Pod Insights DISGRACELAND The Runaways: Exploited by the Music Industry, Escape, and Excellent Rock ‘N’ Roll About this episode This is the story of five teenage girls who used rock ‘n roll to escape their lives, their names, and their futures—only to find themselves trapped in a nightmare of fame, exploitation, and identity turned inside-out. From the Sunset Strip to a jail cell in England, from David Bowie fantasies to Kim Fowley’s real-life horrors, this is how the Runaways reinvented what rebellion could be—and paid the ultimate price in the process.
This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners, including sexual assault and suicide. If you’re thinking about suicide, or are worried about a friend or loved one, call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Speaker 00 This is exactly right.
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0:41 Jake Brennan? I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wines since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.
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1:42 Speaker 04 This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information.
1:50 Speaker 04 Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.
2:03 Jake Brennan? This is a story about transformation, about what happens when you don't just play rock and roll, when you use it to become someone new, someone louder and someone impossible to ignore. It's a story about five teenage girls who turned identity into a weapon, who took rock and roll rebellion and pushed it past the point of no return. It's also a story about escape. Escape from the valley, escape from your parents, escape from polite society. And it's a story about the price of that escape, about the predators who circled and about the exploitation disguised as mentorship and about how, in the most messed up twist of all,
2:46 Jake Brennan? transformation was both the trap and the key. This is a story about The Runaways. And so naturally, it's a story about great music. Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called "The Kids Are Not Alright", MK1. I played you that loop because I can afford the rights to "December 1963: Oh What a Night", by The Four Seasons. And why would I play you that specific slice of falsetto disco cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on March 16, 1976. And that was the day that teenagers Joan Jett,
3:31 Jake Brennan? Cherie Curry, Lita Ford, Jackie Fox and Sandy West released their debut album as The Runaways. And nothing in their lives or in the world of rock and roll would ever be the same again. On this episode, rebellion, escape, predators, exploitation and the white-hot cherry bomb that was The Runaways. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgrace Line.
4:29 Jake Brennan? Thirteen-year-old Carrie Kraus wanted to be someone else. She didn't want this shitty apartment, the latest in a series of shitty apartments. She didn't want the stepdad with the bad temper either. She didn't want the view of the ocean and the horizon, all this vastness and nowhere to go. Views like these inspired awe in some people, but to Carrie, being here, being in Long Beach, California, it was suffocating. Nothing but the repressions of polite society bearing down on her. She needed an out. But first, she turned inward, writing songs inspired by David Bowie, not only her idol, but the template for who she now wanted to become. Bowie was once someone else, someone completely different.
5:14 Jake Brennan? And one day, he just up and left the man known as David Jones behind, and he escaped David Jones, and now he was the Starman, he was Ziggy, he was Aladdin Saint. David Bowie gave you permission to escape, escape from the world you lived in, but more importantly, escape from whoever the world wanted you to be. So Carrie altered the spelling of her first name from C-A-R-R-I-E to K-A-R-I, and Carrie Kraus became Carrie Chrome. And then Carrie Chrome escaped for real. She stood on the side of the road, stuck out her thumb, hitched a ride, and went inland, where she took a long hit off the joint that was being passed around, and slung her head
5:58 Jake Brennan? back, watching the pink and red and orange neon lights bleed into the night sky. 1975, Hollywood.
6:11 Jake Brennan? Down on Sunset Boulevard, latchkey kids from the suburbs were gravitating to Rodney's English Disco, ground zero for all things glam and glitter, and best of all, transgressive. Carrie Chrome climbed out of the car, slammed the door shut, and watched as the strangers who'd given her a lift drove off into the distance. She had no idea how she'd get back home, but who cared? She wasn't going back there, not in any meaningful way at least. This was the place. These were her people: the girls who looked like the boys and the boys who looked like the girls. The rooster hair, the rhinestones, the sequins and platform heels. All of it soundtrack,
6:53 Jake Brennan? not by Captain and Tenille or the fucking Eagles Band, but by the New York Dolls, T-Rex, the Sweet, and that permanent badass of leather-clad rock and roll, Susie Quatro. Carrie took it all in. For the first time in a long time, she felt at ease. But it wasn't enough to simply be there in the crowd. Carrie Chrome would be an active participant. She wanted to be the one to write the songs of tomorrow, the ones local legend DJ Chucky Star would spin for this glamorous crowd. It was a crowd that on any given night included everyone from Robert and Bonzo of Led Zeppelin to Ray and Dave of The Kinks, to the once-boy-king himself, Elvis Presley. Who knows?
