The Runaways With Patty Schemel

Yasi is joined by legendary drummer Patty Schemel (Hole) to tell the story of The Runaways, the all-girl teenage band that changed the course of history. They get into the band’s lasting influence, the surprising origin of the song “Cherry Bomb,” the band’s complicated history, and why The Runaways still matter. Episode PlaylistListen to The Runaways playlist here. CREDITS:Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalekGuests: Patty Schemel @pattyschemelProducer: Rob SundermannEditor: Adrian BridgesAdditional Production Supervision: Justin SaylesTheme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  What's with this band anyway? I don't get it, can you please explain? Wait, like, Bandplain? Never heard this band in my life. Oh, you haven't? I'd love that. Really? Why? Yeah, I love the song. Oh, I don't know that one. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. I really like this band! Whatever, I'm their biggest fan. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain.

• 0:45Yasi Salek?

  Hello and welcome to Bandplain. I am your host, Yasi Salek. This is a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or an iconic artist. Today's episode is about The Runaways. Joining me today, an icon in her own right. Patty, I'm so excited to have you here. It's Patty Schemel!

• 1:03Speaker 02

  Hi, I'm so glad to be back.

• 1:05Yasi Salek?

  Drummer, author.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me.

• 1:07Yasi Salek?

  Certified cool woman.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Thanks, yeah.

• 1:10Yasi Salek?

  What else have we got? What else do you do?

• 1:12Speaker 02

  Um...

• 1:13Yasi Salek?

  Teacher.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  Okay, there's that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:16Yasi Salek?

  Mother.

• 1:17Speaker 02

  Mother, drummer, crafter.

• 1:20Yasi Salek?

  Bitch, liar.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23Yasi Salek?

  I have a child. Sorry, I was doing a little Meredith Brooks there.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28Yasi Salek?

  Patty, this is what a dream to talk to you about The Runaways.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  I know. This is a gift, really.

• 1:35Yasi Salek?

  Patty, before we dive into my 700-page document, also, you guys, I just want you to know that I made this t-shirt, if you're, sorry if you're audio-only, but I made this t-shirt with my iron-on letter names this morning. That's why it looks like garbage. I tried to make it say Bandplain and then how The Runaways have their shirts, but Bandplain has too many letters and it didn't fit. So I just, and I was in a bit of a rush.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  It's cool.

• 1:59Yasi Salek?

  Thank you.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  A ring or tee. I wore a shirt to the show.

• 2:02Yasi Salek?

  You're wearing the cool Runaways shirt?

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05Yasi Salek?

  I love it. In which they're wearing the shirts that I'm referencing, with the iron-on gorgeous letters.

• 2:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've only seen that shirt out in the world. I think Adam Horowitz has a Runaways t-shirt.

• 2:17Yasi Salek?

  One of the originals.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 2:19Yasi Salek?

  Because they didn't sell them. I think they just made them for their friends and family.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Maybe somebody made him one.

• 2:23Yasi Salek?

  Wow, that's so cool.

• 2:26Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 2:26Yasi Salek?

  If I was really rich.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:28Yasi Salek?

  That's the kind of shit I would buy.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  Right?

• 2:30Yasi Salek?

  Like, I'd be like going to those auctions and being like, I need that T-shirt.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:34Yasi Salek?

  Four hundred thousand dollars. I'll put it in a frame and hang it in my house. Um, anyways, if anyone watching is good at making iron-on-letter T-shirts, um, and wants to make me one, get in touch.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:43Yasi Salek?

  Okay, Patty, before we dive into this, a story that has everything I love, tea, goss, drums.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:51Yasi Salek?

  You know, launching a thousand ships of other bands. Can you tell me your personal tale of how you first came to the Runaways and like how they came into your life?

• 3:01Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. They came into my life through, well, Cherry Bomb, of course, and, um, I think my, my parents, um, had some friends come over and they had a daughter that was a little bit older. And Holly was her name, and she brought Sweet, the record, the Sweet record. She brought the, that first Runaways record with Cherry Bomb. And like a bunch of singles, and we listened to records.

• 3:29Yasi Salek?

  So was this in real time? So this is like that Runaways record, the year it came out?

• 3:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, maybe like seventy-seven, but it came out in like seventy-six, I think.

• 3:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, seventy-six.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. Cherry Bomb, of course, great song.

• 3:41Yasi Salek?

  Still, I'll say, one of their best.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:44Yasi Salek?

  May- maybe their best.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  I love the Runaways ever since, and that whole record was great. And then, but now it's a different, sort of like, I remember it a certain way. But now I, I kind of go back and I listen to it like that song, I mean, if you want to talk about individual songs, rock and roll.

• 4:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  They did the cover.

• 4:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  But that cowbell just, oh.

• 4:06Yasi Salek?

  It got, it got, it got you.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know I feel about cowbells. I mean, it's too, I, ah, I mean, I, that Motley Crue record, there's too much cowbell. Someone just bought a cowbell.

• 4:17Yasi Salek?

  I just, you know, this is where we diverge. I just feel like there's never enough cowbell. I would just put more cowbell on it, is how I feel. Blue Oyster call, you know, like, let's go.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Okay, there, oh, right, yeah, I got.

• 4:29Yasi Salek?

  I'm just kidding. I don't have any actual views on the cow, the level of cowbell. Also, you guys, not, if you don't know this, like, you need to leave, but Patty was obviously, and the drummer of Hole, one of the greatest drummers of my lifetime. But if you don't know that, again, I don't know why you're watching the show.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  So it might make me a little more particular to certain, you know, rhythm and stuff.

• 4:48Yasi Salek?

  So, not to like Mr. Rogers, but like, when you...

• 4:54Yasi Salek?

  Saw these girls rocking. Were you like, were you already playing drums? Or were you like, oh, I want to play music?

• 5:01Speaker 02

  I wasn't playing drums yet. I was like, maybe nine.

• 5:04Yasi Salek?

  Okay, yeah.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  I started playing drums at 11, but all I had was that record, you know? Just looking at it. And so, you know, I didn't even see them.

• 5:13Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  Playing. I didn't see them till way later.

• 5:17Yasi Salek?

  Also, on the record cover, it's just Cherie.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's just Cherie.

• 5:21Yasi Salek?

  I guess they're on the inside somewhere.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  And, but, I mean, I knew that it was all girls.

• 5:25Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then, uh, this, the next record, they were all on the front. Queens of Noise.

• 5:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Did you ever get to see them play in the original?

• 5:36Speaker 02

  No, but I did play with Cherie Currie once.

• 5:40Yasi Salek?

  Major.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  We did Cherry Bomb.

• 5:42Yasi Salek?

  Pretty, it's pretty major.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:44Yasi Salek?

  From nine, from nine-year-old Patty listening to the song.

• 5:47Speaker 02

  To go back in time and go, yep.

• 5:50Yasi Salek?

  Good job.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you.

• 5:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, because the Runaways were only active for three and a half years. A little bit less, honestly. So they have a pretty outsized impact for what a brief career they had.

• 6:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, I like how they kind of got together the way, well, Kim Fowley, right?

• 6:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I'm glad he's at that. My document does, perhaps controversially, start with Kim Fowley.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  It was organic in a way, though. They were out at a club.

• 6:25Yasi Salek?

  Totally. Okay, so let's.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Just like how bands start.

• 6:28Yasi Salek?

  Let's get into it.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:29Yasi Salek?

  By the way, I'm not saying Kim Fowley started the Runaways, because we should be really clear about that. There's a lot of, I think, misinformation out there. But I think he was the connector.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:45Yasi Salek?

  Um, and he's obviously, plays a big role in a lot of the story. So I just want to start with him. Also, because I think starting with him is a great way to. Get us into Los Angeles of the 70s. Cause he is.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 7:02Yasi Salek?

  Whatever you think about Kim Vincent Fauley, he did live an interesting life.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:08Yasi Salek?

  Born in 1939, July 21st, he's a Leo in Los Angeles. He, his father was Douglas Fauley, who was an actor. Did a lot of small parts. His biggest part was playing the director in Singin' in the Rain. And he was also Doc Holliday on the television program, The Legend of Wyatt Earp.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 7:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And then his mother was a kind of a struggling actress named Shelby Payne, but who was under contract to Warner Brothers and was employed. Kim said Shelby Payne was Dorothy Lamore meets Natalie Wood. Selfish, vain, bright, but not brilliant, brooding, a spoiled bitch from Oregon State. Just wanted to put that in there, A, to show you how Kim Fauley talks and also to show you that that's how he would speak about his mother. So like, no one is safe from the sharp tongue of Kim Fauley, who passed away about 10 years ago.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:57Yasi Salek?

  He's not with us anymore. So they lived in Beverly Hills and Brentwood. He had a pretty fucked life. And this is just context. I'm not pro Kim Fauley, I'm not anti Kim Fauley, just here to give you the facts. He was put into foster care by his mother when his father was drafted into the Navy. According to him, because he was too smart and talked at a very early age and she was freaked out by it. Whatever the reason is, it's a pretty crazy thing to put your child in foster care when you're still there.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:29Yasi Salek?

  So he was in foster care in Culver City. He said it was like 27 kids in a one bedroom house. It was like Dickensian, like fighting for food. And then she took him back?

• 8:44Yasi Salek?

  It's really crazy. Then his parents got divorced. They were like married like.

• 8:50Yasi Salek?

  Each like 11 times. So he had like 70 million sets of parents.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 8:54Yasi Salek?

  He bounced between homes. He got paralytic polio twice in four, well, once paralytic in 46 and once non paralytic in 57 and it damaged his extremities pretty bad. He actually walked with a cane his whole life.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 9:09Yasi Salek?

  And he was 6'5".

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:10Yasi Salek?

  This is just crazy looking, hunched, but like really handsome, actually.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 9:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. I thought he was quite handsome.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:19Yasi Salek?

  I mean, he's, he's like insane looking.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:22Yasi Salek?

  But if you just like, kind of look at the bone structure. Good looking man.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  Bone structure.

• 9:27Yasi Salek?

  Um, he claims he had a 164 IQ.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  Okay, he claims, yeah, okay.

• 9:32Yasi Salek?

  Listen, he, say what you want about him. It wasn't, he wasn't dumb.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. He certainly had a way with words. He went to uni high, university high here in Los Angeles with Nancy Sinatra, Jan and Dean, James Brolin and Ryan O'Neal. Um, and two decades later, that's where the germs went.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 9:51Yasi Salek?

  One decade prior, that's where my aunt and uncle went.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  So this is the 50s? He's at high school?

• 9:54Yasi Salek?

  50s, yeah.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, Hollywood.

• 9:56Yasi Salek?

  Hollywood, Hollywood kids.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:58Yasi Salek?

  Um, he got really into music because he heard Bo Diddley on marijuana in the 10th grade.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 10:02Yasi Salek?

  Hell, yeah. And then he was kicked out of high school for selling alcohol his senior year, who was already a businessman.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:08Yasi Salek?

  Um, and he moved to Hollywood on February 3rd, 1959, also known as the day the music died.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 10:14Yasi Salek?

  The day that Buddy Holly, the big bopper.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  The plane crash.

• 10:17Yasi Salek?

  And Richie Valance crashed in a plane. This may or may not be true, but again, what a wonderful myth making.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:23Yasi Salek?

  The day the music died, I came to Hollywood to resurrect it.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:25Yasi Salek?

  You know?

• 10:26Speaker 02

  What a good title.

• 10:27Yasi Salek?

  Such a good title. I just love the details. I'm like, this is what the world was like. Like, he lives in a gas station on Argyle and Sunset, right over here, um, next to, because it was next to a recording studio called American Recording Studio. And he wanted to work in music and he strikes up a friendship with this songwriter called Dallas Frazier. And apparently he gave him the use of the gas station's bathroom in exchange, I don't know for what, but Dallas Frazier was like, here, you can have this novelty song I wrote. Uh, it's a doo-wop song about a comic book caveman. And Kim Valley was like, thank you. Took $92, hired several musicians, recorded it.

• 11:09Yasi Salek?

  Got his high school friend Gary Paxton to sing it. They called themselves the Hollywood Argyles. And this song, Ally Oop, became a number one hit in 1960.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  I know it.

• 11:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 11:26Yasi Salek?

  Kim Falley's gas station trade song.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  Oh, my god.

• 11:29Yasi Salek?

  Kind of crazy, right?

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:31Yasi Salek?

  Sorry, I love this shit.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know.

• 11:33Yasi Salek?

  This is, you could just like.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:35Yasi Salek?

  You could just do stuff back then, you know?

• 11:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:38Yasi Salek?

  It's not like he made a bunch of money, because I don't think he really made money like that on number one hit songs in 1960 or whatever, but.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  But it's a moment.

• 11:45Yasi Salek?

  It's a moment, and he kind of cemented himself like into that world.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:48Yasi Salek?

  He also, by the way, produced Bird is the Word and.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  Don't get me started.

• 11:53Yasi Salek?

  Papa, oh, wow, wow.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  Oh, my god.

• 11:55Yasi Salek?

  Oh, wow, wow, wow.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  There goes the rest of my day.

• 11:58Yasi Salek?

  The Rivetons.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  And I'm really.

• 11:59Yasi Salek?

  But he did those.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  God.

• 12:01Yasi Salek?

  What the hell, man?

• 12:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's good. That's good.

• 12:12Yasi Salek?

  But then across his career, before and after the Runaways, I mean, he worked with Frank Zappa. He did West Coast PR for the Yardbirds. He recorded the Modern Lovers album and produced it.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 12:26Yasi Salek?

  It's kind of a.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 12:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  I know he wrote songs, uh, some Kiss songs, actually.

• 12:32Yasi Salek?

  And crazily, because the Kiss songs that he co-wrote are King of the Nighttime World and Do You Love Me off Destroyer. But they were actually written, okay, this is amazing. When the New York Dolls came on the scene, seventy-three, seventy-four.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 12:45Yasi Salek?

  He saw this and he was like, we need an LA version. That's what I'm gonna do. So that was his first, like, harebrained scheme was like, we need a boy band. And he called, he made one called The Hollywood Stars. Those were Hollywood Stars songs, those two Kiss songs.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 13:00Yasi Salek?

  But the Hollywood Stars just didn't gel, didn't come together, it didn't work. This guy named Terry Ray was in it, who was later in the Flamin' Groovies. Anyways, and Marc Anthony, who will, not that one. Not Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony, but the one that will later write some of the Runaway songs.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:16Yasi Salek?

  Besides Kiss, also, one of their songs went to Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  All my favorites.

• 13:21Yasi Salek?

  Down the Line.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 13:23Yasi Salek?

  And Escape, the Alice Cooper song, was also originally a Hollywood Stars song.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  Wow. Well, Do You Love Me was. Well, Pretty Poppy.

• 13:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  Kiss song Nirvana covered it.

• 13:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  It was one of my favorites.

• 13:36Yasi Salek?

  And started right here with Mr. Kimberly Fawley. His name is not Kimberly, but I think that's fun. Um, I wanna, so here's how he described himself. I'm everybody's worst nightmare and somebody's wet dream. I'm a horrible human being with a heart of gold or a piece of shit in a bag of diamonds. I'm a bad guy who does nice things as opposed to a nice guy who does bad things.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Wow, what a wordsmith.

• 14:00Yasi Salek?

  They just don't make people like this anymore is another. I mean, I guess they do. Donald Trump is a person like this.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 14:06Yasi Salek?

  Kind of, you know, like this sort of like.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  But not as clever.

• 14:10Yasi Salek?

  Not as clever, but does like, kind of get some jokes off sometimes where you're like, damn, I hate, against my own best judgment, I'm laughing at this, this is funny.

• 14:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:18Yasi Salek?

  Just, they're like carnival care. They're, they're not real people, cartoons, you know?

• 14:23Speaker 02

  They live in like these little soundbite.

• 14:25Yasi Salek?

  Totally, and they, they craft themselves into a fantasy, you know?

• 14:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:30Yasi Salek?

  When you look at Kim Fawley, and I don't want to armchair psychoanalyze, but it's like,

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:34Yasi Salek?

  It makes sense. And like, you had a horrendous childhood.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:37Yasi Salek?

  Like, of course, you could never probably trust or be good to people. And also you created a fantasy world where you can escape into it and just live there, you know?

• 14:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:48Yasi Salek?

  Iggy Pop said about him, I have great sympathy for Kim. This is like fairly recent. It was like around when the Runaways film, feature film came out. I have great sympathy for Kim. I was always into him. I was always interested in song forms that communicate lyrics by speaking, talking blues, talking cowboy songs. We'll get into Kim had a very copious solo career music output. It's actually kind of cool.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 15:08Yasi Salek?

  Um, Kim's vulnerable. He just looked like you could just diss him and he'd die. He looked physically frail. He looked a lot like Boris Karloff's Frankenstein. He was the kind of guy, if you were into something like comics, and he was too, he'd be your friend over that for 47 years and always be decent to you. But not a nice person and not a human being oriented person.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 15:28Yasi Salek?

  It's a good description.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:29Yasi Salek?

  Anyways, he's not particularly successful. And I said, the Hollywood stars fail. So then he's like, you know what? I need to put together an all-girl band.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 15:39Yasi Salek?

  He said, "I thought up a Darwinian evolutionary metaphor in a rock and roll sense. You would go from Elvis Presley doing female moves with his hips with the striptease pit-type drummer, all the way to the high voice of Robert Plant, into the New York Dolls, into David Bowie, into all the glittering glam guys, and all of a sudden you turn the page and there's a woman on the page with a vagina and a guitar, looking at you right in the eye. It was inevitable that evolutionary-wise, women would pick up the obnoxious rock and roll pitchfork and ram it up the ass of the world."

• 16:05Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 16:07Yasi Salek?

  So, it's really good.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:09Yasi Salek?

  It's really good. So, he places an ad in what used to be called Who Put the Bomp? The Bomp Magazine. Been obsessed with Bomp Magazine since I was like 12 years old. Because this is one of the first LA music magazines that covered like all the early punk and stuff.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:24Yasi Salek?

  Made by Greg Shaw. And it said, "Wanted: Four girls. Job: To play pop music. Purpose: To find the female Beatles, Stones, Who, Shangri-Las of the 70s. We're looking for girls who would take up where Susie Quatro and Fanny Leave Off." Should talk about Fanny for a second, but...

• 16:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:39Yasi Salek?

  "The kind of girls who always dreamed they were in a Phil Spector group. Girls with the desire and ability to carve out a place for women in 70s rock as significant as they held in the 60s. Girls who can bring hysteria, magic, beauty, and teen authority to a stage. Girls with youth, energy, dedication, wildness, discipline, dedication, and style."

• 16:55Speaker 02

  Teen Authority?

• 16:56Yasi Salek?

  Teen Authority.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh.

• 16:58Yasi Salek?

  Such a good band name.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  It is.

• 17:00Yasi Salek?

  That's exactly what I thought it was. I was like, "Should I make a band called Teen Authority?"

• 17:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 17:03Yasi Salek?

  Don't take it, you guys.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:05Yasi Salek?

  I don't know how to play any instruments. I'm gonna learn. 43 is not too old. The picture accompanying this ad, I'm obsessed. I couldn't find, I couldn't find an actual image of it unfortunately, but I saw it described. It was a picture of the Beatles, but he had covered each of their faces with a woman's head. Susie Quatro over George, Annette Finicello over Paul, Brigitte Bardot over Ringo, and then I could not find with the fourth one. Nobody wrote back.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  No one.

• 17:30Yasi Salek?

  Didn't get any responses. Now, we're gonna meet a new person in the Runaway Stories that is also not actually a runaway. Carrie Crumb.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 17:39Yasi Salek?

  Born August 1st, 1961, A Leo. Um, she's actually the only girl in our story who was an actual runaway. Like a teen runaway, like she came from a pretty bad upbringing, like in Bell Gardens, Compton Downey.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 17:55Yasi Salek?

  Um, I also really love this story because it's so my world of existence. For years, I grew up here, you know, so like everything we talk about, I'm like, oh, my God, this is like, I love it. Um, so she started taking the bus up to Hollywood to go to Rodney's English Disco, Rodney Bingenheimer's famed. Uh, establishment that where he brought the British jams.

• 18:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:20Yasi Salek?

  Across the pond and also, uh, where a lot of teenage girls went to meet rock stars. So she goes there and that's where she meets Rodney. Rodney is really good friends with Kim Fawley. She's thirteen years old. She's at Alice Cooper's birthday party at the Palladium.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 18:42Yasi Salek?

  And Rodney's like, you need to meet Kim Fawley because you write songs and he's looking to put together a girl band.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  Thirteen year old girl.

• 18:48Yasi Salek?

  Well, he wanted, he wanted a teenage band.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 18:51Yasi Salek?

  So.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 18:52Yasi Salek?

  She was like nineteen, she'd be too old.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 18:55Yasi Salek?

  And he's like, great. And she's like, okay, well, and then he signs her to a contract to become her publisher. Really was like a lyricist. She wasn't really writing songs. I don't think she played an instrument as far as I could tell. Um, but that was, that was more of a thing back then.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:14Yasi Salek?

  She said, Kim started calling my house. He would call and call and call. He talks forever and it's all about his fucking ego. He was picking my brain. What do you think of this? What do you think about of that? I found that really interesting. I'm like, oh, he's doing market research. He wants to see what teen girls like so he can sell back to them. Being a lonely kid, I liked the attention. He was someone who was not talking down to me, telling me to change my shirt because it was cut too short. But then later I figured out what he was doing. By then I was already signed to him. The pressure became really intense. He was really a dick because I didn't want to fuck him. In another famed.

• 19:48Yasi Salek?

  Early magazine of music here in LA. Backdoor Man.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:52Yasi Salek?

  Fast Freddie Patterson, that was his magazine, described Carrie Crome as being like an alcoholic Emily Dickinson, inspired by Lou Reed and Chuck Berry on a suburban guitar punk bubblegum level.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 20:06Yasi Salek?

  Sounds cool as hell.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 20:07Yasi Salek?

  Thirteen. There's some photos and a little video of her reading her poems onstage, and she looks cool as hell.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  From when she was a kid?

• 20:16Yasi Salek?

  The little thing, she's like 14 years old.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 20:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Now, another girl also learned about Rodney's English Disco

• 20:23Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:24Yasi Salek?

  from reading Enemy and Melody Maker. Her name was Joan Larkin.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 20:31Yasi Salek?

  Soon to be known as Joan Jett.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:34Yasi Salek?

  Let's talk a bit about Joan Marie Larkin.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:36Yasi Salek?

  Born September 22nd, 1958, a Virgo. There's a lot of Virgos in the runaways.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  Oh, OK.

• 20:41Yasi Salek?

  I think it makes sense when we get into, especially with Joan Jett and her like, single-minded focus. You know, like, I'm gonna do this.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, she stayed so true.

• 20:51Yasi Salek?

  So true. Nothing like, nothing diverted her.

• 20:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 20:55Yasi Salek?

  Like.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:57Yasi Salek?

  So she was born in Pennsylvania, in Wynwood. She spent her childhood in Pittsburgh. She said, "My mother had three miscarriages before me. I'm the oldest, and I felt like whoever those kids are, I have all of them in me. I kind of felt whatever spirit or soul I got, I'm like four people."

• 21:10Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 21:11Yasi Salek?

  That was in her, we were talking about off-mic. There's an incredible, if you can get your hands on it, Todd Oldham, the designer,

• 21:20Yasi Salek?

  made a photo book about her. But there's also a bunch of writing in it from her.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:27Yasi Salek?

  It's really cool.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:29Yasi Salek?

  She was, she was just like, really cool-looking.

• 21:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:33Yasi Salek?

  She still is really cool-looking. OK, so by her own account, she had a happy, normal childhood, super close to her younger brother and sister. She said her parents told her at a young age that when she grew up, she could be anything she wanted.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 21:45Yasi Salek?

  Did your parents tell you that?

• 21:46Speaker 02

  My mom, yeah. Yeah, my dad, too, yes.

• 21:49Yasi Salek?

  My parents didn't tell me. They were very awesome, but they were like, you can, you can probably be anything you want, but what you will be is maybe a lawyer or a doctor, or perhaps an engineer. We'll, we'll, we'll take business. These are the options. Um, just kidding, Mom, I love you. You guys listen to this podcast. So at 11, pressured by her parents, she took up clarinet. And she hated it, but she.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:13Yasi Salek?

  But she was like, starting to get into music. Alice Cooper, School's Out, I'm Eighteen. These are songs when she was 12 that were kind of popping off.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:26Yasi Salek?

  Freeze, All Right Now. And Led Zeppelin, Hendrix, stuff like that.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:32Yasi Salek?

  And then her first concert was Black Sabbath.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 22:35Yasi Salek?

  With Blue Oyster Cult. I know you were a Black Sabbath girl.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 22:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  Blue Oyster Cult too. You both.

• 22:43Yasi Salek?

