CHAPTER 15

LIVING LIKE A RUNAWAY

Run baby run. —“LIVING LIKE A RUNAWAY” (WRITTEN BY LITA FORD AND MICHAEL DAN EHMIG)

EVERY NIGHT I WOULD GOOGLE “LITA FORD” ON MY LAPTOP, SITTING AT the office chair. I would look at my old videos and listen to my old interviews, trying to recover my identity. Whoever that person was, “Lita Ford,” I missed her. I wanted her back! I would see clothes I used to wear, people I used to know, things I used to do, guitars I used to play, things that made me remember who I was. A Grammy-nominated artist. I would sit there deep into the night, transfixed by old videos. I hadn’t been that person in such a long time. Each night I studied images on the Internet, and I slowly started to remember who I was.

After the divorce was final, I moved back to California because I consider it my home. My parents are buried there, my aunts, uncles, and cousins live there, and it’s where I started my career. LA had changed so much over the years that I had no idea where to look for a home. I was shell-shocked. I got a place in a temporary housing complex back at the good ol’ Oakwoods and decided I would stay there until the tour for the album started. One night in my apartment in LA, I was on the phone with Michael Dan. I explained my living situation to him and he said, “Lita, you are living like a runaway.” With that we had an album title: Living Like a Runaway.

When people ask me, “Lita, what really happened those fifteen years you were gone from the music scene?,” I tell them to listen to Living Like a Runaway. The songs tell the story of my life during those painful, isolated, horrible years, but they also tell the story of how I survived some of the most tragic events of my life.

I WROTE A song on the new album called “Mother” for my kids. It’s dedicated to them. Their photograph is on the record beside the lyrics. When I first brought the idea to Gary, I knew it could come out one of two ways—really great or really cheesy. We tried it, and it turned out beautiful! We got tears of approval from Nicole, and we knew we had stumbled across something special. When I played that solo, it would be the same heartrending emotions I had when I played the solo for “Lisa.” Gary stayed up late adding some beautiful little subtleties. All those years later, it was as if I had come full circle from “Lisa.” I wrote a song about my mother, and now I had written a song for my own children, as their mother.

The song explains parental alienation because I want my boys to know what happened. Pouring the pain from losing my boys into my new record wasn’t enough. I’ve found that there are so many people all over the world who are going through parental alienation. In every country, in every state we are being ripped off, and the legal system is using our children to do so. It’s become one of the main causes I have dedicated my time to, not just for me and my boys but for all the mothers and fathers out there who have experienced it. My heart goes out to all parents and children who have had to suffer this pain beyond measure. It’s one of the reasons I made the video for “Mother.” The fact that most of our legal system, family law, judges, politicians, and so on allow it to happen is absolutely gross. In my opinion, they are the true criminals who should be put in jail for allowing parental alienation to happen in our family law systems. I take comfort in the fact that truth always prevails in the end, and one day my boys will come find me.

In the meantime, I will never stop fighting for them.

To my sons, James and Rocco: I want you to know I’ve tried calling you, texting you, writing you letters, sending messages on Facebook and to your martial-arts schools, and using any other form of communication possible to reach you. Every message seems to have been intercepted. You are the true loves of my life.

I BELIEVE ANGELS helped me through the difficult period when I was writing Living Like a Runaway. Like the time a handwritten note my mother wrote before she died fell out of a box of old magazines that had been sent to me from the islands. It was written on an old Sheraton Hotel notepad. It must have been from a tour we were on in the 1980s. It read: “I shall love you always, Mother.” That note is at the end of the “Mother” video. I decided to just leave everything in God’s hands, because I trusted he would always work out the situation. My managers knew it, Michael Dan knew it, and Gary knew it. After escaping such a hell, angels were watching over me.

I was still with Morey Management, and Bobby Collin had gotten me a licensing deal with SPV Records, which was the best I could do at the time given how much Wicked Wonderland had diminished my credibility in the industry. My management helped me put together a team of people, including business managers and a booking agency that landed me a spot on the Rock of Ages tour opening for my old buddies Def Leppard and for Poison. It was a godsend.

