punk artists of the past: the runaways
sensitive content warning: Discussion of emotional abuse, substance abuse, suicide, rape, and sexual assault
The lore of The Runaways is conflicting. The 2010 biopic attempts to chronicle the rapid rise and fall of the band's four-year run from the lead singer Cherie Curie's memoir, Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway, but there's a notable absence in the film. The gaping hole left by the bassist -- who the film renames 'Robin Robins' -- is formed by the longest-lasting bassist's refusal to be involved in the biopic's making. Real name Jackie Fuchs but known as Jackie Fox during her time as a Runaway, her more calculatedly sensible approach to tour life was due to her experience of being raped by the band's manager, Kim Fowley. Other members seem to have a lapse in memory over the incident, despite accounts of them being witness to Fuchs' assault. There's a consensus, however, on Fowley's aggressive treatment of the teenage girls that made up The Runaways. Their opinions on his methods are what differentiate the group.
From left to right: Cherie Currie, Jackie Fox, Lita Ford, Sandy West, and Joan Jett
In 1975, 14-year-old songwriter Kari Krome began writing songs for Fowley in exchange for $100 a month. After she discovered guitarist Joan Jett, Krome convinced a sceptical Fowley that they should start a band, alongside drummer Sandy West. The trio made up the original line-up of all-girl band The Runaways.
But Krome soon left the band and was replaced by Micki Steele on vocals and bass. Lead guitarist Lita Ford would soon make the band a quartet. Steele would too only have a short stint with The Runaways (later joining The Bangles, known for the hit "Walk Like an Egyptian") and the new frontwoman was scouted by Fowley at teen nightclub The Sugar Shack. Cherie Currie, one of the youngest members at 15-years-old, would become known for her sexualised on-stage persona, dressed up in a white-and-black corset with stockings. One more bassist would be tried alongside the other girls (known simply as Peggy) before they finally settled upon Jackie Fox.
All teenagers -- Fox was 15, Jett was 16, West was 16, and Ford was the oldest at 17 -- Fowley marketed the band as teenage jailbait. The band were described in the press as "The Sex Kittens of Rock" and "Teenaged, Wild & Braless." Their sound was somewhat punk, a little bit glam rock, with a hint of heavy metal. They took influence from outlandish, gender-bending bisexuals like David Bowie and Iggy Pop, alongside female rockers like Fanny and Suzi Quatro.
The girls had the ongoing struggle of being taken seriously amongst the boys' club of rock and roll. Part of the reasoning for Fowley's harsh treatment of the band was to toughen them up to the cruel criticism they would be subjected to. As Ford once said: "He could be a jackass, but I understood what he was doing and what he was trying to tell everybody in his own Kim Fowley sort of way. He wanted us to be hot. He wanted us to have attitude and charisma." Currie, too, said of Fowley in a 2013 interview:
“He’s an extraordinary man. He really is. Crazy, crazy guy but — and I even tell him — you always love your abuser. That’s the way I felt about him in the Runaways. But he didn’t know how to be a father, he didn’t know how to be a friend, he didn’t know anything but what he calls “the hustle” and the “dog dance.” But in the end, he got stuff done.”
Fowley described himself as a "necessary evil." In the 2013 biography Queens of Noise: The Real Story of The Runaways, Fowley expressed his interest in vulnerable women: "I'm like a shark. I'll smell the blood." Abandoned by his mother as a child and raised by his father to help him pick up women, he became a petty thief and sex worker in his late teens before graduating to music management in the 1960s. A Svengali figure to The Runaways, he hurled verbal abuse and manipulated conflict between the members to maintain his control over the band.
The Runaways were often fighting, fucking, or using drugs with one another. After terminating a pregnancy at 16 -- the result of a fling with another one of the band's managers -- Currie chose to leave the band in 1977 but found herself in the throes of addiction until entering rehab in her early 20s. She admitted that she and Jett experimented with one another on tour, and they remain friends to this day. But her relationship with Ford was often strained, not becoming friends until later in life. The three have spoken of a potential reunion, often supporting one another's solo endeavours, but it hasn't come to fruition. With West passing of lung cancer in 2006, and with Fuchs wanting to leave her time in The Runaways in the 1970s, the logistics and ethics of it seem tricky.
