<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The dawn of the 1980s had to be a revelation for Lita Ford.\u00a0 She was 22 years old, an\u00a0 outstanding but newly unemployed guitar player living back home with her parents in Long Beach, California.\u00a0 She had seen all the \u2018lead singer drama\u2019 she could tolerate before her old band, The Runaways, imploded.\u00a0 Lita wanted none of that with her new band so she formulated a new plan.\u00a0 She rented a warehouse, set up a PA system and a stack of Marshall amps and proceeded to teach herself how to play guitar and sing at the same time.\u00a0 The only problem was money – she had to find a job to pay for the tools she needed to forge the next stage of her music career.\u00a0 The plan to work to pay the bills and woodshed to kick start her career was a far cry from the previous six years of her life.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Lita\u2019s first job as a fitness instructor didn\u2019t work out.\u00a0 Lita was cut loose for being rude to a customer.\u00a0 Job number two wasn\u2019t glamorous – she ended up selling men\u2019s cologne at a Broadway Store (which later became Nordstroms) at a mall across the street from her folks home.\u00a0 She put her hair up, wore glasses, and worked largely incognito for six months.\u00a0 If someone said, \u201cGee, you look familiar,\u201d she would change the subject.\u00a0 Nobody suspected they were in the presence of an anomaly – a female rock \u2018n\u2019 roll pioneer.\u00a0 It was there that she met Ray Marzano.\u00a0 When he mentioned he was looking for a guitarist for the band he was putting together, she took off her glasses and introduced the real Lita Ford to him.\u00a0 Marzono promptly\u00a0 invited Ford to join him at his rehearsal facility in North Hollywood.\u00a0 Ray put her in contact with a young drummer named Dusty Watson and with Marzano on bass, they began honing the power trio sound Ford had in her head long before she became a Runaway.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The band began playing a few gigs with Ray still on bass when Lita was approached by Neil Merryweather.\u00a0 He was an older guy who had written a few albums and by his own admission, he said \u2018he had been around the block\u2019.\u00a0 Ford said, \u201cHe looked like he could use some help himself, but I took him up on his offer when he said that maybe he could help me.\u201d\u00a0 Neil\u2019s first task was to craft some \u2018heavy metal looking\u2019 stage costumes.\u00a0 They weren\u2019t common for rock bands then but eventually everyone from Cher to Lady Gaga would be sporting similar threads.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When they began writing a few songs, Lita discovered Merryweather was also an outstanding bass player.\u00a0 In her biography <\/span>Living Like a Runaway <\/span><\/i>(Dey St.\u00a0 2016), Ford recalled, \u201c[With Neil on bass] the trio fit with my vision of keeping the <\/span>Out for Blood <\/span><\/i>album (her first solo effort) free from overproduction.\u00a0 I wanted people to hear the individual instruments – the guitar most of all!\u201d\u00a0 To put this in perspective, we need to back up a bit and how the daughter of an English soldier and an Italian hospital aide worker ended up in California to begin with.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0During the World War Two Battle of Anzio, Ford\u2019s father, Harry Lenard Ford lost his middle and ring finger – they were blown off when he tried to deflect a stick grenade.\u00a0 Len met his future wife, Isabella Benvenuto, when she worked as a volunteer at the hospital where she helped care for him.\u00a0 Len loved Italy and the people there and learned to speak the language fluently.\u00a0 The couple wed on January 19, 1945 and moved to England shortly after their honeymoon.\u00a0 In England, the family was blessed with a son who unfortunately died at nine months of age from pneumonia. \u00a0 Two years later, Lita was born (September 19, 1958) and her first memories are based there.\u00a0 Growing up a beach girl in Mediterranean Italy, Isa Ford was not happy with the weather in England so the family decided to relocate to the states.\u00a0 They first landed in Boston but the winters there were not to their liking.\u00a0 Len had come from a large family so Boston was home to one sister.\u00a0 Their next destination was Dallas where another sister lived.\u00a0 Lita\u2019s mother finally convinced Len that California was where they needed to be.\u00a0 They settled in Long Beach and he went to work for the Ford Motor Company.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Early on, Lita knew she wanted to play the guitar.