.

But I don't think she wasn't a go-go yet. She was just a girl that played bass. She was in her punk band, the eyes. Yeah. They also at some point, and I don't know when in the story is, it might be after Vicky Blue. auditioned the girl, the woman who went on to be in backstage pass. But she also did. Anyways, they find Vicki Blue. Okay.

Yeah. July of 77. Victory. Tishler Blue. Born on September 16th, 1959. Also a Virgo. A Virgo. Again.

She was a bright, wealthy girl from Newport Beach. She had a trust fund. She was a bit different. She rode horses. actually was thrown from a horse when she was 10, and that's what caused her to have epileptic seizures the rest of her life. Oh, okay. And she had graduated high school at 15 and a half because she just didn't like it.

She had an unusual life. And she had seen the runaways open for the tubes and was a huge fan. She was in a band called Juice. She really wanted to be in a band. She also looked just like Lita Ford. Oh, yeah, that, I read that too. Which Lita didn't love, I think, at first, but then was like okay with. So she auditioned.

She's in, almost. Kim Pally is like, go home and lose 10 pounds. Oh. I know. Then she was in. Not long after this, it's got to be like within that same summer. There's a photo shoot with Vicki Blue, new band photo shoot. There's mixed versions of this story. In Cherie's book and in The Runaways movie, it is that they had this new lineup photo shoot scheduled photographer Barry Levine.

And Shri was sharing a car with her sister, Marie, at the time. Marie was like getting into acting. an audition that night. And so she came right on time to the photo shoot and she was like, I have to leave by 6.30 and it should have been plenty of time according to her. However, she says Lita was two hours late.

And so then they couldn't finish in time and she still was like, I'm leaving at 630. I'm not doing this to Marie. And Lita explodes at her. In Lita's memory, Shari was the one who was late and she says that Shari was always late. Either way, Lita loses on her

like, it's always about fucking you and gives her like an ultimatum she's like it's either your family or the band and shir is like well it's my family then and just quits she's like can't take it anymore she's a broken person at this point which i get it and apparently i thought this is a kim valley again constantly doing things i would not expect didn't call to be like you have to say in the band you're the blonde blonde you're the cherry bomb you're the meal ticket he calls right away and is like oh did you leave the band and she's like yeah and he goes good for you shri for standing up for yourself.

Anyways, I'm going to put you in the studio in two weeks for a solo album. It checks out to me because Kim Fowley said multiple times in multiple different interviews that one of the worst things for him about the runaways was how much they fought and he hated it and he wanted them to all be friends. And he was like stressful. Although Jackie Fox, if you ask her, would say he pitted them against each other as a way to hold control. So who knows. Right.

But yeah, yeah, puts her in the studio in two weeks to make a solo album. And didn't she make records with her sister? Yeah, that's a little bit later. She is, again, a full-blown drug addict at this point. So not doing well enough, I think, to make the album not. Or maybe she did, I'm not really sure. Respectly to Shuri Korea, I didn't too much follow her solo career after this. I know she made music with her sister and they were very popular in Japan.

Because Shuri was very popular in Japan. They started to kind of trash each other in the press after Shari leaves. There's an interesting enemy interview where they asked Joan, why haven't the runaway's been taken seriously up to now? And Joan says it was the whole cherry bomb with the corset thing with Shuri. And Shari says to this wasteland fanzine, I lost respect for them. And when you lose respect for your band members,

you've lost everything. Much later, Joan Jett said, we all had dark stuff going on towards the end of the band after Shari left. I think we all knew that was the lineup. I just sensed it was slowly going to die. I can't explain it. I knew the public wouldn't really accept me as the lead singer. But she had to do it anyways.

Yeah. This is a fun fact that could have altered the history of the runaways probably. Joan came to rehearsal after Shari's gone and they're rehearsing for the next album and she's now the lead singer. Yeah. She brings a cover she wants to do by a band called The Arrows from England. Uh-huh. The song is called I Love Rock and Roll. And Kim was like, I hate that, no?

