CHAPTER 12

BLACK

Black, is it your medicine? Your soul, your hole, or the shape you’re in? Black, is it your wedding gown? Your eyes, your lies, or the truth you’ve found? —“BLACK” (WRITTEN BY LITA FORD AND MICHAEL DAN EHMIG)

SIX MONTHS AFTER MY DOG WAS KILLED, I WAS WALKING THROUGH THE Beverly Center Mall and I saw a little dachshund puppy in the window of a pet store. She seemed to call to me as I walked by. She looked exactly like Porky, but only a puppy version. I picked this dog up and she immediately started to gently chew on my diamond earrings. Porky used to do the same thing. Something so little made me so happy. I held this little puppy in my arms and asked the guy who worked there how much.

I negotiated with the guy at the store, and I began to cry as I handed him my American Express card. This dog was the beginning of a new life for me. I took the puppy home and named her Chili Dog because that is what Chris used to call Porky.

I’d had dachshunds since I was a child. My first wiener dog, Maxy, was bought for me by my parents as a birthday gift when I was four years old. From that point on, I always loved those little sausage dogs. Chili Dog was my constant companion. She went wave running with me, she went horseback riding with me, she went into the studio with me. She was my little buddy. I had guitar picks made with her on them. I had a beautiful Alvarez guitar that had an airbrushed photograph of her on it. It looked exactly like her. Chili later had four puppies and I kept one as a companion for her. I named him Pork Chop. All my dogs from that point on were named after food. The two pups went everywhere with me.

At this time I was working on writing songs for a new album and I was running every day to help me cope with the pain of losing my parents. After a year, I had a really toned body and a full album written. I was ready to go into the studio. When we started to record, my producer on the album, Tom Werman, would ask me each morning, “How far did you run today?” I was a totally different person from the girl who’d stepped into the music scene seventeen years before.

MY ALBUM DANGEROUS CURVES was released in November 1991. Dangerous Curves was a title that came from Sammy Hagar, who is one of my favorite people on this planet. Sammy had started to write a song called “Dangerous Curves,” which we were going to finish writing together. Sammy and I couldn’t coordinate a good time to complete the song, but he let me use the title for my album. I wrote “Shot of Poison” and “Playing with Fire” with Michael Dan Ehmig and Jim Vallance during a songwriting session that lasted a few days in Vancouver, British Columbia. Jim Vallance had picked me up at the airport dressed as a limo driver, holding up a sign that said RITA WARD. I saw the sign, but I was expecting Jim, not a limo. Since I didn’t know what he looked like, it definitely threw me for a loop. I loved Jim already. With a sense of humor like that, I thought, YEAH! I knew we were in for some great songs.

“Holy Man” was born when Michael Dan drove to my house one day and rang the doorbell. When I answered it, he stood there and sang, “Lead me / Into temptation / Save me with your healing hands . . .” The words had come to him while he was driving so he sang the line over and over until he got to my house. When I write with Michael, we always go on the “feel” of a song. If it’s working, great. If it’s not getting me to where I want to be, then we scrap it. I don’t like to have any “filler” on an album. Each song has to stand on its own, and if I’m not feeling it, I won’t bother finishing that song. “Holy Man” definitely worked. Just like all the other songs I’ve written with Michael, it was effortless once one of us had the initial idea for a lyric. As we worked on the album, we wrote all our ideas on masking tape and stuck them up on the door in the recording studio. When the album was finished, the door was covered with tape.

By this time, I weighed 111 pounds of pure muscle. I was ripped to shreds, which I proudly showed off in my “Shot of Poison” video. On a trip to Vegas, I heard that one of the Chippendales dancers was using my song “Cherry Red” in his routine. Naturally, I wanted to go see for myself, and I figured since he was using my song, I’d be able to get backstage. So off I went. I met Bernie Tavis, the guy who was using my song, and introduced myself. He was hot! All the guys backstage were hot! I quickly learned that Bernie was married, but he introduced me to his brother Jimmy. Jimmy was hot too! “Gee, you guys look alike!” I said. I ended up dating Jimmy, but I cast Bernie in my “Shot of Poison” video.

I thought “Playing with Fire” was one of my best videos and one of my finest songs. We had to climb up the Burbank Dam to film it. If you looked behind you, it was a thirty-foot drop to the bottom. The crew threw down this thin rubber mat and told us, “This is just in case you fall.” Right. Like a thin little mat was going to help you if you fell thirty feet! Some airplanes were trying to land at the nearby airport and radioed into the air traffic control tower in a panic because the “dam is on fire!” They managed to send someone out to the dam to see what was going on. “It’s just Lita Ford making a music video. That’s why the dam is on fire.” With that, they cleared the planes to land.