\u00a0 At age ten, her mother bought her a nylon string acoustic which eventually was replaced with a steel string model.\u00a0 Lita was into the electric sounds she heard on the radio and resolved she would have to get a job so she could buy an electric guitar.\u00a0 After her cousin Paul took her to see Black Sabbath at the Long Beach Municipal Auditorium, the then thirteen-year old Lita knew exactly what she wanted to do.\u00a0 To say she lived life in the fast lane at such an early age is an understatement.\u00a0 She talked her parents into letting her attend the rough and tumble school on the other side of town where she soon found musical accomplices.\u00a0 They regularly ditched school to go somewhere and jam.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0She and a girlfriend lied about spending the weekend at each other\u2019s homes and thumbed a ride from the nearby bus station to the massive California Jam concert being held at the Ontario, CA speedway. \u00a0 This 1974 show featured all the bands that Lita wanted to emulate:\u00a0 Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Black Oak Arkansas, among others.\u00a0 The free and easy existence also led to complications – like a pregnancy at age sixteen.\u00a0 Knowing she was not ready to be a mother, she struck out on her own to find a clinic to \u2018take care of the problem\u2019 – and she resolved that if she was planning to become a rock and roller, she needed to be a lot more careful.\u00a0 Her parents were none the wiser about their daughter\u2019s wilder ways but they still supported her musical ambitions.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In 1975, Hollywood beckoned when Lita received a call from a twenty something sleaze bag named Kim Fowley. Fowley had many connections in the biz and he was looking for a bass player for an all girl band called The Runaways.\u00a0 He described them as, \u201cA band of rebellious jailbait girls\u201d he was putting together.\u00a0 He humbly (yes, I am being sarcastic here) told her, \u201cI\u2019m a mastermind producer \/ songwriter and I can make you into one of the biggest rock and roll stars in the world.\u201d \u00a0 She told him she was actually a guitar player and he said, \u201cWell, we need one of those, too.\u201d\u00a0 Kim invited her to a rehearsal space in West Hollywood at the corner of San Vicente and Santa Monica Boulevard above a defunct drug store.\u00a0 There she was introduced to the drummer (Sandy West) and second guitar player (Joan Jett).\u00a0 They had not adopted their familiar\u00a0 West and Jett stage names yet, but it was a start – Lita decided to remain \u2018Lita Ford\u2019..<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In need of a vocalist, Fowley trolled the clubs until he found sixteen year old Cherie Currie.\u00a0 Her main qualification was that she was cute with platinum blond hair and fit the image Fowley thought would get the most attention.\u00a0 Cherie wanted to audition by singing Suzie Quartro\u2019s <\/span>Fever<\/span><\/i> but Lita refused.\u00a0 Joan and Kim adjourned to another room and returned twenty five minutes later with what would become the band\u2019s signature song, <\/span>Cherry Bomb <\/span><\/i>(Fowley liked it because it sounded like Cherie\u2019s name).\u00a0 The next couple of years would find them grinding on the circuit, first on the West Coast, and then all over the map.\u00a0 Tours of Europe, Japan, and the United States had them opening for major acts like The Tubes and The Ramones.\u00a0 They went to Japan unaware that \u2018Runaway Mania\u2019 was at a fever pitch.\u00a0 The \u2018sleaze bag\u2019 part of Kim Fowley left them in the dark as to how popular they were and he fleeced every penny he could from this\u00a0 popularity before they parted ways.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Runaways were NOT the Monkees – they were an all girl band who could play.\u00a0 They were pioneers because in the late 1970s, there were not many all girl bands to emulate (or female rock stars to look up to for that matter).\u00a0 They attracted attention, especially from mostly male audiences, but the grind of touring began to take its toll.\u00a0 The first to bolt was bass player Jackie Fox.\u00a0 She left before their final Japanese shows at the famed Budokan Hall.\u00a0 Jett was forced to switch over to bass and the results were documented on the <\/span>Live in Japan<\/span><\/i> album.\u00a0 They recruited a new bassist when they got back to the States but the interband tension was beginning to mount.\u00a0 Currie\u2019s habit of always being late ended when Ford took her to task.\u00a0 The singer was upset by the friction so she also exited the band.