Imagine. Anyways, that's, gets put away for now. And then they do waiting for the night. Waiting for the night. What a fucking 70s-ass album name, right? I know. And then I think the cover had like barbed wire on it or something. You know, whoever did the art for the runaways, the t-shirts were cool.

I mean, the last album I can't even get into. I'm like, who dressed you, people? Yeah. So Shree is not in the band. Once again, Vicky Blue is not allowed to play bass on here. Sal Mada of the band Milk and Cookies plays bass. I really like Wait for Me I was surprised to like a song on here

I do love Jones I like Shari's voice a lot too But I love Jones voice And this one has a bunch of screaming At the end of it Wait for me is a good song Yeah I unfortunately do not have thoughts

About any of the other songs I like Jones singing It's great Yeah She's an album And it came out And it has songs on it And that's what I'll say about that

It turns out when you Force bands To turn out two albums a year and tour in between, like, they're not going to write that good of songs. Yeah. Love and respect to waiting for the night. Didn't crack the radio, didn't sell albums. Okay.

So by the time that album comes out, the runaways finally got rid of Kim Pauley. I guess they were apparently, I couldn't really get this straight. And obviously, who needs a reason? We've talked about a million reasons. He called them dog cunts. He was crazy. But I think more than anything, it was that. They never got any money.

Yeah. Now, I do think it's a bit overblown that, like, Kim Fowley stole all their money. There wasn't money to steal. Like, I think he did probably steal some money, but it's like... They should have a little bit when they come back from Japan. They should have a little bit, right? Allegedly, he was doing some nefarious and shady accounting practices. But they also just were not making that much money.

They're not selling any albums. They're touring, but that's not a great way to make money in the 70s. Some t-shirt. I just, I don't think there was a lot of money. They should have made more. Right. But not to the level. Either way, it was enough for them to just be like,

I don't know about you, sir. And I think it helped that Toby Mammis, who with Peter Leeds, managed Blondie. And was actually early on Susie Quattro's PR guy and had met Joan back when she was camping out for Susie Quattro. They were like, we want to manage you guys. And so they were like, okay, by Kim. He tried to block them from performing saying that he owned the name,

but they just kind of were like, that contract, it's void. Yeah. And it kind of worked out. I don't think he got it together like sue or whatever. Or maybe he tried. I don't know. I'm not super interested in the legality of the runaways. Right.

But it is interesting to me that while, again, he didn't really pay them. And then the 90s, Joan Jett, Lita Ford, Sandy West, and Sheree Curry, but not Jackie Fox, sued Kim to get back all the rights and stuff. Jackie said in the book that she thought it was like a pointless, like, I mean, she's a Harvard lawyer at this point. So she's kind of like, I just feel like this lawsuit is not worth it or whatever. Yeah. To date, Joan Jett maintains that there was not abuse at the hands of Kim Bally. She says the whole abuse thing is maddening to me actually. It's kind of implying that we just stood there and took it. You don't like it. You leave. I think in hindsight people have to create monsters

and look at why things didn't work out and look at their own shit and responsibility and not making it happen. I think this the story of the runaways is so interesting because of exactly this, right? You have five to eight different women that were in the runaways.

They all experienced a completely different thing. They all took away from it something totally different and they all came in with something different. So while Joan is saying that, and that's her reality. It wasn't the same reality for Shree, right? It wasn't the same reality for Sandy. Yeah.

It wasn't the same for Lita. Although Lido seemed more similar than to Jones than to. Yeah, it's just like, it begs the question of like, can you expect a 16-year-old to have the self-esteem and authority to push back on an adult? I don't know. You know, probably not in my humble opinion. I think it's like, again, it's so complicated, right? It's like everybody wanted something out of this.

And also when you're 16 and you want to be a rock star, you might put up with more than you, you know. And if you're still an entertainer like Joan Jett and Lita Ford, they deny any abuse. But there's still public figures. They don't want to. You might not benefit from all that. From Lott Malarkey. Not saying that that's. yes that's that's a plausible explanation i don't i don't i don't uh we don't know we don't

we don't know we were not there we don't know yeah but it is interesting yeah joan jed also notably not part of the documentary yeah notably not every single other one of them is in it although shri after the fact so kenny laguna didn't manage shri koree when she agreed to be in the documentary. He managed her after the fact. And she hated it. They all hated it, actually. They all kind of wanted, except for Jackie.

