CHAPTER 10

LITA

If I close my eyes forever, Will it all remain the same? —“CLOSE MY EYES FOREVER” (WRITTEN BY LITA FORD AND OZZY OSBOURNE)

BY THE TIME I HAD TOURED THE HELL OUT OF DANCIN’ ON THE EDGE, IT WAS 1986. My manager at the time was Don Arden, who was Sharon Osbourne’s father. Don Arden was considered the Al Capone of managers. His aggressive tactics were well known throughout the industry, and he was both respected and feared. I was happy Arden liked me, and I never saw the scary side of him that some promoters had experienced—like dangling them out a hotel window asking them where his money was. Don respected me and the feeling was mutual, although he didn’t do that much for my career in terms of getting me on great tours or the covers of rock magazines. He, unfortunately, was another one who didn’t know what to do with me. Was it really that hard? You’d think that with a Grammy nomination for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance for Dancin’ on the Edge, someone would get a clue. I really loved Don, and his team members were all wonderful gentlemen to me. They just weren’t the right fit.

I already had a new album written. I had a song called “Under the Gun” that Mike Chapman liked, which soon led to us working together. What unfolded was the Lita album. He brought me “Kiss Me Deadly,” a song he had in his publishing catalog. “Broken Dreams” was an idea inspired by a poster I saw of the James Dean movie Boulevard of Broken Dreams. He looked sad in the poster, and the lyrics of the song are me singing to him. For “Back to the Cave,” Mike already had the chorus, so I wrote the lyrics and the guitar line. It was about the pressures and bullshit of day-to-day life and how you sometimes just want to go “back to the cave” to escape them all. It could be interpreted sexually too, which is why it works so well lyrically.

Mike had seen the David Lynch movie Blue Velvet and wanted to write a song about it. Instead of having the female character as the “sex toy” who does whatever the male character wants, Mike reversed the roles and had the female—me—singing the song as the sexual aggressor.

Motörhead’s Lemmy and I had met at the Rainbow one night while I was working on the album. He had an apartment down the hill, within walking distance from the Rainbow. Since the Rainbow closes at two A.M., and we were still hanging out, he asked me if I wanted to go to his place for more drinks. I ended up staying at Lemmy’s house for three days! We had shots of Wild Turkey, did lines of meth, and ended up writing “Can’t Catch Me.” I eventually called my friend Patty and asked her to help get me out of Lemmy’s house. I was so fucked up there was no way I could drive home. I remember walking in the front door of my new apartment: there was no furniture, only a bed, and I collapsed on the living room floor for probably another three days because I was so fucked up. Once I came to I stumbled over to my bed, where I slept for what seemed a few more days. It was a week before I realized we had written a song.

I already had Mike Chapman in place as record producer. I had a record deal with Dreamland Records, which was Mike’s label. Now I just needed a manager who could take me to the next level.

I WAS SITTING at the bar on the Queen Mary in Long Beach with a gorgeous guy from Anchorage, Alaska. We were downing oyster shooters and drinking Bloody Marys. I said to him, “I want a manager who I can relate to as a human being and who doesn’t just see me as a piece of meat or a dollar sign.” The old record label and Kovak had given me a hard time about wearing too much makeup, my clothes, and my look. “I need someone who can understand what it is like to be a woman in the music industry,” I said. I thought a female manager would be appropriate. Who would be able to take me to the next level I was after? I thought about it for a minute and realized it was Sharon Osbourne. Right then I picked up the phone and called her from the Queen Mary. I told her I was managed by Don Arden and that I needed someone who understood where I was coming from and could help me get to where I wanted to be. At the time I did not know Don Arden was her father and her rival because of a falling-out the family had had. Maybe she saw an opportunity to outdo her dad and believed she could make me a success. She said yes right away.

I was thrilled, and my Alaskan friend and I left the ship and headed toward the freeway. I was driving a Jeep and had taken the top and the doors off. I was talking a mile a minute, imagining the possibilities of my career moving forward with Sharon. I was so happy to have her on my team. Well, as I got onto the freeway, I turned to look at my friend. He was gone! I looked in the rearview mirror and saw him rolling on the freeway. Shit! Thank God there isn’t much traffic in that part of town. I pulled over and ran back to get him. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I just ripped my knee open,” he replied.

I’m not quite sure how or why, but he was wearing the new green suede-leather pants I had bought in Germany. I’m convinced those leather pants saved his leg that day. The pants were torn, and the gravel from the road was stuck in his knee. I helped him into the Jeep and we drove to the first bar I could find. I ordered him a cognac and handed it to him. He started drinking it.

“No! It’s not for you to drink! It’s for your knee! To disinfect it.”

I grabbed the cognac and poured it over his wound. He screamed in pain—the normal reaction when someone pours alcohol on an open wound. This was definitely rock-and-roll first aid.

I ABSOLUTELY LOVED Sharon and respected her. She was a teetotaler and helped me sober up. Sharon and I would go shopping together. We could be real girly girls together, which was nice to have in a manager. She showed me all the best stores and hairdressers in Hollywood and helped me create my new look for the Lita album. Most important, she put me on better tours and shows.

But before I could tour, I needed musicians. I remember hiring Charlie Dalba after he came into the audition and we played “Into the Arena” by Michael Schenker. We immediately had chemistry, and it stayed that way the entire time he was in my band. Shortly afterward, I hired Tommy Caradonna to play bass. He walked in, played one song with us, and he killed it. He was tall, dark, and sexy and could play that bass like a motherfucker.

“That kicked ass!” I said.

Tommy left the room and I turned to Charlie and said, “What do you think?”

“I like him.”

I sent Dave-O out to get Tommy and when he came back in, I said, “If you want the gig, you got it.”

We had our bass player.

We went through a lot of guitarists before we landed on Steve Fister. Everyone would come in to the audition trying to do their own thing, but Steve came in and played what we needed him to play and got the gig. The four of us—Tommy Caradonna (bass), Charlie Dalba (drums), Steve Fister (guitar), and me—did some warm-up shows in small venues before “Kiss Me Deadly” made it onto the Billboard charts.

We were getting ready to go out on tour and I wanted to try dyeing my own hair. I had never done it before because I was always horrible with hair, but I thought to myself, How hard can it be? I went to a local pharmacy and bought some hair color. Bleach, to be exact. Unfortunately, I didn’t know there were different strengths of bleach for hair, so I bought the strongest bleach I could find and went home to “color” my hair.

