Growing up in The Runaways, Lita Ford learned young and fast about rock ’n’ roll excess, as the band used to party with Sid and Nancy on the group’s French houseboat. She dishes on the ’70s punk scene and about getting royally punked by Poison.
Because I’m a female, everything has been a goddamn fight. When The Runaways ended and I started my solo career, everything was crazy, and it was totally life-changing. I could have left music forever after The Runaways, but I chose to carry on. It’s what I love to do and what I feel I was put on this earth to do. But from the start, it’s always been crazy.
In The Runaways, there was always something really fucking dramatic going on, and it’s why I hate drama so much today. One day, it would be Cherie Currie is sixteen and pregnant! Ah fuck, are you kidding me? What are we gonna do?
One time, we were in Japan, and Jackie desperately wanted to go home. She’s a fucking hypochondriac and thought she was dying. We were like, “Dude, you are not dying! You can’t go home because we still have to play Budokan!” So what did Jackie do? She slit her wrist with a broken plate from room service. She thought she was so sick that she attempted suicide to get a ticket home. That Budokan show was huge for us, and Joan Jett had to play bass. I covered on guitar, and it was fucking awesome. Nobody really missed Jackie that much, I’m sorry to say.
I remember the punk era as being really awesome, and it’s probably my favorite era. If the fans loved you, they would spit on you. If you were in a club and the place was absolutely packed with a bunch of dudes in leather jackets, all you would see is spit flying through the air. It looked like it was raining sideways. When that big loogie would splash on my guitar neck, I just had to play through it. What are you gonna do, stop and get a fucking wet wipe? We all learned how to spit really well, and I loved it.
The very first tour The Runaways did was three months, across the US, with the Ramones. I had just come out of high school, and it was so badass. People would throw handfuls of change at us, and that shit hurt! The Ramones would put chicken wire in front of the stage to cut down on the spit and change. There was nothing fake about those guys. Joey looked fucked up, skinny, down-and-dirty nasty, and that’s exactly who he was. He was truly one fucked-up individual but also a genius. They’d eat greasy fried chicken and then sing about wanting to get well. They should have eaten some vitamin C along with their heroin, Jack Daniels, and reds.
The Runaways had a ninety-foot house boat on the river Thames, next to the Battersea Bridge. Sid Vicious and Nancy would just walk right in. Sid would be drunk and fucking high as shit. He had just carved Nancy’s name into his arm with razor blades, and his chest was bleeding with the word “Sid.” He’d be dripping blood, his hair all matted from the night before. He was heavy duty, but I could have real conversations with him. But he was scary. When he’d start talking, I’d usually get up and walk away and go talk to Nancy. She was a doll. She was so gorgeous and a really sweet person. Then Sid would yell something, and it would snap me back to reality. I’d go in the other room and make peanut butter sandwiches for everyone. Everyone knew we had peanut butter sandwiches on the boat, so that’s what brought everyone over. We didn’t have paper plates, and nobody did dishes. Most of our plates got thrown out the window into the river.
That era was so raunchy, with people slicing themselves up with razor blades. The drugs were better back then, and I stayed together for a lot longer than people might realize. Blackberry brandy was my drug in The Runaways days. We’d be booked on these winter, outdoor festivals in Europe, and I was freezing. My fingers were so cold, and I had to go out and play guitar. My mother, being from Rome, and my father from Great Britain, said, “Lita! Have some blackberry brandy!” I used to carry a pint of it in the back pocket of my jeans. That was how the shit really started. From there, I went to Johnnie Walker Black Label. I loved alcohol and really had fun with it for a while. There was always so much different alcohol to try, and cocaine was always available. I didn’t love coke at first, but I eventually got deeper into it. One day, I just said that I didn’t want to do it anymore. I put all my drugs and alcohol into a box and put it out front for the trash man. That was in 1990 when my mother died. I had too much fun in the eighties.
One of the most embarrassing shows for me in the eighties was when I was on tour with Poison. I knew the guys in passing, but I didn’t really hang out all night partying with them. At the end of the tour, I felt like I really hadn’t gotten to know them, and I thought they went overboard with what they did to me on stage. It was the last night of the tour pranks, and I got really, really pissed. I don’t know who exactly did it, but they duct-taped my guitar tech to a chair. While I was on stage, they lowered him from the rafters. He came down out of the sky, and I was pissed. I acted like I was laughing, but I wasn’t happy. Then, during the show, they brought two male strippers onstage, who started flapping their penises on me. Whipped cream rained down, and I just lost it. I jumped off stage and into the orchestra pit to get away from these strippers.
Backstage, Poison were getting ready to go on. All of their keyboards were lined up, all nice and neat. All the programs, samples, and backing vocals were in the keyboards, and I kicked them over as hard as I could. I sent them flying and crashing to the ground. They had to go on in forty-five minutes, and I wiped out their samples. I looked over and saw C.C. DeVille’s guitars lined up perfectly in a row. I figured that if I kicked one, it would have the domino effect, knocking the rest over. I lifted one foot and someone grabbed me from behind. He wrapped his arms around mine and literally picked me up, moving me away from the guitars. It was Poison’s tour manager. He was six foot four—a foot taller than me—so he picked me up like it was nothing. He’s carrying me kicking and screaming through the backstage area, past Poison and all these crew people, trying to get me to my bus. My clothes and hair were totally covered in whipped cream, and I see Bret Michaels smiling and laughing. I just thought, “Fuck you,” and I punched him as hard as I could in the mouth. Finally, the guy got me to my bus, and I had to think, OK Lita, just get in and shut up. We’ve actually become great friends over the years and still play together.