Runaways mania in Tokyo

Posted on October 28, 2011 by

In June 1977 the Japanese caught Runaways mania. It was the moment we’d been waiting for — to play in front of truly appreciative fans, to stay in nice hotels, to get a taste of the rock star life. But there was a scary side to it as well and two memorable incidents stand out.

One came at a scheduled appearance at a record store, where we were to meet fans and sign autographs. We were supposed to be dropped off by limo at the front entrance, but the appearance was over-attended and the front of the store too packed for us to go in that way. So the limo driver went around back through the alley. Once we got into the alley, though, we discovered that it was even more packed than the front, but there was no turning back as the limo was immediately overrun by fans and the driver couldn’t see to reverse.

We inched our way through the alley, with the driver and us terrified we were going to run over some poor Japanese kid. The windows were rolled up and as the fans surrounded the limo and press up against the exterior vents, we started to run out of air, a truly terrifying moment. So someone cracked a window, at which point the fans started to throw things through the cracks, including a letter addressed to me, which turned out to be a heartfelt five page love letter. After about 45 minutes of inching forward in fits and jerks, we finally made it through the alley, although we never made it to the store as the record company decided it was too risky.

Later that week on our way to a television appearance, the crowds grew too thick again and we had to we had to crawl into an office through a window, walk down five flights of stairs and through a basement with a very low ceiling which led into a kitchen in the basement of the building next to it. From there we took an elevator up to a department store, where we were hustled through the crowd and out the main door. Some of our fans, however, had figured out our escape path and were waiting for us. They chased us down the street until we managed to get away long enough to make it back to our hotel, where yet more fans were waiting and we had to run through the back entrance. It really was like a scene out of Help!, both fun and scary at the same time.

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My President went to the Supreme Court and all I got was this lousy Vicodin

Posted on October 5, 2011 by

A number of news items recently caught my eye: California approved an average health insurance premium increase of 14% for Anthem/Blue Cross subscribers after public pressure forced it to withdraw its request for a much larger hike; the Government Accountability Office reported that Medicare is subsidizing prescription drug abuse; the Prescription Drug Summit at the University of Kansas Medical Center found that prescription drugs are increasingly falling into the hands of people who abuse them; in Florida, a group of parents and other concerned citizens protested a meeting of the Board of Medicine for stronger action against physicians who overprescribe pain medication; and today the Los Angeles Times printed that at least three patients had died of overdoses from drugs prescribed by a Southern California physician. Amidst the outcry over the increasing incidence of abuse of prescription narcotics, one group stands shockingly free from accusation: health insurers, who put very few limits on the amount of narcotic pain pills prescribed by an M.D., but severely limit the number of visits for alternative and less risky treatments for pain, including visits to chiropractors, acupuncturists and mental health professionals.

The reason for the discrepancy is purely economic. Under an Anthem/Blue Cross group PPO plan costing over $1,000/month, the copay for a thirty-day supply of ninety pills of hydrocodone with acetaminophen (generic for Vicodin) is $10. The copay for three-times per week physical therapy for that same period of time is approximately $750, and combined physical therapy/chiropractor visits are limited to 20 per calendar year. And if a large number of Americans become addicted to painkillers, what does it matter to the insurance companies, which have shielded themselves from the costs? The number of visits to mental health professionals is limited to 20 per calendar year, including visits for chemical dependency, and subject to higher co-pays. The burden of the insurance companies’ irresponsibility gets shifted to employers, the states (who pay disability benefits for inability to work due to addiction), patients and their families and, perhaps most of all, to American society itself.

But it is not just the insurance companies that are to blame. Responsibility belongs to all of us — government, corporations and individuals as well as insurers. Government because there is no will to achieve true health care reform. The Supreme Court is set to hear a challenge on the consitutionality of the Obama health care plan this term, a plan that offends almost everyone — Republicans because they think the plan is taxes couched as a mandate (and because they consider almost everything Obama does an offense), and Democrats because a mandate puts an almost insurmountable burden on the poor and the unemployed, for whom the cost of insurance is prohibitive. But Obama is right about one thing — without healthy people in the pool, the very notion of insurance collapses, and in a weak economy, many healthy people have stopped buying insurance. But the mandate is flawed, not so much in that it requires us to buy a product (although the Supreme Court may disagree), but in that it requires us to buy such a bad product.

Corporations bear responsibility because employee well-being is a notion of the past, and the only numbers that matter are those on the balance sheet at the end of each quarter. We have become a nation of expendable zombies, as fewer of us are expected to do more, in an increasingly longer work day. Use and abuse of prescription sleep medication is at an all-time high, especially among the young. We are easily replaced when we burn out, and for most of us wages have stagnated even as CEOs are receiving record compensation and the wage gap between those at the top and those at the bottom, while not at record highs, still boggles the mind. And now that the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are people and, therefore, not subject to any restrictions on the amount they can spend of political ads, which are protected as free speech, the likelihood that Congress will act to close up loopholes in the tax code favorable to the wealthy and industry decreases every day, while the imminent retirement of the Baby Boomers will increase the burden on young workers of providing Medicare benefits for a generation with ever-increasing life expectancy.

But we as individuals are responsible, too, because we have gone to George Orwell’s Room 101 — where in our fear of losing what little we still have, we want government to “do it to someone else” — tax someone else, take benefits from someone else, send the opposing party down in flames, just don’t do it us.