I read the directions. “Leave color in hair for twenty minutes, no longer.” Okay, I can do this. It’s easy. What’s the worst thing that could happen? I mixed up the ingredients and blobbed it onto my hair. Just then, the phone rang. It was an old friend from London. We talked and talked. I was standing in my bathrobe with bleach in my hair and realized that the twenty minutes had quickly turned into forty-five minutes. “Oh shit! I gotta go!” I hung up the phone. I washed out the bleach in a hurry, got dressed, and hopped in my car to drive to a meeting in Hollywood. I didn’t have time to dry my hair, so when I got in the car I rolled down the windows to let the wind dry it from the movement of the car on the freeway. My hair was so wet that I decided to run my fingers through it, thinking that would help it dry. It felt good: soft hair, warm California day, driving to a meeting on the freeway, and no traffic. As I ran my fingers through my hair, I noticed a little clump in my hand. I did it again just to see where the hair was coming from. Was it my hair? More strands of hair came out in my hand. What the fuck? It was coming out by the handful! Oh my God! I was freaking out. Strands and strands of hair were coming out in my fingers. There was so much of it that I was throwing it out the window of my car as I pulled it out of my head. I realized I had burned my hair with the bleach by leaving it on too long. All the hair behind the back of my neck was burned off. I didn’t know what to do. Do I cut it all off? Do I shave my head? Shit!

Sharon took me to a professional hairstylist, who suggested hair extensions. Hair extensions? What the heck are those? I had never heard of them before, but I had to do something: I didn’t have a choice. So Sharon and I decided to give me a new look. Like it or not, I bought the finest hair extensions and had the salon put in blue-black hair underneath the back of my neck, and the blond extensions on top. I had a full head of hair again, and my real hair had a chance to grow back. The extensions looked cool and were definitely different. The funny thing was, a lot of Lita fans started dyeing their hair blue-black and blond too. It became a look, but no one really knew the truth behind it.

Sharon was great at creating my new images, but she also had a list of changes that she wanted me to make. “One thing is you must get rid of Toni, your tech.”

I said, “Why?” Besides being my close friend, Toni was a great tech, and I saw no reason to get rid of her.

Sharon said, “Because everyone will think you are gay.” But I didn’t believe it was the real reason. I think it was a control issue. Sharon had to have things her way, and Toni was always looking out for me and looking over everybody’s shoulder. I don’t think Sharon liked that. I didn’t want to do it, but Sharon let Toni go, which made me resentful. However, Sharon also booked me on Jon Bon Jovi’s New Jersey Syndicate tour, which was huge for me. I had to put business before personal.

Around this time, I was with my friend Patty, driving along a side street in Hollywood when I spotted an electrical worker working on a telephone pole. He was wearing a pair of jeans that were shredded all the way up the front, and I thought that they might look good as a part of my new look. I said to Patty, “I want those jeans.” I just didn’t know how I was going to get them. I asked Patty if she could get them for me. I handed her $100 and she got out and asked the worker for his jeans. He told Patty he had another pair just like them at home, so Patty arranged to meet him at the same telephone pole the next day, with another $100 for his torn work jeans. I gave them to my clothing designer at the time, and they became the jeans that I wore in the “Kiss Me Deadly” and “Close My Eyes Forever” videos.

I was walking my dog in the front yard one day at my parents’ house, and my mother was motioning with her hand, pointing toward the ground, as if to say, Come here! I looked at her and said, “What?”

“Get in the house!” she said through gritted teeth. She was angry. “I don’t want the neighbors to see you in those jeans.”

Little did she know that they would be on heavy rotation on MTV. They became quite the fashion statement in the late 1980s and remained a part of the rock-and-roll dress code for years to come. I like to think I had a part in making that happen. Sorry, Mom!

WHEN IT CAME time for me to do a video for “Kiss Me Deadly,” I enlisted the help of a great choreographer named Anne Marie Hunter. She had booked time for us—just her and me—to work on the various parts of the video in Jane Fonda’s studio. When I arrived, Anne Marie handed me a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a small rinse-and-spit cup: “This is to help you loosen up.” I liked this woman already!

I had a few shots of the Jack Daniel’s and we got to work. Anne Marie had some of the girls from a Roller Derby league come in and show me how to fall and slide without putting pressure on the wrong parts of my body. As crazy as it sounds, she had to teach me how to fall in order to get that slide on knee pads just right for the video.

The video for “Kiss Me Deadly” became a hot, sexy anthem on MTV, but it sure didn’t start out that way. I guess I must have been a little too loose after the Jack Daniel’s, because as I was working on the choreographed moves Anne Marie had shown me, I stumbled and slammed into the wall behind me. The problem was that the wall was made of mirrors, and before I knew it, there was glass all over the place. By the time I was done bumping into mirrored walls and sliding across the floor on knee pads, I owed Jane Fonda’s studio $750 worth of mirrors. It was money well spent. Anne Marie really helped me prepare for what would become my signature music video.

During the filming, they put Charlie’s drum kit up on a forklift, and he was convinced that the whole fucking thing was going to come crashing down. The video was directed by Marty Callner, who used the same warehouse we were shooting in for later Aerosmith, Poison, and Cher videos. I remember the taping session lasted twenty-four hours and that years later on MTV’s show Pop Up Video, they mentioned that the band and I had nothing to eat that day because we had no money. I found out just recently that Charlie had seen the show on TV and had his attorney call MTV to tell them to remove that “bubble” from the video because “it was a fucking lie.” It was misleading. We ate and were treated well for that video shoot, and once it hit MTV, it changed everything. We went from playing smaller clubs to playing in front of twenty thousand people in arenas around the world. My bassist Tommy Caradonna said to me that he’d never forget the loud screams and “little girl” squeals that filled the stadium when they announced my name at the first gig we did. It was such an incredible feeling.

OZZY AND SHARON used to come over to my mother and father’s house for dinner or a drink. There was nothing Ozzy could do to freak my parents out. They had already seen it all in the Runaways days. In fact, they were amused by Ozzy, and they liked him and Sharon very much. How could they not? The Osbournes are wonderful people. When they would pull up to my parents’ house in a big black limo, the entire neighborhood would poke their heads out to see what was going on and then realize, “Oh, it’s only Lita with her rock stars.”