Fuchs left the band in the middle of their tour across Japan in 1977. When their roadies failed to properly take care of her beloved bass guitar and caused its neck to snap in half, she broke down. She attempted to take her own life by cutting her wrists with broken glass. Tired of their management using their food money to buy booze and drugs, and after failing to convince the band members to accept new management (she flew to New York to convince Kiss' manager and Aerosmith's producer to work on their next album), the suicide attempt was her final straw.
After a New Year's Eve gig in 1975, a party took place at a motel near the venue they played at. After being given an absurd number of Quaaludes, Jackie found herself passing in and out of consciousness on a motel bed, amongst a group of other people. Fowley entered the room and began to offer her up to other men before removing her clothes and raping her himself. “I remember opening my eyes, Kim Fowley was raping me, and there were people watching me,” Fuchs told Huffington Post. Krome, founding member of The Runaways was witness to the rape. "Jackie was dead, dead, dead drunk—like corpse drunk. She was just laying down on her back, sound asleep, out of it... He had to manually move her body parts into positions that he wanted for himself.” Those watching were unsure of what to do. Allegedly, Currie and Jett were witness to the incident. Krome told Huffington Post: "She recalls that Jett and Currie were sitting off to the side of the room for part of the time, snickering."
Many of those at the party were teenagers. None are reported to have mentioned the incident to police.
“Jackie took her bandmates’ silence to mean that she should keep quiet, too. ‘I didn’t know if anybody would have backed me,’ she says. ‘I knew I would be treated horribly by the police—that I was going to be the one that ended up on trial more than Kim. I carried this sense of shame and of thinking it was somehow my fault for decades.’”
In the same Huffington Post article, Krome describes her own assault by Fowley at age 14, before she left The Runaways herself. “I didn’t know how to say, ‘I don’t want you to do this...' I did not have that voice. … I was also scared of him. He could be really scary.” She says that he assaulted her multiple times after that first incident.
Kim Fowley with The Runaways in 1977
Fowley was The Runaways' manager until 1977. That was the year both Fuchs and Currie left the band. Afterwards, they returned to a quartet, with Victory Tischler-Blue on bass and Jett on both rhythm guitar and vocals until they finally disbanded in 1979. Jett would go on to become the Joan Jett, releasing classic rocks songs such as "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" and "Bad Reputation"; Ford would also launch a solo career as a glam metal artist. One of West's final public appearances can be seen in the 2004 Edgeplay: A Film About The Runaways after she attempted to begin The Sandy West Band. Prior to becoming sober, Currie was contractually obliged to release one more album with Fowley (1978's Beauty's Only Skin Deep, which it appears from interviews she would rather forget), and would also try out a music career with her twin sister, Marie Currie, before becoming a drug addiction counsellor. Now, she creates woodwork art using a chainsaw.
Fowley died at age 75 in 2015. Currie describes him in 2013 as having "had his bladder removed." He said of the allegations against him in the same year: “They can talk about it until the cows come home but, in my mind, I didn't make love to anybody in the Runaways nor did they make love to me.”
Fuchs went on to study at UCLA, and later at Harvard Law School "where she took all but one of her first year classes with Barack Obama." She spent most of her life outside of the public eye, until appearing on Jeopardy! in 2018. She and Krome met later in their lives on Facebook and met in-person to discuss their mutual abuser. “‘I know that Jackie had a lot of pain,’” Krome says. ‘I was glad to be able to tell her that you’re not crazy. It did happen. I just wanted her to know it was OK.’”
The legacy The Runaways leaves is a mixed one, but it's best summed up with a quote from a letter Fuchs received from a fan in 1977: "I think I want to be a Rock musician like you... I will find my own way.”
follow @girlblogzine on instagram