There is no easy fix to the health-care problem, but unless we break free of partisan rancor and fearful self-interest, health care is destined to become the perogative of the privileged few. As for the rest of us, there’s always generic Vicodin to ease the pain.

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A Dream Date With… Peewee?

Posted on October 3, 2011 by

July 21, 2000 — A Dream Date With… Peewee?

This week I am again going to talk about something that is not strictly a Runaways story, but concerns a topic about which people have asked a lot of questions over the years. I’m talking about my appearance on (gulp) yes, The Dating Game.

Why The Dating Game? In the early ’80′s, while I was working at Skyhill Publishing/Tarka Music (see Story of the Week for July 14, 2000) I had a roommate who was a booker for Chuck Barris Productions. Her job was to get potential contestants for The Dating Game to come in for an audition, and she had a weekly quota of applicants. One week she hadn’t met her quota and was desperate, so she begged me to go in. All I had to do was show up. I didn’t even have to try to be good or likeable or to get on the show.

I showed up at the audition and they lined us up and put us up three at a time to ask and answer mock questions with the writing staff. Since I had already fulfilled my duty to my roommate, I didn’t really care about impressing anyone and just started mouthing off. Of course, they loved me for that, and right after my “audition,” someone came up to me and told me they wanted to book me on the show. I figured what the hell, it ought to be a laugh so I agreed. The first thing I had to do was come up with a list of potential questions and then meet with one of the show’s writers to go over them and refine them. We came up with our questions, and they set a date for my taping. I was told to arrive 3 hours before the taping and to bring 3 different outfits for them to choose from.

I arrived at the studio in Hollywood where the show was to be taped with my 3 outfits in tow. I put on the first one, a clingy, dark red dress, but since I was going to have to change 2 more times, I didn’t bother to put shoes on and walked out for the director barefoot. The director thought that was great and said they’d never had anyone go on the show barefoot and that I was going to be the first. Then they sent to me to makeup, where they put so much eyeliner on me I looked like Mick Jagger. Next stop — a run-through of my questions with one of the writing staff.

As you probably know if you’ve watched the show, each episode of The Dating Game features 2 games. In each game, there is one person, usually, but not always, a woman, asking questions of 3 members of the opposite sex. I was to be the asker in the first game on the show, and another woman was to be interviewing 3 bachelors in game number 2. Both of us met with the writer about an hour before the taping to run through our questions and get warmed up. We’d both gotten to know the writer a little when we worked with him on our questions, so we were comfortable even though we were nervous. The writer had done this hundreds of times and was obviously a little bit bored with the process and was giving us kind of flip answers. After one particularly lame answer, I responded “okay, bachelor number 3, we’ll see you later — MUCH later.” He told me I had to say that on the show because I could get away with it, although he was quick to point out that the second girl could never get away with an answer like that because she was too sweet. Thanks a lot!

So now it’s show time, and they push me out on stage in my clingy red dress, my Mick Jagger makeup and no shoes, and I have to stand there staring at Jim Lange while the announcer tells the audience all about me. I had no idea what to do with myself, and I remember being fascinated by the amount of pancake makeup plastered on Jim Lange’s face and being quite surprised by how old he looked. All of a sudden, it was time for me to sit in the hot seat and listen to Jim introduce the bachelors. The first two guys said some sort of hellos, and then it was Bachelor number 3′s turn. He said something along the lines of “if you like to swim and ski, then go with me, number 3.” I immediately ruled him out.

I discovered that I was so wrapped up with asking my questions and keeping things moving, that it was almost impossible to actually listen to the guys’ answers. I did at one point tell one of them “see you later — much later” and I got resoundingly booed by the audience which really took me aback. Finally, about 2/3 of the way through the questioning, I said to Bachelor number 2, “Bachelor number 2, you’re the world’s first rock and roll preacher. Let me hear your sermon, and keep preaching until I stop you.” Number 2 replied, “Okay, I want all you people to come up and give me all your money.” I said, “what are you going to do with all that money.” He said he was going to buy liquor with it and I asked him what my share was going to be. When he said half, I decided to choose him.

As soon as the time was up, they flashed really bright lights in my face, blasted loud music, turned me around and asked me immediately who I was going to pick. They really don’t want you cheating, even on The Dating Game. There was no way there were going to give me any opportunity for coaching by the audience. Fortunately, I had already decided on number 2. When they cut back from the commercial break and Jim Lange said, “so, Jackie, have you decided who you’re going to pick?” I had to resist the urge to say, “Of course, you !@!$!$%!, you made me pick him as soon as the questioning was over!” I said number 2 and then came the part where I got to meet the guys I didn’t pick.

Bachelor number 1 turned out to be a John Travolta Saturday Night Fever clone (who hit on me later backstage), and Bachelor number 3 was your average nice guy surfer/ski dude. Then came the big moment. Jim Lange said “so, are you ready to meet your date?” and I said “no”! Jim gave me a dirty look and forced out a big, phony, “heh, heh, heh — well, let me tell you something about him.” The guy came out, and he was a cute, blonde guy. I figured I had picked the “right” guy. Then we found out we’d won a date to Palm Springs and I’d won a Normal Kamali bathing suit (which I never got). After that, we got to go backstage and watch the second game together.