I was really happy with Dangerous Curves: both the album and the videos were great. But that happiness was short-lived. Bob Buziak, the former president of my label, BMG/RCA Records, had been replaced with Joe Galante, who was a big country music fan, but my impression was that he had no idea what to do with a female, platinum-selling, rock-and-roll artist. Bob Buziak had given me nothing but encouragement and everything I needed to succeed. He was a gem. A real rock dude. To this day I will never understand why they pushed him out of the company.

I knew I was in trouble, but I didn’t know how bad it was until I went out to get my mail one morning and found a letter from BMG/RCA records. I opened it expecting to find something nice, but instead I got a handwritten letter from the new president of the label. It read: “Lita, you are one kick-ass lady. I’m sorry to let you go.” What? I was dropped off the fucking label? I had the rug pulled out from under me once again. I had cleaned up, and physically I was in great shape. I was singing better than ever and playing guitar like a champ. I didn’t understand. What the fuck was wrong with this country music guy? It was a sign of the times—by 1991 rock was in a tough place, and country was the hot ticket, with artists like Garth Brooks selling millions of records and crossing over to dominate the pop charts. This was not good news for me.

I was sick to my stomach. The “Playing with Fire” video was supposed to have been sent to MTV, but it never made it off the label’s desk. The record company completely stopped moving forward with anything and everything. Basically, I had been shelved. Once that country-western jackass took over BMG/RCA, I no longer had the backing I needed to stay on top. When I physically showed up at BMG to find out what was going on, I learned that the staff who had worked on my records and supported me were all gone. The ones who were left wanted nothing to do with me. They were literally slamming the door in my face. Much to my surprise, I received an anonymous phone call from someone at the record label who tipped me off that “Shot of Poison” had been nominated for a Grammy for best female rock vocal performance. I attended the Grammys alone that year, which was such a horrible feeling. Unbelievable. Thanks, Joe Galante!

JUST AFTER “Shot of Poison” made some waves, I got the opportunity to guest star on the TV show Herman’s Head. They gave me a script for one episode, which was about one week of work. Shooting started early in the morning, and for a rocker, that was unheard of. Full hair and makeup and then you had to be ready to deliver your lines. After the show’s taping was done, I went out with the girls from the cast and crew for some wine. At that point in my life, I wasn’t a drinker anymore, so the two glasses of wine I had went straight to my head. I stopped at Jack in the Box and ordered a coffee. I downed the coffee and started driving home in my 1990 black on black Corvette. I was speeding and swerving, listening to Van Halen in the CD player, when I looked in my rearview mirror and saw a cop behind me. I pulled over thinking, Oh my God, I’m going to get a DUI! The officer walked over to my car and I rolled down my window, batting my eyelashes. He flashed his light at my coffee cup and said, “Have you been drinking?”

“No, I don’t drink.”

“What’s in the cup?”

“Coffee.” I showed him the cup.

“Do you realize you were speeding and swerving?”

Oh. “I had Van Halen’s ‘Poundcake’ in the CD player. I’m so sorry.”

“Okay. I totally understand.”

And he let me go. Just like that.

I WAS DOING some press in Detroit in April 1992 when the officers who beat Rodney King after a high-speed chase in 1991 were acquitted in their trial; we all had seen the infamous video of King’s beating by then. The acquittals set off a wave of riots in LA. All of Los Angeles County was being looted, stores were being burglarized, and people were beating each other to death. It was a full-on war zone. I was watching the TV, and I was almost in denial about what I was seeing. The violence and mayhem seemed to be getting worse by the minute. And I was about to fly into the heart of that hell the very next morning.

The plane got closer to LA and the pilot came on the loudspeaker and warned us all to get in our cars and go straight home once we landed. As we descended into LAX, I looked out the window and saw that many buildings across different areas of the city were on fire. The plane almost landed at Ontario airport, more than fifty miles outside of LA, but LAX gave the okay for our flight to land. We were the last ones allowed to land there that night. Then they closed the airport. They closed the city!

I had a driver pick me up from LAX, and as we started to drive toward Hollywood, I noticed that all the streets were completely empty. The driver explained to me that the streets were closed, and if anyone was out past six P.M., they would go to jail for breaking the curfew. It was like we were driving through a ghost town. It was a spooky feeling. I had never seen Los Angeles like this. It’s always crowded, but that day it was completely desolate. We drove up the foothills to where I lived. I was really freaking out because I lived alone, but I was starving and had no food in the house. There was a grocery store two blocks down the hill. Much to my surprise, it was open—but also completely empty of people. I grabbed some food and quickly went back home up in the hill. From there I could see the entire city, and it was still burning in places and completely deserted in others. A few days later city officials lifted the curfew and people slowly trickled out of their houses. It was a weird, edgy time to be living in LA. Everything seemed to be falling apart.

