French singer George Brassens once sang, “Good people don’t like/When one follows a different road than theirs.” And it’s true. When at the beginning of the 1970s, Joan Jett set out to found a rock band made up of teen girls, a lot of people thought it a childish insanity. But Jett had seen how Suzi Quatro, through perseverance, had made it happen. Jett eventually succeeded in her goal and a half century has now passed since that uniquely epic, luminous and at the same time, dark journey.
In August 1975, Jett gave birth to The Runaways, one of the most disruptive bands of rock ‘n’ roll. They were girls of just 15 and 16 years of age who were performing songs like Cherry Bomb, You Drive Me Wild and Thunder, singing about “things that happened to ourselves, getting loaded on drugs, drinking, stuff like that.. about hating people, falling in love with somebody”, she explained in a 1978 interview. They were adolescents who played with unprecedented fury, diving head-first and without a net into the U.S. rock ecosystem, one of the most macho, sexist worlds of the time — notwithstanding the police, the penitentiary system and the military.
The first concert played by Jett (guitar), Sandy West (drums) and Micki Steele (bass and vocals, who would soon become part of The Bangles) took place on September 12, 1975 in the dining room of the house of Phast Phreddie Patterson, the founder of California fanzine Back Door Man. Two weeks later, they played at Whisky a Go-Go, and soon after, were joined by Lita Ford (guitar), Cherie Currie (vocals) and Jackie “Fox” Fuchs, who stepped in for Steele.
They lasted less than four years. Some of the band’s members had tragic experiences, but its long shadow of influence is undeniable when it comes to punk, the Riot grrrl movement and contemporary groups like Hinds and Shego. Not to mention, the lives of countless anonymous girls who, through listening to them, watching their performances and seeing their photos, understand that they are also free to do whatever they want.
“We represent the idea that you can tell the world to stuff it and you can determine your own destiny,” explains Fuchs by email. “Young people see us as badass girls, not caring what the world thinks,” she adds.
Successful ‘60s and ‘70s music man Kim Fowley became the group’s manager, and was later accused of cheating the band out of money, mistreating its members and even sexually abusing them. “Obviously, the worst moment was being raped by our manager and then having the band act as if it never happened. We all carried and still carry, I think, the trauma that act inflicted,” said Fuchs, who went public with the assault in The Huffington Post 10 years ago.
Fowley’s atrocious behavior seems to have been an open secret at the time, downplayed by many in its severity. In 1977, he was described as follows in Rocky Mountain Musical Express: “Countless people in the music business have called Kim Fowley everything from a ‘rancid little pimp’ to a ‘cheesy hustler who pushes shit groups out of the toilets of pop music.’ Fortunately for Fowley, he possesses the only ammunition which could possibly level their onslaughts of abuse — 50 gold records.”
From Iggy Pop to Bardot
In the savage ‘70s, a band with the daring, ferocity and presence of The Runaways was as poorly understood as it was revolutionary. In a 1976 issue of Crawdaddy magazine, Charles M. Young wrote after seeing them live, “Suddenly I am overcome with the urge to jack off against the stage, get my teeth kicked out by a vicious roadie, claw my way through a thousand demented teenagers puking cheap wine and luded out of their cerebral cortexes, just so I could touch the platform boots of these 16-year-old girls. They thunder a direct sexual challenge, almost too threatening, like the Stones or Alice Cooper in the beginning. None of this how-could-you-leave-me-my-life-has-turned-to-s***; none of this I’m-a-Cosmo-girl-and-if-I-paint-my-nipples-pink-the-boss-might-be-fooled-into-marrying-a-mouseburger-like-me s***.”
Playing like there was no tomorrow, dressed in tight lamé or leather pants — or a corset, in the case of Currie, who was described as “the long-lost daughter of Iggy Pop and Brigitte Bardot” — they frequented seedy bars, mediocre clubs and huge stadiums. They also went backstage, to all-hours bars, and the offices of music magazines and record labels. They wanted to do it all.
Without asking permission or apologizing, their mere existence was a culture shock. “Rock ‘n’ roll is, above all, a sexual thing, and girls weren’t supposed to play guitar or drums because of that. In the United States, it’s uncomfortable talking about sex in general, but even more when it’s about a woman’s sex, and much more when it’s about that of an adolescent,” Jett reflected in a dialogue organized by The New York Times in 2018.
They were also misunderstood in the musical sense. “Back in 1976, people didn’t know what to make of The Runaways. They labeled us as teenage jailbait or punk rock. I didn’t care about labels. Just give me my guitar,” Ford told Guitar World. “We were very good as a band, and that is what normally gets lost in the conversation about The Runaways,” reflected Jett in the 2018 dialogue.
They played with The Ramones, with Blondie, but also with Cheap Trick and Van Halen. “They were very undervalued at the time. They were accused of being a prefabricated product, and they were treated cruelly,” says Anabel Vélez, author of the Spanish-language book Rockeras de la A a la Z (Women in Rock from A to Z; Redbook, 2023).
But some supported them from the start, like Lemmy Kilmister and the other members of Mötorhead, for whom The Runaways opened at the Roundhouse in London in 1976. It was true that outside their own country, they were met with a better reception. In places like the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia, and especially Japan, where they were considered the fourth biggest band in the world behind Led Zeppelin, Abba and Kiss. They recorded Live in Japan (1977) there, and thousands of teenagers filled the 10 concerts they gave throughout the country. “It’s just like Beatlemania. It’s amazing, we couldn’t believe it,” said Jett on the Tom Snyder Tomorrow Show in 1978.
At that time, the group had already released The Runaways (1976) and Queen of Noise (1977). On what would be their third LP, Waitin’ for the Night, Jett had stepped into the role of vocalist. Currie had left the band worn-out, addicted to cocaine and Quaaludes, and soon after Fuchs left too. In 1978, they put out And Now… The Runaways, and by the next year, the group had broken up. Fuchs confesses that there are things from the ‘70s she misses, “We had a sense of freedom and of living in the moment. No cell phones or internet. No constant demands for our attention. We could just hang out in outrageous clothes and meet all kinds of people.”
With time, the band has assumed legendary status. “In part, that’s due to the disappearance of cultural prejudices against women’s contributions,” reflects Fuchs. “Yes, there’s a certain fandom, the movie [The Runaways (2010), directed by Floria Sigismondi, with Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning as Joan Jett and Cherie Currie, respectively] helped and important work is being done to recover forgotten figures,” says Vélez.
After the band broke up, Fuchs became a lawyer (she studied law at Harvard and had Barack Obama as a classmate); West, who died of cancer in 2006, put out a solo album, recorded some sessions with bass player of The Who John Entwistle, and was a drumming instructor; Ford continues recording and performing; Jett founded Blackheart Records and has been the frontperson of her group The Blackhearts for decades; and Currie, who also still plays every once in a while, has become a writer, painter, physical trainer and has won awards as a chainsaw wood carver.