  But you're, you were born about a decade later than them. Okay, so while when Joan was 12, listening to Alice Cooper, you were two years old.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:50Yasi Salek?

  About.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 22:52Yasi Salek?

  She also, I thought this was really interesting, said, and I'm sure you read this, that besides being inspired by that music, she was extremely inspired by seeing the film Cabaret when she was 13. Did you read this?

• 23:04Speaker 02

  No.

• 23:05Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so Joan Jett saw Cabaret at 13 years old, and she said, "It changed my life. I knew I wanted to do something in the arts. Seeing Liza Minnelli made me think, God, I could, I hope I can do something like that one day." And I thought that was really cool because it's, it is the like, performance part. And she is a performer, she's an entertainer, you know?

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:26Yasi Salek?

  And I was thinking a lot about this while I was like, researching the Runaways, how it wasn't until like, really punk came along, which is a bit after this. Or, you know, they were.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  But they sort of were part of that, I think.

• 23:40Yasi Salek?

  For sure, for sure. Not musically, maybe, but like spiritually.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, yeah.

• 23:45Yasi Salek?

  But it wasn't like, they were still part of the generation where like, you, you were putting on a show. It wasn't about authenticity.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 23:54Yasi Salek?

  Which is what kind of comes a little bit later, thanks to like punk, is like kind of levels things. And is like, just even though punk was kind of a show too, but then it's like, I kept thinking it's like, oh, punk got you into like, what comes in the eighties in alternative or whatever they call that.

• 24:08Speaker 02

  Alice Cooper Kiss.

• 24:09Yasi Salek?

  Exactly. It was theater, you know? And so I can see her being like, oh, cabaret, you know?

• 24:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:15Yasi Salek?

  So she takes some, some, she gets a Silvertone from Sierra's, which I know I kind of want a Silvertone.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Cute.

• 24:21Yasi Salek?

  They're cute, right? I think it's a good starter guitar for a forty-three-year-old teenager who's just trying to learn for the eighth time. I actually had a really cool guitar, tiny violin, that I got from the president of the Jam Fan Club here in Los Angeles. And it was like this like cream-colored um squire, but it was like from the nineties.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 24:41Yasi Salek?

  It was really cool. And it was a Craigslist buy, so like I got to meet the guy and he was talking about the Jam. And I was like, that's like the best kind of interaction.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  And he was the fan club president?

• 24:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's what he said. I mean, I couldn't fact check that.

• 24:52Speaker 02

  Did he have the, any kind of haircut?

• 24:54Yasi Salek?

  Did he have any kind of identification? Do you have a badge?

• 25:00Yasi Salek?

  Oh, did he have like, yeah, he did kind of have like a modish. Yeah, yeah. I don't, like respectfully to him, I think he just didn't have enough hair left to really like really do it up. Do you know what I mean? You kind of need quite a bit of hair to have that.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  Not everybody can pull it off.

• 25:13Yasi Salek?

  I think Rodney still has that haircut. Bingenheim's. Yeah. I think you can still, I haven't seen him in a long time.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  Me neither.

• 25:22Yasi Salek?

  But you used to be able to just catch him at Cantor's.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:26Yasi Salek?

  But I think he's in poor health. So I think maybe he's not as much sitting at his booth at Cantor's. It's the one when you walk in right past the desk where you pay to the left before the stairs.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  That's him.

• 25:40Yasi Salek?

  That's his spot. She's playing guitar. She doesn't want to learn Smoke on the Water famously from the Runaways film, which we'll also get into.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:47Yasi Salek?

  I didn't care for it. Uh, but it's fine. We, it's, it's a. Immortalized in there. She's, I'm gonna teach myself. She gets some books on like how to do chords and it's off to the races. She learns playing Sabbath in her bedroom.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:02Yasi Salek?

  Fucking cool.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:03Yasi Salek?

  And then in 1974, her family's like, we're moving to Los Angeles, babe.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 26:08Yasi Salek?

  But not Los Angeles, West Covina. It's fine. General area, close enough. And then Canoga Park. And then her father leaves the family. And then the rest of them move to Woodland Hills and she goes to Taft High School, for those of my Valley kids. She said, "My father left the house. My parents were going through a divorce. It was traumatic for my brother and sister, but it allowed me to get the fuck out." Because I think if my father was home, it would have been harder for me to get out to Hollywood. So, look at her. So Virgo. She's like, emotionally, that was bad, but like for my plans, that was very good.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Set it up. Mom's at work, go to high school, you come home, no one's there.

• 26:44Yasi Salek?

  No one's there. Yeah. You take four buses.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 26:47Yasi Salek?

  And you get to Hollywood.

• 26:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 26:49Yasi Salek?

  People just take the bus.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. Spending the night with my friend, we're gonna go to pizza and a movie.

• 26:53Yasi Salek?

  Totally. I remember my dad being so mad in high school when I spent the night at a friend's house. And he was like, "What time did you guys come home?" And I was like, I don't know, 1:00 or whatever. My curfew was like 11:00. He was like, "That's a loophole in the system."

• 27:13Yasi Salek?

  And I was like, I know that's right. That is a loophole in the system and I'll exploit it.

• 27:22Yasi Salek?

  She's like, "Yeah, I live in fucking LA. I'm gonna go see the New York Dolls play. I'm gonna steal David Johansson's beer off the stage."

• 27:31Speaker 02

  The whiskey? Where'd she go?

• 27:32Yasi Salek?

  She didn't say, but like...

• 27:34Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 27:35Yasi Salek?

  It's fucking cool, man.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:37Yasi Salek?

  I saw Blink-182 when I was 14.

• 27:40Yasi Salek?

  To some people, that's the New York Dolls.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:43Yasi Salek?

  You know?

• 27:44Speaker 02

  But at that time, it was like, what, like she wasn't going to Donny Osmond concerts?

• 27:48Yasi Salek?

  No, she was cool, right?

• 27:49Speaker 02

  She's cool.

• 27:50Yasi Salek?

  She was cool. Yeah, cuz kind of the same way like for the runaways to cross your desk at nine years old. It's actually kind of unusual because they did not sell well.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  They didn't.

• 28:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And they weren't on the radio, really. So, and obviously, New York Dolls were not selling well or on the radio. So she was seeking that stuff out, you know? And she, she got really into, she was reading Cream and Circus and all these like cool American rock magazines. And she read about...

• 28:19Yasi Salek?

  It's very interesting because she read about Rodney's English Disco and then through that read about what music they were playing, which was Bowie, Gary Glitter, Susie Quatro. And she started being like, what are those?

• 28:31Speaker 02

  And then found them.

• 28:32Yasi Salek?

  And then found them. And we said this on the Germs episode, but I found it interesting. In LA, it wasn't called glam rock. They called it glitter rock. Because nobody said glam.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  Oh, cool.

• 28:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Glitter rock is cooler.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:44Yasi Salek?

  Right?

• 28:44Speaker 02

  I like that.

• 28:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. So she starts taking multiple buses. She goes to Rodney's English Disco. She says her parents were kind of okay because ostensibly it was like a youth oriented club. It was like you were supposed to be young to go there.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 28:57Yasi Salek?

  I'm not sure if it was the same. I think it was, but the Sugar Shack, which comes a little bit later, which you literally couldn't go in if you were above 21. It was not all ages. It was only under 21. And I think Rodney's was kind of similar unless you were like Iggy Pop or David Bowie you were invited in.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:14Yasi Salek?

  Or Rodney himself or Kim Fawley. So she's like, I'm into glitter. I'm wearing satin bell bottoms. I've got platforms. People at school are fucking throwing rocks at me and going, oh, Diamond Dogs. And bullying her. And she was just like, yeah, like, I got really, I felt at home at Rodney's English Disco. And then she also very famously gets obsessed with Susie Quatro.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:36Yasi Salek?

  Were you a Susie Quatro fan?

• 29:37Speaker 02

  I mean, I liked, you know, the hits, Dumplin' in. And then, you know, she was on Happy Days.

• 29:43Yasi Salek?

  Of course. Leather Tuscadero.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  Yes, leather. And that outfit was amazing.

• 29:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  And yeah, she was super cool. And then she had that haircut. And then Joan got that haircut.

• 29:56Yasi Salek?

  Who amongst us hasn't been like, I want to look like that?

• 30:01Speaker 02

  100%.

• 30:02Yasi Salek?

  I did it many times, as many times as I could, you know? Just in freshman, I'm sorry, I tried it many times.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:08Yasi Salek?

  She got herself a leather jacket. She was like, that's right, Susie Quatro. Because she said, she was like, Susie Quatro was this huge thing to me because I'd never seen a woman play rock and roll. To see her with the bass, just like screaming, really inspired me. I thought, well, if she can do it, I can do it. And if I can do it, there's got to be other girls out there have been thinking about doing this.

• 30:26Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 30:27Yasi Salek?

  We can map so much now back to like Susie Quatro. Although I haven't done Susie Quatro research, so I don't know who she looked at and said.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:35Yasi Salek?

  I can do that. Mary Unfaithful, maybe? I wish she had the leather.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:40Yasi Salek?

  I don't know. Susie, there's that great story that Susie Quatro said that she came to town in the spring of 1975 to LA, and she was staying at the Hyatt House. And she said, "I got back from soundcheck and I saw this little girl in my haircut, in my leather jacket, sitting in the lobby." "I saw her in lobbies waiting for me every time I was in LA." Sometimes a little much, I must admit. She was obsessed with me for a while, which I'm sure she would be the first to admit. But again, always cute. This was obviously Joan.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Joan.

• 31:06Yasi Salek?

  So she meets Carrie Chrome. To tie it back together. Joan Jett is at Roddy's English Disco. She meets Carrie Chrome.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  And I love that, that time at that location. And that's kind of like how it kind of comes together at a venue like that.

• 31:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, authentically, you were saying like, these are just... And Carrie even said, she was like, "I remember seeing her on the bus all the time." Because like, you clock that person.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  Other cool people.

• 31:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, exactly. That person looks like into what I do. Also, like, you're a teen girl. There's another cool teen girl. This is also, again, I'm like, LA was so small back then, you know? Like, you could kind of clock people.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:43Yasi Salek?

  The population was half of what it is now. So, okay, so they start up a little conversation. And Joan said, Carrie said, "I write lyrics. I don't play an instrument, but maybe you should talk to the guy who publishes my songs, Kim Faule." So Joan gets Kim's number from Carrie and calls him. And she's like, "I want to make a band." And he's like, "Okay, do you have a demo?" And she's like, "What now? A what now?" And he goes, "Okay, well, you can come back to me." But then, apparently she goes home and calls him and plays guitar over the phone to him. And Kim Faule said, she was John Lennon. She was Keith Richards. She had amazing timing. Joan Jett plays in time like none of these boys do.

• 32:28Yasi Salek?

  That was nice.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:30Yasi Salek?

  And Joan said, I remember Kim being very intimidating at first, but really I became great friends with him and I still consider myself a good friend of his to this day. Here's a theme that we're gonna get into. Joan Jett will never speak negatively really about Kim Fawley throughout time. There's a couple of like things.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've never heard anything negative.

• 32:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Once he was a teen, they all kind of like razz on him in interviews, but like nothing, nothing serious, you know?

• 32:54Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 32:54Yasi Salek?

  I think he has a great mind and is very creative and really thinks outside the box. He was another guy people called a freak and I think we just kind of fit in, even though we were all different kinds of freaks in our own right.

• 33:05Yasi Salek?

  So now we have, this has happened. Carrie has met Joan Jett, Joan Jett has met Kim Fawley.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:11Yasi Salek?

  A few nights later, Kim Fawley meets...

• 33:14Speaker 02

  Sandy West.

• 33:15Yasi Salek?

  That's right, that's right.

• 33:18Yasi Salek?

  Sandra Sue Pesavento.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  Uh-huh.

• 33:21Yasi Salek?

  Born July 10th, 1959, a Cancer, from Long Beach. Man, Sandy West was cool.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  She was cool.

• 33:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:28Yasi Salek?

  She was the last of four daughters. She came from an Italian-American family. She was nine, she was like, I wanna play drums.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 33:35Yasi Salek?

  In the school band. And they were like, girls don't play the drums in the school band. And she was like, I'm gonna play the drums in the school band. Her grandfather loans her a drum, one drum, and she's like, hell yeah. Beep beep beep. And then at 10, I guess her sister was like, okay, here's your own drum. Again, they just said drums. I'm like, is this one drum? How do you learn how to play one? You would know, I don't know.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  I don't know, maybe.

• 34:00Yasi Salek?

  Either way, she plays, she learns. She plays in orchestra, she plays in stage band, she plays in marching band, and she's not only the first girl drummer in these things, she becomes first chair in the orchestra.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:12Yasi Salek?

  That's my girl.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  There she is, yeah.

• 34:15Yasi Salek?

  They moved to Huntington Beach when she's 11. Then her dad dies out of nowhere of a heart attack. And her sister said Sandy early on was pretty determined that she wanted to play rock music. It was a way to translate her grief.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  Uh-huh.

• 34:28Yasi Salek?

  She's a very active person. Her mother, Jerry, married a guy with three daughters, so they went full Brady Bunch mode, just seven daughters.

• 34:37Yasi Salek?

  In one house together.

• 34:38Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 34:38Yasi Salek?

  Isn't that great? Can you imagine? Some of these things, when I read them back, I'm like,

• 34:44Yasi Salek?

  it would be like, you would make a reality show about that now because it would be so unusual.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  In Huntington Beach?

• 34:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but now, but they were like, yeah, and then Sandy had to like, share a room with like, a brand new stepsister, you know?

• 34:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:55Yasi Salek?

  I did read in Queens of Noise,

• 35:01Yasi Salek?

  Evelyn McConnell's McDonald's book, sorry, um, that Sandy's stepsister was also gay and they kind of realized that together. And so that was kind of cool.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  Oh, good.

• 35:15Yasi Salek?

  But it's not really, I don't know, remember who said, I think more of her sisters, maybe. So it's, it wasn't from her own mouth.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:20Yasi Salek?

  Just gonna say that that's what it said in that book. Um, but she was a really cool tomboy. She played tennis, basketball, swam, surfed, rode horses. And by 13, she was playing drums in rock bands.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 35:31Yasi Salek?

  With the boys.

• 35:32Speaker 02

  Yep. Cool.

• 35:33Yasi Salek?

  And then by 14 or 15, she's, this is in 1975, she's like, time to go to Hollywood on the weekends. That's where the action is.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 35:41Yasi Salek?

  Cause she loved, what, like, Deep Purple?

• 35:43Speaker 02

  Deep Purple. Yeah, I was gonna say, Deep Purple and like, metal.

• 35:46Yasi Salek?

  Metal, yeah. And she's like, I know the bands hang out in the Rainbow parking lot after 2 a.m. And so I'm gonna go hang out in the Rainbow parking lot.

• 35:55Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. After 2 a.m.

• 35:57Yasi Salek?

  You guys, the Rainbow Bar and Girl, by the way, really good food. I'm not a big drinker anymore, so this is where I get my kicks off. I'm like, oh, they have like mozzarella sticks and stuff. Um, anyhow, a lot of history. So she's there, not to eat mozzarella sticks. Um, and she says Kim Folley. Now, Kim Folley says he approached her. There's mixed stories, but again, remember he's looking for teen.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:21Yasi Salek?

  Players. And he probably was like, that girl looks like she rocks.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:25Yasi Salek?

  He said, there's Sandy standing there looking like Dennis Wilson's sister. She was with a bunch of guys in a musician's stance. One of those, hi, I bet everyone should know I'm a musician, like Billy the Kid coming to town to have a gunfight. I don't know if this is true.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:39Yasi Salek?

  She did look cool as hell.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  That's cool.

• 36:41Yasi Salek?

  She had like long, middle parted blond hair.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:43Yasi Salek?

  Muscular arms, because she was a jock and all strum drums.

• 36:46Speaker 02

  Right, tan.

• 36:47Yasi Salek?

  Tan, totally. Lori, Sandy's sister, says actually Sandy had seen that ad that Kim placed and knew who he was and was looking for him. So I don't know. You read this Queens of Noise, right?

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:01Yasi Salek?

  So my biggest takeaway, or not biggest, but one of my biggest takeaways from Queens of Noise was that Sandy was working on a memoir that never came out.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:09Yasi Salek?

  But I guess Evelyn McDonald had access to her notes.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 37:13Yasi Salek?

  And in her notes, she wrote, I felt like a groupie standing out there. I didn't want to be a groupie. I wanted to be in the group.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. Cool.

• 37:21Yasi Salek?

  Either way, they meet. It's quickly established, I'm a drummer, I want to play in a band. And he's like, well, I know a girl you should meet and give Sandy Jones number. So Kim Vowley did not form the Runaways as such, right? As the way it's sort of talked about. He just, he did himself want to form a girl band.

• 37:46Yasi Salek?

  And then also he just put people in touch. So it's like a little column A, a little column B, you know?

• 37:51Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 37:51Yasi Salek?

  I know that's one thing that I read, the only like things that Joan Jett seemed to really bristle at is like, he did not, he was not the one. He did not make us and he did not control us. Um, so I just want to be clear. That was just a, just a connection, Malcolm Gladwell style.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  Cause they had to deliver anyway.

• 38:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, exactly. You couldn't play the music for them.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 38:12Yasi Salek?

  August 5th, 1975 should be an international holiday because that's the day Joan Jett took multiple buses down to Sandy's house in Huntington Beach. And they played together for the first time.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  In her house. That's so cool. I've done that too.

• 38:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  So great.

• 38:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like you're just excited because.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  Someone comes over and then you kind of jam in your room.

• 38:30Yasi Salek?

  You feel like kindred spirit, like a connection.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:35Yasi Salek?

  Cool. I don't know, because I'm only just now going to learn how to play that, um, Sears guitar that I'm going to buy from Craigslist. Joan said she was great. I mean, she could play. Oh my God, she was powerful. What a drummer. She had experience because she played in bands, just teenage stuff. But she played with other people. I played in my room.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:52Yasi Salek?

  According to Kim Vowley, because Sandy was such a good drummer, he was like, she played like a 30 year old man. Um, she.

• 39:00Yasi Salek?

  Her level of skill immediately sort of like rocketed Joan up because she was able to like improve by playing with someone really good. Which of you has this experience? Where you play with someone that's like good or better than you maybe?

• 39:14Speaker 02

  Totally, like a really good bass player can really lock you in. Yeah. Really good rhythm section. Yeah.

• 39:20Yasi Salek?

  I thought that was really cool. They become inseparable. They're spending every weekend together. They're playing music, they're writing, they're working on songs. Maybe they're also partying and drinking and going to roller derby. They also spend a lot of time at Kim's apartment in Hollywood, learning to write songs, plotting world domination.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 39:36Yasi Salek?

  And one of the first songs they wrote was, uh, Joan wrote it, "You Drive Me Wild." Is this a top tier runaway song? Not really.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  No.

• 39:44Yasi Salek?

  But, first song.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  Not bad.

• 39:46Yasi Salek?

  They're 15 years old.

• 39:47Speaker 02

  Right. I know.

• 39:49Yasi Salek?

  You know?

• 39:49Speaker 02

  Add that to the mix.

• 39:51Yasi Salek?

  And now they're like, fuck, we need a band. And Kim is right here. So again, they're all kind of, and Kim's like, all right, I'm gonna find you some girls. Starts to pre-screen "Prospects" with his good buddy Ron Ashton of the Stooges.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 40:06Yasi Salek?

  Kim was friends with everybody.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  I didn't know that.

• 40:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, isn't that interesting? Imagine you're coming to like, try out for the Runaways and it's just Ron from the Stooges.

• 40:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:14Yasi Salek?

  Like, looking at you. You suck. Um, I believe he was there when Jacqueline Fuchs.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Uh huh, okay.

• 40:22Yasi Salek?

  Tried out. Um, we'll come back to her because she was voted down. They said, no, we don't want her.

• 40:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:28Yasi Salek?

  Multiple other women also voted down. And then an older girl, and by older, I mean 18 or 19, named Sue Thomas auditioned. She was a good singer and she was a good bass player and they were really great as a trio. And they were like, okay, you're in, but you have to change your name. How about Mickey Steele?

• 40:48Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 40:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. We're in many iterations of the Runaways.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  Eternal flame.

• 40:53Yasi Salek?

  Eternal flame. Um, soon to be known as Michael Steele. What a cool.

• 40:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:58Yasi Salek?

  Anyways, Mickey Steele is in and now they're a trio and they're a band and they need a name. Apparently Kim went hunting through like. This is when he's like a bit of a man after my own heart. He like loved like junk shops and like places with old books and old magazines and stuff. And he found a poster with a picture of girls in silhouettes running down the streets in some Gothic city, he said. It said something about teenage runaways. And I saw if you cover the word teenage and call a band The Runaways, it's a tribute to all the girls who were juvenile delinquents and didn't have guitars and didn't have an outlet. And so they would be a monument to all the teenage girls. It would be like naming a band Rebels Without a Cause.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  Yes. Yes.

• 41:40Yasi Salek?

  Can't downplay, I mean, again, Kim Falley.

• 41:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:44Yasi Salek?

  Many, in many ways, a monster, but also in many ways, a genius.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:48Yasi Salek?

  He really had a vision, you know?

• 41:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:50Yasi Salek?

  So they said about writing songs, The Runaways. And these five people, Joan, Mickey, Sandy, Carrie, who's still involved, which is helping write the songs, and Kim. Sandy West wrote in those notes for her memoir, "Rock and roll band camp became rock and roll boot camp. Unfortunately, Kim came to most of the rehearsals, which I hated because when it came to artistic thinking, he did not have any. He wasn't musical, and we knew that brain time alone. This may sound strange, but even though Kim is in the music business, he's not really a musical person. He's an idea man. He doesn't play an instrument, he doesn't compose music, he just comes up with words and concepts. I hear her, but the just is doing a lot of work there because that's really important.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 42:28Yasi Salek?

  But not me being like a

• 42:29Speaker 02

  She wanted to jam.

• 42:29Yasi Salek?

  Not me being like a Kim Falley truther all of a sudden. I'm not. That's not, and people are like, this, this woman is just

• 42:35Speaker 02

  Yep, I could see what Sandy's saying, no?

• 42:37Yasi Salek?

  Totally. They're just trying to write songs and he's like shouting like, what if you use this word?

• 42:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 42:41Yasi Salek?

  Or the other things that he would shout, which we'll get into. Okay, we can get into right now.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:45Yasi Salek?

  Kim Falley had a real affection for the word dog.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 42:50Yasi Salek?

  And everything he said had a dog prefix. Often pejoratively, like, this is dog shit, you guys are dog cunts.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 42:59Yasi Salek?

  This is dog puke.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 43:02Yasi Salek?

  Not ideal.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  No, not at all.

• 43:04Yasi Salek?

  Not a nice way to foster creativity.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  So he's running, he's putting them through their paces, right? By shouting.

• 43:10Yasi Salek?

  He said in, we were talking about this off mic too, and we're going to talk about it length on the pod. The documentary Edge Play by Future Runaway, uh, Vicky Blue.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 43:20Yasi Salek?

  He said something to the effect of, I loved Boot Camp. Cause he was, he was in the National Guard. Fun fact.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 43:29Yasi Salek?

  I don't know if that's a fun fact, but that is a fact.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:31Yasi Salek?

  And he was like, I just, I loved it. I thought they would love it too.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:35Yasi Salek?

  Again, it kind of makes sense why he would have loved it, like lack of structure.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 43:38Yasi Salek?

  You know, but they did not love it.

• 43:42Yasi Salek?

  Joan said about this dog shit, dog cunt, dog fuckers or whatever. I was totally amused by it. It wasn't insulting and I didn't feel spoken down to. Because you can bet if I felt spoken down to, I would have let Kim know it. When I see pictures of me and Kim, it just reminds me that Kim and I were friends. He taught me how to write songs. I think he saw something in me and it was easy for us to just sit there. It was a very sort of stream of consciousness with him. I'd grab my guitar and just play stuff and things would come up. So a little different experiences with Kim. He also trained them. This is a scene in the Runaways movie, but.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:16Yasi Salek?

  Sort of inaccurate.

• 44:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 44:17Yasi Salek?

  But he trains them to deal with hecklers.

• 44:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:19Yasi Salek?

  Which I thought was really funny.

• 44:21Speaker 02

  Like throwing stuff.

• 44:22Yasi Salek?

  He brought his friends to come throw shit at them. Which honestly, again, seems insane, but came in handy because that happens later. Especially when they go to England, they're just being pelted with shit.

• 44:36Yasi Salek?

  It is really funny.

• 44:38Yasi Salek?

  They're rehearsing in a trailer above the Rexall's drugstore on San Vicente in Santa Monica, right over here.

• 44:42Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 44:43Yasi Salek?