Being with Sharon and Ozzy was always an adventure. He passed out once in the aisle of a jumbo jet on the way to London. Sharon was poking him with a fork and putting holes in his favorite suit. She wanted him to get up, but he was out cold. He woke up as we were landing and found a bunch of holes in his coat. He was screaming, “Why do I have these fucking holes in me bloody coat? Sharon?!”

She calmly told him, “You were blocking the aisle. Nobody could pass by you.”

Nikki and I were still friends around this time, and one day Mötley Crüe had the studio booked for the day to do some drum overdubs. I was in the next studio. There are a lot of little rooms in Record One, and Nikki had a few minutes to hang out with me in a little side room that had a piano in it. While we were in there we wrote “Falling In and Out of Love.” I was writing and recording the Lita album in the studio, and David Ezrin—Bob Ezrin’s son—was there with me working on the keyboard overdubs together with Mike Chapman. I was kind of running loose.

One day, Sharon and Ozzy came to the studio to bring me a gift, a life-size replica of Koko the gorilla. We started playing pool and drinking wine. Hours went by and Sharon got bored and left. That night, in another little room with a keyboard and a small guitar amplifier, Ozzy and I ended up writing “Close My Eyes Forever” into the wee hours of the morning. It was totally unplanned.

As the sun rose I said, “Ozzy, the fucking sun is coming up.”

“Oh shit,” he said. “I’ve got to get home. You have to drive me.”

“I can’t drive,” I said to him. “We’ve been drinking all night. Take a fucking cab.” I couldn’t make that Laurel Canyon drive drunk! Ozzy took a cab, and later that day, I drove home with the gorilla strapped into the passenger’s seat. Of course I put her seat belt on: we have to be safe after all.

Right before I fell asleep, the phone rang. It was Sharon. “Well, I’ve got one sniffer, now I’ve got two,” she said. She was pissed. I wonder if she thought Ozzy and I were fucking each other, but all we did was play guitar and sing.

She asked me one day, “Lita, I was gone for three days, out of town on business, and when I came back, I found a tampon underneath Ozzy’s bed in his hotel room. You don’t know anything about it, do you?” I didn’t hang out with Ozzy during those three days, and I didn’t know anything about it.

Sharon also got pissed at me because I wouldn’t get into bed with some guy for the “Back to the Cave” video. I wanted to do a live performance-based video, which I hadn’t done before. During the actual shoot, I was trying to decide who would say the part of the song that Mike Chapman speaks in the studio version, where he says “I don’t want to waste your time.” Mike wasn’t there, so I said “Let’s have Tommy speak those parts.” When I look at the video, I can see Tommy Caradonna laughing because he had a hard time keeping a straight face.

I had been voted Best Female Rock Vocalist by Metal Edge magazine, and Ozzy was voted Best Male Rock Vocalist at the same time. Together, both being managed by Sharon, we were a hit. I didn’t know it at the time, but Sharon had tried to stop “Close My Eyes Forever” from being released. She didn’t want Ozzy and me together on screen for the video, but I never understood this until much later. I went to the record company and asked them, “Is this true? Does she not want to release this as a single?” They said, “Yes, but we’re going to release it anyway.” For once, Sharon didn’t get her way. It was released on my label under Lita Ford and became a Top 10 hit single, which is something none of us predicted. It is still one of the greatest rock ballads of all time, in my opinion. It was No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 list. Ozzy’s first—and only—Top 10 hit single ever!

DURING THE RECORDING of the Lita album, I had a rare night off and needed to unwind. The Scorpions, the German heavy metal group, were playing a concert in Irvine, California. The Scorpions are one of my all-time favorite bands, with two great guitar players and one kick-ass vocalist, Klaus Meine. I headed down to Irvine by myself.

Irvine Meadows is an open-air amphitheater that holds approximately twenty thousand people. The only trouble with the place is the horrific traffic. It just doesn’t move, especially when twenty thousand people are trying to get into or out of the same venue. As I was sitting on the freeway in traffic stopped dead, I was starting to get anxious. I said to myself, Hell, I don’t have to play tonight. I was almost there and didn’t need to worry about driving much farther, so I took out a joint I had with me. It was huge, but it was also organically grown pot that had purple hair on it. I lit it up and smoked it while I sat in that traffic. Oh my God, did I get stoned. My eyes were like slits I was so baked.

When I finally arrived at the show, I went backstage to say hello to the band and then planned on sitting in the audience. They were just about to go onstage when Doc McGhee, the Scorpions’ manager at the time, saw me and called me over to talk. Doc is a great man. He said, “How would you like to jam with Klaus tonight?”

“Oh, Doc, thank you so much,” I said, “but it’s my day off, and I’m just going to go out in the audience to watch the show.” Normally I would have loved to jam with the Scorpions, but not when I was stoned out of my mind. I headed to my seat, and on the way I spotted a white-chocolate cheesecake inside the Scorpions’ dressing room. It was two tiers high with chunks of shaved white chocolate stacked up on the cake. The munchies had started to kick in, and I considered taking a slice, but then I heard the show starting so I quickly headed into the audience. But I thought about that cheesecake until the show was almost over. During one of the last songs I said to myself, Fuck it. I need that cheesecake.

I walked back to the empty stage area, and the only two people backstage were Sebastian Bach and Christina Applegate, who were making out. They didn’t look like they were going to get between me and that cheesecake. I grabbed a great big piece and dove in. As I was chowing down, I could still hear the Scorpions playing in the distance, and then I heard Klaus say, “We have Lita Ford in the audience tonight! Lita, come up here and sing with me!”

Oh no! I started choking on my cheesecake. There was no way I could go out there! I was too baked, and the cake was more important to me in that moment. I had no idea how I was going to stay out of sight, and I was looking around for what I thought would be a safe place to hide for just a few minutes in case someone came looking for me. I looked at the table, which had a long, floor-length tablecloth on it, and decided to hide under there until it was “safe” to come out. So there I was, in the Scorpions’ dressing room, stoned, hiding under a table with a slice of white-chocolate cheesecake in my hand. Thank God nobody found me.

After the show, Klaus said to me, “Lita, I called for you to sing with me, but you didn’t come out.” I felt like an asshole for leaving him hanging, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I was too busy stealing his cheesecake—which was really fucking good, by the way. Now every time I see a piece of cheesecake, I think of the Scorpions.