Jackie became very close with Vicki Blue and became her lawyer and helped her. So they all hated the documentary? Yeah. They didn't want it to come out. There was also an interesting story I read in Queens of Noise that it was supposed to have Runaway's music in it because the original cut was completely different.

Yeah. It was like a positive story. Couldn't get it. Yeah. And then she re- cut it to be this more like truth telling authentic sort of yeah it's interesting it's very interesting yeah so she couldn't have the rights to it yeah to their music but lita for did music for it and susie quattro did music for it oh okay susy quattro also in the in the dock oh yeah like for a minute

yeah and then oh the other fun fact if you guys just in case you're gonna if you're gonna watch edge play don't want to speak like I love King Fowley but just did a few things where I was like fucking brilliant so he agreed to me in that documentary but he said he would only do it if he had musical accompaniment and he had someone play guitar

the whole time and then he turned around and said each of those songs you have to license them from me to put any of this footage in your documentary who thinks that way I know anyway so she didn't use any of it and what you see in the documentary is stuff she licensed from VH1

It wasn't actually even her asking the questions. Yeah. But it's, I thought that is. Kim Fowley said later, looking back on it, I should possibly not have been a teenager along with them. I should have been more of an adult, but I was not one. I was a 36-year-old who looked 20-something. It's generous to himself.

And I was thinking like a 16-year-old helping to write these songs. I knew how to get things done, but I had no parental skills. I was certainly not qualified to deal with their discipline issues. I get what he's saying. Yeah. It doesn't excuse his behavior. Not at all. But I think he's kind of like, well, they were also like partying and being teenagers and I wasn't their parent.

But like also you didn't have to like be horribly verbally abusive to them. So there's many ways to have participated. I liked what Jackie said in the end. She said everything involving the runaway has left a weird mark on everyone. Nobody ever thinks about Kim because they think that he's the one who left a weird mark on everybody else. But I think it left a weird mark on him as well. And I'm not exactly sure why. I think it's a very emotional thing with him and not just because it's,

what he will always be known for. Like it or not Kim, were your big thing. Maybe not the one that sold the most records, but the one that made your name. Whoa. I love that. I was like,

too-cha. Kind of the greatest fuck you in the end. You know, like no one will ever think about anything else but the runaways when they think about Kim Falley, which is kind of true. All right. We have no Shuri Curry.

We have no Jackie Fox. We have no Kim Falley. We're forging ahead. 1978, January. Touring America for three months with the Ramones. Cool. Dee Dee Ramon gives Lita Ford Crabbs She said it in her book

It was really funny She was like he was the sweet and nice one I was like was he not the one that was a male prostitute Yeah yeah Yes Well Gave her crabs Cool

By this time I think Mercury Is dropping them Like they have this last album And then that's it Because the records are not selling And also there was a real lack of interest When Sheree left Because she

Like it or not Kim was kind of right about the blonde being up front. Yeah. And this is very strange, but I was a little obsessed with this. In August, their new management sends them to London. In some deal with a studio and a producer there to like ostensibly work on the next album, they live on a houseboat and hang out with the sex pistols, the slits, the Who, thin Lizzie and members of Susie and the Manchies. They're just partying. How?