Before I tell you about the second game, the guy I picked was an actor named John Laughlin, who would go on to star in a number of pictures, including Ken Russell’s Crimes of Passion. Kathleen Turner starred in the movie as a clothing designer who is a streetwalker by night. Anthony Perkins was in it as the truly bizarre preacher who tries to save her from her life of sin, and my date, John, played the guy who falls in love with her and finds out her secret. Truly a strange movie which is considered a sort of cult classic.

I actually went on a real date with John before our Dating Game date was scheduled to happen. We went to the Hong Kong Cafe to see Phil Seymour’s band. Phil had been the drummer for Dwight Twilley (I’m on Fire), and Skyhill Publishing represented him for songwriting. As I recall, I had also invited Robin Williams to the show and he was there flirting with all the waitresses. Anyway, when it came time to go on the actual date to Palm Springs, John wasn’t available, so I invited a friend of mine who worked at Licorice Pizza Records. This friend of mine was about 6’5″ tall and really skinny. We had to go with a chaperone and I had to room with her. The real kicker, though, was that the show had sent us for a weekend at The Palms in Palm Springs, which was a high end fat farm. Now they call them spas, but in the early ’80′s, such places catered to overweight clientele. Food at the hotel was included, but the menu called for something like 800 calories a day, and both of us were stick thin. The chaperone finally felt sorry for us and took us out to eat on her own dime. All in all, a disappointing weekend.

But back to game number 2.

The woman asking the questions in the second game went out, they introduced her to her bachelors and she started asking her questions. Bachelors numbers 1 and 3 were pretty normal guys, but number 2 was really strange-looking and had a really high, odd voice. He was, however, hilariously funny, and John and I started telling each other that she had to pick him. Even though he was really weird, she couldn’t resist how funny he was and she picked Bachelor number 2. When Jim Lange brought him out, he introduced him as Peewee Herman. It was one of Paul Reubens’ earliest television appearances as Peewee and I will never forget being on the same show as him.

My date may have been a disaster, but Peewee was a hit.

On a final note, The Dating Game did give me an opportunity for some minor revenge on an old boyfriend. As you may have realized from the fact that the bookers had quotas, it was a real challenge getting in enough perky, interesting people to pick contestants for the show, especially the men since there were usually 6 per show. So when we went in for our taping, they would ask us to fill out a list of men who we thought would make good contestants that they could call. I put my ex-boyfriend’s name and number on the list with a big star next to it, figuring he’d get pissed off when they called him. About half a year later, a friend of mine called me up and said they’d seen him on the show! I saw a rerun of it shortly after that and it was hysterical. My ex-boyfriend, Dirk, was the lead singer of an early pretty-boy band named Virgin. Virgin opened a tour for Sean Cassidy and was featured in a lot of magazines like 16 and Teen which catered to young girls. Which was really funny considering that in reality, they were a bunch of bad boy rockers. The girl who was asking questions on his show was definitely not his type. At one point she sang her “theme song” — a big, Broadway number like “I Love a Parade” or something similar and not very rock and roll. Then she called on Dirk and asked him to sing his theme song. Without missing a beat, Dirk blurted out “Hot Legs!” and, of course, she picked him. I think he was horrified.

So I may never have gotten my Norma Kamali bathing suit, but I did get to be on a show with Peewee and my ex-boyfriend ended up on the date from hell.

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But Can You Sit On It?

Posted on July 22, 2011 by

June 2, 2000 — But Can You Sit On It?

The week’s story isn’t exactly a Runaways story, but it involves our good friend, Hernando Courtright, whom I have known since before I joined the band in 1975 and who is a dear friend of mine to this day. Hernando spent a lot of time with the band, doing everything from rescuing Joan and me from the airport when we flew back from San Francisco without supervision, to loaning us his clothes to wear on stage, to accompanying us on various adventures, some of which I’ve set forth in this week’s installment. In a way, Hernando is the 6th Runaway, and this week’s story is his story.

Before I joined the band, I would take the bus into Hollywood and hang out at various clubs — The Rainbow, The Starwood and The Whiskey were my favorite hangouts. In particular, I used to love to see bands and go dancing at The Starwood. My best friend from high school, Vicki Tornabeni, and I would hitchhike into Hollywood and hang out with the guys in a really strange band called Zolar X that played the Starwood regularly and would get us in for free even when they weren’t playing. Zolar X was unusual in that they wore prosthetic ears, heads, etc., way before prosthetics were common. Vicki and I lived in the San Fernando Valley and I will never forget the night Zolar X showed up at my house during one of my mother’s dinner parties, wearing full prosthetics, to take Vicki and me out to see some band at the Starwood. I don’t remember what band we saw that night, but among the bands I saw there in the 70′s were Van Halen and Devo. In fact, Lita and I were the ones who brought Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley to the Starwood to see Van Halen, and Gene was so impressed with the band that he produced their demo tape, the one that got them a deal with Warner Bros. Records. But before I joined The Runaways, I would go the Starwood and the other clubs with Vicki, or with my friends Trudi and Helen. In fact, I was dancing at the Starwood with Trudi and Helen when I met Rodney Bigenheimer, who told me about the Runaways and Kim Fowley. But that’s another story.