  And Kim would bring friends to see them play, like, look like how good they are. Fast Freddie Patterson came from Backdoor Magazine. Rodney was just kind of always around, Ron Ashton, we said, and a guy called Denny Rosenkrantz, who worked for Mercury Records. And he was like, okay. They kept auditioning, though, for a bass player because they were like, actually, Mickey should just sing. And they auditioned this writer, Dee Dee Fay, who wrote for Backdoor Magazine's sister, Danielle. And she auditioned and they liked her, but she was like, something about this, this man, I don't want to be involved with him, basically.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:19Yasi Salek?

  And so she pulls out. And then Dee Dee Fay feels really bad because they don't have a bassist now. And she's like, I'm going to introduce you to this girl I know who's like a ripper. Her name is Lita Ford.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  And yes, she is.

• 45:31Yasi Salek?

  Yes. Lita Rosanna Ford, born September 19, 1958, also a Virgo.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  Ugh.

• 45:37Yasi Salek?

  She was born in London. Her father, Henry Lennard Ford, known as Len, was British, and her mother, Isabella Benvenuto, is Italian. Fun fact about Len, he fought in World War I and was injured in some sort of like stick grenade blast, and he lost the two middle fingers on his hand. So that his hand was permanently

• 45:58Speaker 02

  Permanently?

• 45:59Yasi Salek?

  in the metal devil horns.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  Devil horns.

• 46:02Yasi Salek?

  I'm going to say that's cool, because it's not cool to lose fingers in a war injury.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  Does she talk about that?

• 46:07Yasi Salek?

  She talks about it. Yeah, that's how I know it. She thought it was cool.

• 46:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:10Yasi Salek?

  They leave England with Lita Ford, then move to Boston, then to Dallas, and finally to Southern California. Her father worked for Century 21. He was a real estate agent. Real old heads will remember the Century 21 mustard colored jackets.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:24Yasi Salek?

  They had a nice house in Lakewood Village, which is a suburb about five miles outside of Long Beach. And she starts playing guitar at 10 years old. Much like Joan, she took two weeks of lessons on acoustic guitar and was like, you know what? That's not for me. Thank you so much. Teaches herself. Her mom gets her a steel string guitar, but she's like, fuck, I want an electric guitar.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:46Yasi Salek?

  She sees Black Sabbath at 13 years old. Bit of a through line here, right? Of a Black Sabbath. She said, when I saw Black Sabbath, I knew I wanted to be a rock star. It became my dream, and I knew I was going to fulfill it. Virgo. I walked out of that arena knowing what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I wanted to make people feel the way Black Sabbath had just made me feel. It didn't occur to me that I was a girl. Nothing went off in my head that said, girls couldn't do what Black Sabbath did.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 47:08Yasi Salek?

  So she gets a job at the hospital that her mother works at by lying and saying she's 16. Saves up enough money to buy herself a chocolate SG, just like Tony Iommi.

• 47:16Speaker 02

  Wow. Cool.

• 47:18Yasi Salek?

  It's so cool. So I was like, why did I have any gumption when I was 13? I sucked.

• 47:25Yasi Salek?

  I took it home and I plugged it into my father's Sony reel to reel tape player. She was so excited. So she teaches herself to play solos by Jimmy Page and Richie Blackmore, note for note. In her book, she says something where she's like, Jimmy Page made a lot of mistakes.

• 47:40Yasi Salek?

  She's like, learning to play and she's like, mm, you fucked these ones up a little bit. Like, I can do this better. Thirteen years old.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  That was the vibe from Lita Ford throughout all of it was like, she was like, so like, kind of like, I don't know, just in large and in charge kind of all the time.

• 47:59Yasi Salek?

  It's interesting because you kind of, she's the one where like, again, I'm doing my armchair psychology again, but like,

• 48:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:06Yasi Salek?

  she came from a really supportive, really loving, unbroken home.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  So super confident.

• 48:14Yasi Salek?

  Super confident. Parents told her she could do whatever she wanted.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, had the audacity to say Jimmy paid me, made mistakes.

• 48:21Yasi Salek?

  Would, her mom would be like, come play Santana for me. That's so cool. You know, like, let her have parties at the, like, she, she really was like,

• 48:30Yasi Salek?

  can't say shit to me, you know, because she was raised that way. It's really cool. By ninth grade, she's playing in bands with all guys. She's just like, I'm ripping. She had a boyfriend called Davey when she was 16, who also played guitar. He was more advanced than her and taught her a bunch. And then he also got her pregnant.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 48:46Yasi Salek?

  That's bad. She told her parents she was going camping with a friend and went and got an abortion, which is like, again, she just was like, I'm, I gotta do what I gotta do.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:58Yasi Salek?

  And she talks about in the book where she was like, I was, I was a wild child and also I had this dream. And like, it was just wasn't my time.

• 49:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 49:07Yasi Salek?

  Anyway, word spread throughout the south of Los Angeles that there's a girl that can fucking rip on guitar.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:17Yasi Salek?

  Because she was really good. Again, small population. And she gets this call from Didi Fay being like, there's this band that runways. She gets the call from Kim. Now, not long before she gets this call from Kim, she had been in an altercation with a girl at the mall. Actually, a girl and her boyfriend that were like giving her a hard time, threw a coke in her car. She came back and fucking beat their asses. And then the girl came back and sucker hit her in the face with her belt and the buckles cracked her nose. She-

• 49:48Speaker 02

  Girl fight.

• 49:49Yasi Salek?

  Girl fight. She like drove herself to the hospital.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  Seventies girl fight.

• 49:52Yasi Salek?

  Totally. So she had sort of a fucked up face when she goes to this audition. It's just what I wanted to say.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Oh, that's-

• 49:56Yasi Salek?

  It still hadn't healed. Yeah.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  Okay, so yeah.

• 49:58Yasi Salek?

  And she was telling, I remember one of the girls, maybe it was Jackie Fox, wrote about it or Shuri, and they were like, like, already she told that story? And they were like, uh.

• 50:09Yasi Salek?

  She gets this call from Kim Fawley and he's like, do you want to play bass in the Runaways? Or do you play bass? And she's like, I don't play bass. I'm, or I'm a guitar player. And he goes, well, do you play an instrument? And she goes, yeah, I play guitar. And he's like, okay, it's the Runaways. We're going to be the biggest rock stores in the entire world and you need to come up to Hollywood to audition. And she goes,

• 50:28Yasi Salek?

  that sounds good. I've never been to Hollywood. You don't know. And she goes and tells her parents and her parents are like, get in the car right now. You need to go. Imagine, imagine I told my parents, I'm fucking sixteen years old, four, fifteen years old. This strange man has called me. I've never met him. He would like me to come to Hollywood to play guitar in an audition. And they're like, what are you waiting? Get in the car, man. So she, tut tut, goes up there. Um, she says she remembers meeting Sandy, who was super outgoing, and Joan, who had still had light brown hair, by the way, and was very shy. And of course, Kim, who she was like, that's a freak.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:07Yasi Salek?

  Kim told her, okay, so play something. And she goes, okay, here's Highway Star by Deep Purple, solo and all.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 51:13Yasi Salek?

  And they were all like,

• 51:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:16Yasi Salek?

  Sandy was like,

• 51:18Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. Sandy was into it. I read that also that I read that they, maybe it was for Jackie Fox's,

• 51:27Speaker 02

  audition, I'm getting ahead of myself, but they jammed on Strutter.

• 51:31Yasi Salek?

  That-

• 51:32Speaker 02

  The Kiss song.

• 51:32Yasi Salek?

  It was. And I think that was the first audition and they didn't like her. They didn't want her. Yeah, right. Because of that, maybe.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:40Yasi Salek?

  Yes. She was a hu- Jack, we'll get into Jackie Fox when she re-enters the band, but she was a massive Kiss fan.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:46Yasi Salek?

  Lita said meeting Sandy was a breath of fresh air. Like, we locked in musically, we locked in as friends, we both came from a hard rock background. Lita Ford is hired. Now we have four runaways. Also, a few rehearsals in, she noticed that Joan wasn't playing bar chords. And she was like, do you want me to teach you bar chords?

• 52:02Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 52:03Yasi Salek?

  She was like, yeah, Joan bar chords. Now, here's where the stories diverge a bit, but I'm gonna go with the timeline that is in Queens of Noise, because as we learn from Edge Play.

• 52:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:16Yasi Salek?

  Uh, Lita Ford's memory of things is a little off.

• 52:21Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:21Yasi Salek?

  Not that she's a liar, she seemed to be like, I don't remember that show.

• 52:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 52:25Yasi Salek?

  So I think her timeline in her book is a little bit off, but Lita is in the band for, I guess, a very short period of time, this first round. Um, because she realizes that some of the runaways are gay. And she is very uncomfortable. And I'm just, I'm gonna read her quote, so I'm not just saying it. "I'd never been around people at the Runaways. They were gay and I wasn't. It was wild to me. My parents had never explained to me that people are gay. When I met them, I was like, you like girls, but you're a girl? I didn't figure it out. I didn't like it and I didn't want to be around." That's in Queens of Noise. In her own book, she said, "I'd never been around an openly gay person before. I know it sounds crazy now, but that back then, my parents never talked about it with me.

• 53:09Yasi Salek?

  Why didn't anyone discuss it? If not my parents, then my teachers. Kim. It was 1975. Being gay or bisexual is considered wrong, quote unquote, by mainstream society, period. Sorry to say that it fucked with my head. I was so freaked out that I quit the band, but I blamed it on Kim."

• 53:24Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 53:25Yasi Salek?

  I mean, honestly, good for her for like owning it and being honest about it and like being like, yeah, like.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  Kinda like, what?

• 53:31Yasi Salek?

  I was young and didn't know anything.

• 53:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:34Yasi Salek?

  But again, she's very sheltered, right? Like, everything we talked about with her upbringing.

• 53:38Speaker 02

  Totally sheltered.

• 53:39Yasi Salek?

  Totally sheltered. But like, she was so upset about it, she quit. Interestingly.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  Didn't name names, though.

• 53:45Yasi Salek?

  She didn't name names, she just said them. In her book, she says Sri. But like, her timeline is off because Shree wasn't in the band yet. Joan Jett, but I will say, by the way, has never publicly said one word about her own sexuality.

• 53:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:59Yasi Salek?

  She said, "I'm not discussing personally who I'm doing anything with. As far as addressing sexuality, I'm singing to everyone and always have been since The Runaways. I think I'm being pretty blatant. I think anybody who wants to know who I am, all they've got to do is listen to the music." Sandy West did come out in her lifetime. I'm not really sure when, but I know that she did because her mom talks about it and was like, "It's okay." Sandy also dated Penelope Spears's sister Linda.

• 54:23Speaker 02

  Really?

• 54:24Yasi Salek?

  Mm-hmm. Isn't that interesting?

• 54:25Speaker 02

  That's a good little fact.

• 54:26Yasi Salek?

  Kind of early on. According to Carrie Chrome, Joan was her first girlfriend. So, whatever, it doesn't really matter.

• 54:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:32Yasi Salek?

  The point is, Lita was like,

• 54:34Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 54:35Yasi Salek?

  "I'm out of here."

• 54:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:36Yasi Salek?

  So they went back to being a three-piece, because they were like, "Okay." And they played their first ever show as a three-piece. August 12th, 1975, in Torrance, California, my hometown.

• 54:47Speaker 02

  Wow, I was born there.

• 54:48Yasi Salek?

  Oh, you're Torrance, a moral?

• 54:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 54:50Yasi Salek?

  Whoa, this is why we're connected.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:53Yasi Salek?

  It was at Fast Freddie Patterson's parents' house. They were out of town.

• 54:56Speaker 02

  Oh, cool.

• 54:57Yasi Salek?

  3726 West 171st Street in North Torrance.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 55:02Yasi Salek?

  Just five miles from where my house was. Can you imagine? Can you believe? Writer Don Waller was there. He was Dee Dee Faye's boyfriend. He said, "They played a brief set that included two Troggs covers, Wild Thing and Come Now, which Joan introduced as, 'This is a song about fucking.'" "And I'm not sure what else, because we're all as high as Dumbo's crows." "And God knows only how or why the Torrance police didn't show up and shut it down." It was just like a wild house party. It's depicted, I think, in The Runaways movie, where they're throwing all the stuff at them at the house party. But again, it was only the trio back then. And they played a bunch of house parties, this trio.

• 55:34Speaker 02

  And this is Joan?

• 55:36Yasi Salek?

  Mickey.

• 55:36Speaker 02

  Mickey.

• 55:38Yasi Salek?

  And Sandy.

• 55:38Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 55:39Yasi Salek?

  These are just the three of them.

• 55:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:41Yasi Salek?

  Mickey's singing and playing bass.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 55:43Yasi Salek?

  Joan is not singing yet. On September 27th, they played their first ever theater show in Tahunga, opening for The Rats with a Z. And then they played The Whiskey, the 28th and 29th. Um, they dedicated a song to a girl called Devil Worship. Her name was actually Lisa Curland. She later also plays in a band, but she was allegedly Joan's girlfriend at the time.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 56:07Yasi Salek?

  Devil Worship is what Jo- uh, Kim Fowley called her. The song was voodoo.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 56:11Yasi Salek?

  Meanwhile, Lita Ford is regretting her decision. She was like, I had a dream. I came really close. These girls are playing shows.

• 56:22Yasi Salek?

  And she said, I thought about it. I sat there and thought, they're not bothering me. They're cool. There's nothing wrong with them, except their sexual preference. I don't know if I would have said it like that. I think there was nothing wrong with them, just period would have been fine.

• 56:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:33Yasi Salek?

  Two weeks later, I thought, I want to go back. And they called her. She was just thinking. And she was like, great, on my way. Threw my amp in the back of my car. Let's go, gave everyone a hug. We're back. So now it's Sandy, Lita, Mickey and Joan.

• 56:48Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 56:48Yasi Salek?

  Play the whiskey again with this lineup. And then Mickey Steele is...

• 56:54Speaker 02

  Sayonara.

• 56:54Yasi Salek?

  Sayonara. She says, early on this thing with Kim, this sordid personal angle. He was enamored of me in a way I found very uncomfortable. I'd been raised in a sheltered manner and wasn't savvy enough to know I could say, come on, Kim, fuck off. My performance went down the tubes. I started going kind of nuts from it. Sandy said, when Kim would say inappropriate things or yell at us during rehearsal, Mickey never stood up to him. Whereas Joan and I would tell him to fuck off. She was a nice girl who always seemed uncomfortable. I think at the time, it seemed to me that she really lacked the personality that you need to survive in a band situation.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 57:26Yasi Salek?

  Fowley remembers her always having migraines and complaining, bringing down the vibe. Joan Jett said, the vibe was that she didn't like the songs. She seemed very unhappy after shows, almost to the point of tears, like the shows are depressing. She just didn't seem to be at all on the same page. And it wasn't because she wasn't a nice girl or a talented person. She was a great singer, a really good musician. We were younger than she was. Maybe we were too young for her. Listen, just sounds to me, piecing it together. Kim's advances, or whatever they were, were making her feel terrible. And she didn't feel that she could stand up to him, like the other girls. And it was causing her-

• 58:06Speaker 02

  Because they were gay.

• 58:08Yasi Salek?

  I thought about that. I thought about if like, to them, they're like,

• 58:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, no.

• 58:13Yasi Salek?

  Cool. I mean, I did think about, but you know what? But also Lita, didn't bother her, you know?

• 58:20Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:21Yasi Salek?

  So-

• 58:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:22Yasi Salek?

  I don't know if it's just like, not okay, by the way. It's not okay in any, but I-

• 58:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, she's like, I want to play music, but I don't want to compromise my-

• 58:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, or like, it's interesting because she even says it, but like, it's like, you're 18, 19. 19 is still really young. I think she didn't realize that like, almost like, he was just saying it, and she could say, fuck you. And so he kept saying it, you know? And they fucked with her too much, and she couldn't have fun, and she couldn't enjoy it, and it sucks. And he also famously, I guess, he's the one that got rid of her, because they were like, you're bringing down the vibe. He said, you have no Megalo, you have no magic. This is the only chance you'll get to be a rock star, and you've blown it.

• 59:09Speaker 02

  And then, oh, okay.

• 59:10Yasi Salek?

  She did go on to become much more successful. Well, maybe not than Joan Jett, but like, or Lita. Uh, probably more than both of them, actually.

• 59:17Speaker 02

  She was in a great band?

• 59:19Yasi Salek?

  She was in a great band and made a lot of money.

• 59:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:22Yasi Salek?

  Bangles. They're called The Bangles, but that doesn't happen until much later. She doesn't even join them until 83, and they don't form until 1980. But anyways, she did just fine, Michael Steele.

• 59:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:30Yasi Salek?

  Dee Dee Fay said she thought, this is very interesting, that they were actually the best as a trio with Mickey, because they were like a female Aerosmith.

• 59:39Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 59:40Yasi Salek?

  Like a real rock band. It was more the, I mean, it's 1975. So, I thought that was interesting. Another reason I think Kim wanted Mickey out of the band, besides that her, she had a bad vibe, quote unquote, was that he had decided, we need a blonde girl.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:56Yasi Salek?

  We will not succeed without a blonde girl. Um, he'd been reading a book called Blondes in Cinema. He said it talked about how blonde women conduct light in a photo or a scene. So I realized I needed to have my Brigitte Bardot up in front of those girls. The truth is, he's not wrong that people-

• 1:00:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:12Yasi Salek?

  -love to look at a blonde girl. There've been like studies on this, like you could have two women of equal attractiveness, like walk by a person and people will look more, it's just like your eye is more drawn to the blonde for some reason. I don't know that they needed it.

• 1:00:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:30Yasi Salek?

  But again, back to the theater of it, right?

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:00:33Yasi Salek?

  You know, like they're trying to put together an act and sell it, you know? According to some other lore, Denny Rosenkranz from Mercury had also come to the, one of those whiskey shows and told Kim that he would sign the band if they had a few more good-looking women, particularly a blonde.

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:00:49Yasi Salek?

  So it's time to find the blonde.

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:52Yasi Salek?

  Another really quick, fun part of the Rosenkranz lore, Denny Rosenkranz, is that he went to high school with Jimi Hendrix.

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  Oh, in Seattle?

• 1:01:00Yasi Salek?

  Um, I guess so.

• 1:01:01Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:01:02Yasi Salek?

  And shortly before Jimi Hendrix died, Rosenkranz had gone to see him perform in Phoenix and Jimmy said to him, "Denny, someday, girls with guitars are going to play rock and roll and they're going to be just like spacemen. They're going to be like aliens. And when they show up in the rock and roll climate, you need to beware. If you come across a girl band, you need to sign them."

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:01:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And that, that's like a big part of the Runaways lore, kind of with this idea that Jimi Hendrix was like tapped into the future.

• 1:01:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:36Yasi Salek?

  Or that Denny Rosenkranz took this like proclamation so seriously.

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  They have, I've got to do this.

• 1:01:42Yasi Salek?

  That it caused the Runaways to get signed.

• 1:01:44Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:01:45Yasi Salek?

  Love it. Um, okay. So it's time to find the blonde girl. Like I said, we're going to the Sugar Shack in North Hollywood because Rodney's has closed. It's no longer functioning. And this was the new, one of many new underage clubs.

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  All ages.

• 1:02:02Yasi Salek?

  For Glitter. Kim and Joan go together and this is where they find Cherie Curry.

• 1:02:07Speaker 02

  Knock, knock. Who's there?

• 1:02:08Yasi Salek?

  Knock, knock. Who's there? It's Cherie Curry. Born November 30th, 1959, a Sagittarius and in Sino, California, to Don Curry, an actress, Marie Harmon, who had appeared in Gunsmoke. She's a twin, famously.

• 1:02:21Speaker 02

  Marie.

• 1:02:22Yasi Salek?

  It's really crazy that you would name your daughter Marie Curry when Marie Curie exists. I just can't get over it. I'm like, cause she, like, you know what I mean? I can't, I, every, it's like such a fucked up name, like.

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  And Cherie Currie.

• 1:02:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Cherie Currie. A cool name. Marie Currie, the lady who invented pasteurization. Like, I don't know. I mean, it's not the same name, because it's a, but even in her Wikipedia, it says, if you're looking for Marie Currie, it's this link. So people, enough people type it wrong.

• 1:02:54Yasi Salek?

  They also had an older sister named Sandy and a younger brother, named maybe Donnie. When she's 12, Cherie's father leaves home. This is like a really emotional and painful thing for her. Her best friend Paul puts her on a Bowie and glitter music and takes the girls, Marie and Cherie, to Rodney's for the first time. And so by 15, she's obsessed with Bowie. She's like, my hair is in a feathered shag, it's dyed different colors. I'm wearing the Aladdin insane makeup.

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  That's so much in that book.

• 1:03:22Yasi Salek?

  So much in that book. It's really, the, the books are, the tone of all of each of the books is so interesting.

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  Tell. What do you mean?

• 1:03:31Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so the Runaways film, the feature film is based-

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  Was based on Neon.

• 1:03:36Yasi Salek?

  On Cherie's book.

• 1:03:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:37Yasi Salek?

  And you can tell, right? Because it's like, well, I mean, we have, there's a lot to unpack and perhaps criticize about that film. But like, one is that like, the bassist figure is fake. That's, that wasn't, that's why, that's why Aliyah Shakat never speaks in that film. Because Jackie Fox, at this point, had gone to Harvard Law School and was a lawyer and was like, I'm not selling you my life rights. Or maybe, I'm not really sure, but she was like, not down. And Vicky Blue, by the time, I think Vicky Blue came back to do it, they were like, oh, we already wrote it, wrote you out of it. Like, and, but Sandy had sold them her life rights, so it doesn't actually make sense why Sandy barely ever speaks. And Lita also never speaks.

• 1:04:22Yasi Salek?

  Like, not never, but like, there was like, it's, it really focused on Cherie and Joan.

• 1:04:26Speaker 02

  And when they made that film, it was Cherie and Joan were there when they were making the film.

• 1:04:33Yasi Salek?

  On set, yeah, yeah. And at the time, well, this is getting ahead, but Cherie and Joan had the same manager, who was kind of like.

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  Kenny Laguna.

• 1:04:42Yasi Salek?

  Kenny Laguna.

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:43Yasi Salek?

  It's very interesting to me, and we all do it, and I would do it too, if I wrote my life story. But like, when you look back.

• 1:04:53Yasi Salek?

  You're self mythologizing.

• 1:04:55Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 1:04:56Yasi Salek?

  So I'm not saying that anyone's lying.

• 1:04:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:04:59Yasi Salek?

  But you're seeing it, you're the main character. And also, you know, you are bringing to the stories, the experiences that came after them, right? So it's like, you kind of have to read between the lines, I feel like, to get down to it. There's, there was one line from Kim that I found was so interesting much later, where he was talking about the Runaways film and about Al Fanning's performance of Shuri. And I'm getting a little ahead because Shuri's not even in the band yet, but. And he was like, yeah, it was really great. She really did the like vulnerable part of Shuri great, but she missed the part where she was like, Courtney Love Tasmanian devil on steroids.

• 1:05:37Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:05:38Yasi Salek?

  And I was like, and that's interesting, right? Because she doesn't, that part of her is not in her book, right?

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:44Yasi Salek?

  I mean, she says things like, I was a wild child or whatever.

• 1:05:47Speaker 02

  But she was always like, um, trying to root for the underdog in, in, in her story and like, um, and she was the weird freak, but she had kind of gathered the weird freaks with her in, in her story.

• 1:05:59Yasi Salek?

  Totally. Which I'm sure is partly true, right? Or like, you know, one version of looking at it.

• 1:06:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:06Yasi Salek?

  Anyways, I thought it was interesting. Although, but Shuri Curry's story is really, it's in general, really interesting and really sad. I, you know, all the Runaways have pretty tragic.

• 1:06:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:14Yasi Salek?

  Details to their life arcs in different parts, like some earlier and some later.

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:06:20Yasi Salek?

  But Shuri's earlier was just gnarly, like, the dad leaving is one thing, horrible. He was a pretty bad alcoholic.

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:29Yasi Salek?

  But loving, seemed like a really loving dad. But the, one of the more terrible, and I even got, I got the earlier version of Neon Angel.

• 1:06:37Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:06:38Yasi Salek?

  I found.

• 1:06:39Speaker 02

  Cause there was two, like after the film, right? Didn't they re-release?

• 1:06:43Yasi Salek?

  They re-released it and it's a little bit different, not too much, but anyways, one horrible biographical detail that I feel is important to share, because obviously she felt it was important to share, is that when she was, I guess, 14 or 15, her sister Marie had this much older boyfriend. It was like, he was like 30 or something named Derek and he raped her.

• 1:07:02Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:07:03Yasi Salek?

  I only bring it up to just like, we understand the character of 15 year old Shuri Curry and how like, for example, she's different than 15 year old Lita Ford. She's coming into this situation with a different background and a different set of baggage and a different level of self-esteem and solidity or whatever.