Living Like a Runaway was released the day before the tour started. The response was amazing. Loudwire.com hit the nail on the head: “The deeply personal album shows [Lita Ford] at her most vulnerable and honest point as an artist.” My hometown paper, the Los Angeles Times, wrote, “After 11 years of semi-exile on a Caribbean island and a harrowing divorce, and just in time for ’80s-metal nostalgia and Runaways revivalism, the mother of all metal is back”; “much of Living Like a Runaway is about what Ford went through. That channeling of energy gives the album a powerful visceral charge.” Guitar World hailed Living Like a Runaway as “one of the best rock albums of the year” and recognized it as my “true comeback album,” in a dig at Wicked Wonderland. Many other reviewers noted the contrast to my previous record. Rolling Stone wrote: “2009’s nü metal-inspired Wicked Wonderland left many of [Lita Ford’s] hardcore fans befuddled. So the former Runaways guitarist recorded an album much more in line with her earlier efforts.” “Ford strips away some of the conceptual and electronic mayhem that made the last album so confusing,” wrote All Music, concluding, “fans will be relieved and thrilled to hear her return to form.” Nobody was more relieved or thrilled than I was—and the fans couldn’t have been more amazing on that tour.

I hired Mitch Perry to play guitar and Marty O’Brien to play bass. I had known Mitch for years—he was like a brother—but I had never met Marty. I did some research on Marty and really, really liked him as a person. Plus, he was a badass bass player. My drummer was later replaced by the great Bobby Rock. We sounded like rolling thunder.

Salt Lake City was our first show, and we went to play before ecstatic sold-out crowds in forty cities. Seeing the fans, my family, and my musician friends again was such a beautiful feeling and also helped me to remember who I am. It was like I had just woken up from a bad dream. People I hadn’t talked to in years or had been kept from talking to: my former keyboard player, my ex-boyfriend, some old friends and family. Now I have a lot of these people back in my life, and it’s wonderful. I found out a few had passed away, which was sickening to hear, because at the time of their deaths I was not able to show affection or share memories. I had to bury my feelings. But not anymore.

The tour lasted four months, and it gave me the strength and the confidence to know that I could rise again. Things were looking good for me career-wise, but just like when my father died, I felt like I was trading something really bad happening in my life for something really great.

ON ONE OF our days off during the Def Leppard–Poison tour, we decided to play a little club in San Antonio, Texas. I had a powerful band that was extremely loud and ballsy, but I couldn’t hear my vocals over the band because there were no floor wedges in the monitor system, and we were not on in-ears. I had a fever and a sore throat that night and thought, I can’t scream over my band. I started pacing across the stage. Back and forth, back and forth. I was so mad I thought about throwing my Marshall amp head across the stage. Instead I jumped off the front of the stage and started walking through the audience. I didn’t really know where I was going, I just knew that I had to get to a place in the room where I could hear my vocals. As I was pushing my way through the crowd, all of a sudden I bumped into the bar. It was covered with everyone’s drinks, so I swept my arm across the bar, pushing everyone’s drinks to the floor and clearing a space for me to jump up and stand on it. My sound man at the time, Tom, looked at me and smiled and gave me the nod of approval to go ahead. Awesome! Dugie, my tech, grabbed my mic stand, my set list, and my guitar off the stage and brought them over to me. I strapped on my guitar and looked down at the bartender and ordered a vodka on the rocks. At that point I was standing across the room from my band, who were still onstage. I finished the entire show standing on the bar. Not bad! After the show, Dugie said to me, “Well, there’s one for the books.” One of the many adventures of coming back into the music industry, I guess. The audience loved it.

AS THE END of the tour’s celebration with Def Leppard and Poison, I broke down and drank some Irish whiskey with Joe Elliott. Their band and crew have a game you play where you take a rinse-and-spit paper cup, fill it with Irish whiskey, drink a shot, throw the cup in the air, then watch it drop. If it lands upside down you have to drink another shot. If it lands right side up, you are done and win the game. Well, I remember our guitarist, Mitch Perry, walking into the room and saying, “When I was in here a few minutes ago there were only two cups on the floor. Now there’s eighteen.” Ah, yeah, Mitch. Jeez. I hadn’t noticed.

Anyway. I gave Joe a hug good-bye and made my way to my dressing room, where I said my good-byes to Rick Allen. What a wonderful man he is. Rick and the entire crew: Phil, his wife, Helen—they were such wonderful human beings as well as insanely great musicians. The real deal, no doubt.