\u00a0 Jett had been taking more vocals on their recent albums (another source of tension with Currie) so she became the new front woman.\u00a0 By the time the band called it a day, they had made some noise in the music biz but thanks to Fowley, they really had nothing to show for it, money-wise.\u00a0 This is how Lita Ford ended up working at a shopping mall big box store.\u00a0 A sad tale, perhaps, but a necessary one in terms of her taking the next steps in her career.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Growing up with rock \u2018n\u2019 roll dreams, it never occurred to Ford that she would be entering a male dominated field.\u00a0 No one told her \u2018girls don\u2019t do this\u2019 and being the determined soul she was, it would not have mattered.\u00a0 If guys can live the rock \u2018n\u2019 roll lifestyle, why couldn\u2019t she?<\/span><\/p>\n As she made her way through the cloverleaf of opportunities that would\u00a0 see her solo career take off, Lita Ford rarely met a famous guitar player she wouldn\u2019t have a fling with.\u00a0 She contracted her only case of STD from Johnny Ramone.\u00a0 Ritchie Blackmore gifted her an owl ring (who knew he was into owls?) that was later stolen from her hotel room while she was on tour.\u00a0 Glenn Tipton from Judas Priest, Nikki Sixx from Motley Crue, Eddie Van Halen (before he met the love of his life Valerie Bertanelli), and Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath were also notches in her belt.\u00a0 Suffice to say, if the rock \u2018n\u2019 roll guys could live and love how they wanted, so could she.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Lita Ford\u2019s solo career got a jolt on the charts when her radio friendly album <\/span>Lita<\/span><\/i> produced the singles <\/span>Kiss Me Deadly <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Close My Eyes Forever <\/span><\/i>in 1988.\u00a0 The latter was a duet with Ozzy Osbourne and it became her highest charting hit, reaching No. 8 on the <\/span>Billboard Hot 100.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>Having reached the pinnacle of her career up to then, Ford stepped back from the business between 1996 and 2007 to concentrate on raising her two young boys.\u00a0 Rocco and James were the product of her second marriage to Nitro vocalist Jim Gillette whom she married just two weeks after they had met (her first husband was guitarist Chris Holmes from W.A.S.P.).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0She makes note late in <\/span>Living Like a Runaway <\/span><\/i>that she purposely omitted many details about her husband of eighteen years and the father of her children.\u00a0 Suffice to say she met and married Jim Gillette in a two week spin after she bottomed out over that short span of time.\u00a0 Both of her parents died and then her beloved \u2018wiener dog\u2019 Porky was fatally mauled by two larger dogs.\u00a0 She was fed up with the music business runaround and lack of support from her label when the company changed presidents (a country music lover replaced the old rock \u2018n\u2019 roller).\u00a0 The new prez dropped her like a hot potato just as she had a new album ready to drop.\u00a0 She made a big mistake jumping into married life with a stranger and her life became a long strange trip outside of the music biz.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The family eventually moved to the tropical island paradise of Turks and Caicos where Gillette ran a small construction and real estate company.\u00a0 Gillette had already had them living in houses that were \u2018works in progress\u2019 in Oregon and Florida before they landed in Turks and Caicos.\u00a0 The \u2018family\u2019 (re:\u00a0 Jim) bought into the Y2K panic and after the world didn\u2019t implode, they ate stockpiled freeze dried meals for a long time.\u00a0 In the tropics, he decided to build a home totally off the grid on a remote island and was pitching a reality TV show for TLC to be called <\/span>The Gillettes:\u00a0 An Extreme American Family.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>Twisted Sister singer Dee Snider had known and toured with Ford in the past and was surprised when he ran into her when the Snider family were on vacation in T&C.\u00a0 In the forward to <\/span>Living Like A Runaway<\/span><\/i>, Snider noted Lita was enjoying her life of domestic bliss, but was not at all enthusiastic about living totally removed from other human interaction.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t far off the mark when the whole plot took a twist of its own in the early 2000s.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Ford returned from Los Angeles where she had been meeting with TLC suits about the proposed TV show.