AEROSMITH IS ANOTHER of my favorite bands, but whenever I try to go see them, something always seems to happen. The very first time I went to see them was at the California Jam II, held in Ontario, California, the site of the original Cal Jam. I got there and from the parking lot I heard Steven Tyler say, “Thank you, good night!” I wasn’t even in the venue yet. There goes Aerosmith.

My second experience with Aerosmith was in 1989, and I remember wearing low-cut pants and a tiny shirt that came just under my boobs. We got to the venue and I went to my seat, which was about ten to fifteen rows from the stage, looking down from stage right. I noticed that there was someone in our seats.

“Excuse me, you’re in my seat,” I said to the girl who was sitting there.

She turned and spit in my face.

“You fucking cunt!” I hawked the biggest loogie I could and spat right back in her face. I had learned how to spit in the punk era, so I could launch a mean loogie.

Her boyfriend pulled his fist back and was going to hit me. The guy I was with hit him, and they both went tumbling down the stairs. My friend left his high school ring imprinted on the guy’s forehead.

Security came running over.

“You’re Lita Ford. Why are you watching the show from here?”

The girl who spit at me and her boyfriend got thrown out, and I got taken backstage. I got to sit next to the amp that Joe Perry’s tech uses to hear what’s going on, which was cool, but I wanted to see the show from the audience.

When we got backstage, Steven Tyler walked over to me, pushed me up against the wall, and planted a kiss on me. He looked me up and down, checking me out, and said, “Is it really you? You’re really here?” Turns out he had always wanted to meet me, just like I had always wanted to meet him. I explained to him that I had been in the audience but that some chick had spit in my face and we had gotten into a fight in the stands.

“Holy fuck, that was you up there?” He had seen the whole thing from the stage. He had this huge bodyguard stay with us for the rest of the night.

As we were leaving through the loading dock, the girl who had spit on me and her boyfriend were waiting for us. The bodyguard walked me and my friend to my car, and we got out of there without further incident. To this day I still haven’t seen an Aerosmith concert from start to finish. What is it about that band?

ON ANOTHER NIGHT off, in 1987, I went to see W.A.S.P. perform at the Long Beach Arena. I remember watching the guitar player, Chris Holmes. He was six foot six with long flowing hair and a handsome face. He looked hot and menacing when he was onstage. He resembled a Viking, but covered in tattoos. Back then nobody had that many tattoos, so it was different and interesting. I met him backstage after the show, and he turned out to be a really sweet guy. We exchanged phone numbers so we could meet up another night for some drinks. We decided to rendezvous at a club called the Cat House. Afterward we ended up at my apartment, and we started seeing each other from that night on. I would go with Chris on tour, and he would come with me.

I soon moved out of my parents’ home and into a house with Chris in the Tujunga/Angeles Crest Mountains, which were twenty miles outside of Los Angeles with huge properties nestled in the mountain range. While living together, I found out that Chris is an awesome cook. He could make the best chicken chili I’d ever had, and he would often create delicious barbecue feasts. Who would have known that W.A.S.P.’s guitarist knew his way around the kitchen as well as he did a guitar?

As much as I loved Chris’s house, I really wanted to be able to purchase a home of my own. Sharon and my producer Mike Chapman were kicking ass for me. Sharon brought me up to another level of success, just as I had hoped she would when I first asked her to manage me. I was making more money, in larger chunks, and I ended up buying my own dream home in Angeles Crest. It was a country-style house: one level, high beamed ceilings, a huge fireplace, and a backyard that overlooked a massive mountain range. My next-door neighbor had five horses and he used to open up the stables and the gate and they’d eat the long grass in my yard. He’d let us use the horses whenever we wanted, and we’d go horseback riding for hours into the mountains in the twenty-five miles of riding area of that range. We’d party all night, people would sleep over, and then the next morning we’d all go horseback riding. Even if they didn’t know how to ride horses, I would put them on the horses anyway. It kept their mind off their hangovers, that’s for sure. The trails were narrow and steep, and there wasn’t much room for a mistake. Kim, my neighbor, would grind his own wheat and make awesome hotcakes for all of us when we’d get back from the ride. We’d see coyotes, snakes, and poison ivy. My dogs had full run of the yard. I had two rottweilers at the time; Chris had named them Chopper and Crusher. They were friendly dogs, but when Ozzy came over for a visit one day, they took one look at him, walking in his usual hunched-over stance with his hands sticking slightly out in front of him, and they started to growl. Ozzy backed off right away. Settling into that house was a wonderful moment in my life. I had plenty of time for partying, writing, and enjoying my own home. I had a guest room for my parents. But best of all, it was all mine.

BEFORE WE LEFT to go on tour with Bon Jovi in 1988, my father and I met up for our annual fishing trip to Oregon on the Deschutes River. We fished for steelhead salmon and trout, which is my favorite thing to do next to playing guitar. My dad drove there, and I flew in a couple of days later because I had to work.

When I arrived, I noticed him limping, which wasn’t uncommon for him because he had tripped in the rocks a year before and twisted his ankle. I said, “Dad, did you twist your ankle again?” He said yes.

It wasn’t bruised. I had a feeling he was lying, but I left it alone and decided to deal with it after the trip.

As we were driving home, I saw a huge tree trunk on the side of the road. I screamed to my dad, “Stop!”

My father said, “Why do you want me to stop?”

“Did you see that tree?” We pulled over and together we picked up the trunk and strapped it to the roof of the car. When we got back to LA, I took it to B.C. Rich and asked Bernie Rico Sr. to make a guitar out of it. Bernie had the best luthiers in the country, and I knew he would make a beautiful guitar from that trunk. Neal Moser ended up being the luthier who built the guitar. Everyone at B.C. Rich wanted to know where I got the wood. It had three different types of maple in it: curly maple, burled maple, and fire maple. We didn’t want to hide the beauty of that wood, so the guitar was coated with a resin finish instead of painted. I named the guitar Fishing Wood. Every time I play that guitar, it takes me back to the beautiful memory of fishing for steelhead and trout with my father.

I am so glad I asked my dad to stop for that tree trunk, because it gave me a memento of the last trip I ever took with him. Soon after we got back from Oregon, an entire side of my father’s body became paralyzed. We took him to the hospital and he was admitted immediately. They told us he’d had a stroke, and that they’d found a giant brain tumor. They did a biopsy on it to see if it was malignant. The results came back: inoperable stage IV cancer. There was nothing they could do. I remember my mother screaming from the other room when she got the phone call. It was a sound I had never heard before.