I started walking back to my bus to ride eight hours home. It’s a good thing I left when I did, because the whiskey was creeping up on me. I climbed into the bus, went into the restroom, and sat on the toilet. All of a sudden the bus began to move, and so did my head. My manager, Bobby, said to me, “Are you okay? Can I get you anything?” I said, “Ah, yeah! Stop this bus from moving!” Oh, no. I hadn’t had that much to drink in years. I was in for the night of my life.

I started vomiting, trying to aim in the toilet and not spill any on my leather pants. I was able to get them off, in this little cramped bathroom on the bus, and Bobby handed me a trash can to throw up in. Every ten to fifteen minutes or so my manager would get the trash can and dump it out the bus door as we were moving down the freeway. I puked in between emptying buckets and I puked between my legs into the toilet while I sat on it. Just like in the old days. Things seemed to be completely back to normal.

The next morning I called Joe Elliott and told him I woke up in someone’s bunk. Joe said, “Really, no shit. I woke up at six o’clock this morning facedown in the front lounge of the bus.” If you know Joe Elliott, he never, ever hangs out in the front lounge: he always took the back lounge for himself. He said he didn’t know where he was. I told Joe it took me thirty minutes to figure out whose bunk I was in. Then I looked out and saw, in perfect order, a bottle of water, a trash can for puking, a box of tissues, a Sprite, a ginger ale, and a wet towel, neatly folded. I finally realized I was in my own bunk and that Bobby had laid everything out in the utmost order. Bobby saved my life that night. Everyone else went to bed and left me alone. Bobby treated me like I was his daughter, which meant the world to me. How he emptied those trash cans full of Irish whiskey vomit was beyond me, but he did. That’s a real brave manager. I was grateful for the help. However, poor Joe had to play a show that night in Santa Barbara, California. I don’t know how he did it. I bet he was in great pain.

BOBBY HAD CALLED Kenny Laguna to arrange a dinner for Joan Jett and me. I had been in and out of the Long Island, New York, area so many times and was never able to hook up with Joan. Bad timing, I guess. Despite our rocky road, I was excited to see her. When I arrived in New York City, I called her and said, “I’m here!”

Joan said, “I’ll meet you around the corner.” She had picked a little Italian place.

“Call me when you’re ten minutes out and I’ll walk over.”

“Okay.”

I hung up and started to get cleaned up after a long five-hour flight. Forty-five minutes later, the phone rang.

“We’re about ten minutes out. We’ll see you in ten.”

I said, “ ‘We’? Who is ‘we’?”

Joan and Kenny, of course.

I choked. Really. Kenny? I thought, Oh shit—couldn’t she go anywhere without Kenny? I would never take Bobby to a girls’-night-out dinner, nor would Bobby want to go with me. Bobby was a little perturbed that Kenny was there and he was in LA. Either way, I needed a date ASAP!

I went downstairs to the lobby where the guys were rolling in from Los Angeles for David Fishof’s Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp event. I saw my dear friend Rudy Sarzo just arriving. I went up behind him and said, “Rudy!” He jumped out of his skin.

I said, “I’m so sorry. What are you doing?”

“Nothing, why?”

“I need your help.”

“Okay. For what?”

I told him I was stuck for a date, that Joan was coming to meet me for dinner in ten minutes, that she was bringing Kenny with her, and that I needed him to be my date for the night.

“Oh, cool. Yeah, no problem. Let me go upstairs and clean up, drop off my bass and luggage, and I’ll be right down.”

“Okay. Hurry up,” I said.

“Don’t worry, I will.”

Sure enough, thank God for Rudy. He was the perfect date.

It was perfect timing for a Runaways reunion. Unfortunately, Sandy had lost her battle with lung cancer and passed away in 2006. We all missed her and knew that it would be next to impossible to replace such an awesome drummer and a huge part of what made up the Runaways. But thankfully the rest of us were still capable of kicking ass. I wanted to ask Joan, “Why don’t we get the Runaways back together? NOW!” I had e-mailed Joan that very question a month prior to this dinner, but she didn’t acknowledge my e-mail, nor did she bring it up at all during dinner. She completely ignored my Runaways question, which blew my mind. I couldn’t raise it in front of Kenny because it was about the girls in the band. Not him. It was supposed to be our decision, not Kenny’s. The only problem was that now, the timing was ideal. Not 1999. Now! Timing is everything. It was one of those things where it’s now or never. Fans were asking for the Runaways. Demanding the Runaways!