One day, Trudi asked me if I knew Hernando. I didn’t think I did, so I asked her who Hernando was and she told me “he hangs out at The Rainbow and he looks gay but he’s not.” So a few nights later, I’m at the Rainbow and I see this guy walking down the stairs. I walk up to him and say “Excuse me, are you Hernando?” He said he was and asked how I knew. I said “a friend of my described you.” It was until many, many years later that I told him the actual description! We didn’t get to be friends that night, but I would run into him around town, and one night, at a party for The Sweet at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, I wrote my phone number down on a piece of paper and gave it to him. He never called.

Cut to a few months later, and the 3-piece version of the Runaways (Sandy, Joan and Mickey Steele) are playing at the Whiskey. There weren’t very many people at the show, but one of them was Hernando. When I went up and reminded him of who I was, he told me that the night of the Sweet party he had gotten trashed and gotten phone numbers from about 8 different girls, and that he managed to figure out who all of them except me were. I never ended up dating Hernando, but he became one of my closest friends. His father owned the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and he lived in a room there, but since I was too young to drive, he would drive all the way out to the far west end of the San Fernando Valley to pick me up (a good half hour drive out of the way), and we would drive back into Hollywood to hang out and see shows.

One night, Hernando took me to the house of an early Bowie-esque musician named Jobriath.

Someone had rigged Jobriath’s telephone so it bypassed AT&T’s sensors making it possible to call all over the world and not get charged for the call. So all kinds of freaky Hollywood rocker types would hang out at Jobriath’s house making phone calls to Japan, England, wherever. The day Hernando and I visited, Jobriath was telling a crowd of people about his new method of doing drugs — putting them up his rear. Some guy started telling Jobriath about a great, new, synthetic heroin he had tried, to which Jobriath responded, “but can you sit on it?” At the age of 15, this was a memorable experience. Because Hernando lived at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel (Warren Beatty lived there, too, and during the ’70′s the hotel was a real hot spot for bands and actors) he seemed to know everybody, and we had lots of memorable experiences. The adventures didn’t stop once I joined the band.

Hernando would often get mistaken for Freddie Mercury of Queen, and on occasion he would take shameless advantage of the resemblence. There is a famous restaurant in Los Angeles called The Palm, which has on its walls drawings of famous actors and Hollywood executives and directors, many of which have been autographed (the drawings, not the directors). I think it has since been painted over, but there used to be an autographed drawing of Freddie Mercury on the wall there. Only the autograph wasn’t Freddie’s, it was Hernando’s, and Hernando got a pretty good meal on the restaurant’s tab on the night he signed it.

One night, Hernando and I were having a late night/early morning dinner at a coffee shop in the San Fernando Valley called DuPar’s, another late night hangout of musicians and music industry people. We were with a friend of ours, Jeff Colburn, who edited Rock magazine, and he was in a mood to make trouble. The Runaways had been profiled the night before on a local 11:00 P.M. news program, and when our waitress tried to get us to make a little less noise in the restaurant, Jeff pointed to me and said, “Don’t you know who that is? That’s Jackie Fox from the Runaways.” It turned out the waitress had seen the newscast the night before and was suitably impressed. So Jeff decided to really make her night and tell her Hernando was Freddie Mercury. Since she’d already recognized me, she had no reason to doubt that Jeff was telling her the truth about Freddie. “What am I doing standing here talking to you?!?” she said, “I should be sitting next to you,” and she sat down next to Hernando. A few seconds later she said, “What am I doing sitting next to you? I should be kissing you” and, much to Hernando’s chagrin, started passionately kissing him. She was so overwhelmed with awe that she didn’t try to stop me when I decided to see if I could shoot my scrambled eggs into the overhead lamp with my fork. In fact, we were getting away with some really obnoxious behavior, when Jeff decided to press his luck and set his napkin on fire in the middle of the table. At which point not even our waitress’s deep, abiding love for Freddie Mercury could keep us from getting thrown out of the coffee shop.

Anyway, the Hernando stories could go on and on, but that’s enough for this week.

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Play This Piece of *@!*

Posted on July 6, 2011 by

Here’s a blog post I wrote eleven years ago. The words in the blanks start with “c” and “s”, respectively. I remember “Bud’s” as being a fair bit larger than it was portrayed in the movie, but a whole lot grungier. Then again, after I’d been in Junior High a few years I went back to my old elementary school and was surprised to see how small the “big girls” bathroom actually was. No way to check out Bud’s now — it’s long gone. But the Runaways live on, thirty-six years and counting. So sit back and enjoy another blast from the past.

May 19, 2000 — Play This Piece of *@!*

When I first joined the Runaways in late November/early December 1976, three weeks before my 16th birthday and about one week after Cherie’s 16th birthday, The Runaways rehearsed in a run-down trailer we called “Buds,” in the northeastern corner of Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. Although I took a series of buses to Buds to get to my audition, once I joined the band, we had a roadie pick Joan, Cherie and me after school since we all lived in the West Valley. I would be picked up first, then Joan, and then we’d wait in the van until one of us got brave enough to go in and wake up Cherie. Eventually we’d get her moving, and we’d drive out to Bud’s to rehearse.