Unfortunately, Chris wasn’t very sympathetic during my father’s illness. I had just moved in with him, and I really wanted to spend time together, but my father was sick and I needed to be there for him. Chris would get upset at me for visiting my father so often instead of spending the nights with him, and it frustrated me. He just didn’t get it. Driving from Long Beach back up to Angeles Crest was exhausting, but I went to see my father as often as I could, regardless of what Chris said. Sometimes he would stay at my parents’ house so I wouldn’t have to make the drive back to Angeles Crest. I was dealing with Chris and coping with my father’s illness. I was full of mixed emotions at the time.

ONE DAY WHILE leaving the hospital after visiting my father, Toni, my mother, and I were in the elevator when I noticed a lump on the side of my mother’s neck. Toni and I looked at each other and knew exactly what it meant: my mother’s cancer had come back.

My mother had originally been diagnosed with cancer in 1980, but she didn’t tell me at first. I had invited her to come to Hawaii with me, but she said, “No, thank you, I’m going gambling in Vegas.” I should have known something was up because she loved the beach and the sun. She ended up admitting herself to St. Mary Medical Center and had a mastectomy of her left breast. When I came home, she pulled open her shirt and showed me the scars left from the surgery. I knew I had let her down for not going with her. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I said. I was crying, devastated.

“I didn’t want to ruin your vacation,” she said.

God bless her.

IN THE WEEKS that followed my father’s stroke, he lost his speech, then his hearing, and then slipped into a coma. He passed in January 1988, soon after that fishing trip. My mother and I buried him with his favorite things: photographs and pieces of our jewelry. My mother and I were devastated. My father had always been my hero and my best friend. I was his only child: his daughter and his son. He taught me things most fathers did not teach their girls, like how to fish, hunt, shoot, hook a worm, and skin a fish. There was no fluff and pink lace in my childhood, but there was a lot of love and laughter. My father was the funniest man I’d ever met, and he loved me and my mother with all his soul. He was such a good man—the kind of man that as a woman, you wonder if you’ll ever find for yourself. I never once heard my father raise his voice or argue with my mother. I could always call him to come bail me out of any situation and there would be no questions asked. Who was I going to call now?

Looking back, I’m saddened that my father never got to meet his two grandsons, James and Rocco. He grew up with nine female siblings. He was always surrounded by girls. Imagine if he knew he had two grandsons! There are no words to express how happy he would have been.

My parents had been happily married for forty-four years, and my father’s death destroyed Mom. I had to go straight from the funeral to the airport to catch a flight to New York. What hurt the most was having to leave her behind, knowing she was sick and now had to deal with the void left in her heart by my father’s death.

My father never got to see the success of the Lita album. I only wish that he had been there to enjoy those moments with me, as my father was always proud of me, but he was too ill at that point. I felt like something awful had happened in exchange for something really great. The album went platinum, and I was nominated in 1988 for an MTV award in the Best Female Rock Video category for “Kiss Me Deadly.” I took Tommy Caradonna to the awards show with me, and he sat between me and Robert Downey Jr. He was nervous as hell on the red carpet, but he totally pulled it off. He looked so disappointed when “Kiss Me Deadly” didn’t win. David Coverdale from Whitesnake and his wife, Tawny Kitaen—the hot chick who danced and did acrobatics on the hood of a car in the Whitesnake videos—sent me a huge basket of the most beautiful flowers with a note that read “You should have won, Lita.”

Other bands like Warrant and Poison followed with similar videos after the MTV nomination. “Kiss Me Deadly” helped open the door for other rock bands to have a “hot rocker chick” star in their videos, and I can’t help but wonder if David and Tawny’s gift was a way of showing their appreciation for the look I had helped make so popular at the time.

SOON AFTER MY father died, Chris and I were talking and decided we would get married. It wasn’t like we couldn’t live the rest of our lives without each other. It was just something to do. We weren’t a couple who walked around calling each other honey or baby. Marriage just came up in conversation; there was no real proposal. I think I agreed hoping Chris would fill the void left by my father’s passing. If he had been alive, there is no way my father would have agreed to the marriage.

The wedding was in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, in 1988. I only invited my mother, Sharon Osbourne, and a few of my very close friends. Right before the wedding, my best friend’s boyfriend asked me, “Lita, are you in love with Chris?”

I said, “No.”

“Then why are you marrying him?”

I was trying to fill a hole in my heart.

Of course, marrying Chris did not do that. The night we were married, Chris met some stranger at the bar and spent the entire night talking to this drunk. I left him at the bar drinking. It was like our marriage was a kind of game. I went to my girlfriend’s hotel room and stayed with her. The next morning I ran into my mother in the hallway. She said, “Lita, where are you coming from?”

“I was just getting coffee,” I told her.

But she knew I didn’t sleep with Chris that night. And we both knew I had just made a mistake.

BEFORE THE EVENTS of my father’s death and then my marriage to Chris in 1988, though, I took my mother and my aunt Livia with me for the Italian dates of Jon Bon Jovi’s New Jersey Syndicate tour, which was a thrill. Jon and I had been friends since my Out for Blood days, and I thought I’d be in good hands on the road with him. In late 1988, the tour lasted eight weeks throughout Europe. My goal was to get all three sisters together, and since my aunt Rosetta lived in Rome, I could make that happen. They weren’t getting any younger, and I knew it was only a matter of time before they wouldn’t be able to be together again. My aunt Livia was the youngest of the three sisters, and she would be the first to pass two years later. Every night before the show she’d say to me and the band, “Go kick ass!”

The New Jersey Syndicate tour was one of the biggest tours out there at the time. Our bands were a perfect fit. Jon was really nice and accommodating and was always asking if I needed any help with the monitors or anything. Of course, I’d had enough of taking his advice after the Lance Quinn incident.

Jon’s band had learned a couple of Beatles songs for the tour, so if any celebs would show up, they’d be asked to get up and jam with Jon’s band. One show at Wembley Arena he invited Elton John, Brian May from Queen, and Rick Allen from Def Leppard to come up and play “Come Together.” I went running backstage to my bandmate Steve Fister and asked him to show me the guitar parts to that song. Then I went running back onstage. Jon scooped me up and swung me in his arms in front of a packed Wembley Arena. I was wearing a miniskirt. I whispered in Jon’s ear, “I don’t have any underwear on.” Jon quickly put me down like a gentleman would, and I laughed and walked off to grab my guitar.

