CHAPTER 2

THE AUDITION

Hello Daddy, hello Mom, I’m your ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb! —“CHERRY BOMB” (WRITTEN BY KIM FOWLEY AND JOAN JETT)

SOON AFTER THE STREET FIGHT, I RECEIVED AN UNEXPECTED PHONE CALL.

“Is this the girl who plays bass?” a man said.

I was frustrated that everyone thought I was a bass player so I told him, “No! I’m not a bass player!”

“Well, I have a proposition for you, young woman. It requires being able to play an instrument. Do you play an instrument?”

“I play guitar.”

“Well, we need one of those too.”

“Who is ‘we’?” I wanted to know.

“The Runaways. An all-girl teenage band of rebellious jailbait rock-and-roll bitches. Have you heard of them?”

“No.” Everything about the voice on the other line told me that this dude was as strange as they come. But for some reason I was intrigued. “What’s your name?” I asked him.

“KKKKIIIIMMMM! My name is KIIIIMMMM FOOOWWWLEY! I’m a mastermind producer-songwriter and I can make you into one of the biggest rock stars in the world. You will fuck the best rock stars. You will tour the biggest arenas. You will be on the cover of every magazine. You will become a legend.”

“Ah, yeah. Okay. That all sounds good. But what do I have to do?”

“Do you have a car? Do you have an instrument?”

“Yeah, I have a chocolate Gibson SG. I drive too.”

“Will your mummy and daddy let you get out for a few hours? If you could find your way up to the rehearsal facility, we’d want to see you play. We want you to audition.”

“Where are you located?”

“Hollywood.”

“Shit. That’s far from me. I don’t know how to get there.”

The conversation went on and on. We went through my entire life story in about an hour. We talked about Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, and how he knew Ritchie Blackmore personally. We talked about high school and guitars. He really sucked me in. I hung up not only knowing where Hollywood was but also seeing a light I always knew existed. I just didn’t know how to get there. But Kim Fowley had described that light and given me directions toward it.

I told my parents about it. They immediately told me, “Get in the car and go down there.”

My parents helped me pack up my gear in the back of a brown 1972 Monte Carlo that they had bought for me from my aunt Rose as a birthday gift. With my bloodred eye and my still-bruised face, I looked a little possessed. After placing my chocolate Gibson SG in the backseat, I pulled out of the driveway and headed for the freeway. I had never been to Hollywood before. It seemed far from Long Beach—an entire planet away.

THE AUDITION WAS in the heart of West Hollywood, on San Vicente and Santa Monica Boulevards. It was upstairs above a drugstore that has long since gone out of business. It was a little shithole with walls that were covered up with thick, old, dusty brown curtains to keep the sound from leaking through, brown carpeting to dampen some of the noise, and no stage. There were amps and a drum kit in the room. When I got there, Kim Fowley came up to me. He started doing his sales pitch again, but all the while I knew he was checking me out from head to toe. He was tall, skeleton-like, and looked a bit like Frankenstein, but with blue eyes, wavy brown hair, and a weird overbite. He was wearing an orange-brown suit. He spent the first five minutes telling me what a big deal he was and how he was going to make us all stars. As he was talking I kept thinking, I was right. He is some Hollywood freak.

He introduced me to the two girls in the band so far: Sandy Pesavento, the drummer, who had not yet adopted the name Sandy West, and Joan Jett, the rhythm guitar player. Sandy was pretty and athletic, with a great personality and a real excitement for playing music. She was far more outgoing than Joan. Joan was a small, shy teen with light-brown hair wearing a T-shirt and jeans. She stood in the shadows behind Kim.

Kim broke the awkward silence by slapping his hands together and saying, “Okay, play something.” I wanted to make their jaws drop, so I started to play “Highway Star” by Deep Purple, which has an amazing guitar solo. Sandy was a big Deep Purple fan, and, much to my surprise, she kept up with me on the drums. I was so thrilled to hear another girl playing one of my favorite songs. She was excited too. Meeting Sandy was a breath of fresh air. When we locked in musically, we locked in as friends too. We both came from a hard-rock influence, and we jelled right away. We were musically equal. We kept throwing riffs at each other. She asked me, “Do you know Led Zep? Do you know Hendrix?” I knew them all.

Joan’s musical tastes weren’t as heavy as what Sandy and I liked. Her idol was Suzi Quatro, whom I’d never heard of, and Joan liked more glitter-rock stuff. I looked over at Joan and Kim, and their mouths were both wide open. She stood there looking at us, and I could tell that what Sandy and I were playing was a style of music she wasn’t familiar with. The audition was a success. I was in the band after that and was told to come to rehearsals later that week.