It is difficult for mere words to do justice to the squalor that was Bud’s. Dog doo on the floor, p.a. system that could barely be heard and blew out only a few times on a good day, microphones that occasionally worked, mildewed walls and carpeting, bathroom that never got cleaned, etc. We’d start rehearsals and then Kim Fowley would show up and throw microphone stands at us yelling, Come on you dog ____s, play this piece of ___! We could never hear ourselves through the bad p.a. system, so we’d all be off key. Everyone would pick on Cherie and then Cherie would pick on me to the point where I got scared to sing and, as a result, I didn’t do any singing until the second album. But I least I didn’t get picked on too much by Kim like Cherie did.

When we recorded our first album, Kim decided that if he could make Cherie feel ugly, she’d sing more beautifully. So he had her sing all her vocals in the dark and made her feel like crap. This was in total keeping with Kim’s strategy of divide and conquer. He’d make each of us feel alternately like the queen of the band or the one that was about to get kicked out, and he made sure to keep us fighting at all costs. If we were busy hating and fearing each other, we’d be too busy to band together and realize that we were getting royally ripped off. He did this to all of us, but his favorite target was Cherie. He’d give interviews and say that the band would be better off if Cherie hung herself from a coat rack and became the Marilyn Monroe of the band. He’d tell her she lacked “rock and roll authority” (whatever that meant) and he’d suggest to the rest of us that as long as there was a blonde in the band, no one would care which one of us it was.

Kim made sure that we didn’t record very many songs on which he didn’t own 100% of the publishing like he did on Runaways songs. To get an idea of how unheard of it is for a band to give away such a large percentage of its publishing, all you have to do is watch the Behind The Music episode on The Black Crowes, in which Chris Robinson says they had the worst record deal of all time because Rick Rubin took 50% of the band’s publishing and a percentage of their merchandising. Kim Fowley took 100% of our publishing and 95% of our merchandising. Joan and I came back from England with a song we’d found, a little ditty called I Love Rock and Roll, and told Kim we wanted to record it for Queens of Noise. Kim claimed he’d had the record sent from England and that it had arrived broken. We made him get another copy. But ultimately, he wouldn’t let us record it, saying it wasn’t a good enough song. Laughable when you consider that Johnny Guitar passed muster! But Kim wouldn’t have owned any publishing and on our songs he owned it all. Which was on top of us only having 5 points on our albums for the entire band to share. To top it all off, Kim never paid us a single cent, not even the $6,000/year required as a minimum under California law, an amount he was contractually obligated to pay.

It took a long time before we got up the collective guts to kick Kim Fowley out of our lives, but by that time the damage was done. Although there is an unspoken collective agreement by the Runaways not to badmouth each other, we have no such compunctions when it comes to the adults who abused and took advantage of us. When Edgeplay comes out, expect to hear a lot of Fowley bashing. The man deserves it.

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A Rat in the Cellar and Chicago to Austin the Hard Way

Posted on June 30, 2011 by

May 12, 2000 — A Rat in the Cellar (or Was That Iggy?)

One of the more memorable shows we ever played was at the Ratskellar club in Boston in 1976.

The Rat, as it was fondly referred to, is a large, cavernous club in the heart of Boston. Our show there was oversold due to heavy airplay by radio station WFNX FM. I’m not sure whether the club has no air conditioning or if it was just broken the night we played, but between the lack of air and the extreme crowding, it was well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit on the stage and since we were the headliners, we were playing a long set. But that was only part of what made the evening memorable. The other part had to do with two things that happened right before we took the stage. The first was a fight I had with Cherie. I can’t remember what it was about, but it had been brewing for some time. The second was someone telling us that Iggy and Bowie were in the audience. As every true Runaways fan knows, Cherie was a David Bowie fanatic.

We took the stage to a wild response and proceeded to rock the house. About half an hour into the set, however, the sound system blew. While they were fixing it, we held a shouting contest, boys against girls, just like in our old fill-the-set-however-you-can days from Wildman Sam’s. If possible, the lack of a sound system and all the shouting made the club even hotter. We were dripping sweat and the audience was getting antsy. Finally, after a long delay, the sound came back on and we got back into our set. As we were nearing the end, really getting into the high energy numbers and cranking up both the heat and the volume, it happened — the entire power system blew, plunging everything into pitch black darkness and pressing heat. I was pretty overheated at this point since I was wearing a beautiful seuqin-covered vintage sweater (yes, a sweater!) that had belonged to my grandmother. Before the power had crashed, we had been due to play a slow song — Hearbeat. I had originally written the lyrics as a mock love song to Joey Ramone, but Cherie and our producer, Earle Mankey, rewrote them so that Cherie was singing a love song to someone else, although I had never been sure who it was.

So the lights and the sound system finally come back up and before we launch into Hearbeat, Cherie, at whom I am still royally pissed off, dedicates the song to the man she wrote it for — David Bowie. At this point, my anger comes to a full boiling head, which also pretty well describes the temperature on stage. All I want to do is get the damn sweater off, and what better way to take attention away from Cherie during her big declaration of love than by doing it. So I whip off my sweater and play the last couple of songs in a push-up bra, thereby diverting everyone’s attention from Cherie to my breasts. It was very sweet revenge, although Cherie got back at me several towns later my kicking my beautiful, rare 1965 Gibson Thunderbird on stage and by putting a cigarette out on my jacket. But it was worth it. Of course I found out a few years later that while Bowie and Iggy had, in fact, come to see the show, they left long before we played Heartbeat so ours were empty gestures all around.