7:36 Jake Brennan? She could run into Iggy Pop or Elton John, slip them a page of her lyrics, maybe even run into Bowie himself. But it wasn't Bowie, or Iggy, or Elton that Carrie Chrome met when she went to Hollywood. Instead, she was introduced to another songwriter and music producer, a man named Kim Fowley. Fowley's resume was scattershot, but impressive. He'd written for Warren Zevon, Alice Cooper, and The Byrds, and produced songs by Gene Vincent and Jonathan Richman. But what really mattered to Carrie was that he seemed genuinely interested in her songs. He said she had real talent, and that with his guidance, she could be somebody, somebody else.
8:20 Jake Brennan? And so, on her 14th birthday, Carrie Chrome signed a contract with the 36-year-old Kim Fowley to write songs for his production company. The $100 a month that she got paid simply to do what she loved was empowering. So was the fact that Fowley loved her next idea, which was to put together an all-girl rock band to play her songs. But where Carrie saw autonomy, self-reliance, and girl power, Kim Fowley saw something more sinister. The band he would assemble would be marketed not just as girls, but as underage girls. Their lead singer, Cherie Curry, a blonde valley girl, would be their rock and roll Lolita, just like Sue Lyons in that Stanley Kubrick movie.
9:05 Jake Brennan? Along with Joan Jett and Lita Ford on guitar, Sandy West on drums, and Jackie Fox on bass, all of them 15 or 16 years old at the time, the band that Kim Fowley soon christened The Runaways weren't just avatars of teenage rebellion and juvenile delinquency. They were jailbait. Okay, so listen up. Before we continue with this story, I need to set the table for just how fucked up this era of rock and roll was. We've talked about this in some detail before, but it needs to be said again. Kim Fowley wasn't the only one here being a total creep. This was the same time that Jimmy Page, David Bowie, and so many other powerful musicians were sleeping with underage girls.
9:49 Jake Brennan? This is when Ringo Starr had a number-one hit song called "You're 16," which has the refrain "You're 16, you're beautiful, and you're mine." This is when a journalist in a cover story for The Rock magazine, Crawdaddy, wrote this about watching The Runaways perform, and I quote, "Suddenly, I am overcome with the urge to jack off against the stage and get my teeth kicked out by a vicious roadie. Claw my way through a thousand demented teenagers puking cheap wine and looted out of their cerebral cortices just so I could touch the platform boots of these 16-year-old girls." This journalist, by the way, Charles M. Young, he was 25 years old when he wrote this, and he went on to become the editor at Rolling Stone.
10:36 Jake Brennan? Now, as totally gross as that is, it was 16-year-old Cherie Currie, the Runaways' lead singer, who had the idea to buy a revealing corset that she saw in a shop window on Sunset Boulevard and use it as a stage prop. Every show when it came time to perform her signature song, "Cherry Bomb", which Joan Jett and Kim Fowley reportedly wrote for her in 30 minutes, she would change out of her silver lame jumpsuit and into the corset. In her mind, she was the one in power, not the skeevy journalist dry-humping the stage or the manager orchestrating some dirty old man fantasy. In her mind, she was simply doing what her hero David Bowie had done before her. And if Cherie was Bowie, then Joan was Susie Quatro and Jackie was Gene Simmons of Kiss
11:19 Jake Brennan? and Lita was Deep Purple's Ritchie Blackmore and Sandy was Queen's Roger Taylor. This is how they saw themselves, as equals to the rock stars who inspired them. From the jump, the Runaways had the attitude, the drive, and the chops to keep up with their idols. And with Kim Fowley's industry contacts, many doors were being opened for them. Before too long, Cheap Trick and Tom Petty were opening for them.
11:46 Jake Brennan? But it was what was happening behind closed doors that was truly horrifying.
11:52 Jake Brennan? In her memoir, Cherie Currie writes that "Kim Fowley once had sex with a visibly intoxicated adult woman in front of the entire band so that they could learn", in his words, quote, "the right way to fuck", unquote. Jackie Fox later alleged that Fowley drugged and raped her in front of a crowd of people immediately following the Runaways' debut show on New Year's Eve in 1975. And Carrie Crone was only 14 when she said Fowley masturbated on her.