• 1:07:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:07:24Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so her father's moved off to Texas. Her mother has a new boyfriend named Wolfgang who lives in Indonesia. Seems fake, but is obviously totally true.

• 1:07:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:32Yasi Salek?

  And she was like always overseas visiting him. So she's also much like Joan, like, anything goes babe, do whatever you want. So her and Marie are regulars at Sugar Shack. She said the Sugar Shack is the closest thing I had to a stable family life. DJ Chuck E. Star, he was a DJ at Rodney's that then was like the main DJ at Sugar Shack, said, "I'll never forget the first time I saw Marie and Shuri walk in. Rodney just stood there and his mouth hit the floor. You couldn't tell them apart. They were the most perfectly beautiful specimens of a 14 year old girl you've ever seen in your life."

• 1:08:06Yasi Salek?

  I don't like it.

• 1:08:06Speaker 02

  No, not at all.

• 1:08:08Yasi Salek?

  I don't love it.

• 1:08:08Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:08:09Yasi Salek?

  Anyways, now we're at the Sugar Shack. Kim walks in. He sees Shuri Curry sitting at the bar, sipping a Coke. There's no alcohol at the Sugar Shack. He approaches her. In her book, she said, "He looked like a Tangerine Lurch because he always wore an orange suit." She says she didn't really know who he was, but was starstruck by Joan because Rodney used to talk about Joan Jett all the time to her, like, "Oh, there's this girl Joan Jett. She's a star," like, you know. And she recognized Joan from Rodney's English School. And Kim is like, "Do you play an instrument or sing?" And she's like, "Yeah, I sing." She was lying.

• 1:08:44Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:08:46Yasi Salek?

  But good for her gumption.

• 1:08:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. That's what you do.

• 1:08:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And he's like, "Good. Come audition this Saturday. Learn a Susie Quatro song." And she tells her friend Paul, and Paul's like, "Yeah, I know who Kim Valley is. That's, yeah, you gotta go." Let's talk about the myth of Cherry Bomb.

• 1:09:04Yasi Salek?

  The audition is probably the most heavily mythologized, I feel like, in The Runaways story.

• 1:09:09Yasi Salek?

  She shows up. What song did she learn, Patty?

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  Fever.

• 1:09:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, which is a cover song by Susie Crotto. They're covered by Madonna and The Cramps. Great song.

• 1:09:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:21Yasi Salek?

  Not what they were looking for, per se.

• 1:09:23Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:09:24Yasi Salek?

  The most famous version is probably Peggy Lee's 1958 cover version. It's came out in 1956, Little Willie John. That's not important. Anyways, The Runaways are like,

• 1:09:34Speaker 02

  No. Not that song.

• 1:09:36Yasi Salek?

  Get this shit out of here.

• 1:09:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:37Yasi Salek?

  Lita Ford, in particular, was like, we do not play this fucking bullshit.

• 1:09:41Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:09:42Yasi Salek?

  It's too slow.

• 1:09:51Yasi Salek?

  I think Lita called it MOR shit. We don't play that fucking MOR shit. Middle of the road.

• 1:09:59Yasi Salek?

  She said it herself, actually. She said, I want to play some rock and roll, goddammit. So she said in her book. So both Lita and Sheri say, Kim and Joan were like, well, why don't we just go write her a song?

• 1:10:11Speaker 02

  They step out.

• 1:10:12Yasi Salek?

  They step out. And they write Cherry Bomb on the spot and come back. And they're like, here, learn this.

• 1:10:28Yasi Salek?

  Doesn't that all seem insane?

• 1:10:29Speaker 02

  It does.

• 1:10:30Yasi Salek?

  Because it's arguably their best song.

• 1:10:33Speaker 02

  And that was, okay, who is writing that? That's Joan?

• 1:10:36Yasi Salek?

  Just Joan and Kim.

• 1:10:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. They have the songwriting credit on it. I think, I believe it was how Joan described, right? She would sit, kind of probably how it was in the movie, although there's nothing I hate more in music biopics than when they show the writing of a song.

• 1:10:54Speaker 02

  Like pencil and paper?

• 1:10:55Yasi Salek?

  Yes. Yes. Because ninety times out of a hundred, that didn't happen that way.

• 1:11:01Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:11:02Yasi Salek?

  This one, I guess, maybe it probably did, but she was just like riffing and he kept coming up with words and he said cherry, because like Shree.

• 1:11:08Speaker 02

  Oh, right, right. That's right.

• 1:11:10Yasi Salek?

  Hello daddy, hello mom.

• 1:11:11Speaker 02

  Right. What a great song. What, like, sometimes they just come, they show up like that, those songs, right?

• 1:11:19Yasi Salek?

  So.

• 1:11:19Speaker 02

  That was like divine.

• 1:11:20Yasi Salek?

  Totally. Full divine. And again, you gotta give Kim some credit on this one.

• 1:11:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:11:25Yasi Salek?

  Well, or maybe you don't. Maybe you don't gotta hand it to him, but the Cherry Bomb lyrics are pretty sick. I mean, they're kind of crazy that they're about a fifteen year old girl is supposed to sing them and say.

• 1:11:36Speaker 02

  It's their story, though. It's them.

• 1:11:39Yasi Salek?

  Can't stay at home, can't stay in school. Old folks say you poor little fool. Um, down the streets, I'm the girl next door. I'm the fox you've been waiting for. The lyrics are good.

• 1:11:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally good.

• 1:11:52Yasi Salek?

  Have you and grab you until your sore is pretty, um, explicit.

• 1:11:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:57Yasi Salek?

  For a fifteen year old. And I think in the film, she's like, I can't sing that.

• 1:12:04Yasi Salek?

  And they're like, you have to. Um, and so she does. Joan's like, it's just a song. According to her book, they voted right in front of her.

• 1:12:16Speaker 02

  You're in.

• 1:12:17Yasi Salek?

  Well, actually, Lita was kind of like.

• 1:12:19Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:12:19Yasi Salek?

  And then she was like, okay, I guess. Um, and now they had their blonde. They had their Cherry Bomb and their Bessel.

• 1:12:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:27Yasi Salek?

  All in one second. They needed a bassist still, babe, because nobody, because she was like, Shree was like, I don't know how to play anything.

• 1:12:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:34Yasi Salek?

  He calls Kim, he calls the local musicians' union, and he's like, I need a bassist. And they're like, okay, well, here's this nineteen year old in North Hollywood named Peggy Foster. Peggy Foster didn't join the band, um, but I just wanted to bring her up because she had long blonde hair and she showed up and Kim was like, I don't like your hair. You need to cut it and get a perm. And she did. And they still didn't put her in, well, she was in the band for one show. They played a show in Manhattan Beach. And then, uh, she said she hated her hair. And she beefed with Shree. And said there was too much drama in this band, and so she left.

• 1:13:09Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 1:13:10Yasi Salek?

  So they were like, we're gonna call that other girl that auditioned for us played the Kiss song.

• 1:13:15Speaker 02

  Jackie.

• 1:13:16Yasi Salek?

  Jackie Fox. Jacqueline Louise Fox, born December 20th, 1959, Sagittarius also in Los Angeles. She grew up in Woodland Hills.

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:13:24Yasi Salek?

  Fawley. Sister Carol later would marry Castle Rock Entertainment co-founder Martin Schaefer. Also, I believe Carol is like a poker champion.

• 1:13:33Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:13:34Yasi Salek?

  Fascinating. So random.

• 1:13:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:37Yasi Salek?

  Um, she was a gifted child with extremely high IQ. Fawley has said that Jackie Fox's IQ was higher than his.

• 1:13:44Speaker 02

  That's saying something.

• 1:13:45Yasi Salek?

  I know. She was really smart. We'll get, we'll, we'll, I mean, there's great interviews with her, but we'll also, there's like one great quote, which I'll read later, which I was like, it's insane that a 16 year old girl said this in an interview. She was quarter finalists for Miss Teen USA, babe. She was beautiful. She was a surfer. She was on student council. She played piano. She could read music.

• 1:14:04Speaker 02

  She loved Kiss.

• 1:14:05Yasi Salek?

  She loved Kiss.

• 1:14:07Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:14:07Yasi Salek?

  Got her first guitar at nine and was like, I want to be like Kiss.

• 1:14:10Speaker 02

  That's cool.

• 1:14:11Yasi Salek?

  She was also high school friends with the future drummer of the Knack, Bruce Geary, and Helen Keller and Trudy Argulies, who would go on to become very iconic LA punks, like Friends of the Germs.

• 1:14:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:14:27Yasi Salek?

  Like, this, this is the shit that I live for. That like Jackie Fox of the Runaways was high school friends with Trudy and Helen Keller, and they would take the bus to go to Rodney's together.

• 1:14:35Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:14:36Yasi Salek?

  That's where she, or the Starwood, actually. But she met Rodney at the Starwood and he introduced her to Kim. Jackie said, Kim always liked me. He was a weirdo, but I was hanging out in Hollywood. My parents had friends who were alcoholics and actors and gays.

• 1:14:48Speaker 02

  Cute.

• 1:14:48Yasi Salek?

  Three, three categories.

• 1:14:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:50Yasi Salek?

  Um, he didn't faze me. He was just another California weirdo, maybe a little weirder than most. So she takes a bunch of buses, once again, to audition. They voted again, right in front of her face. Sandy, yes. Joan, yes. Shuri, yes. Lita, no.

• 1:15:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:07Yasi Salek?

  And Kim was like, to his credit, was like, if it's not unanimous, we're not putting someone in the band.

• 1:15:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:13Yasi Salek?

  So he didn't, wasn't just like, you have to have her. And so Cherie convinced Lita to let Jackie in. And Lita was like, okay, if she'll get us a record deal.

• 1:15:25Yasi Salek?

  And guess what?

• 1:15:26Speaker 02

  That she did.

• 1:15:27Yasi Salek?

  She did.

• 1:15:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:27Yasi Salek?

  December 1975, Mercury signs them after one rehearsal, seeing Cherie. Jackie was also very beautiful. I think that's what Denny Rose and Crans wanted. He wanted two more hot girls in the band.

• 1:15:38Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:15:40Yasi Salek?

  And he got it.

• 1:15:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:42Yasi Salek?

  He said, "The first time I saw them, they were a power trio, and I didn't really like them. Whatever they were trying to do, they couldn't quite pull it off. But when they add the lead singer and the bass player and made it into a regular band, I fell in love with them." So they renamed her Jackie Fox. She is the longest-running bassist of The Runaways, 18 months.

• 1:15:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:59Yasi Salek?

  But they have a lot of bass players.

• 1:16:00Speaker 02

  She would be kind of like the founding member.

• 1:16:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, she's the one you think. I mean, Mickey Steele was technically the first bassist, but like, she's the, the iconic lineup of The Runaways is this one, right?

• 1:16:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:16:12Yasi Salek?

  Cherie, Joan, Lita, Jackie, and Sandy.

• 1:16:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:16Yasi Salek?

  T-shirts.

• 1:16:17Speaker 02

  That's it. Yeah.

• 1:16:23Yasi Salek?

  Jackie said, "The real thing that happened with the addition of Cherie and me is that the very strong personalities that made up the band were suddenly in balance. The chemistry worked. There was this pentagram. Each of us had two people in the band, not the same, that we got along with best, then someone further away. Lita and Joan had really nothing in common, except the desire to be in a band. Lita and Sandy liked hard rock.

• 1:16:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:45Yasi Salek?

  Lita and I were the only completely straight girls. We had overlapping tastes in clothes, and we'd go shopping and check out guys together. Cherie and I were the two nice ones." I thought that was really interesting, because one main factor of The Runaways that we're gonna get into is like, Classic thing that happens when you put five girls together.

• 1:17:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:04Yasi Salek?

  There's some fucking girl on girl crime, babe.

• 1:17:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:07Yasi Salek?

  They, some of them do not fucking get along and they hate each other. And they caught, there's some drama.

• 1:17:13Speaker 02

  Right. I've been in, you know, like I've known Alita. I've known, totally known Alita. I've known a Cherie.

• 1:17:19Yasi Salek?

  Of course.

• 1:17:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:20Yasi Salek?

  Right? I'm sure you have. Kim put it differently. He was like, now we have a blonde bombshell.

• 1:17:26Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 1:17:26Yasi Salek?

  Cherie, the girl next door, Jackie, heavy metal anger volcano, Lita. John Lennon, Keith Richards and Natalie Wood with some Suzy Cuatro, Joan and Dennis Wilson.

• 1:17:37Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:17:38Yasi Salek?

  That was cute. Then it's time to sign contracts. Uh oh.

• 1:17:43Yasi Salek?

  Oh no.

• 1:17:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:45Yasi Salek?

  You already know what happens when some 15 year old girls and their parents who don't have any experience in the entertainment world sign contracts.

• 1:17:52Speaker 02

  Sign it all away.

• 1:17:53Yasi Salek?

  Bad, so bad. Uh, yeah, basically they have a contract directly with Fowley. Um, which is a partnership agreement, which gives him the rights to the name of the Runaways. All merchandising, all songwriting and ownership of the masters.

• 1:18:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's bad.

• 1:18:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And then they have, uh, one directly with Mercury. Anyways, it's a bad deal. Um, but they sign them because they don't, that's, they just want to be in a band. One thing I want to say about this five piece lineup that I, I'm so obsessed with in the story of the Runaways is

• 1:18:29Yasi Salek?

  this is such an LA band in the sense that like, they basically come from all stretches of suburbs outside. These are, these are not girls who grew up in Hollywood. Like for example, the Red Hot Chili Peppers grew up in Hollywood, you know? These are like suburban teenagers.

• 1:18:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:47Yasi Salek?

  Which is kind of what was so special about them. Like they're real suburban teenage girls, just from the sprawl around LA. They were able to come into the nucleus of Hollywood and kind of make this like magical thing happen.

• 1:19:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:00Yasi Salek?

  I just think it's so.

• 1:19:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they're not pros. That, I love that they're not like musicians.

• 1:19:06Yasi Salek?

  Well, I mean, they're 15. How could they be?

• 1:19:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:19:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. They're like, uh, well, Lita, I mean, Lita was as pro as it gets, I think.

• 1:19:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:15Yasi Salek?

  Um, so, okay. So they sign these deals, bad deals. And right around this time, I believe. Right before, maybe, Cherie's mom is like, hey, me and Wolfgang are moving to Indonesia. And Cherie's like, again, 15 years old, Marie 15 years old. She's like, Donnie's coming with us. Do you want to come with us? And Cherie's like, I just signed a record deal. Like, I'm gonna be in a band. Her mom's like, that's okay. You can go live with your aunt and grandma and your dad will come back. And Marie was like, I guess I'll stay with Cherie. And the craziest part about this is not that, which is pretty crazy. Like, can you picture, again, a modern day mother

• 1:19:58Yasi Salek?

  leaving her 15-year-old girl at home to move to Indonesia?

• 1:20:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, no.

• 1:20:05Yasi Salek?

  The craziest part is that, and this is in Cherie's book, so this is what she said, but that she comes home from the studio, because they're starting to record their first album, the day that her mother's supposed to leave to say goodbye, but her mother's already left for the airport without saying goodbye. And Marie's like, Cherie's like, well, she was supposed to, it was so much later. And Marie's like, she was afraid that you were gonna serve her with papers to make her stay and take custody of you.

• 1:20:33Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 1:20:33Yasi Salek?

  And Cherie like drives to the airport to try to catch her, and she sees her mom like in disguise, running away from her. Again, this is all in Cherie's book, so I don't have her mother's side of the story.

• 1:20:44Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:45Yasi Salek?

  Either way, it's very dramatic and she doesn't see her mother for two years.

• 1:20:48Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:20:48Yasi Salek?

  She's 15.

• 1:20:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:51Yasi Salek?

  Okay. We have a record deal.

• 1:20:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. Wow.

• 1:20:55Yasi Salek?

  Our mother has moved to Indonesia. One of our mothers has moved to Indonesia and left us behind.

• 1:20:58Speaker 02

  We're in the wind.

• 1:20:59Yasi Salek?

  We're in the wind. We're living with grandma and Aunt Evie and our dad, who is, again, a bit of a terrible alcoholic, but very loving. And it's time to play our first show as the Fabulous Five, as Kim would call them. It's New Year's Eve in Orange County, a place called Wild Sam's. Okay, this is, do you, okay, do you remember in Cherie's book where she describes the pretty harrowing moment where it's in a motel room and Kim Fowley invites them in for sex education class?

• 1:21:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:32Yasi Salek?

  Likely it's this show because they would have had a motel room to change and get ready into before Orange County.

• 1:21:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, there.

• 1:21:40Yasi Salek?

  I know, I like, I'm like, I don't want to go too into detail about this because it's so terrible. But TLDR is like, he has like a very drunk, maybe underage girl?

• 1:21:53Yasi Salek?

  Not sure. Did Cherie say how old she was? She was definitely a young girl.

• 1:21:57Speaker 02

  I don't remember exactly.

• 1:21:59Yasi Salek?

  And he makes the runaways like stand in the room and is like, I'm gonna teach you how to fuck. And like has sex with this girl in front of them. It's so gross.

• 1:22:12Speaker 02

  Doesn't Jackie talk about this? Jackie?

• 1:22:14Yasi Salek?

  Jackie talks about, well, okay. Here's what they had said later. So Cherie describes it in pretty like chilling detail. Faly denies it ever happened. Joan Jett has not denied it, but also says she does not remember it. Lita Ford says she was not there and didn't hear anything about it till 26 years later.

• 1:22:37Yasi Salek?

  In notes from her memoir, though, Sandy has a very

• 1:22:41Speaker 02

  Detailed.

• 1:22:42Yasi Salek?

  Very similar to this. So Sandy kind of did corroborate it. Carrie Chrome remembers it. She says she was there and she saw it.

• 1:22:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:49Yasi Salek?

  And Jackie Fox says if it did happen, she also didn't know about it till years later because she wasn't there. That's what she said in the book. I'm not, I don't remember what she said in Edge Play. Either way, it would be a kind of a crazy thing to make up.

• 1:23:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:04Yasi Salek?

  I'm not saying it happened or didn't happen, but like two band members said it did. This is fucking disgusting.

• 1:23:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:23:11Yasi Salek?

  And it's like, they're 15, 16 year old girls, like, and to feel like you can't leave and how uncomfortable it is.

• 1:23:20Speaker 02

  You feel trapped because this is your dream.

• 1:23:23Yasi Salek?

  You just signed the, it's your first big show together and then you're like, oh no. This is also part of it.

• 1:23:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:33Yasi Salek?

  Being in a band to me, it's like going on a group vacation. You know how like when you go on a group vacation?

• 1:23:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, get have a like.

• 1:23:41Yasi Salek?

  You have to have a buddy.

• 1:23:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, and also in in bands, like when you're auditioning or whatever, like besides playing well, you have to be a good hang. Too, you know, like certain things like, you know, like there's a like, it's okay to be a vegan. You know, but you know, or whatever, you know, like, but like, I don't know if that's a good example, but like.

• 1:24:03Yasi Salek?

  Like being high maintenance, too high maintenance, complaining too much. Yeah, because you have to spend so much time together. And you're traveling. Yeah, it is. I always think of it as like when you go on a trip with some friends and you've like come back and be like, never go on a trip with that fucking person again.

• 1:24:17Speaker 02

  Well, that's that.

• 1:24:18Yasi Salek?

  We do not.

• 1:24:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:24:19Yasi Salek?

  Travel in the same vibe. Yeah.

• 1:24:22Speaker 02

  I'm done. Yeah.

• 1:24:23Yasi Salek?

  But this is just that at the most intense level. Yeah. And spoiler alert, some of these girls do not travel together. Um, and they have a lot going on, given that they're 15 and 16 years old. They have.

• 1:24:35Speaker 02

  Just kids.

• 1:24:36Yasi Salek?

  A lunatic involved.

• 1:24:38Speaker 02

  Running the show.

• 1:24:39Yasi Salek?

  Owning kind of a lot of their shit. Um, but also helping write the songs, got them the deal, booking the show, like really embedded and meshed. Okay, so in January 76, they have their Hollywood debut at the Starwood. I think this is that show that is on your T-shirt where they all they get all these cute T-shirts made with their names on them.

• 1:24:59Speaker 02

  Super cool.

• 1:25:00Yasi Salek?

  I love things with my name on it.

• 1:25:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:02Yasi Salek?

  Terrible, but I did it. Um, Robert Plant was there and Kim had made him a Runaways shirt too that said Runaways, Robert Plant.

• 1:25:08Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:25:09Yasi Salek?

  He's a genius. Psychotic freak, but also genius. Ace Frehley was also apparently on this one of the shows. Yeah. This is written up in the LA Times by Richard Cromwell. He said, sooner or later, I actually love this, rock senility problem will reach the crisis stage. And then it will be solely up to the teenage audience to reject both father figure rock stars and corporate bred bubble gummers and produce its own new wave. It's kind of like foreseeing punk, right?

• 1:25:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:39Yasi Salek?

  And I get it's 76, so like you already have some youth movement stuff, right? I mean, the Stooges have come out.

• 1:25:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, Stooges and.

• 1:25:46Yasi Salek?

  Bowie's youngish.

• 1:25:47Speaker 02

  Velvet Underground.

• 1:25:48Yasi Salek?

  Velvet Underground totally, which I guess again, much like the Runaways, never really had a big commercial impact, but. Yeah, it's bubbling up, you know, because we kept, we've been talking about Kiss and Deep Purple and all these.

• 1:25:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:58Yasi Salek?

  These are kind of older. Men.

• 1:26:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:02Yasi Salek?

  So he said, "The Runaways, who played the Starwood Wednesday and Thursday, might be it, notwithstanding ample room for musical improvement."

• 1:26:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:26:10Yasi Salek?

  Okay, fair enough.

• 1:26:11Speaker 02

  All right.

• 1:26:11Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Well, again, when, you know, it wasn't cool yet to not be able to play your instruments.

• 1:26:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:16Yasi Salek?

  "The Runaways' lack of contrivance results in some awkwardness at this stage of the game, but the basic image, five Southern California beach and valley girls strutting and posing as if, as they've seen their rock heroes do it, is immediately striking. It's not so much what they do, as who's doing it."

• 1:26:31Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:26:32Yasi Salek?

  She's kind of right, like.

• 1:26:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:33Yasi Salek?

  It's the fact that they're teenage girls that's like kind of the novelty of it.

• 1:26:36Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 1:26:38Yasi Salek?

  The show is, I guess it's success, right? They're like, okay, we've debuted, Robert Plant was there.

• 1:26:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:43Yasi Salek?

  We got a write-up. Then it's grueling rehearsal time. I thought this was really interesting. Kim hires Kenny Ortega. Kenny Ortega is now best known as the director of all the high school musical movies and choreographer of those and Newsy. He also directed Newsies at Hocus Pocus.

• 1:26:59Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 1:27:00Yasi Salek?

  Incredible.

• 1:27:01Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:27:01Yasi Salek?

  I know. And choreographed Madonna's Material Girl video, Michael Jackson tours, I don't talk about that. But at the time, he was just a young choreographer who was working with that band, The Tubes.

• 1:27:11Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:27:12Yasi Salek?

  And he was like, "Help, I need you to help the girls with stage choreography." And he did. That was his, like, job. And Lita Ford has said in her book that she owes a great deal to him of how she learned how to move on stage.

• 1:27:25Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 1:27:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, kind of cool. Again, back to like, this isn't The Ramones. You know, like, they were, in many ways, doing theater. They have a choreographer, you know? When we get into Dead End Justice, it's like a rock opera play happening.

• 1:27:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:44Yasi Salek?

  They're doing an act. Kim hires a 25-year-old guy named Scott Anderson at this point to be his assistant.

• 1:27:51Yasi Salek?

  It's bad news, but we'll get into that later. I just want to point out that he was hired. And most of the girls have moved to Hollywood now. Sandy's living with her sister Terry. Lita gets her own apartment with the help of her parents, like, near, uh, the Whiskey. Joan lives with Kim in his spare room.

• 1:28:07Speaker 02

  Okay. Yeah.

• 1:28:10Yasi Salek?

  And she always speaks very highly of it. Uh, Lita says that Kim finally, one day, though, called Joan's parents and was like, "Listen, your daughter's doing too much drugs. I don't want her to die at my house. I'm not gonna deal with a dead 16-year-old. You gotta fucking figure this out." And Joan was like, "Okay, I'll get my own apartment." So she moved out into her own apartment, the iconic place across from the whiskey that she lives for a long time.

• 1:28:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:34Yasi Salek?

  And all the parties happen at.

• 1:28:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what I've heard about.

• 1:28:36Yasi Salek?

  Later on, the Germs' party there.

• 1:28:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:40Yasi Salek?

  Um, and Lita moves into Joan's room in Kim's house.

• 1:28:45Speaker 02

  Weird.

• 1:28:46Yasi Salek?