As I was saying good-bye to Joan, she reached into her pocket and took out a Sharkfin guitar pick that said JOAN JETT on it. She said, “Do you remember these?” Those were the picks I used in the Runaways, before I received the home plate pick from Ritchie Blackmore. I had turned Joan on to Sharkfin picks in the early Runaways days. “I still use them,” she said. That warmed my heart a bit. She never mentioned the Runaways that night. And I felt that, with Kenny sitting there, it was impossible to talk. Still, it was good to see Joan. It only took thirty years.

She drove off with Kenny, and I went into the hotel with Rudy. Rudy was a total gentleman, and I thanked him. He knew what was going down and had tried to help as best he could. We said good night, then went to our separate rooms to get ready for the camp the next day in NYC.

IN THE MONTHS that followed, I spoke to Joan a couple more times. She still didn’t bring up the Runaways. One time she e-mailed me Cherie’s contact information. Cherie had asked Joan to give it to me. So I decided to call Cherie.

“Liiiiiii-taaaaa!” she screamed when she answered the phone. That put a huge smile on my face. We ended up having dinner together, and we talked about our ex-husbands and our children. I told her about my ordeal with the boys. I recall being shocked and upset when Cherie said, “Well, Lita, maybe you were just meant to suffer in life!” What a horrible thing to say to someone! I said, “Cherie, can you imagine if your ex took your kids away?”

She said, “Oh no! I’d curl up and die!”

Cherie’s son is a handsome and talented redhead. She and her ex-husband are best friends. “I wish me and my ex could be like that,” I said to Cherie. “You are so lucky. You have your son too. You don’t realize how lucky you are.”

She said, “Yes, I do. I count my blessings every day.” That night, I realized Cherie and I had never really gotten to know each other while we were in the Runaways. Kim had put together the band with five teenage girls who didn’t know one another. It was like going to class in a school with girls you don’t know: not everyone in the classroom gets along with each other. Cherie and I are very different people. But Cherie and I did a couple of photo sessions together, and we sang a Christmas song together.

WHEN YOU FLY as often as I do, you’re bound to have run-ins with airport security. We must have about thirty of the TSA’s “Notice of Baggage Inspection” flyers in each guitar case. These are the calling cards they leave in your luggage to let you know they’ve rummaged through your stuff. My tech Dugie lays them down on the guitar, so when the TSA person opens the case, they know we’re wise to them. Once, Dugie opened a case and there was a note from the TSA saying, “I suppose you think this is funny.” Yeah, actually it is! I’ve got a long-running grudge against the TSA because they snapped the headstock off my red Warlock. Dugie was the one who had to break the news to me. Needless to say, I was upset that they had broken one of my prized possessions.

We were coming back from Sturgis after our show in 2013. That weekend 750,000 bikers had come through town, and ninety bands played. There were people selling stuff everywhere: souvenirs, handmade items, you name it. There were people running around naked. Little old men wearing nothing but a cock ring. Later that night, I came by again and those same old men were wearing hoodies. Little old men in hoodies and cock rings. A great combo.

I met one man who was selling all kinds of items out of his van on the side of the road. He showed me some switchblades. They were so badass! I bought one and he wrapped it up for me. I got to my hotel and threw it into my makeup bag. I put my huge makeup bag into the suitcase I was checking and flew back to LA. I got home, unpacked my stuff, and forgot about the switchblade.

A couple of days later we left for yet another show and this time I threw my makeup bag in my carry-on. We got to LAX and I put my purse through the metal detector. The lady working the conveyor belt called a police officer over. I thought I had left a bottle of water in my purse.

“I left water in there, didn’t I?”

“No, ma’am.”

They called a couple more officers over. There were about five after all was said and done. I thought, Boy, I sure have a lot of police officer fans here at LAX.

My tour manager was asking what was going on but was being kept away from me. When I saw him panic, I knew then that something was wrong.

“What is it? What did I do?”

“Do you realize you have a switchblade in your purse?”

Oh fuck, the switchblade! I had forgotten all about it. It was still in the box.

I explained that I had been playing at Sturgis, the biker festival, that I was a rock musician, and that I had forgotten I’d thrown it into my makeup bag.

Another officer came over and said, “I need your driver’s license. I’m going to run your license and if ANYTHING AT ALL comes up, you’re going straight to jail.”

“Fine, run it.”

I knew it was going to come up clean so I wasn’t worried. The officer came back and said, “I ran it, it’s clean. I’m going to write you up for a misdemeanor.”