12:23 Jake Brennan? While Jackie tamped down feelings of shame and disgust and shock over what happened to her, Carrie was not so equipped to compartmentalize. And she spiraled, watching her teenage dream unravel before her eyes. She'd been taken advantage of, sexually assaulted, watched it happen to others too, and now Kim Fowley was taking credit for the songs Carrie had written and was even denying her royalties. So Carrie split, dropped out of school, became addicted to drugs, and like her hero David Bowie, became someone else for the second time in her young life.
12:57 Jake Brennan? But this time, her life wasn't art. Her life imitated art. Soon, Carrie Cron was living on streets, crashing on couches, and Carrie was no longer one of the runaways. Instead, she was simply a runaway. And when her friends and the band soon found themselves in real trouble far from home with no one else to turn to, Kim Fowley kept betraying them, and they kept looking for new ways to escape.
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14:15 Jake Brennan? I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.
14:46 Speaker 00 Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with IBM's Ana Paula Assis about what digital sovereignty actually means in the age of AI.
14:57 Speaker 06 AI now moves from somebody operating a system to the technology actually making decisions. So you have to have a much better visibility of what AI is touching, data it is accessing, and where.
15:13 Speaker 00 Hear the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts.
15:24 Jake Brennan? September 1976, England. Joan Jett was pissed. This time, not at Kim Folli, but at another man who put her down. Robert Plant. Led Zeppelin's lead singer was as enamored with The Runaways as the next jailbait-chasing horn dog. In fact, Kim Folli even got Robert Plant his own Runaways t-shirt to wear. The girls all wore shirts that had their names printed below the band's name, but for Robert Plant, below The Runaways' logo, his read, "Robert Loves Kim." That's not what Joan Jett was pissed off about, though. Give Robert Plant a t-shirt, who cares? Give him a thousand t-shirts, whatever would help The Runaways' incredible self-titled
16:04 Jake Brennan? debut album climb higher than number 194 on the Billboard album chart, which is where it had stalled since its release a few months prior. So far, it wasn't working. UK fans were way more into the record than people back in the States, and even England's own version of the so-called "manufactured band controlled by a Svengali," the Sex Pistols took notice. Sid Vicious, for one, did more than notice. He put his hands all over Joan's body, despite her protests. Next thing Sid knew, Sandy West was grabbing him by the lapels and tossing him into the tims. The Runaways was all Sandy knew. It was the only stable thing that she had in her life. So if some safety-pin-wearing punk rocker was going to threaten that, Sandy would do
16:49 Jake Brennan? what she had to in order to protect it. But I digress. So, back to the story. There was Joan Jett, along with the rest of the band, standing at a dock in Dover, waiting for the ferry to take them to Paris, where their manager, Scott Anderson, told them that the show that night was already sold out. And this is where Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin comes in.
17:15 Jake Brennan? Back in Los Angeles, at one of their shows at the Starwood, Robert had shown up in the runaway's dressing room. With his locks of Greek god hair and equally godlike smile, the girls were all over him. Joan Jett tried to play it cool, rocking that trademark Joan Jett attitude, the swagger, the ambiguous look that said she was either about to fuck you up or rock your face off, but it was hard to play it cool, seeing as though the line for the show that night stretched down the block and around the corner. And it was hard to keep your cool, as Joan demonstrated when some dude put his fat hands on Cherie's legs and ripped her stockings right off that night. Fat-handed dude got a face full of Joan's metallic platform boot.
17:57 Jake Brennan? And now, standing on the shore in Dover, England, exhausted, ready to collapse on the incoming ferry, Joan wanted to put that metallic platform boot to the face of Robert Plant. Because a police inspector from Scotland Yard had detained Joan and the rest of the band, preventing them from going to France, and it was Robert Plant's fault.
18:19 Jake Brennan? Flanked by a couple of officers, the inspector ordered the girls to empty their bags. Hotels in England were reporting that items had gone missing from rooms that the runaways had stayed in. And British law enforcement, as it had proven so definitively years earlier in its relentless persecution of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, were eager to put these smug American rock and roll girls in their place. First, Sandy turned over her bag. A hotel hairdryer came tumbling out. And then Joan turned her bag upside down and all sorts of hotel room keys rained onto the ground. More bags were searched and more keys were found, more than 30 in total. Fucking Robert Plant. Back at the Starwood, Joan had asked him what were the best souvenirs to get while on tour.