We got to our places onstage: Sir Elton John was on keyboards, Rick Allen on drums, Brian May and me on guitars, and Jon on the mic. What a surreal moment it was when we all started to jam. It was a blast and truly one of the best nights of my life and career.

At another stop on the tour, my drummer Charlie Dalba got to jam with me, Bon Jovi, and the Scorpions. That same night we went to an after party where I met the legendary blind guitarist Jeff Healey for the first time. He was sitting in a corner drinking some chicken soup. He got up and walked over to where the food was and was eating out of everyone else’s discarded food trays. I took his chicken soup and handed him a bottle of champagne. “Here, drink this instead.”

Jeff and I got drunk together off this bottle of champagne and he said, “Let’s get out of here.”

“What do you want to do?”

“We’ll go back to my room and order some room service.”

We tried to order food and they told us that we’d have to go down to the front desk and get a menu. Jeff led me to the elevators, and knew where everything was, which amazed me at the time. We got to the front desk and the guy working there said, “Would you like to see a menu?”

Jeff was completely drunk by this point and yelled, “I’m fucking blind! Are you kidding me?” We laughed hysterically. We went back up to his room and I ordered food for us. I will never forget how Jeff poured the wine for me—he didn’t spill a drop. It was amazing to watch him. We ate and then went back to the party. I had my arm wrapped around his and was leading Jeff toward the party, but then I realized the party was downstairs, not upstairs. “Hey, Jeff, the party is down here.” Before I knew it, we tripped on each other’s feet, fell down the stairs, and flopped right into the Scorpions party. At that same party, Charlie Dalba hooked up with a gorgeous blonde. She later told him that she had come to the party with Richie Sambora. Turns out Charlie ended up taking the girl away from him without even knowing it! The next day Richie was pissed at Charlie. Oops!

I always traveled with my band on the tour bus, and I stayed in the same hotels as they did. They were family to me. I had also hired a keyboard player for the tour, Martin Gershwitz, who was a wonderful human being. He was very European, with long hair and a German accent. He was a joy to be around, but we always made fun of him because he wasn’t really into personal hygiene. God bless him and I love him dearly, but he was a stinky guy. Every once in a while, one of us would buy him a can of Lysol, mouthwash, or deodorant as a gift. Once, there was a bee on the tour bus and I used the Aqua Net hairspray we had bought Martin as a blowtorch to kill it. The bus driver wasn’t too impressed with me.

Our drummer Charlie had a video camera with him and would film everything we did—on the bus, at sound check, anywhere—and caught a lot of beautiful memories on tape. At one gig, one of Bon Jovi’s security guards came into our dressing room while we played our set and took Charlie’s camera. During the sound check that day, Charlie had been filming while they were testing the harness that Jon used to get strung across the stage and swung over the audience. The security guards thought he was going to sell the footage, and so they took his camera and erased it. They were also going to keep the camera. Jon came over and said, “You weren’t gonna sell that, were you?”

“No, man. I just want to keep it to show my kids some day!” Charlie answered.

Jon Bon Jovi turned to the security guard and said, “Man, give him his camera back. He’s not gonna sell anything.” Charlie thought it was a really down-to-earth thing for a megastar like Jon to do.

Tommy, our bassist, used to like to run around all over the stage. Bon Jovi and their crew never gave Tommy any orders about what not to touch or where not to go onstage, unlike when we had opened for Ted Nugent. The Motor City Madman’s crew wanted to know where you were going to stand and didn’t want us putting our feet up on the monitors. I never told my band what to do onstage or where to stand. Sometimes that meant we’d run into each other, like the time Tommy was going nuts onstage and didn’t notice me standing next to him until he swung around and hit me in the leg with the headstock of his Fender P-bass. I had apparently yelled out when he hit me, but the part Tommy remembered was that the next day, I had four bruises on my leg—from the four machineheads on his P-bass.

When we got to Paris, Jon and I had a chance to hang out. Jon said, “Lita, tonight I will take you anywhere you want to go.” One of my favorite places in Paris was the Crazy Horse strip club. It is a high-class burlesque club that you needed to make reservations to get into months in advance, but because it was Jon Bon Jovi and Lita Ford, we got in right away.

I put on my favorite black lace dress with black high-heeled shoes and curled my hair, and Jon was dressed in a silver-gray suit, which complemented his light eyes. He looked very handsome, and he smelled so good. Jon rented a limo so we could drink and not worry about driving. First stop: the Crazy Horse. We drank champagne, more champagne, and more champagne. We stayed for hours at the Crazy Horse, watching the girls dance. They were hot! It was a turn-on, I have to say.

Then Jon said, “Let’s go get something to eat.” We were already drunk, and the dress I was wearing was skintight. There was no room for a big meal. We had some nibbles of food and drank the rest of our dinner by doing shots of tequila.

After we tore up Paris, we went back to Jon’s hotel. I pulled off my dress and asked Jon for some sweats. By this time it was five A.M. and I had to get back to my hotel. Chris usually called me at around six A.M., so I wanted to be there for him when the phone rang in my room. I said my thank-yous to Jon in more ways than one, then I took off for a cab dressed in his sweats. He was so thoughtful and kind. As soon as I walked in the door of my hotel room, the phone was ringing. I ran to answer it. It was Chris. Phew. Good timing.

The next day, Sharon kept asking me, “What did he smell like?” I couldn’t describe it, so we went to a mall and searched the men’s cologne section, trying to find the one that smelled like Jon. We never did.

WE WERE DOING gigs, press, radio, photo sessions, and traveling from country to country. I was wiped out half the time. I asked Sharon if I could have one day of rest. She said to me, “If you can’t take the pressure, then get the fuck out of the music business!” It was kind of a shitty thing for my manager to say to me. I’m not a complainer at all—she knew that. I was simply asking for one day of rest, but she refused.