\u00a0 Upon her return, she found her husband and sons were not talking to her.\u00a0 Gillette had told the boys that their mother was going to do them harm and encouraged them to physically attack her.\u00a0 Gillette had also introduced the boys to a brutal martial arts \/ fighting routine at much too young an age.\u00a0 She later reflected on why the change occurred.\u00a0 Everything came to a head after she began asserting more control over the proposed TV show.\u00a0 These events led to a divorce after which Lita became an advocate for\u00a0 something known as \u2018parental alienation\u2019.\u00a0 Being forcefully removed from her life as a full time mother by her husband\u2019s strange behavior, Ford decided it was time to dust off her guitar and get back into the music world.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The end result was her first true album in nearly 20 years.\u00a0 Released in 2012, <\/span>Living Like a Runaway<\/span><\/i> was put together with the help and support of guitarist Gary Hoey and lyricist Michael Dan Ehmig.\u00a0 Hoey had called Lita when she was in the midst of her divorce drama and invited her to come to New Hampshire to use his home recording studio anytime she wanted.\u00a0 It took a year to take him up on the offer, but Hoey\u2019s wife and kids made Ford feel right at home and they wrote and recorded some amazing songs together.\u00a0 Lita had also worked with Ehmig off and on in the past.\u00a0 He was the one who inspired the name of her first album in 20 years (and in the end, the title of her book) when he described her post marriage life in a phone call:\u00a0 \u201cLita, you <\/span>are<\/span><\/i> living like a runaway.\u201d\u00a0 Indeed, she says now that the songs on that album pretty much tell the story of her 15 years in exile from the music business.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Where is Lita Ford in 2024?\u00a0 Where else, but back on the road.\u00a0 Her current tour began at the Whisky A Go Go in West Hollywood on April 11 and will wrap up at the same venue on November 11.\u00a0 In between, she will be all over the map (see her website for details) and if you have a yen to see \u2018The Queen of Heavy Metal\u2019 in person, she will be opening for Foreigner in Duluth, MN on September 27, 2024.\u00a0 This will be Foreigner\u2019s final tour so it is a fair bet that the bill with Lita Ford opening will be a good one.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Around 2014, Ford and Joan Jett finally got together for a face to face meeting for the first time in 30 years.\u00a0 They had never been best friends and overtures by Ford about a possible Runaways reunion were met with silence.\u00a0 The subject never came up again because drummer Sandy West died that same year.\u00a0 Jett did pay her former co-guitarist a semi-tribute reminding her that she still used the shark fin style picks Ford had shown her way back when.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Ford also set aside her past difficulties with both Cherie Currie and Kim Fowley.\u00a0 Fowley\u00a0 was dying from cancer when they reconnected. Curry and Ford visited him at his home and Lita put aside any angry feelings about how he had treated the band back in the day.\u00a0 She told him, \u201cI don\u2019t think I would be who I am today if it weren\u2019t for Kim Fowley.\u201d\u00a0 He may have been a sleaze-bag hustler when he put together the Runaways, but in the days when female rockers were not the norm, he started a music revolution that is still going on today.\u00a0 Lita Ford is a good place to start because she has certainly earned her \u2018Queen\u2019 title and influenced a lot of rockers, and not just female rockers.\u00a0 Her only regret is the alienation from her boys and she holds out hope they will read her book and try to reconnect in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Lita Ford and Ozzy perform IF I CLOSE MY EYES FOREVER<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The dawn of the 1980s had to be a revelation for Lita Ford.\u00a0 She was 22 years old, an\u00a0 outstanding but newly unemployed guitar player living back home with her parents in Long Beach, California.\u00a0 She had seen all the \u2018lead singer drama\u2019 she could tolerate before her old band, The Runaways, imploded.\u00a0 Lita […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,8,6,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bands-musicians","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-new-music","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3170"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3173,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3170\/revisions\/3173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}