  I know. Lita said, "When I was eating my cereal in the morning, Kim would be on the phone talking business. I listened to how he worked, heard him sell these people the rap of a lifetime. He promised them that the Runaways were the greatest thing to happen to music in a long time, that we were gonna save rock and roll and would be international superstars. Because he said it over and over again, he truly believed it, and he made everyone else believe it, too. Then, because everyone believed it, it began to come true."

• 1:29:09Speaker 02

  Yep, that's it.

• 1:29:11Yasi Salek?

  I love that.

• 1:29:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:12Yasi Salek?

  Again, Kim Fowley, insane, very despicable behavior.

• 1:29:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:18Yasi Salek?

  Still had a thing that he was like, "They don't make 'em like that anymore," where he was like, "I'm just gonna speak this into existence."

• 1:29:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:29:26Yasi Salek?

  Um, and now it's time to record the first album. Okay, let's get into it.

• 1:29:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:29:29Yasi Salek?

  You guys, I'm just gonna be honest with you. I had not really spent a lot of time with the music of the Runaways prior to this. Um, I will probably not be spending much time with it in the future. I don't think the Runaways' importance as a musical act lays in their musical output.

• 1:29:48Speaker 02

  Uh-huh.

• 1:29:49Yasi Salek?

  What do you think?

• 1:29:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree. I agree, yeah.

• 1:29:52Yasi Salek?

  But also, you know, I wasn't, it didn't come to me in the time that I think it would have made a bigger impact. Okay, first Runaways album. It is called The Runaways. It comes out May 17th of 76.

• 1:30:07Speaker 02

  First song, Cherry Bomb.

• 1:30:08Yasi Salek?

  Okay, I mean Cherry Bomb.

• 1:30:09Speaker 02

  Great song.

• 1:30:10Yasi Salek?

  And you know what I'll say? I was, Cherie does not sound 15 years old.

• 1:30:16Speaker 02

  No, she doesn't.

• 1:30:17Yasi Salek?

  It's pretty striking, her singing voice.

• 1:30:19Speaker 02

  Totally does not. And I guess they recorded it, like, um, live, but in different, you know.

• 1:30:26Yasi Salek?

  Oh.

• 1:30:27Speaker 02

  You know, sections of the studios so that, like, you know, they wouldn't bleed into each other.

• 1:30:40Speaker 02

  There's this song "Secret", which sounds like, like the riffs are cool. It sounds like, um, it sounds like "Substitute", like it's that Who riff.

• 1:30:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then there's like those vampy songs that I'm just not into those.

• 1:31:08Yasi Salek?

  Like?

• 1:31:09Speaker 02

  You know, like, I don't know the titles.

• 1:31:11Yasi Salek?

  Like "Thunder"?

• 1:31:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, where they start out with like, they're sort of like, these sort of like bluesy vampy things.

• 1:31:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:16Speaker 02

  It's, I'm not down with that.

• 1:31:17Yasi Salek?

  It's not your thing. Yeah.

• 1:31:19Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:31:20Yasi Salek?

  I mean, "American Nights" I quite like.

• 1:31:22Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I like that one. Yeah.

• 1:31:24Yasi Salek?

  Marc Anthony wrote that one.

• 1:31:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:31:26Yasi Salek?

  That's like a pretty, that's the one where the phrase "queens of noise", not, they invented it, it comes from that song.

• 1:31:31Speaker 02

  And they do, they, don't they do like harmony in that? And it's so cool.

• 1:31:46Yasi Salek?

  I'm a sucker for Dead End Justice because I just like that, like, do, do, do, do, do the drum while they're like talking. It's like a story.

• 1:31:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love that. Like, "Hey Joan", yeah.

• 1:31:55Yasi Salek?

  "Come on, Cherie."

• 1:32:02Speaker 02

  Which one has a, there's like a talking, like photo shoots.

• 1:32:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:06Speaker 02

  "I hate 'em."

• 1:32:07Yasi Salek?

  Love that. Love that.

• 1:32:09Speaker 02

  We used to say that at photo shoots. Me and Courtney.

• 1:32:11Yasi Salek?

  Photo shoots. God, I hate 'em.

• 1:32:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:13Yasi Salek?

  They just sound, they sound so cool.

• 1:32:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:16Yasi Salek?

  Like when they're talk singing like that.

• 1:32:27Yasi Salek?

  By and large, a lot of this music is forgettable, um, with a love and respect to the Runaways.

• 1:32:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:33Yasi Salek?

  Also, we should say Jackie Fox did not play one note of music on this album because Kim Valley was like, we, we, I don't know if I said it clearly enough, but Jackie Fox was a guitar player.

• 1:32:43Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 1:32:43Yasi Salek?

  So she kind of just switched to bass to be in the Runaways, but that's not her real instrument. And I don't think she, I think she was proficient.

• 1:32:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:52Yasi Salek?

  But Kim was just like, "You're not good enough." And he had Nigel Harrison from Blondie uncredited play all the bass parts on here. The promo to me is very interesting. This is the press release said. Mercury Records has the new Stooges. The buzz on the streets says the runaways are gonna happen big. Think about it. 16-year-old beautiful girls playing hard rock. If you can't relate, you're dead.

• 1:33:17Yasi Salek?

  Fucking sick. Meanwhile, Joan and Lita are already 17, but we don't need to talk about that. What? The premise of the runaways, though, like, someone didn't think it through. Because you're only, how long can they be teenagers?

• 1:33:31Speaker 02

  Right. Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:32Yasi Salek?

  Like, you know, everyone bemoans that they ended after three and a half years.

• 1:33:36Speaker 02

  You know, it's like Menudo.

• 1:33:37Yasi Salek?

  Exactly. Well, and then you have to start switching them out, you know?

• 1:33:39Speaker 02

  They gotta start switching.

• 1:33:40Yasi Salek?

  But it's like, it's not like this band could have had like a Pearl Jam-length career where like, they're like singing songs about being teenagers and they're 38 years old.

• 1:33:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:33:49Yasi Salek?

  So, you know.

• 1:33:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:51Yasi Salek?

  It was baked in.

• 1:33:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:53Yasi Salek?

  The end of the run was baked into the premise.

• 1:33:55Speaker 02

  An expiration date.

• 1:33:56Yasi Salek?

  Um, this is what the band bio said. There are two myths that exist in rock. Neither teenagers nor females can rock. Bull. Who do you think Chuck Berry, Brian Wilson, and Paul McCartney have been singing to all these years? Male collegians? Rock and roll exists because teenagers exist. It's fucking true.

• 1:34:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:15Yasi Salek?

  No lies detection in that one.

• 1:34:17Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 1:34:18Yasi Salek?

  The cover is just a photo of Cherie. This is gonna start a trend.

• 1:34:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:22Yasi Salek?

  That does not.

• 1:34:23Speaker 02

  How did that happen?

• 1:34:24Yasi Salek?

  I think Kim. I think it was Kim Falley's decision.

• 1:34:27Speaker 02

  But the rest of the band was cool with that?

• 1:34:29Yasi Salek?

  No, I don't think so. They don't think, they don't think we're cool with it. And they would have liked to also be on the cover. So this is gonna start a crack that will continue to permeate the runaways, which is that Cherie is made to be like the front focal person.

• 1:34:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:47Yasi Salek?

  And she says that she didn't want that, but it wasn't really up to her. And the band resented her for it, even though it wasn't really up to her. And it starts here with this cover being, I mean, it's a cool photo, but like.

• 1:35:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:02Yasi Salek?

  But also, I don't really get that thing. So like, as Robert Hillburn said in the LA Times, like, the novelty, the interest of this is that it's like five teenage girls. Why would you not put all of them on the cover? And they're all gorgeous. It's not like, it's like, oh, we don't want to show those ones, you know? Um, so that's a bit confusing. Uh, did not sell well. I think it hit 194 on the Billboard 200s, just cracked in there. Didn't really get radio play. I think Cherry Bomb was played on like two stations. Really fun fact, their radio promo guy, Cliff Bernstein.

• 1:35:37Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:35:38Yasi Salek?

  Future Metallica manager.

• 1:35:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know Cliff, yeah.

• 1:35:43Yasi Salek?

  Cliff was their, their radio promo guy at Mercury.

• 1:35:46Speaker 02

  We never, we never talk about it.

• 1:35:48Yasi Salek?

  Now you can call him up and be like, hey, just learn.

• 1:35:50Speaker 02

  Tell me.

• 1:35:52Yasi Salek?

  Well, he might remember it as a struggle because again, he could not get these fucking people on the radio for the life of him. Tons of press though. Consider a teenage girl rock and roll band. Jackie said something really interesting, which is that the thing that gets lost in the aura that surrounds the Runaways now is how big of a joke we were considered back in the 70s. And I was reading a lot of the articles and I get what she's saying.

• 1:36:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, Jackie just really, she says, she puts it all like.

• 1:36:21Yasi Salek?

  She's really honest about it.

• 1:36:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:23Yasi Salek?

  It makes sense because it's, she, I don't think, again, fast forward, Jackie Fox is one, the first of these five to leave the band. She goes to Harvard Law School, becomes, she's a genius, become with Barack Obama, becomes like a record label lawyer, I think. I don't know what she does now. She won Jeopardy.

• 1:36:45Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:36:46Yasi Salek?

  Anyways, I don't think it's in her, I don't want to say interest, but it doesn't seem like it's important to her to be the steward of the legacy of the Runaways.

• 1:36:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:36:54Yasi Salek?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 1:36:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:36:56Yasi Salek?

  In the way that it is more for Joan.

• 1:36:57Speaker 02

  Part of her life, where she has many parts of success.

• 1:37:01Yasi Salek?

  So she's, she's just kind of like, well, let me tell you fun facts.

• 1:37:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, this happened.

• 1:37:05Yasi Salek?

  People thought we were a joke.

• 1:37:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:08Yasi Salek?

  Here's, here are a few sentences from the reviews. Cash Box, this album contains 10 of the hottest, sweatiest, nastiest, most straight ahead rock and roll songs we've ever heard. That's a bit of hyperbole.

• 1:37:23Yasi Salek?

  Robert Hillburn, my king, in the LA Times, flawed, but not nearly enough to keep the album from being a most inviting introduction to a delightfully promising female band that is firmly entrenched in the Quattro Sweet New York Dolls tradition.

• 1:37:35Speaker 02

  It's good. Yeah, that, yeah, gentle.

• 1:37:37Yasi Salek?

  Gentle, true.

• 1:37:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:39Yasi Salek?

  Not mean.

• 1:37:40Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:37:40Yasi Salek?

  But not lying and saying it's amazing.

• 1:37:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:44Yasi Salek?

  Enemy said, "By the looks of the sleeve, and quite a sleeve it is, these girls are more interested in eliciting good old fashioned lust than musical respect." Well, that should see them through a couple of years at least. Do they play their own instruments? Does it matter? Well, no session man I've ever heard could possibly sound as lame and unimaginative as they manage to be.

• 1:38:03Speaker 02

  Ouch.

• 1:38:03Yasi Salek?

  I know. Enemy really hit them in every place that it hurt.

• 1:38:07Speaker 02

  All of it. Yeah, that's bad.

• 1:38:10Yasi Salek?

  We're gonna get into this about what it meant for them to be positioned as sex objects.

• 1:38:19Speaker 02

  Well, there was a moment that it all kind of-

• 1:38:22Yasi Salek?

  Yes. And obviously, it's there from the beginning. Even in the songs, all have pretty lurid lyrics.

• 1:38:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:30Yasi Salek?

  And I think just, Joan has said this before, and I think she's absolutely right. Rock and roll is sexual, right? Like Mick Jagger, you know, Led Zeppelin, it's libidinal music, you know?

• 1:38:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:38:39Yasi Salek?

  So it's like, just because they're teenagers doesn't mean they're gonna opt out. Because they weren't trying to be like some cute, see, even the Shangri-Las have kind of like sexual sounding music, you know? They maybe took it a step further, but then, yes, we're gonna get into the other step further. I just wanted to read the zigzag review so I can shame the man who wrote it, Chris Needs. I mean, it was a long time ago, Ben, I'm sure he's atoned since then, but, "Ooey." That's the first caps. "This platter boasts one of the most fetching sleeves I've had the pleasure to mass..." dot, dot, dot, "oggle at." "On the front, the glitteringly attired Cherie casts a seductive eye over her shoulder while outstretched hands caress the mic." She's onstage, you see. "Open it up and you're confronted by all five runaways.

• 1:39:24Yasi Salek?

  On the left, there's sultry Joan Jett, complete with chain hanging out of her jean pocket. In the middle is Cherie again, hand and hip and blouse unbuttoned to the waist. Their delectable teen dream cohorts, Sandy Wesley, DeFoe, and Jackie Fox, pout provocatively alongside. All the girls look exceedingly tanned and healthy. There's more pics on the back, and we even get to find out the girls' ages. All 16, except lead guitarist Lita, who is the old lady of the group, at 17." As I said, "Ooey." There's not one word about the music.

• 1:39:57Yasi Salek?

  It's gross.

• 1:39:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:58Yasi Salek?

  Georgia Criscow, sister of Robert Criscow.

• 1:40:01Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 1:40:02Yasi Salek?

  Who was also a music critic and a lot of people talk about her. She was also very smart. Wrote in Circus that the album is more complicated than it is great. On record, the band sings everything as if by rote. There's nothing to indicate that they have asked to be seen as they see themselves.

• 1:40:17Speaker 02

  I really liked that. Yeah. Clever. Circus.

• 1:40:22Yasi Salek?

  It makes sense what she's saying, though, because like, while I think what Joan said is totally true, right? I don't think that they did anything they didn't want to do. But there's a, but there is such, there is such a thing as like not realizing because you're 16 or 15 that you're being pushed in a direction that maybe isn't, like, I had that when I was a teenager. Like, a lot of what I look back on as a teenager is like, I wish I had known more what I actually wanted because it made it too easy to do the things I didn't want, you know?

• 1:40:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:40:54Yasi Salek?

  And I wonder if that was a bit at play here, you know?

• 1:40:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:40:58Yasi Salek?

  Robert Criscow, the brother of Georgia Criscow, said, "Don't let misguided feminism, critical convolutions, or the fact that good punk transcends ordinary notions of musicality tempt you. This is Kim Falley's project, which means that it is a tuneless, it is tuneless and wooden as well as exploitative. How can anyone hang around LA for so long without stealing a hook or two defies understanding? Maybe it's just perversity, which would make it the only genuine perverse thing about the man." This is mostly him hating Kim Falley.

• 1:41:28Speaker 02

  I can understand that idea, like, for somebody like Sandy West, who's such a great musician. And to be stuck in that, you know, oh, in a novelty of the Runaways.

• 1:41:40Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:41:41Speaker 02

  And to be not respected.

• 1:41:43Yasi Salek?

  And like musically speaking, which is gonna really come into play later, again, as they get a little bit older and a little bit into their own skin, these are not five girls who have the same musical background.

• 1:41:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:56Yasi Salek?

  Like, like you said, Lita Ford and Sandy West love metal.

• 1:42:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:00Yasi Salek?

  You know?

• 1:42:01Speaker 02

  Joan was more Glitter Clam.

• 1:42:02Yasi Salek?

  Joan loved Glitter Clam, and then once punk crosses her desk, she's like, let's fucking go. And pop, you know?

• 1:42:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:08Yasi Salek?

  Um, Shereen kind, she loved Bowie, obviously.

• 1:42:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:12Yasi Salek?

  But she seemed to be a little more into just pop music. Yeah, and like, she chose Fever because she likes like- More sultry, you know?

• 1:42:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:42:21Yasi Salek?

  And Jackie loved Kiss, but she didn't love heavy metal.

• 1:42:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:25Yasi Salek?

  She loved Kiss.

• 1:42:26Speaker 02

  It is important, though, that like, everybody kind of has a similar vibe.

• 1:42:31Yasi Salek?

  Sure, once you start writing your songs and want them to sound a certain way.

• 1:42:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:36Yasi Salek?

  I do love Dead on Justice, though. I'm sorry, I already said that, but it's seven minutes long and it's like,

• 1:42:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:41Yasi Salek?

  It's really a vibe.

• 1:42:42Speaker 02

  Lita Ford, I have to say, is such a ripper. She's so good.

• 1:42:47Yasi Salek?

  What must it be like?

• 1:42:49Speaker 02

  So great, and that, like, to, I know that, you know, they had to have been like,

• 1:42:55Speaker 02

  just so excited to be able to play these songs, you know, in their first record and to record them and to like, this is,

• 1:43:04Speaker 02

  this is us, you know, like, pretty amazing for 16-year-olds.

• 1:43:08Yasi Salek?

  I can't imagine being 16 and looking at Bowie, or looking at Ritchie Blackmore, or looking at Suzy Quatro, and being like, I want to do that, I want to do that. And then five minutes later, you are doing that.

• 1:43:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:20Yasi Salek?

  You know, what a trip.

• 1:43:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:32Yasi Salek?

  I wanted to ask you, when you first did it, what did it feel like?

• 1:43:35Speaker 02

  Amazing. I mean, and to, um, yeah, that's, it's, I mean, there isn't enough, I couldn't, you know, what-

• 1:43:41Yasi Salek?

  There's not enough words to describe in the English language that feeling.

• 1:43:45Speaker 02

  There's so many things, yeah.

• 1:43:46Yasi Salek?

  Oh, how cool.

• 1:43:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:49Yasi Salek?

  And I will learn that, too, at the tender age of 47, when I finish learning, uh, the four bar chords that I need to put together. Okay, we were, we've been referencing this hinge moment in the way that they're perceived, particularly as sex objects, and now we're going to talk about it. This is right after the album comes out. They have a show at the Starwood. Now, Cherie Currie, she said in the Edge Play documentary, she didn't play an instrument, right? So she was like, I didn't really know what to do on stage, so I thought costume changes were like a good way to like, kind of, be occupied and keep it interesting. She had walked past Frederick's of Hollywood and seen, still there, you guys can go visit.

• 1:44:31Yasi Salek?

  She spied a white satin corset with black bows. Now, I think this is really interesting, because most people think this was Kim's idea.

• 1:44:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:41Yasi Salek?

  This is where like it gets, there's a lot of this.

• 1:44:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, he, I mean, he loved it, of course, but this was 100% Sherri's idea. She loved it. She said, "As I pressed my nose against the glass, that corset set my brain on fire. Man, how cool would it be if I wore that onstage? Kim was always screaming that I lacked rock and roll authority. I imagine standing in front of the audience dressed in that getup, that would blow people's minds."

• 1:45:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, but she's, she did it in such a, I mean, she, it was her choice, but.

• 1:45:14Yasi Salek?

  It's complicated, right?

• 1:45:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:16Yasi Salek?

  It's really, that's why I'm like so interested to talk about it, because.

• 1:45:19Speaker 02

  Also, I forgot, I mentioned on that first record, there's like maybe two songs where she plays piano.

• 1:45:25Yasi Salek?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 1:45:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's like, like not even a full section, it's like a few little, like two songs, and it's.

• 1:45:32Yasi Salek?

  Classic with the girl on keys moment, yeah.

• 1:45:34Speaker 02

  Or, or like she didn't feel like she was part of this.

• 1:45:38Yasi Salek?

  Contributing enough, yeah.

• 1:45:40Speaker 02

  There's, and it's like really not needed, but I mean, no offense to you Sherri Curry and your piano playing, but like.

• 1:45:48Yasi Salek?

  I kind of get it, though. I'm like, I, I'm such like a child of the 90s, so like the idea that you would just be the singer of a band is so like, especially as a woman.

• 1:45:58Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:45:58Yasi Salek?

  I'm like, oh, you gotta play guitar.

• 1:45:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, you have to.

• 1:46:00Yasi Salek?

  You gotta. It's like, come on, you know?

• 1:46:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:46:03Yasi Salek?

  So, again, I'm, this is one of my like obsession points on the runways, I'm dying to talk about it, because, again, it was her idea, she wanted to do it.

• 1:46:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:46:10Yasi Salek?

  Another layer of this is the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

• 1:46:13Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:46:13Yasi Salek?

  Because it's important to talk about the Rocky Horror Picture Show was huge amongst young glittering glam teens and then punk teens. It stayed, it screamed like fucking every week or every day in Los Angeles.

• 1:46:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:46:26Yasi Salek?

  They would always go see it. They were obsessed with it. It was transgressive, it was cool, and she was like, I can look like Frankenfurter.

• 1:46:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:46:33Yasi Salek?

  That was one of the inspirations, which you don't think about, right?

• 1:46:35Speaker 02

  I don't, I didn't.

• 1:46:37Yasi Salek?

  But that, she said it, you know, like.

• 1:46:38Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:46:39Yasi Salek?

  And he has, especially the fishnet thigh highs, like, that's very much that look. Kim loves it, like I said.

• 1:46:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:46:46Yasi Salek?

  Lita.

• 1:46:47Speaker 02

  Not so much.

• 1:46:48Yasi Salek?

  Hates it. She only wore it onstage for the one song, for Cherry Mom. She would change onstage. However, it becomes sort of associated with it. I'm, again, I'm just fascinated, like, you can track a lot back to this. Like, you can track Madonna later and Britney Spears later and all pop in, in these, like, really... But what about Wendy O. Williams, you know?

• 1:47:14Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 1:47:15Yasi Salek?

  A, a lot of, you know, like, you didn't see this before Cherie Curry that much, right? Even like Susie Quatro was wearing a full-body situation.

• 1:47:25Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:47:26Yasi Salek?

  I'm not, I, I, yeah, yeah. It's not even that I'm saying it's good or bad.

• 1:47:30Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 1:47:30Yasi Salek?

  It's interesting.

• 1:47:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:47:33Yasi Salek?

  That she sort of started this thing that before that didn't really... And I'm sure I'm gonna get a million dollars thinking, this lady did it, and I'm like, if I'm not thinking of somebody, but...

• 1:47:44Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:47:46Yasi Salek?

  I'm just, I mean, I'm, I'm also interested in, like, who gets to be sexual onstage? Who gets to own their sexuality? Men can do it because they're innately granted respect. And they don't have to prove why they have to be onstage. So they, so Mick Jagger can wear extremely tight pants and like, and Robert Plant, because no one's gonna question their authority, as Kim said, you know?

• 1:48:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:15Yasi Salek?

  But, but a girl, the premise is already, like, you don't deserve to be up there. And now you're, now you're tarting it up too.

• 1:48:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, tip of the iceberg. It's just the tip of the iceberg.

• 1:48:27Yasi Salek?

  Again, I don't have a dog in this fight.

• 1:48:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:29Yasi Salek?

  I'm just interested in, like, what it means.

• 1:48:32Speaker 02

  Wow, yeah.

• 1:48:33Yasi Salek?

  And what it, what happens because of it.

• 1:48:37Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 1:48:38Yasi Salek?

  Fast Freddie, this is actually very interesting.

• 1:48:40Speaker 02

  Patterson.

• 1:48:41Yasi Salek?

  Patterson. And Lisa Fancher. So these are two very early Runaways acolytes and friends and journalists. Lisa Fancher wrote for Bomb. Fast forward, I said the corset was a very cheap attempt to reach the lowest common denominator. DeeDee and most writers knew that, DeeDee Faye. Women definitely knew it. I believe the Runaways may have been taken more seriously if Cherie wasn't all tarted up. Lisa Fancher said, "They were a good rocking band, but I thought the whole corset thing was really sad. It was just creepy to see a 16-year-old girl wearing a corset. It detracted from being a Joan Jett kind of kick-ass band." I don't even know how much Cherie was into music before that, but I don't think she liked music that much. I think she more liked to look the part. So even girl on girl crime, babe. Woman on woman crime, you know?

• 1:49:23Speaker 02

  I think she's right.

• 1:49:24Yasi Salek?

  She might be. I mean, again, like, I don't, I don't know where to put it, because I'm like, well, not to bring up one of my favorite bands. You might have heard of them called Hole.

• 1:49:37Yasi Salek?

  I loved seeing Courtney up there in like, pretty provocative clothing, you know? I mean, she wasn't wearing a corset and thigh highs, but she was kind of not wearing, she was wearing a, you know, ripped little girl's shoes. It was like, part of the allure of being onstage and playing rock and roll is being sexy, right?

• 1:49:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It's just, it's like, how far can you take it? Kathleen Hanna said something interesting. It was, she read it this way. She was like, "It was so awkward and weird and drag-like. The way she moved was so weird and almost mocking pornography poses. Cherie looked like a little kid playing dress up, a skinny boy in drag. When I watch videos of them, I'm like, oh, she brings out the idea that being a woman is a role. It's something you can put on and take off." Again, this might have been applying a little too much. But who knows? You know?

• 1:50:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:25Yasi Salek?

  Yes. I'm not sure that Cherie Curry was thinking in a Brechtian manner when she was taking the stage.

• 1:50:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:32Yasi Salek?

  But maybe subconsciously, again, whatever it is.

• 1:50:35Speaker 02

  I don't think there's, she's in backlash or anything.

• 1:50:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Exactly. It's, it's just really fascinating. Yeah. So, so to you, you think it's like...