19:04 Jake Brennan? And Robert had told her all about his ritual of collecting room keys from every hotel he stayed at. And now, this little piece of harmless advice had landed the runaways not just in hot water, but incredibly in jail.
19:21 Jake Brennan? Joan Jett was grabbing the bars of her cell, her knuckles white, her face red, trying to shake them loose and screaming at the top of her lungs. She was the oldest in this group and had just turned 18, and she was getting the adult treatment. So while the rest of the band could be together inside a holding room with bunk beds, Joan was freaking out inside a cold cramped jail cell all on her own. Not that things were going any better over in that holding room.
19:49 Jake Brennan? Tensions were high. The girls had been informed that they'd have to remain behind bars for at least as long as it would take for the cops to retrieve their luggage and search it. The thing was, their luggage had already been put on that ferry over to France, so it was gonna be a minute to get it back to England. And when they did, Cherie for one was freaking out about what they'd find inside. Because in one of those bags was her makeup case, and inside that makeup case, Cherie had hidden a bunch of cocaine. Technically, the coke belonged to the runaway's tour manager, Scott Anderson. Scott was Joan's age, 18, but those extra couple of years' experience over the rest of the girls were clutch when it came to procure the necessary ingredients of the rock and roll lifestyle.
20:33 Jake Brennan? If you needed your cocaine cut up into neat little lines, Scott was your guy. If you needed some prescription-grade downers, like Placidil, Scott was your guy. Booze, Scott could obviously get that for you as well. The girls were supposed to have tutors out on tour with them. This was one of the many promises that Kim Fowley so willfully failed to deliver on. Instead, they had guys like Scott. And now Cherie Currie had Scott Anderson's problems smuggled inside her luggage. Cherie was sweating like crazy, doubled over where she was sitting on the concrete floor. She felt ill thinking about what would happen if those drugs were found. She was in a foreign country, and she was only 16. The Placidils were wearing off,
21:15 Jake Brennan? and now panic, dread, and sickness deep in her stomach began to consume her. She and Scott had been engaged in a sexual relationship on the road, as well as what Cherie thought was a deeply emotional relationship. Surely as a result of this, Cherie assumed Scott was prepared to do the chivalrous thing and tell the cops that if it was found, the coke was his.
21:37 Jake Brennan? But that night, when Scott paid a visit to the girls in lockup, Scott made it very clear that he intended to do no such thing. What he intended, and what Kim Fowley also intended, was that Cherie would take the fall and face the consequences.
21:55 Jake Brennan? The night felt like an eternity. At some point, the guards took pity on Joan and moved her from her solitary jail cell to the holding room with everybody else. By the time the sun came up, the sickness in the pit of Cherie's stomach was overwhelming. They heard footsteps coming down the hall. All five runaways craned their necks to get a look at who was coming to visit. It was the inspector from Scotland Yard who had originally arrested them. He had news. Their luggage had been located. Cherie's heart rate spiked. She waited for him to hold up her makeup bag and ask who exactly this belonged to. But the inspector did no such thing. The luggage was clean, and they were free to go.
22:38 Jake Brennan? Somehow, the cocaine had been overlooked.
22:43 Jake Brennan? Cherie breathed a huge sigh of relief. Even though Scott and Kim Fowley had left her up to dry, she still managed to dodge a bullet. That is, until she returned home to the States and discovered the true source of the sickness she'd been experiencing. Cherie Curry was 16 years old and pregnant.
23:08 Jake Brennan? We'll be right back after this word, word, word.
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23:44 Jake Brennan? I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.
24:15 Speaker 00 Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. Imagine your business depends on a system you didn't build and don't fully control. For years, it works perfectly. It's fast, reliable, affordable. So over time, more and more of your operations rely on it. Then one day, the terms change. What once felt flexible now feels difficult to leave. Moving to another provider or bringing those capabilities back under your own control could take years, cost millions, and disrupt the business in the process. That's the challenge of digital sovereignty. Businesses today rely on all sorts of third-party systems: cloud platforms,
24:59 Speaker 00 data pipelines, AI models, software tools. Most days, these systems operate quietly in the background. But when something changes, like costs go up or rules shift, organizations are forced to confront how much control and flexibility they actually have. So to understand the challenge up close, I traveled to Paris to speak with IBM's Anapaula Assis and Axas CIO, Giovanni Daniele, two people who think about these questions every day.