What year is this? 78 top of 78 I want a movie about that on a boat yeah I just want like what a should I write that like what a cool movie of like it's like a one act play or like a one room play but it's just like these runaways hanging out with Sid Vicious

and like Viv Albertine and Phil Linnott fucking cool man that is cool I assume Susie wasn't there I don't know because it just said members of this is probably like budgie budgy um anyways the runaways were too fucked up

parting too much couldn't really record and whatever deal the had been negotiated for them was like canceled and they were sent back to America again they're still seven they're 17 years old

wow they're still teenage it's been two years you know um they go back to L.A and Toby Mammis I don't know what to say his last name hires John Alcock

a British producer to produce the next album and this is a whole damn mess babe maybe he's the one that I think maybe Sandy and yeah okay so Sandy and Lita were like really got along with him okay that's it it wasn't a real make he was these it was him and he was like the rock dude he loved hard rock he was obsessed with them he didn't get along with Joan by all yes and that was the whole issue it was like

how can you don't hide Joan what are you putting Joan out for yeah that was the whole thing about this guy was like he was all into them like Sandy because he wanted to make like like a rocky and probably there I think Joan Judd is I know I think she's been named now as like one of the greatest guitar players of all time or whatever like at this point she's 17 she's playing rhythm guitar so he's probably like not that excited about whereas like Lita's like again shredding like a 35 year old man and Sandy's like one of like this incredible drama he's like oh we can make something cool with them right and also Joan wanted to make Joan was like now introduced to punk she loved it she wanted to make like pop punk basically right that didn't exist then but yeah essentially

essentially something more pop-punkky. And Toby Mammis said that Alcock drove a real wedge between the girls. Yeah. Alcock says it wasn't his fault they broke up. They broke up because of all of the lawsuits that were going out with Kim and the business tensions. I'm sure it was a little column A, a little column B, a little column C, which is that everyone's on drugs. A mixed bag. And they're 17.

Right. Vicky Blue does not play on this album. Who plays Bates? I actually not sure. I think Lita. Yeah, I think maybe Lita plays. Yeah, yeah. Vicki's credited on playing bass, but I don't think she did play bass.

Black Leather is an interesting song. That was written by Steve Jones and Paul Cook for the Sex Pistols. It was never used for it. Wow. It's not great. I can't remember what it sounds like. Black Leather. It's okay.

I mean. Sandy sings on here right now. Lita sings I'm a Million, which is her first lead vocal on a record. I bet you there's cowbell somewhere in this whole thing. Lita sings. Yeah, now they're stepping up, right? They're stepping up. Again, they're or pushing Jones being pushed out.

One or the other egregious album cover. Joan Jett's wearing like a ruffle tuxedo. there's a white big hat they're wearing suits it's not they look like a wedding band and there's something really not off there's like a cartoon font

a whole damn mess babe this album is a whole damn mess one of them looks like the Bomp Records logo yeah yeah it's this one it's this one we can just pretend this one didn't come up and now dot dot dot the runaways is what it's called November 1978

and I'm really sorry I'm sure they like it But for me, I mean, there's a couple, I'm not going to lie, it's a couple songs. It's okay. It's better than Queens of Noise. Is it New Wave even? No. No. How to describe.

They cover eight days a week. Oh, no, no. See, like, there's no one, no one telling them. No one's driving the car. No one's driving the bus. Jesus takes the wheel. Yeah, don't do that. They're like, you know what's good?

Cover the Beatles. I have an idea. What if you cover the Beatles? There's one last bassist because Vicki Blue quits before this album comes out. Which, by the way, comes out in November. So this girl is the basis for one month.

Oh, six weeks because they have shows. Her name is Lori Hoyt, but then goes by Lori McAllister, which is even a cool Joan Jet-type name, so I don't know why you would change your name. Yeah. They play a bunch of shows in December. On New Year's Eve, 78, they play The Cow Palace.

That's their last show ever. Wow. Yeah. And in 1979, the Runaways officially send a breakup letter, Joan sends it to the Runaways fan club. It says, Sandy, Lita, Lori, and I have talked it over and decided to try our own things for a while.

With five albums and two world tours, and what seems like a lifetime of experience is behind us, we felt that it was time to get out there, and try a few things that we could not do as a group. We're still great friends, and we hope you'll join us and wishing each other the best and brightest roads ahead. Nice.

