Readers Roost: Friday Book Blog Hop: Living Like a Runaway

Genre:

Music, Memoir, Autobiography

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Blurb

Fearless, revealing, and compulsively readable, Lita Ford’s Living Like a Runaway is the long-awaited memoir from one of rock’s greatest pioneers—and fiercest survivors. “Heavy metal’s leading female rocker" (Rolling Stone) bares all, opening up about the Runaways, the glory days of the punk and hard-rock scenes, and the highs and lows of her trailblazing career.

Wielding her signature black guitar, Lita Ford shredded stereotypes of female musicians throughout the 1970s and ‘80s. Then followed more than a decade of silence and darkness—until rock and roll repaid the debt it owed this pioneer, helped Lita reclaim her soul, and restored the Queen of Metal to her throne.

In 1975, Lita Ford left home at age sixteen to join the world’s first major all-female rock group, the Runaways—a “pioneering band” (New York Times) that became the subject of a Hollywood movie starring Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning. Lita went on to become “heavy rock’s first female guitar hero” (Washington Post), a platinum-selling solo star who shared the bill with the Ramones, Van Halen, Motley Crue, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Poison, and others and who gave Ozzy Osbourne his first Top 10 hit. She was a bare-ass, leather-clad babe whose hair was bigger and whose guitar licks were hotter than any of the guys’.

Hailed by Elle as “one of the greatest female electric guitar players to ever pick up the instrument,” Lita spurred the meteoric rise of Joan Jett, Cherie Currie, and the rest of the Runaways. Her phenomenal talent on the fret board also carried her to tremendous individual success after the group’s 1979 disbandment, when she established herself as a “legendary metal icon” (Guitar World) and a fixture of the 1980s music scene who held her own after hours with Nikki Sixx, Jon Bon Jovi, Eddie Van Halen, Tommy Lee, Motorhead’s Lemmy, Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi (to whom she was engaged), and others.

Featuring a foreword by Dee Snider, Living Like a Runaway also provides never-before-told details of Lita’s dramatic personal story. For Lita, life as a woman in the male-dominated rock scene was never easy, a constant battle with the music establishment. But then, at a low point in her career, came a tumultuous marriage that left her feeling trapped, isolated from the rock-and-roll scene for more than a decade, and—most tragically—alienated from her two sons. And yet, after a dramatic and emotional personal odyssey, Lita picked up her guitar and stormed back to the stage. As Guitar Player hailed in 2014 when they inducted her into their hall of fame of guitar greats: “She is as badass as ever.”

Free use image from Pixabay

Ornery Owl's Review

Rating: Five out of Five Stars

The only serious musician in her band, Lita would resurface just a few short years later fronting her own projects and doing things the way she had always wanted to, no longer held back by other less-committed band members.

When I first read this statement, my reaction was, I love Dee Snider, but I have to ask, Dee, what were you smoking when you said this in the book's intro? Have you not heard of Joan Jett?

After reading Lita's account, I think what Dee means is while the Runaways were active, Lita was serious about playing music while the other band members were distracted by drugs, partying, and relationship drama.

In the 1980s, I preferred I Love Rock and Roll and I Hate Myself for Loving You to Kiss Me Deadly (an unpopular opinion I reckon, but, urgh, I never could stand that song. I always changed the station when it came on) or Close My Eyes Forever (Lita's duet with Ozzy Osbourne, which I did like.) I learned later that those certainly weren't Lita's only post-Runaways songs, they were just the ones that got played (overplayed) on the radio.

As a female fan of the rock and metal genres (and decidedly no-one's groupie), I appreciate women like Joan and Lita, who told men who wanted them to promote themselves using their carnal qualities rather than their talent, to go fuck themselves. They were role models for angry young women like me who were sick of men seeing us as objects.

I genuinely appreciate Lita's admission of the fact that all the girls in the Runaways aside from herself and Jackie Fox being lesbian or bisexual freaked her out. These days, admitting something of this nature can get a person canceled or harassed. Coming of age in the 1980s and having been raised Catholic, I understand where Lita is coming from.

I certainly never hated gays and lesbians and did not believe they should be harassed, but I admit I didn't know many people who were openly gay. I wigged out when I had a sexual dream about a girl who was a grade below me. I spent the next couple of weeks praying to God not to turn me into a lesbian. I didn't realize at the time that sex dreams usually aren't about sex, nor did I realize that a person's sexual orientation is hard-wired. If The Powers That May Be wanted me to be a lesbian, I would already have been one.

I've never figured out why I had this dream. Delia and I had nothing in common. She was a valley girl wannabe who wore a button that said "like, I'm proud to be shallow." I was a weird amalgamation of metalhead, pothead, and nerd. If I were to have wanted to get intimate with a girl, Delia would never have been my choice for a partner. None of the girls I went to school with would have been. If I had to choose someone to go against my sexual orientation with, I'd probably say Phoebe Cates or Kim Basinger, although I'd rather look like them than have sex with them.

Anyway, I get where Lita is coming from with her fear that "one of the girls might make a move on me." Like me, she understands now that her past worries about being in the company of women attracted to other women were silly.

I also align with Lita's determination that men in makeup are hot.

"I always felt that Tim Curry dressed up as a transvestite was an awesome sexual fantasy of mine."

Me too, Sister. Me too.

Lita doesn't hold back on telling it like it is, although she doesn't divulge unnecessary details with stories where sex is involved. After reading her account of times spent with Mötley Crüe, I have to say that while I love those guys to death, there is no way I could have hung out at their apartment back in the day. And while nobody will ever accuse me of turning down a good meal, (or even a mediocre meal, let's be real), I would have starved to death before ever consuming a single morsel in the Höüse of Crüe. One time Lita found a cockroach floating in her wineglass, and before cooking food in the oven, the guys first had to burn up the cockroaches taking up residence there. Not only no, but hell no!

Sadly but unsurprisingly, Lita had to put up with a lot of sexist bullshit from male musicians threatened by her talent. She also endured the loss of her parents. However, the worst thing she has suffered is the estrangement from her sons, thanks to the manipulative actions of her abusive ex-husband.

Lita Ford is one of those women whose lives I wished I could have lived, but I don't think I would have made it out alive. She is resilient in so many ways and has endured some things that nobody should ever have to. I hope that one day she is able to realize her fondest wish and reconnect with her sons.

Book Beginnings and First Line Friday