I was trying to further explain myself, and the officer shoved the ticket in my face and said, “Explain it to the judge on your court date.” I put my tail between my legs and wandered off with our tour manager to board the plane.

My business manager had to hire a criminal defense attorney to make sure this switchblade incident didn’t turn into something bigger than it was, because they could have put me on a no-fly list and sunk my ability to tour. The day I was scheduled to appear in court I got stuck in LA rush-hour traffic. Great. I called my attorney who was close to the courthouse and asked her to show up in my absence. Before I knew it, the judge was on the phone. He had apparently googled me, and said, “I looked you up, I see what you do, I know who you are, I get it.” Whew! What a cool dude! The charge was dropped. Another travel story that ended up a lot better than it could have. I’m convinced I have angels watching over me every day of my life.

CHRISTMAS 2013 ROLLED around, and to keep myself from going crazy without my sons, James and Rocco, in my life, I wrote and recorded a Christmas single with my dear friend Rodger Carter. Rodger played drums, and we recorded it at his studio, the Dog House. Cherie would end up singing the song with me as a duet. I said to her, “This is a song that will come out and be played every year.” Cherie and I are just becoming comfortable around each other again. But we had a blast in the studio together, laughing a lot. What a big difference from our Runaways studio sessions. My dear friend Gene Kirkland took pictures while we recorded.

Shortly after the Christmas single was released, I found out that I was going to be receiving Guitar Player magazine’s Certified Guitar Legend Award. I was so happy. I heard I had won the award when I was on tour and on my way to South America. I couldn’t wait to get back to accept it.

This was something I’d waited almost an entire lifetime to achieve: to be recognized for my abilities as a guitarist. I had traveled a long, hard road to hear such praise from an awesome but male-dominated guitar-slinging magazine. Mike Molenda from Guitar Player had acknowledged the work I had done through the years, and also the fact that I’m still standing tall after four decades in the industry. Mike and Cherie Currie presented me with the award at the Sunset Strip’s Whisky A Go Go on March 24, 2014, at a benefit show for multiple sclerosis. Although an MS benefit wasn’t the first place I would have chosen to accept the award, it was still one of the highlights of my life. Thank you, Mike Molenda and Guitar Player magazine, for making my year and my life complete. It’s something I will take to my grave, when it’s “my time.”

CHERIE ASKED ME to go along with her and her son, Jake, to visit Kim Fowley, who had been diagnosed with cancer. Kim had written four songs for Cherie and was too weak to travel outside of his home. When he saw me, Kim said, “You look like your mother.” If you knew my mother, that was a compliment.

I said, “Thank you. She was a lovely lady.”

“Yes, she was,” Kim said, remembering that my mother had died from cancer. Kim wrote some songs for Cherie, and later he wrote a song for me that will be on my next album. It’s got deep lyrics: something I’d never heard Kim write before.

By this time, Kim had developed several types of cancer and had a lot of health issues. I was worried for him. We stayed in touch by phone and e-mail, especially when the Guardians of the Galaxy movie soundtrack came out and used “Cherry Bomb.” The song finally reached No. 1 and was nominated for a Grammy—thirty-seven years after it was first released, the Runaways had a platinum record! I also told Kim about my boys.

I told Kim, “I don’t think I would be who I am today if not for Kim Fowley.” He discovered me. Plucked me out of Long Beach and created the Runaways. He was the mastermind, the creator of the Runaways. Not Lita Ford. Not Joan Jett. Not Kari Krome. Not Cherie Currie. Not Jackie Fox. Kim Fowley: that’s who single-handedly changed the face of rock and roll with an all-girl teenage jailbait rock group. Several months after this meeting Kim lost his battle with cancer. I was glad that I got to thank him for the Runaways. I didn’t like seeing Kim sick, and I don’t want to remember him like that. Cherie went on to record the songs he wrote for her, though the engineer they used did a funky job with dangling mics and bad recordings. Cherie’s son, Jake, was left to fix it up on his own. The kid did a real good job. To put a twist on her versions of some Runaways songs she asked me to sing a duet with her. I was happy to. It was fun to reconnect with Cherie—and Kim—in that way.