DURING A SHOW for Dick Clark, I met Clarence Clemons, Bruce Springsteen’s legendary sax player. He was putting together a house band for Howie Mandel’s new talk show, and he asked me if I wanted to be in it. I was hired to play in the band for every taping of the show, which was done over the course of six weeks starting in July 1992. I wore high heels and tight leather clothes every day and ran up and down through the audience. The contrast and chemistry between me and Clarence was hot! It was sexy and electrifying. I had the time of my life filming Howie Mandel’s show with the late, great Clarence Clemons.

We stayed in Anaheim during the filming of the show. One morning, we were awakened by a huge earthquake. It shook the Anaheim Hilton like a fucking tree. It flipped me out of bed and knocked out the electricity. Man, I thought, I’m dead for sure! My life flashed before my eyes. I crawled to the front door as it swung back and forth. I stood up, holding the edges of the doorway. I watched families running down the fire-escape stairs. An automated lighting system came on and gave a little light, enough for me to be able to walk down the hall to Clarence’s room.

Clarence stood way taller than me, so next to me he was kinda like Darth Vader. I was running down the hallway, yelling, “Clarence, we’re gonna die! We’re gonna die!” I was hysterical. Clarence was holding a cognac in his hand looking completely calm. He asked me if I would like one. “Fuck yeah, pour me one of those,” I said in a panic. I was speaking ninety miles an hour because I was freaked out. We were on the unlucky thirteenth floor; the damn hotel was rocking and rolling, literally. Apparently the Disney Hotel, which was next to us, cracked in half.

Clarence came back and said, “Come inside and stop worrying. This is nothing. I’ve been in way bigger earthquakes than this; I lived in the Bay Area for a long time. Here’s your drink.” I downed it. Keep in mind it’s still only five A.M. We had to perform to a huge studio audience later. “Clarence,” I said, “all these tremors, we have to blow off the show! What if the building caves in and kills all the people?” I was worried because the Celebrity Theatre was in the shape of a dome.

Clarence put his hand on my shoulder and said, in a thick southern-style accent: “Lita, when it’s yo’ time, it’s yo’ time. If it ain’t yo’ time, it ain’t yo’ time!” Huh? Oh! Yeah, that makes total sense, Clarence. It ain’t our time?

Later that day we had to go get ready and leave for the venue to tape the TV show. In the elevator on the way down, I was standing there with Clarence and Howie Mandel. There were still aftershocks from the quake. I was still screaming “We’re gonna die!,” trying to convince Howie not to do the show. I explained about the building caving in on all the people in the audience. Howie said, “Lita, do you want me to slap you?” I stopped and thought to myself, Shit, I must be overreacting! We did do the show that night. The aftershocks stopped as soon as we started to play.

WHEN JENNIFER BATTEN quit Michael Jackson’s band during the Dangerous tour in 1993, I got a phone call from Michael’s people right away. Who else would they have called? Ha! I went to get the songs they wanted me to learn. I needed to learn the solo to “Beat It,” so I called Edward Van Halen, who originally played it for the recorded version, and asked him to show me exactly how he played it. When I went over to Edward’s studio, he gave me a red signature Music Man guitar that played like a dream. I decided to drop-tune the guitar two whole steps—down to C—and it made the song sound so ferocious. It was fun to play it like that. When I played it for Michael’s band, they were floored. They loved the hard, heavy vibe I had given the riff. Even though I knew Michael wouldn’t have gone for it, the band loved it and we had a blast.

I needed to learn the rest of the show too, and I had to get the tapes from Michael’s musical director to do so. The musical director lived on Lookout Mountain, filled with tight, winding roads. On the way to his house, a car coming in the opposite direction slammed into my Corvette. It was a head-on collision, similar to the one I had years ago coming from Blackmore’s house. My car was a mess and barely drivable. After calling the police, my tech and I drove over to pick up the tapes from the musical director. When we got there and knocked on the door, no one answered. I knocked and rang the doorbell over and over, but no one came. Finally, my tech walked over to the back of the property and basically opened the door and found the musical director asleep in his bedroom. I don’t know what he said to him, but we got the tapes pretty quickly after that. There wasn’t much time to learn the show, and I wanted to get it perfect before we left to go on tour. In the weeks that followed, I had stage clothes made and received the tour itinerary from Michael’s people.