But, like I said, it was a memorable show.

April 7, 2000 — Chicago to Austin the Hard way

We had played two shows at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago and were scheduled to fly to Austin, Texas the next day for a show at the Armadillo the following night. Lita and Cherie decided they were tired of flying, so they left that night right after the last Chicago show and drove with the crew to Austin.

The next day, Sandy and Joan and I were ready to leave for the airport, but our manager, who talked on the phone so much the band nicknamed him “Tyrone Telephone,” was tied up on a call and we were running even later than usual. To top it off, it had started snowing.

We got the taxi driver to speed in the snow and managed to make the flight, but didn’t have time to check any luggage. So the four of us took all of our things onto the plane, along with a few items Cherie and Lita had left behind in their haste to get on the road in time. The plane had a 15-minute stop-over in Dallas before heading on to Austin, so when we landed, Sandy, Joan and our manager got off to buy snacks and magazines, and I stayed on the plane to watch our stuff.

15 minutes passed and Sandy, Joan and our manager hadn’t gotten back on the plane. 20 minutes… 25. The flight crew closed the doors and got into their jump seats preparing for take-off. All of a sudden, one of the stewardesses jumped up and opened the door, and Joan came racing in with all of the crew glaring at her. We took off and 20 minutes later, Joan and I arrived in Austin with 5 people’s luggage and no one to meet us. We were 16 years old.

Joan pretended to have a limp so we could get her a wheelchair. I don’t think she fooled anybody, but they gave us the wheelchair anyway and we piled all of our things onto it. Fortunately, I remembered the name of the hotel we were staying at in Austin, and we called them and got someone to come pick us up. When we got to the hotel, however, we couldn’t check in because neither of us had a credit card. So we left the baggage at the front desk and wandered around the hotel grounds.

Pretty soon, we stumbled onto a building in which the hotel staff was setting up a party for later that night. We talked the bartenders into giving us drinks, and by the time our manager and Sandy showed up, Joan and I were plastered. I have a vague memory of sitting at a very long table which was covered by a long, red table cloth, and thinking it would be pretty cool to do the old ‘pull the tablecloth out from under the drinks’ trick — with my teeth. It didn’t work and I got kicked out of the party.

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Another Random Chapter From Delilah’s Scissors

Posted on June 23, 2011 by

Note: Chapters not in order. Also, a reminder — this isn’t about the Runaways. But this is what it’s like to be on tour. Hope you enjoy.

Bruce pulled the rented van carrying the band and the girls’ personal equipment — guitars, stage clothes, make-up and the like — up to the back entrance of the college auditorium where Delilah’s Scissors and several other bands would be playing that evening. Although the ostensible purpose of the evening’s gig was a Rock For Choice benefit, the out-of-the-way Orange County concert was, according to Dexter Sterling, the perfect place for the Scissors to try out new material for their up-coming album, which they were to start recording in less than three weeks. Tonight would be an opportunity to measure crowd response and to fine tune the material, none of which they had ever performed live. But despite the fact that they desperately needed such a testing ground, none of them was really looking forward to the show — the acoustics were likely to be God-awful and the facilities even worse. At least they were headlining and would get a sound check and a dressing room, something the opening acts would have to do without. The girls eyed the auditorium skeptically as Bruce opened the doors to the back of the van.

“Who’d you say the opening acts were?” asked Brenda, staring at Bruce accusingly, as if the entire matter were his fault.

“Oh,” said Jen, looking as if she too would like to slit someone’s throat. “I did a little research into that this afternoon. The first act on is some local number called “Achocoli and the Broccolates” — apparently there are about ten of them and they dress in green and brown striped loincloths and do some mish-mosh of new-wave rap/funk/dance music while dancing in a sort of pseudo-Egyptian break style. The second act is a slightly less sane band called “The Hanseatic League of Pacoima,” fronted by a blond nut-job who calls himself the Viscount Mortimer of St. Louis of the Abyss and prances around in a Visogothic helmet and armor. They do hard-core industrial, sort of a cross between Nine Inch Nails, Ministry and a rusty chainsaw. Lowenstein played me their demo tape last week. He’s actually thinking about signing the creeps.”

“Whose idea was this stupid gig anyway?” whined Nancy, who seldom whined.

“Take a guess,” said Jen. “Wait… I’ll give you a hint — his name rhymes with ‘vex.’ ”

“Ah… that explains it. We’re being punished, right?” asked Gloria.

“Give the little lady a prize,” said Jen.

“Give Dexter Sterling a hydrochloric acid enema,” spat Brenda, as Leila, the band’s new bass player, followed the exchange with undisguised curiosity.

“Grab your shit,” Jen called to Leila, “looks like the roadies got lost again.”

Leila picked up her bass and make-up case and followed Jen into the auditorium, wondering how she was ever going to replace Carlotta. Even though everyone had been really nice to her since she’d joined the band two and half weeks before, she could tell they all missed Carlotta terribly, even Brenda despite her repeated statements to the effect that she was glad to be rid of “the little slut.”