WHEN EDDIE TRUNK first started That Metal Show on VH1 Classic, I had recently been a guest on his radio show. I was just coming back into the music business after my hiatus, and he wanted me on his new pilot for the TV show. I agreed and was on the very first episode. Eddie has always been a great supporter, and I’ve been back on his show several times. He also made me the first female musical guest. That meant I got to shred some licks as we led into commercial breaks or segments in the show. I had a blast doing it, and it was a pleasure to be back on the set. Later that same year, in August 2014, Eddie turned fifty on the day we played a huge rock festival in Montana. Eddie was the host, so when it was time for the set, we played a couple of songs before I called him out onstage and had the crowd of thousands sing him “Happy Birthday.” We had a crew member from the festival bring out the cake we had ordered for him and Marty O’Brien, my bass player, captured it all on his GoPro camera. It was a great moment for me and for Eddie.

Being on the road with my new band has brought many great new memories, but with all the traveling, there are also bound to be horror stories about lost baggage, missed flights, and even lost band members. I was playing this big club in Salt Lake City and the hotel we were staying at was about two doors down. Bobby Rock, my drummer, prefers to spend as little time at the gig as possible because he finds it draining. At this particular venue, he ended up using his hotel room as an extended backstage area because it was so close to the gig. The venue had an odd setup because the backstage area and the stage were completely separate—the stage was upstairs. The elevator was manually operated, so unless someone was in it to operate it, it didn’t work. When it was showtime, Marty, Mitch, and I found ourselves waiting for Bobby. The intro was playing and he was nowhere to be found. Dugie got on the phone.

“Where the fuck are you?”

“I’m downstairs! Come get me! I can’t get the elevator to come down and there is no other way for me to get into the venue from here!” He had left with more than enough time to get there, but had gotten stuck in this weird “holding area” for fifteen minutes while we searched for him and he tried to call us. Dugie goes down to get Bobby and he literally got to his drum kit right after the intro to our set had already played. It was one of the strangest Spinal Tap moments in both of our careers, and believe me, there have been many.

THE BAND AND I were going to be playing the Monsters of Rock cruise in 2015. We all packed up and flew across the country to Tampa, Florida, to play a show, then flew to Fort Lauderdale early the next morning to catch the ship. I was told to wait in an area with some fans who were having trouble boarding the ship. At first I was confused.

“Well, your passport is good, but your green card is two and a half months expired.”

I thought to myself, When I got my green card, they told me it was good for ten years. After 9/11, anyone who is not an American citizen can only have a passport and a green card for no longer than ten years. I assumed my green card expired when my passport did. I was wrong.

“You can’t get on the ship.”

The lady helping me tried calling immigration, but all it did was alert them that my green card had expired and I was really in trouble. I had shows coming up in Canada and was worried. All the fans walking by were saying, “Rock on! Can’t wait to see you rock out, Lita!”

I was thinking, Maybe not.

I waited five hours. Everyone else had boarded the ship at this point. Bobby and Pilgrim, my tour manager, were by my side, but everyone had done everything they could. Larry Moran is a great promoter and he helped tremendously, but the rules are the rules, and I wasn’t getting on the ship.

The lady who was helping me then turned to me and said, “One last thing. We cannot leave the dock until we find your luggage.”

I’m waiting, knowing I’m not getting on the ship, with Bobby sitting next to me while we wait for my luggage. The lady came back and told me, “I’m sorry, Lita, we can’t find your luggage.”

Things were off to a bad start. Bobby, realizing there was nothing more he could do and figuring he could work with the promoters once the cruise departed, boarded the ship.

I was in Miami, stranded, with no luggage. Awesome!

One of the promoters decided he wasn’t going on the cruise, and he drove me to a nearby hotel. As we were pulling out of the terminal, I heard someone yelling, “Wait, wait! We found your suitcase. Pilgrim found it!” It had been sitting on a baggage cart and he happened to see it as he walked by. They put my luggage into the cab and off we went—my band on the ship and me headed to some hotel. Great.

When we got to the hotel, I called a friend of mine I hadn’t talked to in ages and said, “Rudy, I need a yacht, a helicopter, or a private plane.”

“Okay, baby, speak to me.”

“I gotta catch a cruise ship in the Caribbean. I have to play a show.”

Shortly after he hung up to see what he could do, he called me back and said, “I can fly you in a helicopter.”

I would be flown to an island. Once I got to the island, I would still have to catch a boat to the other private island where the ship would be docking. Well, I figured it was better than nothing. I waited for another phone call to find out when the helicopter would be coming for me. Then I get some bad news: there was a wind storm so my friend couldn’t fly the helicopter. Scratch that idea.