That night we arrived in Munich, Germany, which was the headquarters for my record company, BMG (Bertelsmann Music Group). I crawled into my hotel room after arriving from the airport exhausted. We had just wrapped up the German leg of the tour and needed to be near the airport for an early departure the next morning. All I could think about was sleep. Almost instantly after arriving at the hotel, there was a knock at the door. A man with a huge arrangement of beautiful white flowers was standing there. I tipped the guy and he left the flowers in the room. I read the note that went with the flowers: “Lita, Welcome to Munich. Tonight we take you out to your favorite restaurant.” It was signed by all the BMG executives.

To tell the truth, I was way beyond sleep, and if I didn’t rest, I knew I would be sick. My immune system was running on empty, but how do you refuse your record company? I called them to try to explain to them that this was my only night off and I would love to go, but I needed the sleep so badly.

“No, no, no, Lita. You are in Germany. We must take you out tonight. I’ll send a car for you at eight P.M.” Click. The guy hung up. Oh, man. I could barely walk, I was so beat-up and tired. How was I going to pull this off?

Eight o’clock rolled around. I chose the same restaurant I had been to in the past so I was familiar with it. I walked in and was greeted by the entire artist-relations department. They were so kind and friendly. I ordered a soda, but they were not happy with me drinking soda, so I caved and ordered a shot of tequila, hoping to kill the pain of being exhausted. They brought me white tequila, which I had never had before. It tasted like nitroglycerin! Oh boy. This was going to get interesting.

After I had a few shots of this stuff, I was toast. I said to the artist rep from BMG, “Please get me out of here. Now!” He could see in my eyes that I wasn’t doing well at all. He grabbed me under one arm while another rep grabbed me under my other arm, and we headed for the front door.

I remember that my feet were dragging behind me.

The BMG reps drove me back to the hotel. Being in the moving car made my head spin. I never even got a chance to order my food at the restaurant. I was so embarrassed.

When I got back to my hotel, I ran straight for the toilet bowl and puked my guts out again and again. Clearly I had alcohol poisoning combined with being exhausted, but I had a flight to Italy the next morning at six A.M. and there was no time to do much about my situation. The phone rang the next morning. It was my mother. She was so excited for me because I was going to Italy: her country. I told her how beat I was and how sick I was from last night. She said, “But, Lita, you are going to Italy. I’m going to order you an orange juice and some breakfast.” Before I could tell her no, she hung up. I called her back and said, “Mom, I can’t eat. I’ll just puke it up.” And then I threw up some more.

Six A.M. came around fast. I still had on my leather pants from the night before. The rest of my clothes were spread out all over my hotel room. Makeup everywhere. I wasn’t packed at all! Sharon sent over her assistant Lynne to help me. Every time I moved an inch I had to vomit. Lynne placed my stuff on the bellman’s trolley. I was still clutching the toilet bowl. “Lynne,” I said, “if I move, I’m going to puke.”

“So puke, then,” Lynne told me.

I asked her for something to puke in while I tried to get through the lobby. I knew I wouldn’t make it all the way to the car. She handed me a plastic bag. I made good use of it while I made my way to the car from the hotel room while they took care of the bill. I got in the cab and headed for the airport.

When we arrived at the airport in Germany, we had to check our bags, then get in a shuttle to take us to the gate. I was puking at every bathroom I could find. By now I was getting dehydrated and had the dry heaves, but I managed not to puke on the shuttle bus.

Of course when we got to the airplane, it was a small prop plane. Oh, fuck! Great. This wasn’t going to help. I sat at the very back, in the last seat so no one could see me, and grabbed a sick bag out of the seat-back pocket. I still had the dry heaves, and everyone was looking at me for the entire flight.

When we arrived in Florence, Italy, I got off the plane and went straight to the shuttle, which took us to the terminal. Sharon and Lynne went to baggage claim while I went to the bathroom. Again. When we got in the vehicle, I closed my eyes, held my guts, and managed not to puke all the way to the hotel. An accomplishment.

After arriving at the hotel, I was relieved but exhausted. Sharon knocked on the hotel door and said, “How are you now? Any better?”

“Fucking horrible.”

“Good. You’re shooting the cover of an Italian magazine. You’ve got an hour and a half, then a car is picking us up.”

What? Oh, dear God. Another car? Really?

“Okay, Sharon. I’ll be ready,” I promised. It’s not like I had a choice.

When we arrived at the photography studio, everyone was excited to see us. They directed me to the makeup artist as I sat there sipping a soda, trying to munch on a Quarter Pounder. The makeup artist made me look beautiful. Wow, I sure didn’t feel as good as I looked. They cranked some Aerosmith and I felt a whole lot better. I rocked out to the music while we shot the cover of this Italian magazine. The session was a success. It was a miracle.

After the photo shoot, I made my way to sound check for a show that night. No rest for the wicked. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see much of Florence outside of souvenir postcards. However, my mother had taught me to say “Good evening, Florence!” to the audience in Italian: “Buona sera, Firenze!” They went wild and we rocked them so hard. I was so beat-up but still kicked ass. Ah! The magical powers of a Quarter Pounder with cheese. Some things never change.

AT THE END of the European tour dates, there was a huge party. Jon had sixty-three people on his crew. I didn’t go, because I am not good at good-byes. I sent him a note that said: “There will always be a place for you in my heart. Lita xo.” Soon after that tour, Jon eventually married his girlfriend. I was really happy for them, and I wished them both well.

I flew home on Pan Am from London’s Heathrow airport. For some reason, there was a last-minute change and we switched gates. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. A limo picked me up at LAX. As soon as I walked in the door of my house I turned on the television and saw that a jumbo jet flying out of Heathrow headed to New York had gone down over Lockerbie, Scotland. Everyone was killed. The airplane had left from the very gate I was originally supposed to fly out of before the switch. Oh my God. That could have been my plane. I wondered if Jon or any of his crew were on that flight. (Thankfully they weren’t.) I dropped to my knees and began crying in horror.

COMING HOME FROM Europe after the Bon Jovi tour, I was so jet-lagged and my system was so out of whack that I decided to go to my mother’s house for a few days to get a home-cooked meal and some rest.

After a day of being home, I told my mother I had some stomach issues, probably due to jet lag.

“Mom, I can’t go to the bathroom.”

“Lita, what’s wrong with you?”

“I haven’t gone to the bathroom in three days and my stomach hurts.”

“Oh, Lita, I’m going to get you the castor oil,” she said in her Italian accent. “You’ll go tomorrow morning.”

I took the castor oil. Nothing. The entire day passed.

“Mom, the castor oil didn’t work.”