25:32 Speaker 00 Hear the full conversation at ibm.com/smarttalks or wherever you get your podcasts.
25:49 Jake Brennan? Joan Jett hammered out the opening riff for the runaway song "Born to be Bad" on her Gibson Melody Maker. Her bright red leather jumpsuit shimmered under the subtle stage lights, and her shock of black hair stood defiant as the song's slow start, an unabashed girl group homage, suddenly turned into loud slashing power chords that nodded to punk rock, no doubt one of the old girl group genre's many descendants. Sandy came thundering in on the drums with Jackie and Lita close behind on bass and guitar respectively. The stage lights exploded, and then Joan belted out the title chorus into the microphone with a sneer. The audience went nuts. Cherie was a killer frontwoman, no doubt, but Joan had that underdog gear like Pete Townsend next to Roger Daltrey.
26:34 Jake Brennan? Joan had the place mesmerized. And then, something caught Joan's eye. First, it was just a glimmer out there in the crowd, one of the lights catching a piece of metal, and then the metal erupted in bright red and orange, and the sound of machine gun firing drowned out the sound of the band. People in the audience hit the floor, and others ran screaming for the exit. Joan felt bullets rip through her body. She collapsed onto the stage floor crying out in pain, looking around to see if anyone else had been hit. And then she looked over at her guitar lying next to her. It was covered in blood, but it wasn't her blood. She opened her eyes wider to make sure she was actually seeing what she thought she was seeing. It was so clear to her now. The guitar was bleeding.
27:16 Jake Brennan? The Gibson's body was riddled in bullet holes, and the blood was just oozing from it. Suddenly, the pain got worse. It was like she wasn't just experiencing her own pain, but she could feel what the guitar was feeling, and it was unbearable. Joan's eyes went wider than before, and she opened her mouth to scream for help for someone when all of a sudden... Joan shot up in bed, yelling out into the darkness. She was covered in sweat, and her heart was practically beating out of her chest. She'd had nightmares like this one before, but never this intense. And though this latest nightmare, like the rest, hadn't been real, she couldn't help but feel that something this crazy and this bloody could potentially be coming around the bend.
28:03 Jake Brennan? Being a Runaway had become an endurance test. As their notoriety grew, Joan and the girls were now being demeaned by what seemed to be an entire world of Kim Follies, by random older men who had no problem calling them bitches, dykes, and cunts every day, just for being women who dared be in a band with zero swinging dicks among them. Some days it felt like the assholes outnumbered the real fans. Those same assholes spent their own damn money to buy tickets to the Runaway's shows, only to heckle the girls and throw shit at them onstage. It was enough to make you want to ditch the show early, run into the dressing room, cry for hours, and wonder why the hell you were putting yourself through it all.
28:45 Jake Brennan? For Joan Jett, and also for Lita Ford, the negative experiences only hardened their resolve and thickened their skin. For Sandy West, there was simply no way she could give in to the alternative: go back to a normal high schooler's routine, or even worse, the life of an ordinary young adult? Go back to reality? That was a fate worse than death.
29:09 Jake Brennan? But for the others, the stakes were even higher. Cherie had returned home from the Runaways' 1976 European tour pregnant with Scott Anderson's child. She was 16 years old, without the means or the ability to raise a baby, so she decided to get an abortion. And while that was happening, Kim Follie kept the proverbial show on the road.
29:34 Jake Brennan? He ushered the Runaways into the Beach Boys' Brother Studios in Santa Monica to record their second album, Queens of Noise, while Cherie was still recovering. Because of this, she only sang lead on half of the album's songs, while Joan sang the other half. The record was released in January of 1977, the same week the Ramones released their sophomore album, Leave Home, and the same year that the Runaways conquered Japan like they were the second coming of the Beatles. Keep in mind that this was one year before Cheap Trick, the band that used to open for the Runaways, had hit paydirt at Budokan. For a few weeks on the other end of the world, the Runaways finally got the respect they deserved. But unlike Cheap Trick, all that love on tour in Japan didn't translate to a greater
30:19 Jake Brennan? love and thus a bigger profile in the States. Because by the middle of 1977, there was no love lost within the ranks of the Runaways.