The band had arrived in Portland with the intention of hiding out from the press, giving Carlotta some moral support and time with her daughter, and maybe working on some tunes for the new album. Somehow the Catalanos had found room for everyone and the Scissors had stayed for ten days, resting and writing and generally getting to be friends all over again. But when it came time for the band to leave and return to Los Angeles, Carlotta had dropped her bombshell — she was staying in Portland with her daughter.

Carlotta had tearfully told the band that she had done some serious thinking over the previous ten days and realized that being a mother to Amaya was more important than being a rock star. It was bad enough that Amaya was growing up without a father without having to grow up without a mother, too. There would be plenty of time for Carlotta to make music , but Amaya would only have one childhood. The rest of the band begged and pleaded and tried to get Carlotta to change her mind — they’d chip in for a nanny and she could bring Amaya on the road, they’d take turns baby-sitting in L.A., they’d do whatever it took to make it work. But Carlotta remained firm in her conviction — her daughter was not going to grow up in the circus. She’d made her choice when she’d decided to have and keep her baby. And so Carlotta, the member of the band least likely to bow to convention had bowed to the most time-honored convention of all: motherhood. And the band, while disappointed, had accepted her decision.

They’d found Leila through a lucky accident just a week and a half later. The band had been surprisingly depressed over the loss of Carlotta and had gone out drinking on the Sunset Strip, ending up at a table at the infamous Rainbow Bar and Grill, where rock stars, wanna-be rock stars and never-gonna-be rock stars had been hanging out seeing and being seen for several decades. Sometime around midnight they’d staggered drunkenly down the street to Johnny Depp’s Viper Room for yet more alcohol. And Leila had been playing upstairs with Proclivity, a band composed of frequently-changing members of various local bands, such as Leila’s regular band, Pap Smear. But whereas Pap Smear was a punk rock throwback with no real future, Leila could really jam. It also didn’t hurt that she had long, wavy dark-brown hair and could sing really great, high background vocals. None of the Scissors other than Gloria could hit high notes very easily and so the background vocals had always suffered live. The band had invited Leila to audition that weekend and had hired her on the spot. Leila had learned fifteen songs in two weeks to get ready for tonight’s gig. But while getting into the band had been easy, replacing Carlotta was not. Leila was more than a little nervous.

The band hauled its equipment into the classroom that had been set aside as its dressing room. Nancy’s new girlfriend, Alice, a petite blonde who looked like a cheerleader and couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds, staggered in under the weight of Nancy’s bag and dumped it heavily on a badly scarred, graffiti-incised wooden desk, then promptly scurried off to hide in a corner with a dog-eared copy of “Bob Flannigan: Super Masochist.” Nancy and Alice had been going together for almost two months and seldom left each other’s sides, yet no one else in the band had been able to get more than two words out of Alice. Like most other things in Nancy’s life, Alice was a complete mystery.

The band started unloading its gear for sound check. Suddenly the door flew open and in marched a tall, thin, young man wearing armor and a plumed, visored helmet and brandishing a sword.

“Greetings, fair damsels,” he declaimed loudly with a sweeping bow. “The Viscount Mortimer of St. Louis of the Abyss at your service.”

There was a moment of stunned silence as the girls just looked at each other.

“Yeah, whatever,” said Nancy, brushing past the geek with her bass drum pedal and sticks.

“Madame,” replied Viscount Mortimer, “if I have offended thee I beg thy forgiveness. I came only to pay my respects. I am afraid thou hast turned me into the Viscount Mortified, for I would fain offend a lady.”

“Good,” said Nancy, without missing a beat, “we’ll be sure to let you know if we see one.” Amidst much snickering the band filed past the would-be warrior and up onto the auditorium stage. The road crew had miraculously found its way to the gig and started setting up the band’s amps. Leila plugged in her bass and turned on her amp, which promptly emitted a loud popping sound and began spouting flames.

“Fuck me!” she shouted, “that’s the third one this week. I’m beginning to think this band is jinxed.” She looked around for help but, as usual, the roadies had disappeared just when they were most needed. Leila’s amp began dispensing thick, black smoke into the air. “Fucking useless shit!” she yelled, although whether she was referring to the amp or the road crew was hard to tell. Disgusted, she finally ripped off her t-shirt and starting patting out the flames herself. At the sound of applause, she turned around. The road crew had reappeared just in time to see Leila battling the fire in her black, leather push-up bra and were loudly hooting and applauding her impromptu performance. As she flipped the crew the finger, flashbulbs went off near the front row. The photographer from the college newspaper had just gotten his lucky break. Or so he thought. Leila jumped off the stage, grabbed the camera off the startled guy’s neck and ripped the memory card out of the back.

“You fucking little prick. You come near me again and I’ll rip you a new asshole. Asshole!”

The applause from the road crew doubled. Leila scowled and walked back toward the dressing room. “This band sucks.”

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Jen picked listlessly at her taco while trying to ignore the funky sounds of Achocoli and the Broccolates, which floated in at varying volume every time someone opened the dressing room door, which seemed to Jen to be every few seconds.

“Shut the fucking door!” she screamed as one of the roadies propped it open in order to carry Leila’s fried amp back to the truck. “Man, this gig sucks. It’s fecund for disaster.”

“Did you say fecal?” asked Nancy.

“Great I’m on tour with Beavis and Fucking Butthead! Fecund, fecund! You know, fertile, capable of bearing fruit and all that shit,” Jen growled. “Go look it up. There’s a dictionary in here.”