“Oh, Lita, we’ll get you the Ex-Lax.” I was on day five by this point.

I took the Ex-Lax, and nothing happened.

“Mom, nothing is happening. I have all of England, Ireland, and Germany in me and I feel awful.”

“Oh, Christ, Lita, we’re gonna have to get you a dynamite.”

So I went to the health-food store and got Smooth Move tea. I made it using four tea bags instead of one. It was really strong. The next day, still nothing.

“Mom, I need to go to the bathroom. I feel like I’m going to die. What am I going to do?”

I was in Long Beach and had a lunch-hour meeting in Hollywood. I was stuck in the midday rush-hour traffic on the 101, going two miles an hour in the fast lane, when I felt all of England drop into my lower intestines.

“Holy fuck! I’ve gotta shit and I’ve gotta shit now!”

I managed to pull off the freeway, and the only place I could find was a tiny little hotel. I went flying past the front desk yelling, “Where’s the bathroom?”

I get into the bathroom, and I’m shitting out all of Europe while holding my tampon string. All of a sudden, I notice there’s someone’s eye looking through the crack of the bathroom stall.

“Excuse me?”

“Excuse me, but are you the girl who sings ‘Kiss Me Deadly’?”

“Yes, I am. And if you wait for me in the lobby, I’ll give you whatever you want,” I said in a panic, my voice cracking.

“My daughter would love an autograph. She loves you.”

“Oh, how nice. I’ll be right out and give you an autograph.”

I sat in there for about ten to fifteen minutes and then walked out and gave her an autograph, but I felt like I carried the smell with me. God, the luxuries of touring.

Sharon threw us a beautiful party after we got back from the Bon Jovi tour. She had a gorgeous old house that was built in the 1800s with something like twenty-four rooms. She had a tent and hosted Bon Jovi, me, and our crews. They had drums and amps set up and we all jammed; Jon’s drummer, Tico Torres, got so drunk that he fell backward over the monitors and into the drum set. We all had such a great time.

PRIOR TO THE Bon Jovi tour, we were opening for Poison on their US tour in support of their album Open Up and Say . . . Ahh! I kept to myself on that tour and didn’t get too friendly with the guys in Poison because of the way they treated women back then. It scared me away, although the tour was awesome.

During the show, they would have one of the road crew pick women out of the audience, then after the gig they would herd them into a room backstage. The band would go into the room and take their pick of which woman they wanted to be with that night. The rest were offered to the road crew, for second pickings, or sent home. I hated this and didn’t want anything to do with these guys because of it. It was disgusting. The women probably thought they were going to a party, but they were just pieces of meat for the band and crew that one night. It was a game to them. It was degrading to women in general, and it was upsetting to me to see other women being treated like fucking cattle.

I never partied with them or went on their bus. Chris came with me to a few shows, so I mostly stuck with him and my band. The final stop of the tour was Dallas. On the last day of the tour, the headlining band often plays a prank on the other band. That night, right in the middle of my set, I saw something coming down from the rafters. I looked closer and saw it was my roadie and one of my best friends, Roger. He had been duct-taped to a chair and was hanging from the rafters. The crowd starting cheering. I began laughing even though I was really pissed. I kept right on playing. Then another roadie came down from the rafters. Poison’s crew started throwing pies at the band. Steve and Martin got hit, but Tommy managed to dodge every pie they threw at him. During “Kiss Me Deadly” they poured a huge bag of flour all over Charlie and his drum kit. He kicked his kit right over and dumped the whole rack forward. The crowd cheered louder. Poison was ruining our show. Then a male dancer comes out of nowhere and starts humping me; all of a sudden a bucket of whipped cream came down all over me. That was it. I was pissed off. These guys didn’t know me. They weren’t my friends. We didn’t hang out together. Who the fuck did they think they were?

I was using Bret Michaels’s wireless mic that night because mine wasn’t working. I held it in my hand, ready to throw it at something. I didn’t want to toss it into the audience in case it hit someone, so I sent it flying as hard as I could back over the drums. It struck the top of the backdrop curtain and came down onto the ground. The sound man couldn’t find it, because he wasn’t sure where I had thrown it, and all he could hear were people walking back and forth, because the mic was still on. Then I jumped forward off the stage and into the orchestra pit. I ran around to the side of the stage because the audience was gated. On the side stage I saw all of Poison’s keyboards lined up, polished and clean and ready to go onstage. This was thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment with all their backing tracks in them. I kicked them over one by one, sending them flying, destroying bits and pieces of their keys, and wiping out their backing tracks. Next I saw C.C. DeVille’s guitars all lined up, cleaned, and polished. “Tie up my road crew,” I mumbled under my breath. “Who do you think you are?” The Italian in me was coming out. I was fuming, my blood was boiling, and I was already pumped up from the show.

I made my way for C.C.’s guitars. I thought that if I kicked the first one, maybe it would trigger a domino effect and they would all fall over. I lifted my boot, ready to kick over the first guitar, when I felt two large arms being wrapped around me from behind. They were holding my arms down and picked me up so my feet weren’t touching the ground. It was Poison’s tour manager, a six-four dude. He carried me from stage left to stage right, where the buses were. On the way I managed to work one of my arms free. Just as we passed Bret I punched him in the jaw. “Fuck with me and my crew, Bret,” I yelled out. “Fuck you!”

The tour manager took me back to the bus where Chris was just waking up and didn’t have a clue as to what was going on. He saw that I was in a bad mood and he said, “What’s the matter with you? Did you get a little bit of whipped cream on you?” I slept on the bus that night, having nowhere to shower and no hotel where I could clean up. I did get some joy from the fact that Poison’s show was delayed by an hour and a half because of faulty backing tracks. The next morning Chris said, “Eww, you smell like sour cream.” No shit! Thanks.

TWO YEARS LATER I was leaving a recording studio in West Hollywood. In the dark, coming from the parking lot, I could see a familiar shadow walking toward me. As he got a little closer I realized it was Bret. I hadn’t seen him since that night in Texas. How was I going to handle this? I wasn’t about to turn around. Shit. We had to pass each other. As we got closer, I took a step sideways and stood in front of him. He looked down at the ground. I stuck out my hand and said, “No hard feelings?” He looked up at me, smiled, shook my hand, and said, “No hard feelings.” We both laughed and then went about our business. Years later, in 2012, we would tour together again, this time with Def Leppard.