• 1:50:45Yasi Salek?

  Cheap.

• 1:50:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, like it was like a cheap ploy to get.

• 1:50:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:51Yasi Salek?

  Which, which is interesting, cause like it already, they were already wearing these custom jumpsuits made by Shuri, I think her name was.

• 1:51:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:00Yasi Salek?

  Already pretty sexy, you know?

• 1:51:02Speaker 02

  Lita had that whole, um, one-piece spandex, the black.

• 1:51:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I mean, Lita played in like Daisy Dukes and, and thigh high or knee high boots, you know?

• 1:51:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:13Yasi Salek?

  Again, that's one level down though, from like underwear and yeah, it's, it's really interesting. And it did, I think it damaged how they were perceived. That's the, that's the issue.

• 1:51:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then it even goes farther than that.

• 1:51:28Yasi Salek?

  Oh, right. When we get to the later photos and yeah.

• 1:51:32Speaker 02

  The photos.

• 1:51:33Yasi Salek?

  The photos. It even goes back to the question of like, oh, Shuri's decision. Okay, you're 15.

• 1:51:41Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 1:51:41Yasi Salek?

  Should you have been allowed to make those decisions?

• 1:51:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:51:44Yasi Salek?

  What, what level do you get to have agency, you know? And, and in, for what decisions? Complicated, right? You know?

• 1:51:53Speaker 02

  And also I feel like maybe she felt, I don't know, maybe I'm reading into it, but she felt like she wasn't seen enough.

• 1:52:00Yasi Salek?

  Right, cause she's not playing instrument, yeah. Who knows? But it's there and this is gonna be forever sort of like associated imagery of the runaways.

• 1:52:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:52:16Yasi Salek?

  Alright, so they go on their first tour. We pack up the corset.

• 1:52:21Yasi Salek?

  It's in the back. We get in the station wagon with a trailer and we're heading the road. The road was really stressful for Shuri in particular. She loses a ton of weight. She thinks she dropped like 90 pounds. Cause she's really homesick.

• 1:52:34Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:52:34Yasi Salek?

  Uh, which makes sense.

• 1:52:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:52:36Yasi Salek?

  She's 15.

• 1:52:37Speaker 02

  Kids.

• 1:52:37Yasi Salek?

  She also didn't really have a stable home anyway. She was living with grandma and Evie and her sister and her dad. There's that really great bit that's in both Lita and Shuri's books, and I believe it's in the film too, where she's like talking to Lita about being homesick. And she's like, aren't you homesick? And Lita says, yeah, of course I'm homesick too, but when I get home, I wanna be someone. So good.

• 1:53:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:01Yasi Salek?

  And Cherie said that like really like, like, kind of like changed her.

• 1:53:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:06Yasi Salek?

  This is also the tour that Joan and Cherie grow super close on. Cherie said, "When I think back on Joan and our relationship, I can still feel a distant quaking inside. Our friendship was a godsend to me. I believed in her and the dream that had driven her this far. I felt safe when I stayed close to her. Sometimes we'd look at each other and I'd get that tingling in my stomach. She was my anchor. How do I explain about a person that was my best friend, someone I would confide in like a sister, someone who, to me, became a strong sexual attraction? Well, it's easy, just like how easy it was to be that way with her."

• 1:53:36Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:53:37Yasi Salek?

  Sweet.

• 1:53:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:39Yasi Salek?

  She's taking a bunch of Quaalids, Cherie, on this tour.

• 1:53:41Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 1:53:42Yasi Salek?

  Often provided by Scott Anderson, who was working for Kim.

• 1:53:47Speaker 02

  Assistant.

• 1:53:48Yasi Salek?

  Who, Kim doesn't go on the road, no, no interests, and Scott. The other girls, I think, are parting a bit too, except for Jackie, who didn't do drugs.

• 1:53:57Yasi Salek?

  And then Scott Anderson, I think is 28, maybe 29, sets his sights on Cherie Curry and starts a relationship, a sexual relationship with her. I believe she's maybe 16 now, 15 or 16.

• 1:54:12Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:54:15Yasi Salek?

  Oh, I don't like it.

• 1:54:16Speaker 02

  Nah, no.

• 1:54:18Yasi Salek?

  I don't care for it. I believe it's illegal.

• 1:54:19Speaker 02

  No, I believe it is.

• 1:54:21Yasi Salek?

  There's some speculation that he also slept with the other girls too.

• 1:54:25Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:54:26Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 1:54:26Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, didn't, there's also that Cherie slept with.

• 1:54:31Yasi Salek?

  She slept with Joan, she says. I mean, Joan has never said anything.

• 1:54:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, she said she slept with Joan, Sandy.

• 1:54:38Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:39Speaker 02

  Joan and Sandy.

• 1:54:40Yasi Salek?

  And Joan and Sandy also had a thing, according to Carrie Chrome.

• 1:54:45Speaker 02

  Oh, that doesn't, that's, that doesn't add up.

• 1:54:48Yasi Salek?

  That Carrie Chrome said it?

• 1:54:49Speaker 02

  No, no, that Joan and.

• 1:54:51Yasi Salek?

  In the, in the early days, they had a thing, apparently. That's what Carrie said, because Carrie and Joan were dating, and then she says Joan.

• 1:54:58Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:54:58Yasi Salek?

  Jumped ship for Sandy.

• 1:55:00Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:55:01Yasi Salek?

  Again, this is, I'm just reporting the news. I wasn't privy.

• 1:55:06Speaker 02

  I'm just like.

• 1:55:07Yasi Salek?

  Teenage girls, a bunch of hormones.

• 1:55:09Speaker 02

  Like, style-wise, I was like.

• 1:55:10Yasi Salek?

  Right, you thought they wouldn't.

• 1:55:13Yasi Salek?

  I mean, but I'm imagining again, I'm not a person of gay experience, but maybe in the 70s, that's like the only other gay girl.

• 1:55:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:55:22Yasi Salek?

  There's not a huge dating pool, maybe.

• 1:55:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:55:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:55:26Yasi Salek?

  Cherie was in love with Scott Anderson. She was like, which again, makes sense. You start having sex with a man who is nearly twice your age and you're vulnerable and young and you're gonna be like, yes, that's gonna be my husband.

• 1:55:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he's giving you Quaaludes.

• 1:55:39Yasi Salek?

  And he's fucking feeding you Quaaludes left and right.

• 1:55:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:55:44Yasi Salek?

  He sucked at his job, by all accounts, and the tour was a mess.

• 1:55:48Yasi Salek?

  Joan said something interesting.

• 1:55:51Yasi Salek?

  It's really easy to have 2020 hindsight and go, where was the supervision? I didn't see the girls going, where's our supervision back then? No one was concerned. We may have been kids, we were also professionals. We wanted to play the gigs. But the whole point of supervision is that it's for people who don't know they need it. Isn't, they're not gonna ask to be supervised. Teenagers, of course, are not gonna ask to be supervised. But they needed it.

• 1:56:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56:16Yasi Salek?

  In the signing of all the deals, Kim Valley like promised all their parents there would be supervision, there would be tutoring. Cause they're still in high school.

• 1:56:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, their parents talk about that in Edge Play.

• 1:56:27Yasi Salek?

  In Edge Play, yeah. None of that. They were supervised by Scott Anderson, who was like feeding them drugs and sleeping with them.

• 1:56:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:56:34Yasi Salek?

  Again, some conflicting stories. The TLDR is the same. Cherie gets prescribed Placidols for either tonsillitis or fatigue. I don't think it could be fatigue, cause they are heavy downers. They're like what Elvis used to take.

• 1:56:47Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 1:56:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And then she gets addicted to Placidols and starts taking them every day. She was a real like, one pill makes you smaller, one pill makes like, to wake up, to go to sleep, you know? Here's a fun little excerpt from an NAB interview at the time.

• 1:57:05Yasi Salek?

  Girls, come on now, let's not get carried away. You're presumably always getting hit with questions about feminism, right? Joan looks as if she wants to puke.

• 1:57:15Yasi Salek?

  We don't even think about it. We're not even part of it. It doesn't have anything to do with what we're doing. And he goes, I imagine you'll get people saying you're a feminist rock band. If we do, we'll just tell them to piss off, says Shuri. Sandy says, shit, man, how many teenage girls really care about women's rights? Not too many. It was the 70s.

• 1:57:32Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 1:57:33Yasi Salek?

  Also, it was kind of like a bad word.

• 1:57:36Speaker 02

  Right, yeah.

• 1:57:37Yasi Salek?

  Like, you were like, you didn't shave your armpits.

• 1:57:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:57:39Yasi Salek?

  You were like a hippie. Like, it was like, not cool, you know? Yeah, this is interesting on Patti Smith. Well, because there's that, that great story.

• 1:57:50Yasi Salek?

  Where Kim, I think it was Kim, I can't remember if it was Kim, takes them backstage at a Patti Smith show in LA and is like, or maybe it was Lenny K. One of the band people was friends with them. And Patty did not want to meet them. It was like, get those girls the fuck out of here. And in front of them. So, the interviewer goes, it almost goes without saying that they all knew about the Ramones. Shuri wasn't too sure of them. They don't have the charm the Dolls did. I don't like them. Their whole album sounds like one long song. Shuri Curry, you're wrong, but this is important to point out how it's already diverging, right? Shuri is like, I think the Ramones suck.

• 1:58:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:27Yasi Salek?

  The idea of thinking that the New York Dolls are better than the Ramones.

• 1:58:32Speaker 02

  Absolutely not.

• 1:58:32Yasi Salek?

  Like musically?

• 1:58:34Speaker 02

  Not in perhaps.

• 1:58:35Yasi Salek?

  Spiritually in some senses. And again, like, that's more glam and the Ramones is punk.

• 1:58:39Speaker 02

  It's a whole different thing.

• 1:58:41Yasi Salek?

  And Joan said, and the Dolls at least wrote great songs. Well, the entire words to Ramones songs are, now I'm gonna sniff some glue. All the kids wanna sniff some glue. Now I'm gonna sniff some glue. All the kids want something to do. I mean, that's pretty tacky.

• 1:58:54Yasi Salek?

  But then Patti Smith. They're like, hey, Patti Smith? A chorus of, hate her. Hate her fucking guts. And Shuri says, Kim Fawley took me to stare at the Roxy to see if I could see how she performed on stage. And she was such a, ugh. I mean, she was so disgusting with those saggy tits.

• 1:59:13Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:59:14Yasi Salek?

  And Lita goes, she looks like she's coming down off four quaaludes. And Sandy goes, and she's really a drag. Here's the, this is the real thing. We went back to her dressing room with Rodney to meet her, you know, very friendly. And she goes, you girls, out.

• 1:59:28Yasi Salek?

  Which I think is a true story because that's come a couple of times. Although that was funny.

• 1:59:32Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:59:32Yasi Salek?

  Inner, inner woman drama.

• 1:59:34Speaker 02

  Yep. Why Patty, though?

• 1:59:37Yasi Salek?

  Well, you know, what we like to talk about on here is the queen of self mythologizing is Patty Smith. And I'm obviously a huge fan, but there's a lot of stories of the early days where she was kind of mean. To Blondie, to, but also like, again, like, I think it, I think it's important to remember that it wasn't easy back then to make your mark. And like, I was just talking to someone about this the other day where I was like, how come only men get to be ruthless? Not the feminism re-entering my body, but like, it comes across, it's spoken about in different tones when a man does it and a woman does it, right?

• 2:00:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:00:16Yasi Salek?

  Like, it's funny to people when like, Kim Thales mean to Billy Corgan.

• 2:00:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:00:21Yasi Salek?

  Which was really funny.

• 2:00:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, or, um, um, Jack White.

• 2:00:26Yasi Salek?

  Or Jack, yeah.

• 2:00:27Speaker 02

  And the guy from.

• 2:00:33Yasi Salek?

  I honestly don't.

• 2:00:34Speaker 02

  Auerbach, Dan Auerbach.

• 2:00:35Yasi Salek?

  Oh, Black Keys, yeah. Or like, there's a million probably examples of like, you think fucking, um, Gene Simmons was like, shaking hands and kissing babies, Axl Rose.

• 2:00:47Speaker 02

  Right, right. Um, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Neil Young.

• 2:00:52Yasi Salek?

  Exactly.

• 2:00:52Speaker 02

  They wrote songs about each other.

• 2:00:54Yasi Salek?

  But anyways, I thought that was funny.

• 2:00:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:00:57Yasi Salek?

  Then they, then they do an interview for a teen magazine. I think it's just called like Teen Women or something.

• 2:01:02Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 2:01:02Yasi Salek?

  This is the quote of Jackie's that I was obsessed with. She goes, kids today have the same problems kids had way back when Socrates wrote about how uncouth youth was.

• 2:01:14Yasi Salek?

  Okay, Jackie Fox.

• 2:01:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:16Yasi Salek?

  Dropping some Socrates references in a teen magazine. Obsessed with her. Okay, so then the wheels are starting to creak off here. I mean, again, Shuri is addicted to pills and sleeping with a 30-year-old man. People are tired. They have no, they're not getting any money.

• 2:01:31Speaker 02

  Right, they come home.

• 2:01:33Yasi Salek?

  They're scraping by. They come home and then they're sent to Europe. Jackie's mother, Ronnie, accompanies them as their chaperone. This is where they kind of start to see, because it's 70s, right? They start to see punk.

• 2:01:44Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 2:01:45Yasi Salek?

  Sex pistols is happening. Shuri said, "In Europe, I saw the future of rock music and I didn't like it. Punk rock was everywhere in the UK and suddenly our shows were packed with scrawny kids wearing dog collars and leather with safety pins shoved through their noses, ears, and even their cheeks." She didn't like it. Joan loved it.

• 2:01:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:02:00Yasi Salek?

  Let me ask you. Where do you place the Runaways in the history of punk music?

• 2:02:10Speaker 02

  I consider them involved in it, but like, they are like, maybe not, they're not the Stooges.

• 2:02:18Yasi Salek?

  No, exactly.

• 2:02:20Speaker 02

  But...

• 2:02:20Yasi Salek?

  They're like antecedents in a way that is really important.

• 2:02:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, because kind of like David Bowie glitter rock, but not David Bowie. Not, they're not in his sphere, but, you know.

• 2:02:30Yasi Salek?

  I think attitudinally, just by being teenagers.

• 2:02:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:02:36Yasi Salek?

  That was punk, right? It was punk to be teenage girls in a band. Whether or not the music was punk, the Runaways were spiritually punk.

• 2:02:48Speaker 02

  Entirely.

• 2:02:48Yasi Salek?

  Kind of the same way I always think The Doors are spiritually punk because of how Jim Morrison related to the world and the thing, but their music has nothing to do with it. But obviously, they had huge impacts, both these bands, right? The Doors inspired Iggy to start The Stooges. And the Runaways directly inspired The Germs.

• 2:03:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:03:08Yasi Salek?

  The Germs formed because they saw the Runaways and they were like, "We can do that." So they, in my Mount Rushmore of punk music, they have a big space.

• 2:03:17Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:03:17Yasi Salek?

  Mount Rushmore is maybe not the right term because that was only four heads, but, you know, in my Ken Burns history. That's where they belong. Okay, so Shuri is hating punk, they're pelted by cans, so Kim Fauley's earlier training is coming in handy.

• 2:03:32Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:03:32Yasi Salek?

  They're told by the promoters that's a sign of love. Joan is stoked.

• 2:03:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:03:38Yasi Salek?

  Joan is like, I love the Sex Pistols, I love the clothes, I love the attitude. I mean, obviously, very early on Joan loves it, she's wearing her little leather jacket from the beginning.

• 2:03:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:03:47Yasi Salek?

  My queen.

• 2:03:47Speaker 02

  She's so punk rock. Also, I think that has to do with gay, being gay.

• 2:03:53Yasi Salek?

  Also very punk.

• 2:03:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:03:55Yasi Salek?

  At the time, right?

• 2:03:56Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 2:03:58Yasi Salek?

  Shuri is unhappy, Joan is thriving, Shuri is on placidals, Scott Anderson is also providing cocaine. In her book, Shuri says on this tour, Scott starts to sort of like pull away and like flirt with the other girls and she's going like crazy, you know, because she's like, that's my husband, I'm gonna marry that man, I love him. So she's spiraling, she's taking all these pills, she's drinking, again, losing weight. And so they get home from the European tour and Shuri is like really sick. She's so tired, she's puking every day, she doesn't understand what's going on, but like, they're like, it's time to, this is another thing, it's time to record the next album because they were on like the most psychotic

• 2:04:42Yasi Salek?

  schedule as per Mercury where like, they were worked like dogs, you know? Nobody recorded this much, like, the idea now where you're like, Rihanna, can I have one more album, please, in the next decade? Like, people were putting out two albums a year.

• 2:04:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:04:55Yasi Salek?

  You were just always, you were either on tour or in the studio, there was no other.

• 2:04:59Speaker 02

  Is Shuri like benzo withdrawal, like, or is she?

• 2:05:02Yasi Salek?

  Oh, I'm glad you asked. Well, we find out while we're making the next album.

• 2:05:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:05:07Yasi Salek?

  Her dad finally takes her to the doctor, she's pregnant.

• 2:05:10Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 2:05:11Yasi Salek?

  Scott Anderson got her pregnant.

• 2:05:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05:13Yasi Salek?

  This is a rough time for Shuri, so she's gotten pregnant by her 28-year-old tour manager.

• 2:05:24Yasi Salek?

  Her father ends up, her father sounded so wonderful, like she went and told him, he took care of her, took her to, you know, get her abortion, even though she was like really conflicted about it, but she was like, I can't, you know. Her father was like, you need to call him and tell him and also like make him pay for it. And she couldn't do it. And so he called.

• 2:05:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:05:43Yasi Salek?

  I think also she was like living with him, like, like she was like 15, 16 years old, living with this man. Anyways, whatever, absolute trash, disgusting trash jail. This is also the making of the album, which is memorialized in, have you seen this Runaways movie? I could bring you.

• 2:06:03Speaker 02

  Not, I've seen it, yes, but I can't remember. I just remember, why is Nolio Shawcat talking?

• 2:06:10Yasi Salek?

  Not allowed to speak because she's a fake person named Robin who didn't exist. Not a real, not a real character. Also, I can't watch, I especially can't watch music biopics once I've done the research because I'm like, that wasn't, that wasn't a different place. That person wasn't there. And I know that's not the point, but like it just.

• 2:06:28Speaker 02

  I can't either.

• 2:06:29Yasi Salek?

  It gets in, it gets under my skin. Well, what I was getting at is that it's the making of this album, not only is Shuri like ill and soon to find out she's pregnant, they're in the studio and she's handed a copy of Crawdaddy Magazine, had a big piece about the Runaways, and she reads this nice little quote about herself from Kim Bailey. Handling Shuri's ego is like having a dog urinate in your face. The best thing that could happen to this band would be if Shuri hung herself from a shower rod and put herself in the tradition of Marilyn Monroe.

• 2:06:59Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:07:00Yasi Salek?

  So, yeah, Shuri Curry, addicted to pills.

• 2:07:05Speaker 02

  Mentally ill.

• 2:07:06Yasi Salek?

  Really sick, yeah, really being put through the wringer.

• 2:07:09Speaker 02

  He's mentally ill.

• 2:07:10Yasi Salek?

  He's mentally ill, no, she's not. She's unwell, I think on many levels.

• 2:07:14Speaker 02

  And then you see this.

• 2:07:15Yasi Salek?

  And then she sees this.

• 2:07:16Speaker 02

  After the work, you know, even though there is drug addiction, you're sleeping with the man, you know. Uh, to be so disrespected.

• 2:07:25Yasi Salek?

  So disrespected.

• 2:07:26Speaker 02

  That's just to begin.

• 2:07:27Yasi Salek?

  She gets super upset.

• 2:07:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:07:29Yasi Salek?

  Obviously, as anyone would.

• 2:07:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:07:31Yasi Salek?

  Now, Lea, I want to point out, Lita, at this point, is sick of Shuri's shit anyways, because she's like, she's sleeping with the fucking manager. He's giving her all this special attention.

• 2:07:41Speaker 02

  I feel like Lita has a short fuse for everything.

• 2:07:44Yasi Salek?

  And I'm just like, from reading their books, diametrically opposite kinds of human beings.

• 2:07:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:07:50Yasi Salek?

  Like, could not be more different.

• 2:07:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:07:53Yasi Salek?

  And so Lita's like, are you gonna fucking sing? Are you gonna fucking cry? I'm paraphrasing, but it's something, cry like a baby.

• 2:07:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:08:01Yasi Salek?

  Shuri says in her book that Lita was in an extra horrible mood because she hated the direction of this album. It was too soft. And Kim comes over and is like, what's the fucking problem? And Shuri's like, what the fucking hell, man, with this quote? And he's like, this idiot wanted to hear some inside gossip on the runaways, so I manufactured some for him. You should be glad, Shuri, because of that little quote, we got an article twice as long, and most of it's about you. In his mind, where everything is a fantasy and a story and a production.

• 2:08:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:08:30Yasi Salek?

  He doesn't hate Shuri.

• 2:08:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:08:32Yasi Salek?

  Or he, or he does, doesn't matter. That's not relevant. What's relevant is that he made a fun story for them to write about. And she's like, I'm hanging on by a thread and I have to read that you want me to kill myself in Crawdaddy National Music Magazine. And he, he's like, it's called Selling Records. And she's just like, no.

• 2:08:52Speaker 02

  This is Queens of Noise, right?

• 2:08:53Yasi Salek?

  Queens of Noise. This is all the making of Queens of Noise.

• 2:08:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:08:57Yasi Salek?

  Comes back to learn that they have given her vocals on the title track to Joan.

• 2:09:03Speaker 02

  Right. And she was pissed.

• 2:09:05Yasi Salek?

  Was upset.

• 2:09:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:09:06Yasi Salek?

  I can imagine. I, I, I'm putting myself in her shoes.

• 2:09:11Speaker 02

  Right. But it's sort of like, you know, like a sign of things to come.

• 2:09:16Yasi Salek?

  Totally. But like, you already feel like I'm not contributing enough.

• 2:09:21Speaker 02

  Dismissed, yep.

• 2:09:22Yasi Salek?

  I had to put on this course out to get some respect, which backfired. Um. I had to go get an abortion for my 30 year old. I keep giving him different ages because it doesn't really matter, but.

• 2:09:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:09:33Yasi Salek?

  I'm addicted to pills. Kim Fawley is being extremely mean to me. Lita Ford hates me. And now my best friend has taken my vocals on this song that was, according to her, written for her.

• 2:09:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:09:43Yasi Salek?

  By Billy Bizeau of The Quick. Who wrote it on acid, by the way.

• 2:09:47Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 2:09:48Yasi Salek?

  Apparently. Kim Fawley said Joan opened her mouth and she had a radio voice. Cherie did not have a radio voice.

• 2:09:58Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:09:58Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 2:10:11Yasi Salek?

  So that's Queens of Noise. What were you gonna say?

• 2:10:14Speaker 02

  That I was gonna say that record was, I guess, Lita and Sandy loved that record because they liked working with Earl Mankey, who was the producer.

• 2:10:23Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 2:10:24Speaker 02

  Who had done like Beach Boys, but.

• 2:10:27Yasi Salek?

  Played guitar with Sparks.

• 2:10:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:10:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. And the drum sound on that, I mean, is so, I can't, I mean, maybe for one song it's okay, but the drum sound is so like, like roomy, but gated, like, like, like maybe he wants it to sound like a big glam rock drum sound. And it's so wrong. It's like, I, I can't get through it.

• 2:11:02Yasi Salek?

  I'm gonna keep it 100 with you. This album is a rough thing.

• 2:11:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:11:06Yasi Salek?

  It was, it's hard to listen to.

• 2:11:08Speaker 02

  But they loved it, I guess, Lita and, because it was, I think, speaking their language with.

• 2:11:15Yasi Salek?

  Hard rock or whatever.

• 2:11:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:11:22Yasi Salek?

  So yeah, we won't go too into the weeds of the music on Queens of Noise.

• 2:11:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:11:32Yasi Salek?

  Not my favorite. You can hear the divergence of the different styles a little bit. Where Johnny Guitar, for example, is like the Lita Ford song where she really wants like a hard rock and blues, you know, and Jackie Park was like...

• 2:11:50Speaker 02

  It's the worst song on the record, according to Jackie.

• 2:11:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Jackie was like teenage girls from the suburbs should not be playing the blues.

• 2:11:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:11:56Yasi Salek?

  "I Love Playing With Fire," which I kinda like, is Joan Jett's favorite, which you can kinda see where she wants to do.

• 2:12:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:12:01Yasi Salek?

  Cherie liked midnight music, which is like the croony one.

• 2:12:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, ballady.

• 2:12:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:16Yasi Salek?

  The reception is not much better, still no radio hit, 172 on the Billboard, 200.

• 2:12:22Speaker 02

  Album cover.