About six weeks into rehearsals, I went to a nightclub and mentioned to someone that I was playing for Michael Jackson, and they said, “No, some girl named Becky is playing for Michael Jackson.” I laughed it off and said, “Yeah, right.”

The next day, I showed up at SIR rehearsal studios, and they told me I wasn’t allowed in. They blocked the door like security guards and wouldn’t let me or my tech in. I was pissed. I put my ear up against the door and I could hear the other guitar player. I asked one of the guys, “What kind of guitar is she playing?” “A Strat.” A Strat? Wouldn’t it have been easier to just call me and tell me, instead of making me find out about being replaced on the street? My manager called the musical director and reamed him out. “Why did you do that to her? Couldn’t you have just picked up the phone and let her know?”

About four days later, I got a call from Michael’s longtime guitar player, Dave Williams. He told me that Michael didn’t want me in the band because I had too much credibility and had my own name in the industry. I told Dave I respected him for his honesty and thanked him. “Please, Lita, don’t say anything,” he said. “I’ll lose my job.” I gave him my word that I wouldn’t say anything. Bam magazine, an LA industry paper, later wrote an article that claimed I had auditioned for Michael Jackson and “failed miserably.” The bullshit never ends.

BY NOW I was getting pretty tired of the games of the music industry and almost wanted to quit. I thought about getting a lead singer and kicking back and just playing guitar like I had originally tried to do when I went solo. Playing in someone else’s band appealed to me because it meant I could focus on my guitar playing without having to deal with the pressures that come with being the lead singer. I pondered my options for a while, trying different ideas, talking to labels and different management companies. I even called John Kalodner, who had his success with Aerosmith. He gave me $13,000 to put on a showcase for him. I had found a lead singer and put together a band. We wrote songs and we were great, I thought, but John said to me that the lead singer was not the star I was. “So sign me,” I said to him. But he said, “No. I don’t know what to do with you.” I thought he didn’t know what to do with a woman. The great John Kalodner didn’t know what the fuck to do with me, either. At least he was honest and didn’t give me the runaround.

I was offered a deal with Atlantic Records. But I turned it down because the only one who really believed in me at Atlantic was their A&R guy, but he was at the bottom of the food chain over there, so the president could overrule him in a hot second. I felt like it was a “Let’s throw her against the wall and see if she sticks” kinda thing. Fuck that. I walked. I wasn’t going to be shelved again.

Instead I decided to go with a little label called ZYX that believed in me wholeheartedly. There were definite drawbacks to going with a smaller label. I knew I was in trouble commercially either way we sliced it. Rock had completely changed to make way for the grunge era, which I didn’t fit into at all. Everyone had started to look like they crawled out from under a fucking boulder. Either that or they had no look at all—bland, slickly produced “adult contemporary” schlock with zero edge dominated the charts. Rock stars were dropping off the face of the planet like dinosaurs. In 1993, for instance, not one rock act would be represented in the top twenty of Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 Singles. I made a decision to give the music scene one last chance. I decided that if I was going to go down, I would go down swinging.

After I left Sharon, I had signed with the agency Gold Mountain. They also managed Nirvana, and most of their attention went to Kurt Cobain and his wife, Courtney Love. According to news reports at the time, Courtney, who was then pregnant, was alleged to be shooting heroin, and child welfare services in California launched an investigation. Kurt was also doing so much heroin; between the two of them, they were a handful and dominated almost all of Gold Mountain’s bandwidth. There was no place for me; meanwhile I was running out of money. I was in a dark, depressed place. But I was determined I would write one more album before I hung it all up. It would be called Black, because that was my state of mind.

A FEW MONTHS before I decided to walk away from the music scene, the Northridge earthquake hit the San Fernando Valley in January 1994. It was one of the most devastating and costly natural disasters in US history, racking up more than $65 billion in damage. It was about four thirty in the morning when it struck, and I did what I always did when an earthquake hit: grabbed my .357 revolver, my bottle of Absolut vodka out of the freezer, and my dogs. The revolver was for the looters, the vodka for my nerves. I remember sitting at the breakfast nook in the kitchen. I had the front door open and all of a sudden I saw a giant flashlight coming down the walkway. It was my friend Gavin. He had driven from North Hollywood up into the area where I lived. I couldn’t believe he had driven that far because some of the freeways had collapsed. He brought in a little radio that ran off batteries, and I was so glad to see him. I was just sitting there with my dogs, Gavin’s dog—who I was babysitting—my revolver, and my Absolut. My house was one of the few that wasn’t damaged because it wasn’t in the Valley, where the earthquake had hit the hardest. Many of my friends ended up staying at my house and brought their dogs, their kids, everybody. I was handing out sleeping bags and pillows.