Rudy’s sister Diana called me the next morning and said, “I might be able to get you a ninety-eight yacht. Let me see what I can do.” But it turned out her connection who owned the yacht was out of town. Great. He was also the guy who had a private plane. I was shit out of luck.

Diana also happens to be an immigration attorney, so she called the immigration office for me. Turns out the guy who worked there had a crush on her and she begged him to get me an extension on my green card.

She called me and asked, “You have any eight-by-tens?”

“Um, yeah. Why?”

She starts to rattle off a list of names for me to personalize the 8 x 10s with, for pretty much everyone in the immigration office. I was there for about an hour signing photos, and by the time I left, I was able to board a flight from Miami to Nassau.

When I landed, I finally got ahold of Bobby, my manager.

“Bobby, I’m in Nassau.”

“The ship docks at eight A.M. tomorrow morning.”

That night, I had to stay in a hotel on the opposite side of the island, because all the other hotels had no vacancy. It was a piece-of-shit, run-down hotel, and the mosquitoes were horrible. I walked to get bug spray and covered myself in it before I went to bed. I just kept thinking to myself, Just make it through the night. At seven A.M. you’re outta here.

The next morning, I asked the woman at the hotel how to get to where the ships dock.

“You have to take bus. On the 25.” So there I was, with my suitcase, standing at the bus stop.

I boarded the bus and looked around. People going to work, school kids, you name it. Me, this rocked-out blonde, on the local bus headed toward the cruise ship pier. The driver put my suitcase at the back and with the wheels on the ground. Every time he’d put the brakes on, my suitcase would come flying forward, and when he pressed the gas, it would roll backward. The door on the bus didn’t close properly so every time he’d hang a left, the door would open, and every time he hung a right, the door would close. Rush-hour traffic in the Bahamas. Gotta love it.

When we got to the stop, I didn’t see any ships anywhere.

“You have to walk through the straw market. Keep walking that way,” the bus driver said to me, gesturing. I should have known it wasn’t going to be as easy as just getting off the bus and walking a few steps. I started walking and then got a text message: it was Bobby. “I see land.”

I looked up and saw a ship in the distance. I was thrilled!

I got to the gate and the security guard there said, “I have a list of names here of people who are allowed to pass through, and your name isn’t on it.”

“You gotta be kidding me!”

Because of the green card issue, my name hadn’t been added to the list of passengers who could board from other ports. But my green card was now up to date, so what was the problem? The promoter worked on getting me past the security guard. “Find a place to chill out. This is going to take a couple of hours.” Right. Island time. How could I forget? I found a Starbucks. Yes! I went to hang out there until finally I was able to get on the ship.

Come hell or high water, I was going to be on that ship. I wasn’t going to let my band down. When I arrived, they couldn’t believe their eyes. They were thrilled to see me. Bobby Rock told me that people had come up to him at the buffet and said things like, “We heard. We’re so sorry.” Almost like there had been a death in the family. Marty O’Brien said he just wandered around for three days with no purpose. Every corner he’d turn people would ask him, “Is Lita going to make it? I heard that she’s flying to an island with a helicopter and catching a speedboat, is that true?” It was like we were in a James Bond movie.

I had finally made it on the ship, and that morning they made a shipwide announcement: “Ladies and gentleman, the Queen has arrived. The Queen is on the ship!” The last day of the cruise, Wendy Dio hosted a special cancer fund-raiser gala and when I walked into the place, the entire room shouted “Liiittaaaaa!” Everyone was so happy to see me, and it warmed my heart, especially after the crazy journey I had been on to get there.

But most of our performance slots had been given to other bands, so we had to play in a midday slot on the last day. I was hoping to play later, but it wasn’t possible. The passengers were so drunk by the time we hit the stage that when I asked them if they could clap along to “Kiss Me Deadly,” most of them had a hard time doing it. All I saw was a sea of sunburns and hangovers. Right after we were done with our set, a huge storm cloud came in and it started to rain. Had we played a later time slot, the rain would have forced our set to be cut short. There were those angels, looking out for me again.

BEFORE LEAVING FOR the Monsters of Rock cruise, I caught a black widow spider in my house. I trapped it in a Tupperware container and took it to rehearsal. Marty took the Tupperware container and put it on top of his bass rig.