• 2:12:24Yasi Salek?

  Has all the girls on it.

• 2:12:25Speaker 02

  Is that where they look like they're in jail? Or they called it stripper poles too? Is that the one?

• 2:12:32Yasi Salek?

  Okay, wait, is this the one where they did the...

• 2:12:37Speaker 02

  Smoke?

• 2:12:38Yasi Salek?

  Yes, yes, yes, yes.

• 2:12:39Speaker 02

  And then, so the original idea?

• 2:12:41Yasi Salek?

  Was like different parts of their bodies, like only shown like...

• 2:12:46Speaker 02

  And they couldn't do it, so they had to switch the cover?

• 2:12:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. I don't know.

• 2:12:53Yasi Salek?

  I don't know.

• 2:12:54Speaker 02

  I don't know about that cover.

• 2:12:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I don't know about that cover. That's okay. Here's a really mean line from a review by Cream. "These bitches suck despite what the West Coast blowjob coordinator would say."

• 2:13:05Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 2:13:07Yasi Salek?

  "Chris Gou gave it a C minus. I'll tell you what kind of street rock and roll these bimbos make.

• 2:13:12Speaker 02

  Oh."

• 2:13:13Yasi Salek?

  "When the title cut came on, I thought I was hearing Evita twice in a row, only I couldn't figure out why the singer wasn't in tune."

• 2:13:21Yasi Salek?

  You could just call people Bimbo's.

• 2:13:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:13:23Yasi Salek?

  You could all through the 90s, pretty much, too. They did it then, too.

• 2:13:27Speaker 02

  A little bit.

• 2:13:27Yasi Salek?

  Now you couldn't do it. NME said one good thing, not good thing, but one accurate thing.

• 2:13:33Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:13:33Yasi Salek?

  One example of what's wrong with this album is the way the tempo has been pulled back on just about every track. Somebody must have decided slowing everything down makes for a sultry, pouting feel. In fact, the end product merely comes out sluggish. I think he's really right, because I was thinking about like, what I react to in the Runaways songs, particularly on the first album, which is Cherry Bomb and Dedda and Justice, is that they're kind of propulsive.

• 2:13:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, the energy.

• 2:13:58Yasi Salek?

  They're young, they're teenage, like, it is like, Joan is kind of right, and like, they should have been making kind of punky, poppy

• 2:14:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:14:06Yasi Salek?

  music, you know?

• 2:14:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:14:08Yasi Salek?

  It doesn't as much work when they're doing these sort of like, whatever it is.

• 2:14:14Speaker 02

  The lead a sandy vibe.

• 2:14:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. All right, that came and went, they do another tour.

• 2:14:21Yasi Salek?

  Again, we're only a year out from being formed, we've put out two albums.

• 2:14:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:14:25Yasi Salek?

  And are on our second or third tour. Iggy Pop and David Bowie come to see them at The Rat in Boston.

• 2:14:32Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:14:33Yasi Salek?

  Which still existed back then, and well through the 90s, I believe. Iggy said, "I went strictly to see them, I thought it was important to see their work, I was most impressed by Joan Jett, she was a real competitor. None of the other girls put a foot wrong, but she was the one."

• 2:14:48Yasi Salek?

  A roadie of theirs is quoted in Evelyn's book saying, "By this tour, it was really like the Shuri Show, unlike the rest of the band." There's a couple of, again, this is what I'm talking about, the tone of each of their books being maybe different than what some other people say.

• 2:15:03Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 2:15:03Yasi Salek?

  Jackie Fox in Edge Play is like, "Shuri was the most selfish person I had ever met, at that time, you know?" And also, in Shuri's defense, she was an addict, and addicts are the most selfish people that anyone knows, so.

• 2:15:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:15:17Yasi Salek?

  Kind of lines up, right?

• 2:15:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:15:18Yasi Salek?

  And then they go to Japan.

• 2:15:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:15:20Yasi Salek?

  June, they go to Japan.

• 2:15:22Speaker 02

  Big.

• 2:15:23Yasi Salek?

  One of the greatest visual parts of the Runaways story is like them in kimonos.

• 2:15:28Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:15:28Yasi Salek?

  And with like, tons of like teenage Japanese girls like fawning and fainting over them like they're the Beatles.

• 2:15:34Speaker 02

  You know, any band that went to Japan in the 70s, all the photos are amazing, like when Kiss went.

• 2:15:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:39Speaker 02

  So cool. Yeah, but definitely.

• 2:15:42Yasi Salek?

  Was that like that when you guys went to Japan?

• 2:15:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, like, when, when Lita was talking about how they bring you gifts and stuff, that's true. And then they'll bring you, like, you'll, like, do a picture, and then they'll come to the next show and bring you a copy of the picture of you and them.

• 2:16:01Yasi Salek?

  That's so cool.

• 2:16:04Speaker 02

  That's really nice.

• 2:16:04Yasi Salek?

  Too bad bands' names is in English, and I'm not gonna be, I gotta get that, I gotta get that Sears Telecaster popping right now. Do you think there's a market for 45-year-old woman music?

• 2:16:16Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, totally.

• 2:16:17Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 2:16:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:16:20Yasi Salek?

  Okay, Japan is their biggest tour to date. It's huge. They're, they're to play the Tokyo Music Festival at the end of this, like, I think it's at least a month. But they're also playing a bunch of shows, doing much of press. Fans are insane, like we said, thousands of these Japanese schoolgirls, just like, ah.

• 2:16:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:16:38Yasi Salek?

  They got to go to Suzy Cuatro's wedding.

• 2:16:40Speaker 02

  Right, I saw that, too.

• 2:16:41Yasi Salek?

  She got married in Japan. Meanwhile, tensions are continuing to flare up in this band.

• 2:16:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:16:46Yasi Salek?

  The promoters would put all the magazines that had press about them in their rooms.

• 2:16:54Yasi Salek?

  And this is when they opened the magazine and see these insane photos of Shuri Curry in her corset and panties.

• 2:17:03Speaker 02

  Provocative.

• 2:17:04Yasi Salek?

  Provocative, yeah. It's funny, because by today's standards, if you look at those photos, you're like, we've seen way worse stuff.

• 2:17:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:17:16Yasi Salek?

  But it was the 70s.

• 2:17:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:17:18Yasi Salek?

  And again, she's still only 16.

• 2:17:20Speaker 02

  Right. And she did it without anyone knowing, it was sort of secrety.

• 2:17:26Yasi Salek?

  But she didn't know, according to her, she didn't know no one else knew. So she, Kim told her that they were each doing individual photo shoots. And she was like, okay, I'm doing my individual photo shoot. She had no idea. This is what she says. And the other girls, like, lose their shit. And again, they're still, I think they're trying to be taken seriously, right?

• 2:17:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:17:47Yasi Salek?

  And this is just furthering the narrative, like, sex pot narrative, you know?

• 2:17:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, to tag on to that, yeah.

• 2:17:54Yasi Salek?

  And I think on top, also, they're probably, like, back to, like, why is it only the Shuri show? What about us, you know?

• 2:18:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:02Yasi Salek?

  They don't talk to her for like a week in Japan.

• 2:18:04Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. I know that vibe too. Like you're on tour.

• 2:18:07Yasi Salek?

  I can't imagine. It must be so hell.

• 2:18:09Speaker 02

  Everybody's like mad at someone. And so, yes.

• 2:18:13Yasi Salek?

  Oh, it sounds like hell.

• 2:18:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:15Yasi Salek?

  Because they're the only people you're with and they're not even talking to you.

• 2:18:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:20Yasi Salek?

  So you would think like it would be Cherie that gets out of the band during this tour. No, it's actually Jackie.

• 2:18:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's had it.

• 2:18:28Yasi Salek?

  She's had it. She's super burnt out. She's sick of being abused by their new roadie tour manager, Ken Smythe. Scott Anderson was fired.

• 2:18:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:37Yasi Salek?

  Um, and by Lita, according to Jackie. Um, Lita and Cherie say that Jackie was a hypochondriac and a no at all.

• 2:18:46Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 2:18:46Yasi Salek?

  And super annoying. And Lita kept saying an edge play. She wanted to go to her own gyno.

• 2:18:53Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:18:54Yasi Salek?

  She wanted to go to her own gynecologist. I was like, okay. I mean, it might have been true, but it's like.

• 2:19:00Speaker 02

  Like girl and girl crime again.

• 2:19:01Yasi Salek?

  Full girl and girl crime. Um, Jackie says that she confided in Joan in Japan and was like, I want to leave. And she says that Joan got down on her hands and knees and started weeping and was like, please don't go.

• 2:19:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:19:15Yasi Salek?

  She goes back to the thing where I'm like, if you could point to one person.

• 2:19:19Speaker 02

  Who was pure and it was true and was gonna go.

• 2:19:21Yasi Salek?

  And it was like, this is the most important thing to me. Come hell or high water, I need this to work.

• 2:19:27Speaker 02

  Joan.

• 2:19:28Yasi Salek?

  And Lita was kind of like that too. But again, but Lita was went about it a bit differently.

• 2:19:33Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 2:19:35Yasi Salek?

  Like Joan wasn't a mean girl in that sense, right? She wasn't. She was a little more shy and kind of a little more like, I just want everyone to, I just want, I don't want to deal with drama. I just want to make the music.

• 2:19:45Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 2:19:46Yasi Salek?

  Um, and Jackie said it was such an outpouring of emotion that I stayed.

• 2:19:51Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 2:19:52Yasi Salek?

  But then after this full month of like nonstop craze, they had a show.

• 2:19:59Yasi Salek?

  Jackie was like, "The bass, the stand for my bass is wobbly, please replace it. It's, it's, I need a new bass stand." Because she had this very nice 1966 Thunderbird bass. It was like her pride and joy.

• 2:20:11Speaker 02

  Kim Gordon plays one.

• 2:20:12Yasi Salek?

  Oh, she does?

• 2:20:12Speaker 02

  Beautiful, yeah.

• 2:20:13Yasi Salek?

  So gorgeous. They never fixed the wobbly stand. And it got knocked over and the neck snapped off. And she just also snapped. She lost it. She says, "When my bass broke, I was so upset. I realized there was no one looking out for us. And I had no allies in the band. This sucks. Get me out of here. I did not just freak out and leave. What I had was an anxiety attack. I was a teenager and I was alone. I'd ordered a Coca-Cola from room service and I threw it against the wall. I was so angry. And then I was angry at myself because I was being a pussy and I was scared to leave. So I saw this piece of broken bottle and I was not trying to kill myself. I was not doing it consciously, but I was angry and I wanted to hurt something.

• 2:20:56Yasi Salek?

  So I picked this up and cut myself, she like cut herself all the way down the arm."

• 2:21:02Yasi Salek?

  Crazy. Not, not she's been crazy, but that's like a crazy visual.

• 2:21:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:21:06Yasi Salek?

  And ultimately, it was Cherie who like kept being like, "Is Jackie okay? Is Jackie okay?" And Kent Smythe, who by all of the girls' accounts was a villain, was like, "She's fine. Stop it." And Cherie was like, "I, she's not, I'm sure she's not fine," like pushed past him. In Cherie's book, she like grabbed the, it's very more dramatic. She grabbed the glass out of her hand and Jackie was like, "No, I had already finished doing it." But still, she was like, it was really, like Cherie had such a big heart that she's the only one that like thought about me and knew that I would be so upset that my bass broke and checked on me. She goes to the hospital because she has a huge

• 2:21:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:21:42Yasi Salek?

  gaping wound. And then, in the documentary, did you notice in the Edgeblade documentary that she says she came home and called Randy Rhodes?

• 2:21:50Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, that's right.

• 2:21:52Yasi Salek?

  They were like best friends.

• 2:21:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:21:53Yasi Salek?

  He was in Quiet Riot still at the time. It was like four in the morning and he was like, "Babe, come home." Like, I really liked that little detail.

• 2:22:01Speaker 02

  I know.

• 2:22:03Yasi Salek?

  And so she says, "I want to go home." And they're like, "Cool, take the bus. Here's 700 yen. Take the bus to the airport."

• 2:22:10Yasi Salek?

  And she said, no one said goodbye to her. In the liner notes of Live in Japan, which by the way, I think is low key the best Runaways album, um, cause it sounds, it's like you can kind of feel the energy of the live show. Kent Smythe wrote, "We thank ourselves for spending the 700 yen."

• 2:22:28Yasi Salek?

  So mean.

• 2:22:29Speaker 02

  Wow. Whenever there's a live record, that's always like a filler. Like, cause they, you know, broke up or whatever. Like, so then they fill it in with a live record.

• 2:22:37Yasi Salek?

  But weirdly, this one, I think, is their best album.

• 2:22:39Speaker 02

  And B-side.

• 2:22:40Yasi Salek?

  Maybe because of just what you were saying about the last album, the way that was produced, like, they should have been just produced live, like, with the energy, you know?

• 2:22:58Yasi Salek?

  This is an amazing tid. According to Evelyn's book, Joan had this teaser that you have, probably with all their faces on it. And after Jackie left, she took her cigarette and put it out on Jackie's face and burned a hole through the face.

• 2:23:11Speaker 02

  Joan.

• 2:23:13Yasi Salek?

  She also said to Bumpin' Grind magazine that year, not familiar with it, but, um, "In Tokyo, Jackie wanted to go home and we said, no, you can't. She had obligations to fulfill. She had to finish the fucking tour, but she didn't want to. So she did the most outrageous thing she could think of to get attention. That stuff's gonna happen when you're in a band. Misunderstandings, hurt feelings, this and that. But when you make what you consider a war move and you quit, it's like, come on. Okay, you quit. You're out. Don't play games. This is serious. This is my life." I read it not to show that Joan was being mean, cause it's not about that. It's more like, how important this was to her, you know? Like, at the time, she wasn't even able to see the forest for the trees to be like, this girl is like, struggling. She was just

• 2:23:55Yasi Salek?

  like, you're compromising our dream. This is our dream, you know?

• 2:24:00Speaker 02

  And didn't, did Joan play bass and then Lita?

• 2:24:04Yasi Salek?

  So yeah, for, because they still had that huge festival.

• 2:24:07Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:24:08Yasi Salek?

  And Joan took over on bass and Lita played her guitar.

• 2:24:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24:13Yasi Salek?

  And now they're back home and guess what? They need another bassist ASAP, cause they have tours and obligations, as aforementioned.

• 2:24:19Speaker 02

  It's always just a rotating bass player.

• 2:24:22Yasi Salek?

  Is that common?

• 2:24:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:27Yasi Salek?

  Why?

• 2:24:28Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 2:24:28Yasi Salek?

  So replaceable.

• 2:24:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 2:24:30Yasi Salek?

  That's what I'm gonna learn.

• 2:24:31Speaker 02

  It's not hard.

• 2:24:32Yasi Salek?

  Telecaster.

• 2:24:32Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 2:24:33Yasi Salek?

  Hard for me.

• 2:24:35Yasi Salek?

  They tried to hire Charlotte Caffrey.

• 2:24:38Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 2:24:38Yasi Salek?

  The Go-Go's, but she was like, no, thank you.

• 2:24:40Speaker 02

  Yes, she was. Oh, my God.

• 2:24:42Yasi Salek?

  She wasn't a Go-Go yet. She was just a girl that played bass.

• 2:24:44Speaker 02

  Punk band eyes.

• 2:24:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. They also at some point, and I don't know when in the story, it might be after Vicky Blue

• 2:24:54Yasi Salek?

  auditioned the girl, the woman who went on to be in Backstage Pass. But she also did. Anyways, they find Vicky Blue.

• 2:25:03Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah.

• 2:25:05Yasi Salek?

  July of seventy-seven. Victoria Tischler Blue. Born on September sixteenth, nineteen fifty-nine, also a Virgo.

• 2:25:13Speaker 02

  A Virgo, again.

• 2:25:15Yasi Salek?

  She was a bright, wealthy girl from Newport Beach. She was, she had a trust fund. She was a bit different. She rode horses, actually was thrown from a horse when she was ten, and that's what caused her to have epileptic seizures the rest of her life.

• 2:25:27Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:25:27Yasi Salek?

  And she had graduated high school at fifteen and a half because she just didn't like it. She had an unusual life. And she had seen The Runaways open for the Tubes and was a huge fan. She was in a band called Juice. She really wanted to be in a band. She also looked just like Lita Ford.

• 2:25:40Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, that, that, I read that, too.

• 2:25:42Yasi Salek?

  Which Lita didn't love, I think, at first, but then was like, okay with. So she auditioned. She's in, almost. Kim Valley is like, go home and lose ten pounds.

• 2:25:51Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 2:25:52Yasi Salek?

  I know. Then she was in. Not long after this, it's gotta be like, within that same summer, there's a photo shoot with Vicky Blue, new band photo shoot. There's mixed versions of this story. In Cherie's book and in The Runaways movie, it is that they had this new lineup photo shoot, scheduled photographer Barry Levine, and Cherie was sharing a car with her sister Marie at the time. And Marie was like, getting into acting, had an audition that night. And so she came right on time to the photo shoot, and she was like, I have to leave by six-thirty. And it should have been plenty of time, according to her. However, she says Lita was two hours late. And so then they couldn't finish in time and she still was like, I'm leaving at 6:30.

• 2:26:37Yasi Salek?

  I'm not doing this to Marie. And Lita explodes at her. In Lita's memory, Shuri was the one who was late and she says that Shuri was always late. Either way, Lita loses on her, like, it's always about fucking you and gives her like an ultimatum. She's like, it's either your family or the band.

• 2:26:55Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 2:26:56Yasi Salek?

  And Shuri is like, well, it's my family then. And just quits. She's like, can't take it anymore. She's a broken person at this point, which I get it. And apparently I thought this was Kim Valley, again, constantly doing things I would not expect. Didn't call to be like, you have to stay in the band. You're the blonde, you're the cherry bomb, you're the meal ticket. He calls right away and is like, oh, did you leave the band? And she's like, yeah. And he goes, good for you, Shuri, for standing up for yourself. Anyways, I'm gonna put you in the studio in two weeks for a solo album. It checks out to me because Kim Valley said multiple times in multiple different interviews that one of the worst things for him about the Runaways is how much they fought and he hated it. And he wanted them to all be friends. And it was like stressful, although Jackie Fox, if you ask her, would say they, he pitted them

• 2:27:41Yasi Salek?

  against each other as a way to hold control. So who knows?

• 2:27:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:27:46Yasi Salek?

  But yeah, puts her in the studio in two weeks to make a solo album.

• 2:27:50Speaker 02

  And didn't she make records with her sister?

• 2:27:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's a little bit later. She is, again, a full blown drug addict at this point.

• 2:27:55Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:27:56Yasi Salek?

  Not doing well enough, I think, to make the album not, or maybe she did. I'm not really sure. Respectfully to Shuri, correct? I didn't too much follow her solo career after this. I know she made music with her sister and they were very popular in Japan. Cause Shuri was very popular in Japan. They start to kind of trash each other in the press after Shuri leaves. There's an interesting NME interview where they asked Joan, why haven't the Runaways been taken seriously up to now? And Joan says, it was the whole cherry bomb with the corset thing with Shuri. And Shuri says to this wasteland fanzine, I lost respect for them. And when you lose respect for your band members, you've lost everything. Much later, Joan Jett said, we all had dark stuff going on towards the end of the band after Shuri left. I think we all knew that was the lineup. I just sensed it was slowly gonna die.

• 2:28:41Yasi Salek?

  I can't explain it. I knew the public wouldn't really accept me as the lead singer.

• 2:28:47Yasi Salek?

  But she had to do it anyways.

• 2:28:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:28:49Yasi Salek?

  This is a fun fact that could have altered the history of The Runaways, probably. Joan came to rehearsal after Shuri's gone and they're rehearsing for the next album and she's now the lead singer.

• 2:28:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:29:00Yasi Salek?

  She brings a cover she wants to do by a band called The Arrows from England.

• 2:29:05Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 2:29:06Yasi Salek?

  Song is called "I Love Rock and Roll." And Kim was like, "I hate that, no."

• 2:29:12Yasi Salek?

  Imagine. Anyways, that's

• 2:29:16Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:29:16Yasi Salek?

  Gets put away for now. Um, and then they do Waiting for the Night. Waiting for the Night, what a fucking 70s ass album name, right?

• 2:29:25Speaker 02

  I know. And then I think the cover had like barbed wire on it or some.

• 2:29:30Yasi Salek?

  You know, whoever did the art for The Runaways, their t-shirts were cool. I mean, the last album, I can't even get into, I'm like, who dressed you people?

• 2:29:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:29:38Yasi Salek?

  So Shuri's not in the band. Once again, Vicky Blue is not allowed to play bass on here. Sal Maida of the band Milk and Cookies plays bass. I really like Wait for Me. I was surprised to like a song on here. I do love Joan's, I like Shuri's voice a lot too, but I love Joan's voice.

• 2:29:55Speaker 02

  I do too.

• 2:29:56Yasi Salek?

  And this one has a bunch of screaming at the end of it. Wait for Me is a good song.

• 2:29:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:30:00Yasi Salek?

  I unfortunately do not have thoughts about any of the other songs.

• 2:30:03Speaker 02

  I like Joan's singing.

• 2:30:04Yasi Salek?

  It's great.

• 2:30:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:30:05Yasi Salek?

  She's an incredible singer.

• 2:30:15Yasi Salek?

  This is an album and it came out and it has songs on it. And that's what I'll say about that. It turns out when you, um, force bands to turn out two albums a year and tour in between, like they're not gonna write that good of songs.

• 2:30:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:30:29Yasi Salek?

  Love and respect to Waiting for the Night. Didn't crack the radio, didn't sell albums. Okay, so by the time that album comes out, The Runaways have finally got rid of Kim Patty. Um, I guess they were apparently, I couldn't really get this straight and obviously who needs a reason? We've talked about a million reasons. He called them dog cunts. He was crazy. Um, but I think more than anything, it was that he, they never got any money.

• 2:30:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:30:58Yasi Salek?

  Now, I do think it's a bit overblown that like Kim Vally stole all their money. There wasn't money to steal. Like, I think he did probably steal some money, but it's like-

• 2:31:08Speaker 02

  They should have a little bit when they come back from Japan.

• 2:31:10Yasi Salek?

  They should have a little bit, right? Allegedly. He was doing some nefarious and shady accounting practices. Um, but they also just were not making that much money. They're not selling any albums.

• 2:31:20Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 2:31:21Yasi Salek?

  They're touring, but that's not a great way to make money in the seventies. Some T-shirt. I just, I don't think there was a lot of money. They should have made more.

• 2:31:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:31:29Yasi Salek?

  But not to the level, either way, it was enough for them to just be like,

• 2:31:36Yasi Salek?

  I don't know about you, sir. And I think it helped that Toby Mammas, who with Peter Leeds managed Blondie.

• 2:31:46Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 2:31:46Yasi Salek?

  And was actually early on Suzy Quatro's PR guy and had met Joan back when she was camping out for Suzy Quatro. They were like, we want to manage you guys.

• 2:31:55Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 2:31:55Yasi Salek?

  And so they were like, okay, bye, Kim. He tried to block them from performing, saying that he owned the name, but they just kind of were like, that contract, it's void.

• 2:32:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:32:05Yasi Salek?

  And it kind of worked out. I don't think he got it together like Sue or whatever, or maybe he tried. I don't know. I'm not super interested in the legality of the runaways, but it is interesting to me that while, again, he didn't really pay them and then the nineties,

• 2:32:20Yasi Salek?

  Joan Jett, Lita Ford, Sandy West and Shuri Curry, but not Jackie Fox sued Kim to get back all the rights and stuff. Jackie said in a, in the book that she thought it was like a pointless, like, I mean, and she's a Harvard lawyer at this point. So she's kind of like, I just feel like this lawsuit is not worth it or whatever.

• 2:32:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:32:39Yasi Salek?

  To date, Joan Jett maintains that there was not abuse at the hands of Kim Vally. She says, the whole abuse thing is maddening to me, actually. It's kind of implying that we just stood there and took it. You don't like it, you leave. I think in hindsight, people have to create monsters and look at why things didn't work out and look at their own shit and responsibility and not making it happen. I think this, the story of the runaways is so interesting because of exactly this, right? You have five, well, to eight different women that were on the runaways. They all experienced a completely different thing. They all took away from it, something totally different. And they all came in with something different.

• 2:33:19Yasi Salek?

  So while Joan is saying that, and that's her reality, it wasn't the same reality for Shuri, right? It wasn't the same reality for Sandy.

• 2:33:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:33:27Yasi Salek?

  Wasn't same for Lita, although Lita seemed more similar than, to Joan's than to...

• 2:33:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's just like, it begs the question of like, can you expect a 16-year-old to have the

• 2:33:41Yasi Salek?

  self-esteem and authority to push back on an adult?

• 2:33:47Yasi Salek?