AUTHOR’S NOTE ON WHAT FOLLOWS: Out of respect for my children, I have chosen not to write in detail about their father, my husband of almost eighteen years. It was a very difficult decision. There is much the world needs to hear. But now is not the time. Thank you for your understanding as you read forward.

The period that followed was one of the worst times of my life, both emotionally and careerwise. To make matters infinitely worse, I met a man whose name I refuse to mention because of the awful memories I will always associate with the seventeen years he was a part of my life. I sometimes get asked, “How did you meet someone and marry them after knowing them for only two weeks?” The answer is not a simple one, but the consequences were life-changing.

I went to Texas to do a few gigs before heading into the studio to record what would be my last album before taking a fifteen-year hiatus from the music industry. I was with a friend, and we went to catch a local band. They weren’t bad. The place was packed. I was standing on the side of the stage, all dressed up, when I felt somebody poke me on my shoulder. I turned around, thinking it might be a friend or someone who needed to get past me. I saw a cute stranger standing there. I turned back to watch the band. He poked me again. I turned around again. This time he introduced himself.

“Hi, I’m Lita,” I replied.

“I know,” he said.

Two weeks later, I was married to this guy. After a horrible few years—with my parents’ deaths, then changes in staff at BMG destroying the success it took me decades to build, then the disruption of the hard-rock market—I was left without music and without family. I was all alone. I was extremely vulnerable.

My dream wedding was to be married in Rome surrounded by my Italian relatives, the warmest, most wonderful people I had ever met in my life. Instead, I got hitched by a Texas justice of the peace. I was wearing an old, torn-up pair of jeans and no makeup and hadn’t even had a shower. Nobody else was there, just my new husband, me, a little old judicial officer, and his wife.

We were married in May, on Friday the thirteenth.

We went to Denny’s for breakfast right after we were married, and we drove back to our hotel room in a truck littered with beer bottles and soda cans that we had borrowed from one of the workers at the Chicken Ranch, a local tittie bar. I had just gotten married in bum-fuck Texas to a man I hardly knew.

I was thinking, What the hell did I just do? Why did I marry this guy? I don’t even love him!

I called some people with the news. None of my friends even knew I was seeing anyone. I rang my manager and told him. “What? Who did you marry?” he asked, puzzled. It was a great question. I quickly came to realize I had no idea who this guy was.

What had I done?

BACK IN CALIFORNIA, I looked into having the marriage annulled; I called the justice of the peace. It would have meant flying back to Texas to take care of the paperwork, though, and I was already in the studio recording Black. The musicians I had hired were there, on the clock. Michael Dan Ehmig was staying at my house, and I had booked and paid for studio time. Not to mention that I knew this might be the last album I would ever record, and I wanted to make it great. I couldn’t leave. The annulment idea slipped away.

Still, something inside me was not happy.

I sought Michael Dan out to get his feedback and opinion. I needed some reassurance from someone whom I truly trusted. Michael has a way of finding the beauty in anything and everything. He would always tell me he loved me like a sister. I said to Michael, “I don’t know, something doesn’t seem quite right, but I can’t put my finger on it.” He replied with “Yeah . . .” in a slow, southern drawl. Michael later told me he felt the same thing I did but didn’t want to say it.

AFTER DEALING WITH so much bullshit while trying to make the album, the grunge scene pushing heavy metal out the door, and dealing with the pressures of being married, ZYX released Black in early 1995. Their slogan was: “Lita Ford is back, and she’s black.” REALLY?!? What the fuck is that? That’s when I knew it was time to hang it up. I was not happy with the album that was released. The demos I had recorded were fucking awesome, but the record company insisted on using the Robb Brothers as the producers, because they owned Cherokee Studios. They mutilated my songs by rerecording all the demos. Even Michael Dan was devastated when he heard what they had done to my songs. “You should just produce yourself, Lita. You know exactly what it should sound like and you’re so good at it,” said Michael. That was it. I quit. Black was the end of the road for me. I didn’t even recognize the music industry anymore, and I thought no matter what I did at that point, it would have been a losing battle. I was so beaten down and so exhausted. I didn’t have it in me to fight for my career and try to get a divorce, so I decided to be a loyal and faithful wife. It would be the most disastrous decision of my life.

Looking back, it’s eerie to reread the lyrics to the title track of the album I was recording: Black / Is it what you hate / the hangman’s hood or the offering plate / Black / is it nightmare or dream is it midnight sky or silent scream / Black / is it all you see when you close your eyes and you think of me / Black / Black / Black.

The next decade and a half of my life would be a nightmare, a silent scream. I withdrew from the music industry and faded to black.