30:31 Jake Brennan? The bass was beautiful. It was a white 1965 Gibson Thunderbird. Just immaculate, and it sounded incredible. For Jackie Fox, the bass was more than just an instrument. It was a representation of how far she'd come. When she first joined The Runaways, she could hardly play. She was so inexperienced, in fact, that Kim Folli brought in Nigel Harrison, Blondie's bass player, to lay down Jackie's tracks on The Runaways' debut album. Jackie worked hard to get better, and now, in addition to being able to play, she knew from playing next to Joan and Lita every night how to strike the right rock and roll pose while doing so.
31:14 Jake Brennan? But where she'd once looked up to Lita Ford, these days, it seemed, all Lita wanted to do was push Jackie around. Maybe it was because Jackie was an easy mark. She was a nerd by trade, a straight-A student who, before joining The Runaways, had been planning to skip her senior year of high school so that she could attend UCLA full-time. Whatever the reason, Jackie felt bullied from all sides. The girls in the band, Kim Folli, their crew. She could understand the guys, but Lita? There was an unspoken rule that the girls all protected each other, though Jackie had to admit she hadn't felt very protected. Ever since Folli sexually assaulted her and no one in the band seemed to want to acknowledge, it had happened.
32:01 Jake Brennan? At least she had the bass. After sound checking at one of The Runaways' final shows in Japan, she went to place it on its stand on the stage and noticed that the stand was unstable. She grabbed one of the guys on the crew and asked him to find her a better stand so that the bass wouldn't fall over and get damaged. She knew she shouldn't have trusted anyone on that tour to help her with anything. The roadie didn't listen. No one listened. And the stand was never replaced. And the Gibson Thunderbird tumbled over, and the neck snapped. And then Jackie snapped.
32:36 Jake Brennan? She went to her hotel room, her head throbbing, her pulse pounding, tears of rage and sadness and panic running down her face. She couldn't keep it all in check anymore. It was all coming to the surface. The pressure and the mental and psychological abuse, the rape. She didn't recognize herself. She had become her worst fear, someone else. Jackie picked up a Coke bottle and threw it against the wall. It shattered into pieces just like her Thunderbird. She grabbed one of the glass shards and she jammed it into her flesh. The blood was running now. She dragged a piece of glass in a straight, jagged line across four inches of her arm. More blood. The pain on the outside finally a
33:18 Jake Brennan? match for the pain on the inside. The room began to spin. She must have been screaming because the door to her room suddenly flung open and Cherie busted in. And then Jackie was in an ambulance on her way to the hospital where she would begin a long journey back to the person that she used to be.
33:56 Jake Brennan? Alright guys, I'll get back to a runaway story in just a second, but real quick, I wanted to mention that we always dig up way more in our research than we're able to include in our full episodes here. Like for instance, this week, we uncovered this whole thing about how there is a church out there that worships Joan Jett as a god, literally, for real. It's such a crazy story that we made this mini episode about it. And if you're a member of Disgrace and All Access, you can go listen to that crazy story right now, along with all of our other weekly mini episodes that we've got out there on a ton of artists. All you gotta do is go to disgracelandpod.com to find out more and become a member today. Alright, back to our story.
34:36 Jake Brennan? Sandy West stuck the barrel of the gun down the Deadbeat's throat, and the Deadbeat swallowed it, his teeth clattering around the cold, hard steel. Now that she had his attention, Sandy passed along the message she'd been hired to deliver: Pay up, fuckstick, or next time this pistol will be the last thing you ever taste. And then, the smell of rock-bottom depravity. The Deadbeat had shit his pants. The 1980s were far from glamorous for Sandy West, former drummer for The Runaways. She worked construction, she tended bar, she freebased cocaine and did crystal meth, and at her lowest, she found herself taxiing, which is a term that I was unfamiliar with,
35:21 Jake Brennan? but according to Sandy, is the act of collecting drug debts for dealers. It was this erratic and dangerous lifestyle which led to Sandy being arrested multiple times and eventually doing jail time. Surprisingly, perhaps most of all to Sandy, was that jail was the first place where she had felt stability in a decade or so since the band had split up. Jail, to Sandy, was like Jackie's Thunderbird bass or Carrie Chrome's alter ego. It kept her cool and calm and out of trouble, at least for a short while. Because just like The Runaways, Sandy's time on the inside was finite, a flash in the pan. And so when she got out, she went right back into the fire of an untethered life.