And done. This is like the part where we would be like, oh, here's what happened. You know, at the end of a movie. Right. Like, freeze frame, Joan Jett, here's what happened. Actually, interesting to me to bring up in the runaways,

they only did that with Joan, Shuri, and Kim. They don't even say what happened to Sandy and everyone else. Yeah. Also, apparently, even Joan and Shari were mad about the runaways movie because they wanted it to be dedicated to Sandy West, but the studio refused. Because she had passed away by then. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. In 2006, yeah. It's no surprise to me that the most successful runaway to date is Joan Jett. Right. She had the fire of a thousand suns blazing and she was going to make this fucking happen, hell or high water. Yeah. She had the talent. She had the talent. She had the drive.

Right. She goes to England. records three songs with Paul Cook and Steve Jones from the Sex Whistles, her new besties. Finally gets to do that, Aeros Cover. Yes. Becomes a massive hit. Massive hit.

I don't want to brush across. There is a whole period where she's like a fucking mess as well and she's depressed because she thinks her dream is over and she's definitely on pills and all sorts of drugs. I don't know which kinds. Yeah. This is around the time that she's hanging out with all the punks in Ellie because by this time...

Has she done the germs record? Yeah. That's that year. So the runaways break up in 79. The Germs record is recorded and released in 7.9. So I think it's after they've broken up because they are maybe, yeah, I think so. And like I said, the germs formed because they saw the runaways. And by all accounts, Joan Jett slept most of the recording of the germs album and wasn't exactly a hands-on producer.

But still, she was like getting involved, hanging out with punk, like into it, but also a bit of a mess. And I guess Kenny Laguna kind of like came in and I don't say saved her, but like he moved her to his home with him and his wife. Yeah. Where she still lives today, right? Is that true? I think so. That's really interesting. Well, there is a whole thread in the end of Queens of Noise where they're like, it's a bit weird because it's impossible to get in touch with Joan Jett.

Like the other members say that. They're like, Lita Ford's like, I can call anyone on Earth. but I can't get in touch with Joan because you have to go through Kenny. Yeah. It's protective. Yeah. Very.

Yeah. But through his gumption also, I mean, they were selling the myth, right, that they were selling her first album out of the back of his car because no one would sign and then she became one of...

That album cover is so cool. That pink, the colors. All the songs, so smart. This is where she got to flex that glam glitter. Yeah, yeah. This woman still is, playing shows to date, babe. She's playing this year.

Yeah. Yeah. I saw her open for Atlanta last year. She started her own label. That's like... With Cannella Goodhart. Right.

Yeah. She's doing amazing. She is. She looks great. She's killing it. Lita also similarly was like... What was her hit?

The Ozzy song and then there was the... Close my eyes forever. That's the Ozzy one. Kiss me Dead. that's it yeah it's interesting

because she she had two solo albums before her career kind of took off because she was almost so early in that like glam metal space

that kind of Motley crew and all those bands got to like really succeed in also she dated Nikki Six which is so fucking cool oh yeah

very early on in Motley Cruz's career her him and uh Lita Ford were a couple hot I know so hot so she's doing she did great

she also she married several rock stars. So she was engaged to Tony Iommi. In the 80s. She was married to Chris Holmes from Wasp. Oh, yeah, okay. Iconic moment and decline too. Wow, it's such an iconic.

Whoa. Drinking vodka. Yeah. Then she married a guy called Jim Gillette, who was the vocalist of a band called Nitro. They have two children. and this story is pretty insane and I don't know the details

but they moved to Turks and Caicos but on like a small island that you can only access via private plane and she basically was like I was trapped there it's like a really crazy story oh wow and then he kind of he took her children

away from her or like again I don't want to misspeak but like she claims that he turned the children against her and kind of took them away. Anyways, her story got really crazy. Wow. They all had kind of traumatic moments, but at different, like,

Leah's first half was really great. And then Sheree, she married Robert Hayes, right? Shari was in a film called Foxes, which is incredible, if you guys haven't seen it. Canon. The best movie of all time, pretty much in my top ten. Jody Foster. Scott Beo.

She got clean. Casa Blanca Records? The soundtrack? Yeah. No. Fox is amazing. Yeah. So good.

She had a pretty, she was like smoking crack. She had like a pretty bad drug problem. She was like living with a drug dealer and smoking crack. And then she got clean. I think she had on and off struggles with addiction. But she did, she got married. She had a child. Yeah.