After watching Joan play a few days into the rehearsals, I realized she wasn’t playing barre chords. I asked her if she wanted me to teach her how, and she said yes. Joan was a fast learner. During those first rehearsals there was a bass player named Micki Steele, who wasn’t there when I first auditioned because Kim wasn’t sure whether I played bass or guitar, and he wanted to leave his options open. We went through bass players like we went through toilet rolls. Micki wasn’t happy with the band, and the feelings were apparently mutual. She couldn’t stand Kim, and she didn’t like the style of music we were playing. She didn’t want to be part of a teenage rock band, which was fair enough because she was already twenty-two.

Kim had just finished reading a book called Blondes in the Cinema, and he was fixated on the way that light reflected on blond hair. “We have to find a blond girl to sing,” he kept saying. “We need a blond Mick Jagger,” I said, and Kim agreed. The Sugar Shack was a popular teen club in North Hollywood that I wasn’t familiar with. Apparently, you weren’t allowed in unless you were under eighteen, but of course they let thirty-six-year-old Kim Fowley in because he was Kim Fowley. “Teen bitches will be there,” he said. There was a buzz in the Sugar Shack that night because people had heard of the Runaways, and word had gotten out that Kim and Joan had gone there to look for the lead singer. Kim Fowley created the buzz. He was the king of hype. That’s all the Runaways were in the beginning—Hollywood hype. And now it was time to get serious.

THE FOLLOWING DAY we all met at the rehearsal space above the drugstore. We were sitting around in the room, jamming, waiting for this girl Kim had found at the Sugar Shack. Finally she arrived—Cherie was thin and pretty, with platinum-blond hair cut exactly like David Bowie’s in his Ziggy Stardust days. She was nervous as hell. She looked like a little lost girl to me. I thought she was way too young, but I suppose Kim wanted someone cute. And that she was. Especially when she lit up a cigarette.

Kim shut the door and said, “What Suzi Quatro song did you learn?”

“ ‘Fever.’ ”

I stood up and said, “ ‘Fever’? You learned ‘Fever’? Why?!”

“Well, it’s kind of a sultry song,” she stammered. “I thought you could hear my voice.”

“I’m not playing ‘Fever,’ ” I told everyone. “I want to play some rock and roll, goddammit.” Cherie and I hadn’t exactly hit it off. Sandy wasn’t too happy with her, either.

Kim Fowley said, “Okay, hold on. We’ll write a song. What sounds like Cherie? Cherry! We’ll write a song called ‘Cherry Bomb.’ ”

Kim took Joan into the other room as the rest of us stood in the room twiddling our thumbs. Twenty-five minutes later they came back out and Kim pointed at Joan and said, “Play this. Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo.” Joan started mimicking Kim on the guitar. Kim started to sing the lyrics to “Cherry Bomb.”

Cherie auditioned for the band singing that song. I was skeptical about her singing abilities. She was so young and undeveloped. Plus, finding her at a nightclub freaked me out. What parent allows their child to go out in Hollywood at night without an adult? She was only fifteen. But she was a kid hungry for rock-and-roll fame.

I was pacing. I wasn’t thrilled, but I didn’t really have any input. None of us did when it came down to it. It was up to Kim. Obviously with Cherie it was about her looks and her blond hair. Kim was set on her being our front person, and that was that.

After making her wait a little bit longer, Sandy said, “Okay, welcome to the Runaways.”

Cherie sighed with relief. Everyone shook her hand, even Kim, as he looked at her like she was a piece of meat. He was relieved that his search for a lead singer was over. I still was not convinced. I had hoped for more after learning such complicated guitar solos.

Now we needed someone to play bass. Rodney Bingenheimer, a legendary player on the Sunset Strip and owner of Rodney’s English Disco, told Kim about a young Kiss fan named Jackie Fuchs who he met in the parking lot of the Starwood. Rodney seemed to know how to find the pretty girls. He was smitten with Jackie and her love for Kiss. “I’m a bass player,” she told Rodney. Kim thought he’d ask her to come audition, not knowing what to expect. How could she refuse? It was the chance of a lifetime.

The next thing we knew, Jackie Fuchs showed up to audition and the only song she knew was a Kiss song, of course: “Strutter.” To be honest, I was not in love with Jackie’s playing. Sandy was against her joining too. She just was not cut from rock-and-roll cloth. “She looks like the girl next door, there’s nothing rock and roll about her,” I said. Sandy agreed and said that she looked like a “Valley princess.”

Kim said, “Hey, listen to me, you pieces of dogshit,” pointing his finger in our faces. “All the kids next door might find comfort with her. You should thank her for being her or you’ll never get signed. She’s good enough to make this what Mercury Records wants,” which meant that we would get signed if we let Jackie into the band. As Runaways legend has it, shortly before Jimi Hendrix died, Jimi told Denny Rosencrantz, who would be the A&R man for Mercury Records in 1975, “Denny, someday girls with guitars are going to play rock and roll. And they’ll be before their time. They’re going to be like aliens when they show up in the rock-and-roll climate. Whenever they show up, no one will know what it is. If you’re still around when an all-girl band comes along, remember this moment.” But Denny Rosencrantz didn’t sign us based on Jimi Hendrix’s word.