“Marty, what are you going to do with that spider? Give me the container.”

Marty and Bobby were convinced that the spider was dead. They got a kick out of the fact that a black widow spider had made its way to my house, of all places. It is the symbol I have used since the beginning of my solo career—one that I consciously chose because I knew that having come out of the Runaways, I could devour the boys of the music industry, no problem. I was ready to take on the world.

“Those things don’t die that easily,” I said. “Trust me, it’s still alive.”

We stood there and debated what to do with it. Flush it down the toilet? No, it would come back up and bite me in the ass, I thought. I wasn’t about to step on it. Marty decided to take it home with him. The next day, he sent me an e-mail telling me he had gone to a crafts store and bought a kit to make a paperweight out of the black widow. At least it was out of my house.

At the next rehearsal, he came in and said, “Lita, you’re never going to believe it! I had the spider in the container, and when I was getting ready to make it into a paperweight, my friend was holding the container and she said, ‘Marty, this thing is still alive!’ I couldn’t believe my eyes!”

“I told you, Marty!” I said.

“Well, that goes to show, when Lita Ford tells you a black widow isn’t dead, don’t doubt her.”

I thought that was the end of the black widow fiasco. After the cruise, I flew from Florida to Detroit to do a signing at a horror convention. I flew home three days later, looking forward to relaxing after a week of chasing cruise ships, city buses, and immigration offices. I walked into my house, put down my stuff, and walked over to my bedroom. It was all dark, and I walked toward my window to open the drapes, only to see this huge black ball hanging from the window screen, outside the sliding glass window.

“Oh dear God! Don’t tell me it’s another black widow spider!”

I went into the kitchen, grabbed another Tupperware container, and went outside to catch it. I wasn’t sure what kind of spider it was, but I caught it. Sure enough, it had the red hourglass symbol on it. Another black widow! I walked into the kitchen and saw another one crawling out from behind the fridge. I looked in the hallway and found another one there. I needed to get the fuck out of that house! I went to a hotel and called my business manager, who contacted the exterminator. They promised to come the next day to try to get rid of the infestation. I was told that it would take seventy-two hours to kill them all. I stayed at the hotel and didn’t come back for three days. When I walked in, I saw one spider on the floor and used a Tupperware container to catch it. Don’t tell me they were still here?! It was the last spider I saw, but it was in the Tupperware container and wouldn’t die. I ended up taking Marty’s advice and put it in the freezer overnight. It was dead the next morning.

Maybe the black widow spiders had thought I was their queen. I couldn’t help but smile about what Marty had said when I had brought that first spider to rehearsal: “Lita, they probably saw your jumpsuits with the red hourglass on them and thought, ‘Yeah, man, this place is the shit! Let’s hang out here!’ ”

I’VE COME A long way since the days when I would sit and stare at the stars and pray for God to help me and make me a better guitar player. Although I still do gaze at those stars, it’s now for other reasons, and I ask God to help guide my children. I pray that one day soon the family court system will pay for the crimes they commit on a daily basis against the innocent children of the country. They are a disgrace to God and to the Constitution they stand behind. I think there is a special place in hell for the ones who have inflicted mental and emotional pain on children and their loving family members.

For years I have put my blood, sweat, tears, pain, sex, love, laughter, and heartache into paving the way for others. I put up with doors being slammed in my face, being turned down by many executives because I was female, and getting mind-fucked, financially and musically, by the assholes of the world. I was told what to do and what not to do, when all I wanted to do was be LITA and follow my dreams.

Here I am, fortysome odd years later, and the front row of most every concert is now lined with women. Women who want to rock, and play hard, sexy rock and roll, and the men who support these women are not afraid to step forward and show their loyalty. It’s a beautiful thing. The rock world has evolved into a universal language that’s no longer just for the testosterone-driven. The path is carved, and now it’s free and clear for anyone who wants to walk it. The wonderful men who were the main musical influences in my life and helped to shape me as a guitarist, performer, and singer helped me become a charismatic leader in the male-driven world of heavy metal music. I truly believe I was put here on this earth as an only child, with the support of my incredible mother and father, and after going through the Runaways school-of-rock-and-roll college, to become an icon for those who weren’t able to cross that line yet. Now they know they can.

As for me, I will go to my grave with the title “The Queen of Heavy Metal.”

Why?

Because I am!