Now she's a chainsaw artist. Right. And I believe it was in the valley. Yeah. And she did some work with like in recovery. Yes, yes. I think she's in counseling stuff. Also, we forgot to mention Joan Jep produced that bikini kill single. That's right. Go back.

Yes. Yeah. So cool. Jackie Fox, we already talked about it. Links, she became a lawyer and is doing great, one jeopardy. Sandy has the most tragic story. So Sandy didn't have much of a career after the runaways. And she, again, they had all kind of gotten into drugs. And she got really heavy into drugs and was working for a drug dealer as like an enforcer or like a collector of money or something.

And then there was like some gun running or something. She was like a criminal. She became a criminal. She went to jail. Yes. And actually I think, I don't know if this is true or not, but I read that in Edgeplay, those interviews are like the day she got out of jail. Wow. Which I hope it's not true because that's pretty manipulative.

Yeah. But it's like, Edgeplay was like, that was the most heartbreaking part of it for me was at the end when Sandy's like so sad. And she's like, why did the runaways have to break up? Like, I don't understand. We were so great together. Like we could still be playing music and we could, you know, and it was like just so heartbreaking. And then did she die of a drug overdose? No, she died of lung cancer. Yeah. In 2006. She was quite young. 40-something, I think. And Vicki. you know, became a filmmaker. Right. We already said Michael Steele. Right. Bangles. Bangles, great career.

And, yeah, the runaways kind of launched, you know, whether, again, we spoke semi-dispairgently about their music. But it wasn't about that. No. It was about seeing teenage girls on stage rocking and what that. unlocked in the minds of, you know, so many young people and Derby Crash and Pat's mirror. Yeah. Yeah. Suburban, 70s, California girls.

It's so cool. Yeah. We did it, Joe. We came to the end of the runaway story. Here we are. Thank you, Patty Shammell for joining me on this twisting, turning, and sometimes harrowing journey. My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

It was a real honor to talk. to you. Hey guys, I'm just popping in with a message because we didn't include this in the episode. Honestly, my fault due to some constraints I had on time for researching. But before we wrap up, I want to make sure there's something we address because I think leaving it out would feel like a completely incomplete picture of the runaway story. In 2015, Jackie Fox, the basis of the runaways, publicly shared that she was raped by the band's manager Kim Fowley at a party in 1975. She was 16 years old then. Her account was detailed and painful, and she has spoken about the years it took for her to process what happened and to find the language and the courage to talk about it publicly.

Kim Fowley died in January of 2015 before Jackie came forward, so he never faced any legal or public accountability for what she described. This is obviously part of the runaway story. Jackie's story is part of the runaway story. The same man who is credited for creating and shaping this groundbreaking band is also accused of causing serious harm to one of its members. These two things are both true. They exist together and, you know, my job is always just to bring you as much context as possible, so it felt important to be really clear about that. If you want to read more, Jackie spoke at length about her experience in a piece published by the Hollywood Reporter in 2015. and I would encourage you to seek it out.

Anyways, I just wanted to make sure that was included before we wrapped out this episode and the story of the runaways because I would be remiss to leave it out. Okay, thanks. If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bandsplain. Our guest today was Patty Shemmel.

This episode was produced by Rob Sunderman and edited by Adrian Bridges, help from Justin Sales. Video production by C.T. Thomas. Executive producers for Bansplaine are Gina Dalvac and me, Yossi Salvation. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Costantino and Jennifer Clavin and graciously recorded by Carlos Delaguerza in Los Angeles, California.

Special thanks to our producer emeritus, producer Dylan, aka Dylan Tupper Rupert, and also Sean Fennessee and The Goop Kitchen. I love that chicken Caesar wrap. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bansplane on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. I will say when I watched The Runaways film, which I didn't care for. Chris and Stewart as Joan Jett looks so fucking cool that I ordered $2,000 worth of leather jackets online on my phone. They're returnable. It's the motorcycle jacket, right?

Yeah, there's multiple different ones.