It seemed to me that everyone said yes to Jackie because they didn’t want to look any further. I felt like she didn’t belong in a rock band. I did change my no into a yes, but only for the sake of getting signed. Jackie improved with time, as we all did.

FOR THE NEXT few months, we rehearsed in an uncomfortable trailer on the corner of Cahuenga and Barham in the San Fernando Valley. It was actually a trailer that you could pull by hooking it onto the back of a truck. It was parked in a lot right next to the Hollywood 101 freeway and belonged to a guy named Bud who was about a hundred years old and had no teeth. Kim leased it from him for probably twenty-five cents an hour. There was nothing in it but a filthy multicolored shag rug that had all kinds of stains on it. It was really disgusting and in a dirty location, but I didn’t care. To me it was a place where we could play as loud as we wanted and nobody would bother us. One day, Bud’s Saint Bernard came into the rehearsal room and was ready to give birth. She produced a litter of puppies right there while we were rehearsing. Oh my dear God! There was afterbirth and fluids all over the freakin’ carpet. Somebody ran outside to tell Bud what had happened while the rest of us just kept right on rehearsing. It was a little distracting to say the least. Bud called it a day. Kim let us go home while Bud had the mess cleaned up.

We would all get to the trailer around 4:30 P.M., right after school. We were always starving once we got to Bud’s trailer. One good thing about that location was the deli around the corner. I would get an avocado-provolone-and-tomato sandwich on egg bread almost every day. Sandy would get a cheeseburger. Sandy and I would scarf our food down and then get straight to work on music. We had the longest commute, so we got there later. I would leave school early and drive from Long Beach to her house in Huntington Beach. On a good day that would take at least thirty minutes. Then I’d turn the car around and drive to the Valley. We would take the 405 to the 101; that was a good hour-and-a-half drive. Jackie, Joan, and Cherie would already be there because they lived much closer.

Sandy and I would talk the whole drive. She would tell me about her family and her sisters. She was the total black sheep of the family, and her mother wasn’t very supportive of her decision to be in a rock band. It seemed like no matter what Sandy did, she could not make her mother happy. To me, she was the best one out of all her sisters and it was a shame her mother didn’t see it. On one of our long commutes, Sandy came up with a song we called “The Nipple Song.” We had to find some way to keep ourselves occupied, so why not a song? The lyrics overlapped like they do in “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” and it started off with Sandy singing, “Are your nipples getting hard?”

And I would answer, “Yes, my nipples getting hard!”

Sandy: “Getting hard!”

Me: “Getting hard!”

Sandy: “Are your nipples getting hard?”

Me: “Yes, my nipples getting hard!”

And then we’d both sing “Woooooooooooooh!” and we’d start all over again in unison. A lovely tune.

It was hysterical and we’d have a blast. It was becoming the Runaways’ theme song. We also had another song we came up with called “Cinema.” The lyrics were simple: “Cinema, cinema, cinema face.” Another groundbreaking tune.

A lot of early Runaways shit got hammered out around those rehearsals. One day we sat around thinking about what we could change our names to so they would sound more rock and roll. Joan had already changed her name from Joan Larkin to Joan Jett. We all decided we should do something similar. Sandra Pesavento became Sandy West, and Jackie Fuchs became Jackie Fox. I sat there for a while thinking, What the hell am I going to change my name to? Lita Paris? Lita London? I tried everything but nothing seemed right. I finally said, “To hell with it. If they don’t like me for my name, fuck ’em anyway.” Cherie’s name was already made for Hollywood since she had a mother who was an actress and she knew how to name an LA kid. Cherie Currie. You couldn’t beat that.

One time we rehearsed naked. Just for fun. We threw the crew and the roadies out and locked the door behind them. Then we took off all our clothes and we played in the nude. We started off with “The Nipple Song.”

Sandy and I sang out to the girls on the other side of the trailer:

“Are your nipples getting hard?”

Joan, Cherie, and Jackie: “Yes, my nipples getting hard!”

Sandy and me: “Getting hard!”

Joan, Cherie, and Jackie: “Getting hard!”

Everyone: “Woooooooooooh!”

At age sixteen, my body had already developed. I was a 36C bust, 26-inch waist, 36-inch hips. I was really the only one with a figure, so it made me feel fat. I hated that. Although it was considered a perfect figure, it made me feel awkward. They had to airbrush some cleavage onto Cherie’s chest on the first album cover because she had her blouse open and there was nothing there. I didn’t realize until later that curves were a good thing.