  I don't know, you know? Probably not, in my, in my humble opinion. I think it's like, again, it's so complicated, right? It's like, everybody wanted something out of this. And also, when you're 16 and you want to be a rock star, you might put up with more than you, you know?

• 2:34:04Speaker 02

  And if you're still, and you know, you're still an entertainer like, like Joan Jett or, and Lita Ford, they, they deny any abuse, but they're still public figures. They don't wanna...

• 2:34:14Yasi Salek?

  You might not benefit from...

• 2:34:16Speaker 02

  From all that.

• 2:34:17Yasi Salek?

  From the lot malarkey.

• 2:34:19Speaker 02

  Not saying that, that's...

• 2:34:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yes, that's, that's a plausible explanation.

• 2:34:25Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't, uh...

• 2:34:26Yasi Salek?

  We don't know.

• 2:34:26Speaker 02

  Co-sign it.

• 2:34:27Yasi Salek?

  We were not there. We don't know anything.

• 2:34:29Speaker 02

  Don't know.

• 2:34:30Yasi Salek?

  Um, but it, it is interesting.

• 2:34:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:34:33Yasi Salek?

  Joan Jett also notably not part of the documentary.

• 2:34:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, notably not.

• 2:34:38Yasi Salek?

  Every single other one of them is in it. Although Shuri, after the fact, so Kenny Laguna didn't manage Shuri Curry when she agreed to be in the documentary. He managed her after the fact, and she hated it. They all hated it, actually. They all kind of wanted, except for Jackie. Jackie became very close with Vicky Blue and became her lawyer and like helped her.

• 2:35:03Speaker 02

  So they all hated the documentary?

• 2:35:05Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. They, they didn't want it to come out. There was also an interesting, uh, story I read in Queens of Noise that it was supposed to have runaways music in it because the original cut was completely different.

• 2:35:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:35:17Yasi Salek?

  It was like a positive story. Yeah, and then she recut it to be this more like... Truth telling, authentic, sort of, um, yeah, it's interesting. It's very interesting.

• 2:35:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, so she can have the rights to it.

• 2:35:35Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:35Speaker 02

  To their music.

• 2:35:36Yasi Salek?

  But Lita Ford did music for it.

• 2:35:38Speaker 02

  Oh, she did.

• 2:35:39Yasi Salek?

  And Suzy Quater did music for it.

• 2:35:39Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 2:35:40Yasi Salek?

  Suzy Quater also in the, in the doc.

• 2:35:43Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, like for a minute, right?

• 2:35:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And then the other fun fact, if you guys, just in case you're gonna, if you're gonna watch Edge Play, I, I don't wanna speak like I'm Love Kim Fawley, but just, it just did a few things where I was like, fucking brilliant. So he agreed to be in that documentary.

• 2:36:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:36:00Yasi Salek?

  But he said he would only do it if he had musical accompaniment. And he had someone play guitar the whole time. And then he turned around and said, each of those songs, you have to license them from me to put any of this footage in your documentary.

• 2:36:13Yasi Salek?

  Who thinks that way?

• 2:36:14Speaker 02

  I know.

• 2:36:14Yasi Salek?

  Anyway, so she didn't use any of it.

• 2:36:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:36:16Yasi Salek?

  And what you see in the documentary is stuff she licensed from VH1.

• 2:36:20Speaker 02

  Oh, okay, yeah.

• 2:36:21Yasi Salek?

  It wasn't actually even her asking the questions.

• 2:36:22Speaker 02

  Cause I was like, he's in it, yeah.

• 2:36:23Yasi Salek?

  But it's, it's, I thought that was... Kim Fawley said later, "Looking back on it, I should possibly not have been a teenager along with them. I should have been more of an adult, but I was not one. I was a 36-year-old who looked 20-something." He's generous to himself. "And I was thinking like a 16-year-old helping to write these songs. I knew how to get things done, but I had no parental skills. I was certainly not qualified to deal with their discipline issues."

• 2:36:47Yasi Salek?

  I get what he's saying.

• 2:36:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:36:48Yasi Salek?

  Doesn't excuse his behavior.

• 2:36:50Speaker 02

  Not at all.

• 2:36:51Yasi Salek?

  But I think he's kind of like, well, they were also like partying and being teenagers and I wasn't their parent. But like, also you didn't have to like be horribly verbally abusive to them, so there's many ways to have participated. I liked what Jackie said in the end. She said, "Everything involving the Runaways left a weird mark on everyone. Nobody ever thinks about Kim because they think that he's the one who left the weird mark on everybody else. But I think it left a weird mark on him as well, and I'm not exactly sure why. I think it's a very emotional thing with him, and not just because it's what he will always be known for. Like it or not, Kim were your big thing. Maybe not the one that sold the most records, but the one that made your name."

• 2:37:28Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 2:37:29Yasi Salek?

  I love that. I was like...

• 2:37:30Speaker 02

  Touche.

• 2:37:31Yasi Salek?

  Kind of the greatest fuck you in the end, you know, like, no one will ever think about anything else but the Runaways when they think about Kim Fawley, which is kind of true. All right. We have no Shuri Curry. We have no Jackie Fox. We have no Kim Fawley. We're forging ahead.

• 2:37:45Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:37:45Yasi Salek?

  1978, January, touring America for three months with the Ramones.

• 2:37:49Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 2:37:51Yasi Salek?

  Dee Dee Ramone gives Lita Ford crabs.

• 2:37:54Yasi Salek?

  She said it in her book.

• 2:37:58Yasi Salek?

  It was really funny. She was like, he was the sweet and nice one. I was like, was he not the one that was a male prostitute?

• 2:38:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes.

• 2:38:04Yasi Salek?

  Well, gave her crabs.

• 2:38:07Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 2:38:07Yasi Salek?

  Um, by this time, I think Mercury is dropping them. Like, they have this last album and then that's it. Um, because the records are not selling and also there was a real lack of interest when Shuri left because she, like it or not, Kim was kind of right about the blonde being up front.

• 2:38:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:38:23Yasi Salek?

  And this is a very strange, but I was a little obsessed with this. In August, their new management sends them to London in some deal with a studio and a producer there to like ostensibly work on the next album. They live on a houseboat

• 2:38:41Yasi Salek?

  and hu- hang out with the Sex Pistols, the Slits, the Who, Thin Lizzy, and members of Susie and the Manches. They're just partying.

• 2:38:50Speaker 02

  What year is this? Seventy-nine?

• 2:38:51Yasi Salek?

  Seventy-eight, top of seventy-eight.

• 2:38:54Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 2:38:55Yasi Salek?

  I want a movie about that.

• 2:38:57Speaker 02

  On a boat?

• 2:38:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I just want, like, what a, should I write that? Like, what a cool movie of like, it's like a one-act play or like a one-room play, but it's just like the, these runaways hanging out with Sid Vicious and like Viv Albertine and like-

• 2:39:11Speaker 02

  And Phil Winnant.

• 2:39:12Yasi Salek?

  Fucking cool, man.

• 2:39:14Speaker 02

  That is cool.

• 2:39:14Yasi Salek?

  I assume Susie wasn't there. I don't know because it just said members. This is probably like, it's probably budgy.

• 2:39:19Speaker 02

  Budgy.

• 2:39:20Yasi Salek?

  Um, anyways, the runaways were too fucked up, partying too much, couldn't really record, and whatever deal that had been negotiated for them was like canceled and they were sent back to America. Again, they're still seven, they're seventeen years old.

• 2:39:33Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:39:33Yasi Salek?

  They're still teenage. It's, it's been two years, you know? Um, they go back to LA and Toby Mam- Mamis, I don't know how to say his last name, hires John Alcock, a British producer, to produce the next album. And this is a whole damn mess, babe.

• 2:39:46Speaker 02

  Maybe he's the one that I think maybe Sandy and yeah, okay, so Sandy and

• 2:39:53Yasi Salek?

  And Lita were like really

• 2:39:55Speaker 02

  All about him. Okay, that's it. It wasn't Earl Makey. It was these, it was him and he was like the rock dude.

• 2:40:02Yasi Salek?

  He loved hard rock. He was obsessed with them. He didn't get along with Joan by all accounts.

• 2:40:06Speaker 02

  And that was the whole issue. It was like, how can you don't hide Joan? What are you putting Joan out for? Yeah, that was the whole thing about this guy was like, he was all into them, like Sandy.

• 2:40:17Yasi Salek?

  Cause he wanted to make like a rocky and probably there, I think Joan Judd is, I know, I think she's been named now as like one of the greatest guitar players of all time or whatever. Like at this point, she's 17, she's playing rhythm guitar. So he's probably like not that excited about, whereas like Lita's like again shredding like a 35 year old man. And Sandy is like one of like this incredible drummer. He's like, oh, we can make something cool with them.

• 2:40:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:40:41Yasi Salek?

  And also Joan wanted to make, Joan was like now introduced to punk. She loved it. She wanted to make like pop punk, basically.

• 2:40:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:40:47Yasi Salek?

  That didn't exist then, but

• 2:40:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:40:48Yasi Salek?

  Essentially something more pop punky. And Toby Mammas said that Alcock drove a real wedge between the girls.

• 2:40:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:40:56Yasi Salek?

  Um, Alcock says it wasn't his fault. They broke up. They broke up because of all of the lawsuits that were going on with Kim and the business tensions. I'm sure it was a little column A, a little column B, a little column C, which is that everyone's on drugs.

• 2:41:09Speaker 02

  A mixed bag.

• 2:41:09Yasi Salek?

  And they're 17.

• 2:41:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:41:11Yasi Salek?

  Um, Vicky Blue does not play on this album.

• 2:41:16Speaker 02

  Who plays bass?

• 2:41:17Yasi Salek?

  I actually want sure.

• 2:41:18Speaker 02

  Think, Lita.

• 2:41:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think maybe Lita plays. Yeah, yeah. Vicky is credited on playing bass, but I don't think she did play bass. Black Leather is an interesting song. That was written by Steve Jones and Paul Cook for the Sex Pistols. It was never used for it.

• 2:41:38Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:41:39Yasi Salek?

  It's not great.

• 2:41:41Speaker 02

  I don't, I can't remember what it sounds like.

• 2:41:43Yasi Salek?

  Black leather. It's okay. I mean.

• 2:41:49Yasi Salek?

  Sandy sings on here right now. Lita sings "I'm a Million," which is her first lead vocal on a record.

• 2:41:57Speaker 02

  I bet you there's cowbell somewhere in this whole thing.

• 2:42:01Speaker 02

  Lita sings. Yeah, now they're stepping up, right?

• 2:42:04Yasi Salek?

  They're stepping up. Again, they're, or pushing, Joan's being pushed out. One or the other egregious album cover. Joan Jett's wearing like a tux, like a ruffled tuxedo. There's a white big hat. They're wearing suits. It's something, it's not. They look like a wedding band. And there's something really not odd. There's, there's like a cartoon font. A whole damn mess, babe.

• 2:42:29Speaker 02

  Really?

• 2:42:30Yasi Salek?

  This album is a whole damn mess.

• 2:42:31Speaker 02

  One of them looks like the Bomp Records logo.

• 2:42:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's this one. It's this one. We can just pretend this one didn't come out.

• 2:42:41Yasi Salek?

  And now, dot, dot, dot, The Runaways is what it's called, November 1978. And I'm really sorry. I'm sure they like it. But for me, I mean, there's a couple, I'm not gonna lie, it's a couple songs. It's okay. It's better than Queens of Noise.

• 2:42:53Speaker 02

  Is it new wave even? No.

• 2:42:56Yasi Salek?

  No. How to describe?

• 2:43:01Yasi Salek?

  They cover eight days a week?

• 2:43:03Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no.

• 2:43:07Speaker 02

  See, like, there's no one, no one telling them.

• 2:43:10Yasi Salek?

  No one's driving, no one's driving the car.

• 2:43:12Speaker 02

  No one's driving the bus.

• 2:43:14Yasi Salek?

  Jesus, take the wheel.

• 2:43:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, don't do that.

• 2:43:16Yasi Salek?

  They're like, you know what's good? Cover the Beatles.

• 2:43:22Yasi Salek?

  I have an idea. What if you cover the Beatles?

• 2:43:26Yasi Salek?

  There's one last bassist, because Vicky Blue quits before this album comes out. Which, by the way, comes out in November. So this girl is the bassist for one month. Or six weeks, because they have shows.

• 2:43:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:43:38Yasi Salek?

  Her name is Lori Hoyt, but then goes by Lori McAllister, which is even a cool Joan Jett type name, so I don't know why you would change your name.

• 2:43:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:43:45Yasi Salek?

  They play a bunch of shows in December. On New Year's Eve, 78, they play the Cow Palace. That's their last show ever.

• 2:43:52Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:43:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:55Yasi Salek?

  And in 1979, The Runaways officially send a breakup letter, Joan sends it to The Runaways Fan Club. It says, "Sandy, Lita, Lori and I have talked it over and decided to try our own things for a while. With five albums and two world tours and what seems like a lifetime of experience is behind us, we felt that it was time to get out there and try a few things that we could not do as a group. We're still great friends and we hope you'll join us in wishing each other the best and brightest roads ahead."

• 2:44:22Speaker 02

  Nice. And done.

• 2:44:25Yasi Salek?

  This is like the part where we would be like, oh, here's what happened. You know, at the end of a movie.

• 2:44:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:44:31Yasi Salek?

  Like freeze frame Joan Jett, here's what happened. Actually, interesting to me to bring up in The Runaways, they only did that with Joan, Shuri and Kim. They don't even say what happened to Sandy and everyone else.

• 2:44:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:44:41Yasi Salek?

  Also, but apparently even Joan and Shuri were mad about The Runaways movie because they wanted it to be dedicated to Sandy West, but the studio refused? Because she had passed away by then.

• 2:44:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:44:53Yasi Salek?

  2006, right?

• 2:44:53Speaker 02

  2006, yeah.

• 2:44:55Yasi Salek?

  It's no surprise to me that the most successful runaway to date is Joan Jett.

• 2:45:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:45:01Yasi Salek?

  She had the fire of a thousand suns blazing and she was gonna make this fucking happen, hell or high water.

• 2:45:05Speaker 02

  She had the talent, yeah.

• 2:45:06Yasi Salek?

  She had the talent, she had the drive, she had the like... She goes to England, records three songs with Paul Cook and Steve Jones from The Sex Pistols, her new besties. Finally gets to do that Arrows cover.

• 2:45:20Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:45:22Yasi Salek?

  Becomes a massive hit.

• 2:45:23Speaker 02

  Massive hit.

• 2:45:24Yasi Salek?

  I don't want to brush across, there is a whole period where she's like a fucking mess as well and she's depressed because she thinks her dream is over and she's definitely on pills and all sorts of drugs. I don't know which kinds.

• 2:45:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:45:33Yasi Salek?

  This is around the time that she's hanging out with all the punks in LA because by this time...

• 2:45:38Speaker 02

  She done, has she done the Germs record?

• 2:45:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that's that year. So, So, The Runaways break up in 79, The Germs record is recorded and released in 79. So I think it's after they've broken up because they, or maybe, yeah, I think so. And like I said, The Germs formed because they saw The Runaways. And by all accounts, Joan Jett slapped most of the recording of the Germs album and wasn't exactly a hands-on producer, but still.

• 2:46:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:46:04Yasi Salek?

  She was like getting involved, hanging out with punk, like into it, but also a bit of a mess. And I guess Kenny Laguna kind of like came in and...

• 2:46:15Yasi Salek?

  I won't say saved her, but like, he moved her to his home, with him and his wife.

• 2:46:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:46:20Yasi Salek?

  And like-

• 2:46:21Speaker 02

  Where she still lives today, right?

• 2:46:22Yasi Salek?

  Is that true?

• 2:46:23Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 2:46:24Yasi Salek?

  That's really interesting. Well, there is a, there is a whole thread in the end of Queens of Noise where they're like, "It's a bit weird because it's impossible to get in touch with Joan Jett." Like, the other members say that. They're like, Lita Ford's like, "I can call anyone on Earth, "but I can't get in touch with Joan because you have to go through Kenny."

• 2:46:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:46:43Yasi Salek?

  It's protective.

• 2:46:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, very, yeah.

• 2:46:46Yasi Salek?

  But through his gumption also, I mean, they were selling the myth, right? That they were selling her first album out of the back of his car because no one would sign. And then she became one of-

• 2:46:56Speaker 02

  That album cover is so cool. That, that pink, the colors, all the songs, so smart. This is where she got to flex that glam glitter.

• 2:47:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, this woman still is playing shows to date, babe.

• 2:47:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:47:11Yasi Salek?

  She's playing this year.

• 2:47:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:47:12Yasi Salek?

  She, I saw her open for Alanis Morissette last year.

• 2:47:15Speaker 02

  She started her own label. That's like-

• 2:47:17Yasi Salek?

  With Ken LaGudner?

• 2:47:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:47:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. She's doing amazing.

• 2:47:21Speaker 02

  She is.

• 2:47:22Yasi Salek?

  She looks great. She's killing it. Um, Lita also similarly was like, I'm all stopping.

• 2:47:32Speaker 02

  What was her hit? The Ozzy song, and then there was the, um-

• 2:47:36Yasi Salek?

  "Close My Eyes Forever." That's the Ozzy one. "Kiss Me Deadly."

• 2:47:39Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 2:47:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It's interesting because she, she had two solo albums before her career kind of took off because she was almost so early in that like glam metal space. That kind of Motley Crue and all those bands got to like really succeed in. Also, she dated Nicki Sacks, which is so fucking cool. Oh, yeah. Very early on in Motley Crue's career, her, him and, uh, Lita Ford were a couple.

• 2:48:04Speaker 02

  Hot.

• 2:48:05Yasi Salek?

  I know, so hot. So she's doing, she did great. She also- She married several rock stars. So she was engaged to Tony Iommi in the eighties. She was married to Chris Holmes from WASP.

• 2:48:19Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, okay.

• 2:48:20Yasi Salek?

  Iconic moment in Decline Two.

• 2:48:22Speaker 02

  Wow, it's such an iconic.

• 2:48:24Yasi Salek?

  Drinking vodka.

• 2:48:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:48:26Yasi Salek?

  Um, then she married a guy called Jim Gillette, who was the vocalist of a band called Nitro. They have two children. And this story is pretty insane. I don't know the details, but they moved to Turks and Caicos, but on like a small island that you can only access via private plane. And she basically was like, I was trapped there. It's like a really crazy story.

• 2:48:55Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 2:48:56Yasi Salek?

  And then he kind of, he took her children away from her. Or, or, or like, again, I don't want to misspeak, but like,

• 2:49:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:49:04Yasi Salek?

  She claims that he turned the children against her and kind of took them away. It's anyways, the story, her story got really crazy.

• 2:49:12Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:49:13Yasi Salek?

  That's what I'm saying. They all had a kind of traumatic moments, but at different like, Lita's first half was really great and then.

• 2:49:19Speaker 02

  And then Cherie, she married Robert Hayes, right?

• 2:49:21Yasi Salek?

  Cherie was in a film called Foxes.

• 2:49:23Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:49:24Yasi Salek?

  Incredible if you guys haven't seen it. Canon.

• 2:49:27Speaker 02

  The best movie of all time, pretty much in my top 10.

• 2:49:32Yasi Salek?

  Jodie Foster.

• 2:49:32Speaker 02

  Jodie Foster, um, Scavio.

• 2:49:36Yasi Salek?

  Scavio. She got clean.

• 2:49:38Speaker 02

  Casablanca Records, the soundtrack.

• 2:49:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, no, Foxes is amazing. Yeah.

• 2:49:43Speaker 02

  So good.

• 2:49:43Yasi Salek?

  She had a pretty, she was like smoking crack. She had like a pretty bad drug problem. She was like living with a drug dealer and smoking crack. And then she got clean. I think she had on and off struggles with addiction, but she, she did, she got married. She had a child.

• 2:49:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:49:57Yasi Salek?

  Um, now she's a chainsaw artist.

• 2:49:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:50:00Yasi Salek?

  And I believe lives in the valley.

• 2:50:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:50:02Yasi Salek?

  And she, she.

• 2:50:03Speaker 02

  She did some work with, um, like, um, in recovery.

• 2:50:07Yasi Salek?

  Yes, yes. I think she's in counseling stuff. Also, we forgot to mention Joan Jett produced that Bikini Cal single.

• 2:50:12Speaker 02

  That's right. Go back. Yes.

• 2:50:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. So cool.

• 2:50:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:50:18Yasi Salek?

  Jackie Fox, we already talked about it. Link, she became a lawyer and is doing great. One Jeopardy. Sandy has the most tragic story.

• 2:50:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:50:29Yasi Salek?

  So Sandy didn't have much of a career after the Runaways. And she, again, they had all kind of got into drugs and she got really heavy into drugs and was working for a drug dealer, like as like an enforcer or like a collector of money or something.

• 2:50:45Speaker 02

  And then there was like some gun running or something.

• 2:50:47Yasi Salek?

  She was like a criminal. She became a criminal. She went to jail.

• 2:50:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:50:52Yasi Salek?

  And actually, I think, I don't know if this is true or not, but I read that in Edge Play, her, those interviews are like the day she got out of jail.

• 2:51:00Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:51:01Yasi Salek?

  I hope it's not true because that's pretty manipulative.

• 2:51:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:51:04Yasi Salek?

  But it's like, Edge Play was like, that was the most heartbreaking part of it for me was at the end when Sandy's like so sad and she's like, why did the Runaways have to break up? Like, I don't understand. We were so great together. Like, we could still be playing music and we could, you know, and it was like just so heartbreaking. And then, did she die of a drug overdose?

• 2:51:26Speaker 02

  No, she died of lung cancer in 2006.

• 2:51:29Yasi Salek?

  In 2006. She was quite young, 40 something, I think. And Vicky, you know, became a filmmaker.

• 2:51:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:51:37Yasi Salek?

  We already said Michael Steele.

• 2:51:38Speaker 02

  Right, Bangles.

• 2:51:39Yasi Salek?

  Bangles, great career. And yeah, the Runaways kind of launched,

• 2:51:46Yasi Salek?

  you know, whether, again, we spoke semi disparagingly about their music, but it wasn't about that.

• 2:51:54Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:51:54Yasi Salek?

  It was about seeing teenage girls onstage rocking and what that unlocked in the minds of, you know, so many young people and Darby Crash and Pat Smear.

• 2:52:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Suburban 70s California girls. So cool. Yeah.

• 2:52:19Yasi Salek?

  We did it, Joe. We came to the end of the Runaways story.

• 2:52:21Speaker 02

  Here we are.

• 2:52:23Yasi Salek?

  Thank you, Patty Schemel, for joining me on this twisting, turning, and sometimes harrowing journey.

• 2:52:30Speaker 02

  My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

• 2:52:32Yasi Salek?

  It was a real honor to talk to you.

• 2:52:36Yasi Salek?

  Hey guys, I'm just popping in with a message because we didn't include this in the episode. Honestly, my fault due to some constraints I had on time for researching, but before we wrap up, I want to make sure there's something we address because I think leaving it out would feel like a completely incomplete picture of the Runaways story. In 2015, Jackie Fox, the bassist of The Runaways, publicly shared that she was raped by the band's manager, Kim Fowley, at a party in 1975. She was 16 years old then. Her account was detailed and painful, and she has spoken about the years it took for her to process what happened and to find the language and the courage to talk about it publicly.

• 2:53:21Yasi Salek?

  Kim Fowley died in January of 2015 before Jackie came forward, so he never faced any legal or public accountability for what she described. This is obviously part of the Runaways story. Jackie's story is part of the Runaways story. The same man who is credited for creating and shaping this groundbreaking band is also accused of causing serious harm to one of its members. These two things are both true. They exist together, and you know, my job is always just to bring you as much context as possible, so it felt important to be really clear about that. If you want to read more, Jackie spoke at length about her experience in a piece published by The Hollywood Reporter in 2015, and I'd encourage you to seek it out.

• 2:54:06Yasi Salek?

  Anyways, I just wanted to make sure that was included before we wrapped out this episode and the story of The Runaways because I would be remiss to leave it out. Okay, thanks.

• 2:54:27Yasi Salek?

  If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bands Play. Our guest today was Patty Schemel. This episode was produced by Rob Sunderman and edited by Adrian Bridges. Help from Justin Sales. Video production by C.T. Thomas. Executive producers for Bands Play are Gina Dalvak and me, Yasi Salek. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Cosentino. And Jennifer Klavan, and graciously recorded by Carlos de la Garza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer emeritus, producer Dylan, AKA Dylan Tupper Rupert, and also Sean Fennessy and The Goop Kitchen. I love that chicken Caesar wrap. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Fans Playing on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 2:55:15Yasi Salek?

  I will say when I watched The Runaways film, which I didn't care for, Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett looked so fucking cool that I ordered $2,000 worth of leather jackets online on my phone. They're returnable.

• 2:55:32Speaker 02

  It's the motorcycle jacket, right?

• 2:55:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that.

• 2:55:34Speaker 02

  There's multiple different ones.