“Gee,” said Brenda, “maybe you should look up ‘on the rag.’ I mean, seeing as how you are and everything.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you.”

“No, fuck you.”

“By, all means, fuck me.”

“Not my type.”

“Then why’d you offer?”

“I didn’t — you did.”

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

“I know you are, but what am I?”

“Probably bored shitless like the rest of us. What are we gonna do for the next two hours, anyway? I swear, if that geek St. Dickwad of the Clueless comes in here one more time I’m going to shove his sword up his zitty little butt.”

“Hey!” yelled Alice, in a rare moment of animation. “We could play dictionary.”

“Huh?” Five faces just looked at her.

“You know, that’s where one person finds a word in the dictionary that no one else knows and everyone writes down what they think it means and the person with the dictionary writes down the real definition and then one person reads them all out loud and you try to figure out which is the real one. You get points if people pick your fake definition and if you’re the one who picked the word you also get points when someone guesses a fake one. It’s stupid, but it’s fun and it beats listening to Achocoli and the Flatulates or whatever they’re called.”

The girls just looked at each other.

“Okay, yeah, sure, I’m game,” said Jen, as the other girls nodded. “What do we do?”

“We need some scrap paper or something to write on,” said Alice.

“Here,” said Jen, “how about Brenda’s lyrics to ‘Fuck Me ‘Til Your Dick Falls Off’?”

“Dude!” yelled Brenda, “those are good lyrics!”

“Alright, alright,” grumbled Jen. “We’ll use Bruce’s copy of the set list. The sound is gonna suck no matter what, so who cares?”

Alice carefully tore the paper into strips. “Okay,” she said, handing the dictionary to Nancy. “Look through it until you find a word you think none of us knows.”

“That would be most of them,” snorted Gloria.

“Let’s see,” Nancy said, leafing through the book. “Hey! ‘Cunt’ is in here!”

“Wait, let me see,” said Brenda, grabbing the dictionary from her.

“Who cares?” roared Jen, “we all know what that means. Hell, there’s probably a picture of you next to the definition.”

“Hey bitch, it’s my turn,” said Nancy, grabbing the book back from Brenda. “Find your own dirty words.”

“Okay,” said Nancy, “here’s one — ‘patulous’ — p-a-t-u-l-o u-s . Anyone know what that means?”

The girls shook their heads.

“Okay… go to it.”

For a few minutes there was nothing but the sound of Achocoli and the Broccolates as the band and Alice wrote down their definitions.

“Okay,” said Alice. “Anyone got a hat?”

“How about a spare bra?” offered Brenda.

“Nah, we need something big, like your head,” said Nancy.

“Hah, hah. In that case, let’s use your underwear.”

“At least I wear underwear,” Nancy said.

“Here,” said Alice, “we’ll use the empty taco bag from dinner. Okay, everyone put your slip of paper in here.”

As the band was passing the bag around, Bruce stuck his head into the room. “Everyone dressed,” he asked?

“No, we’re all patulous,” Brenda said.

“Huh?” Bruce asked, a quizzical look on his face. “I’ve got a reporter here from Metal Beat who wants to ask you some questions about the new album.”

“Oh well,” said Nancy, crumpling up the taco bag and tossing it dead center into the nearest garbage can which was eight feet away. “Guess you’ll have to remain in suspense.”

“Come on,” implored Jen, as Bruce led the reporter into the room. “What the hell does ‘patulous’ mean? I’m pretty sure it doesn’t mean, uh, well, what I wrote down.”

“Why?” asked Nancy with interest, “what did you write down?”

“Um, never mind. . . you can root through the remains of dinner if you’re that interested in finding out. What does it mean?”

“It means ‘spreading or expanded.’”

“Gee,” said Brenda, “I thought that was Nicole Richie. Or is that shrinking? What do you call it when someone keeps expanding and contracting?”

“Hey,” said Gloria, “that reminds me… what’s the fastest way to get from Beverly Hills to North Hollywood?”

“What?” said the reporter from Metal Beat.

“Marry a musician.”

As the girls started laughing, the door opened and in walked Dexter Sterling. The room went dead silent.

“Hello, ladies,” Dexter said with an easy smile. “And how are we tonight?”

“Well, I don’t know about you, Dexter,” said Brenda, “but we’ve got to play this shitty gig with Spinal Tap and Puppet Show in Bumfuck, California, after eating dinner from Juan’s Speedy Dog Meat Taco and Upchuck Joint.” She turned to the Metal Beat reporter. “Not that there’s anything wrong with properly cooked dog meat, it’s just that Juan’s was a little on the raw side.” The reporter looked around uncomfortably while Dex pasted on his most amused looking smile and introduced himself.

“Hello,” he said in his most charming, polished accent, “Dexter Sterling, Starlight Records. Has anyone introduced you to the band?” The reporter shook his head. As Dex started introducing the band the door burst open and the singer from the Hanseatic League of Pacoima swept in and bowed with a flourish.

“Ladies… the Hanseatic League of Pacoima takes the stage. We invite you and your men in waiting to partake of the festivities.”

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Leila said as she walked over to the Viscount Mortimer and threw up on his polished leather boots.

It was her third standing ovation of the evening and the band hadn’t played a single note.

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