I would get home around midnight and crawl into bed. In the morning I would beg my father to let me stay home from school. I would say I was sick or was going to vomit. He never bought my bullshit. If I wanted to be in a rock band, that was fine with him, but I also needed to graduate from high school, so I dragged my ass to Long Beach Poly every morning and then got out of there as soon as possible so I could pick up Sandy and get to the rehearsals.

ONE AFTERNOON DURING rehearsal, I had a realization. It was about October 1975 and we were two weeks into the Runaways at this point. I thought it was strange that none of my bandmates ever talked about boys. We were teenage girls—boys were supposed to be a favorite topic, but they were always giggling about other girls. At the same moment, it dawned on me that Joan and Cherie were always together and chummy, not in a friendly way, but in a romantic way. Joan went everywhere with Cherie and followed her like a shadow. I just thought they were becoming best friends, but then it hit me: they were all into girls. All of them except for Jackie. Jackie was straight and she also didn’t do drugs.

Before then, I didn’t even have a name for being gay or bisexual. I had never been around an openly gay person in my life. I know it sounds crazy now, but back then my parents never talked about it with me. Why didn’t anybody discuss it? If not my parents, then my teachers? Kim? It was 1975. Being gay or bisexual was considered “wrong” by mainstream society. Period. I’m sorry to say that it fucked with my head. If someone would have taught me that men sometimes slept with men and women sometimes slept with women, I wouldn’t have been so shocked. Instead, I was left to figure it out for myself.

First I found out that Sandy, the one I had bonded with the most, was a lesbian. Then I found out that Cherie was messing around with Joan. I was so freaked out that I quit the band. I blamed it on Kim. I said I couldn’t take his weird behavior anymore. But that was bullshit. I understood someone being a foulmouthed lunatic. But I did not understand lesbianism or bisexuality. I thought one of the girls might make a move on me, and before that could happen I packed up all my gear and went home. I told my mom and dad I had a fight with Kim and quit. My parents were upset. They really thought we were going to achieve something as a band.

About a month went by, and I kept having nightmares that the Runaways would go on to achieve superstar status while I got left behind. One day in mid-December 1975 I got a phone call from Joan, Cherie, and Sandy. I knew Kim put them up to it. At this point they were in the studio recording the first album, but they had not yet been signed to a label. They said, “Lita, please come back. We can’t find anyone to replace you. Nobody can play like you.” I was stoked. By this point I had come to terms with their behavior, and it was no big deal. I knew they wouldn’t make a move on me because I didn’t play that way and they respected that. That phone call also let me know that I was really good, because they’d obviously been auditioning girls, but none of them had made the cut.

I said to Kent Taylor, “Will you go with me and tell me what you think?” I needed a second opinion from someone I trusted. We loaded my gear into my Monte Carlo and drove to West Hollywood’s Cherokee Studios. When we got there, Sandy was in the drum booth getting the sound dialed in and Joan was tuning up. The entire band and Kim greeted me and thanked me for coming back.

As soon as we walked in, Kent started looking at this huge mixing board and microphones. He turned to me and said, “If you don’t get on board with this, you’re fucking crazy.” Kent knew Sandy West somehow. He said to her, “Holy shit, it’s you. I told you about Lita when you were trying to get a band together. Remember?”

Kim was still kind of getting sounds together. We all jammed a bit and Kim kept stopping the tape to tell us, “You gotta think with your crotch. You guys are going to open up for the Tubes in three weeks and you have to think with your pussy.” Kent looked at me like, What is this guy’s deal? He hadn’t seen anything yet. That was the tame side of Kim Fowley. It wasn’t long before he was calling us dog meat, dog bitches, dog cunts, dog pucks. But I learned from the “gay episode” to stop trying to figure people out, to tune people out, and to focus on my own six strings.

THE BAND HAD been together for a little while, and we thought it would be a great idea to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show as a band. Everyone but Jackie went to the theater that night to watch it. I had started to develop a fixation with transsexuals, and although I never had sex with one, I liked them. I always felt that Tim Curry dressed up as a transvestite was an awesome sexual fantasy of mine. I also think it may have been the inspiration for Cherie’s corset. With some of the girls experimenting with their sexual identities, I thought this was the perfect transsexual/rock-and-roll movie to go see. We all took a liking to the movie and we would do the entire “Time Warp” song together, complete with every dance move. We would line up and do it at rehearsals, restaurants, live shows, radio stations, parties, everywhere. When we did line up in front of the drum kit to do the “Time Warp” at rehearsal, Kim would say, “Hey, you filthy bitches, cut that shit out!” But we kept right on dancing, middle finger in the air, directed toward Kim. And yes, even when we rehearsed naked that day, the “Time Warp” dance made it into our “set list,” along with “The “Nipple Song.”