36:05 Jake Brennan? She died of cancer in 2006, at just the age of 47. For nearly 30 years, all Sandy wanted to do was get the band back together. Back in 1977, following a mental breakdown in Japan, Jackie Fox had been replaced on bass by Vicky Blue, Cherie quit soon after, leaving Joan to shoulder the weight and lead The Runaways as a quartet. They made two more albums, but even after they fired Kim Folly, they still weren't able to come together as a cohesive unit. On New Year's Eve in 1978, The Runaways played their last show. It wasn't until 2015, the year of Kim Fowley's death, that Jackie Fox went public with her allegations that Fowley had raped her.
36:49 Jake Brennan? And it was another eight years, in 2023, when Carrie Chrome sued Fowley's estate for multiple sexual assaults she says she suffered at the Svengali's hands. Revelations and lawsuits such as these continue to expose the system that enabled men like Fowley to do what they did: exploit, corrupt, manipulate, and control.
37:13 Jake Brennan? But The Runaways were never about Kim Fowley. The Runaways were about escape, reinvention, about becoming who you are, for real. What Carrie understood when she changed her name, what Cherie understood when she stepped into that corset, and what Joan understood every time she put on that red leather jumpsuit, was a rock and roll truth. You get to create your own myth. You get to turn yourself into the thing the world told you you could never be. David Bowie became Ziggy Stardust. Carrie Kraus became Carrie Chrome. And every girl who heard The Runaways play Cherry Bomb on a shitty AM radio or later saw Joan Jett sing "Bad Reputation" in heavy rotation on MTV
37:56 Jake Brennan? wasn't just inspired to form a band. They were inspired to become whoever the hell they wanted to be, to escape the person polite society told them they had to be, and instead, become the person they needed to be.
38:12 Jake Brennan? The Runaways didn't just kick open a door. They obliterated the idea that the door ever existed. That is rock and roll. And rock and roll is no disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is DisgraceLand.
38:46 Jake Brennan? All right, guys. Thanks for listening to another episode of Disgrace Land. Apple Podcast listeners, make sure you have auto downloads turned on. Listen, guys, I'm wondering for the question of the week this week, obviously Runaways, great girl group, great all-girl group, I should say, we want to know here at Disgrace Land, which female artist do you want to hear covered in the coming episodes of this podcast? We've obviously covered a bunch. We got a bunch more slated for release this year, but I want to know who you guys are into, who you want to learn more about, who you want us to cover. Let me know, 617-906-6638. Voicemail and text. Hit me up with your answers. We might play them on the after-party coming up right after this. Hit me up on social, at Disgrace
39:26 Jake Brennan? Land Pod, [email protected] to email me. All right, here comes some credits. Disgrace Land was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgrace Land All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com/membership. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook, at Disgrace Land Pod, and on YouTube at youtube.com/AtDisgraceLandPod. Rock and roll.
40:09 Speaker 08 He's a bad, bad man.
40:13 Jake Brennan? Hey, guys. Time to dust off your detective skills while unwinding in the Caribbean on Virgin Voyages' second true crime voyage. It's back by popular demand. This five-night, adults-only escape sets sail March 20, 2027, to Grand Turk in the Beach Club at Bimini. The difference between this year and last will be that I will be on the cruise this year, along with Zeph, and he and I will be taping a live version of Disgrace Land, along with podcast hosts from Exactly Right's Buried Bones, Podcast of the Year Award winners, Wisecrack, and other fan favorites. Get on this cruise with us, guys, and enjoy live podcast recordings, behind-the-scenes storytelling, exclusive meet-and-greets, and immersive true crime programming throughout this one-of-a-kind voyage. Head over to
40:58 Jake Brennan? www.virginvoyages.com/truecrime to secure your spot.
41:04 Jake Brennan? I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.
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Previous Bonus Episode: Bob Weir, Bohemian Grove, more Orion, and First-Gen Punks Next Bonus Episode: Grammy Snubs, Righting the NWA Wrong, Wild Award Show Buggery, and More Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated