Lita Ford - Living Like a Runaway: A Memoir

In Loving Memory of

SANDY WEST

(July 10, 1959October 21, 2006)

CONTENTS

BY DEE SNIDER

I FIRST MET LITA FORD THE WAY MANY OF YOU DID: THROUGH THE Runaways. Having read great things about the band and seen photos of them in Creem magazine, I decided to give the girls a chance. (Hell, thats how I discovered the New York Dolls and Kiss.) I bought their first album, took it home, and slapped it onto the turntable. I realize now that I was mentally daring the Runaways to be good. After all, they were just a bunch of teenage chicks. I dropped the needle into the groove... and a driving, chugging guitar came blaring out of my speakers. A real metallic electric guitar. Hello, Lita Ford!

The Runaways had their fifteen minutes or so of fame, then imploded as so many bands do. Good-bye, ladies. It was nice knowin you. But Lita Ford wasnt ready to leave. 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.

It was in the late spring of 1984 when I finally met Lita in person. Twisted Sister was just starting to tour, promoting our Stay Hungry album, and Lita Ford was the opener, working her second solo album, Dancin on the Edge . Having never gotten to see the Runaways live, I was truly impressed not only by Litas performing but also by her guitar playing. Here was a girl who could really play! And Im not talking playing good for a girl, Im talking playing good for anybody . Lita Ford could wail, and night after night she rocked the house. Lets face it, up to that point, with rare exception, a female rocker was pretty much viewed as an oxymoron. Lita Ford was standing flat-footed on the stage each night, wearing denim and leather, shredding on her guitar, and daring anyone to deny her right to be there. And nobody could. Lita Ford was just what the womens movement in the rock-and-roll world needed.

Not being a hanging-out-and-partying kind of guy, I really didnt get to spend much time with Lita during that tour, but we both came to respect and appreciate each other. And while my band Twisted Sisters career crashed and burned after one big record (my bad!), Litas continued on. Culminating with a platinum album and number one single, Lita Ford had become an iconic female rocker. The Queen of Metal!

I FELL INTO obscurity for more than a few years and lost touch with and track of Lita Ford. At some point I heard rumors about her getting married (again) and retiring to some tropical island, but that was all I knew. I was having enough of my own troubles trying to reinvent myself and take care of my family without worrying about who was doing what in the world of 1980s rock. In fact, 80s rock and rockers had both died a horrible (yet much needed) death at the hands of grunge. Every band I had known was dealing with its own crisis.

By the early 2000s, I had finally pulled out of my personal slump, having found new careers in radio, voice-over, and filmmaking. To celebrate my return from the dead, I took my family on our first real vacation in years, to a resort in Turks and Caicos.

A couple of days after getting there, we returned to our room to find the phone-message light flashing. I figured it was the hotel management checking to see if we were finally happy with our room, having moved three times since we had arrived. (Hey, once a rock star, always a rock star.) I hit the message button and a voice from my past started speaking to me.

Hey, Dee. Its Lita Ford. I live on the island and would love to have my family get together with yours.

Lita Ford? She lives here? Wait how did she even know I was here?

When I called Lita back, she quickly pointed out that it was a small island, and when an iconic 80s rocker shows up, the islands resident iconic 80s rocker is quickly informed.

Lita had retired from the music business, with her husband and family (she now had two young boys, James and Rocco), to a quiet life in the tropics, and while she had deliberately disconnected from her past to find her future, the one rocker shed met during her years in the business who she wanted to reconnect with was me. Lita Ford the rocker/family woman knew she could hang with Dee Snider the rocker/family man. She knew I didnt party, drink, or get high, had been with the same woman (Suzette) since Id met her in 1976, and that we had four children of our own. This fit perfectly with the post-rock-and-roll life Lita had built for herself.

Visiting Lita and her family for the first time at her home in the tropics, I was taken by (and a bit surprised at) how domestic she was. Lita had approached her new life with the same intensity and dedication that she had used to attack her career in rock and roll: she gave it everything she had. A loving wife and mother, she doted on her family, giving them all (especially her children) the kind of love and attention they needed and then some. Cooking (even baking bread each day from scratch!), gardening (growing fresh fruits and vegetables), cleaning, homeschooling her boys, and everything else in between, Lita was definitely a rock-star mom.

That afternoon, Lita and her family took my family to see the beautiful home they were building on an island off the coast of Turks and Caicos, accessible only by boat. I couldnt help but notice how removed this property, an oceanfront paradise, would make Lita and her children. While her husband was clearly excited about the prospect of further disconnecting from civilization, I could see that Lita was less than ecstatic. While she loved her family deeply, I know she worried about the effect that social isolation might have on her children... and herself . And what about her music?

Later, after a delicious dinner back on the mainland at Litas house, I asked her that very question: What about your career? Did she miss it? Was it over? Would she ever come out of retirement to kiss us deadly again? Lita assured me that her rock-and-roll days were far behind her, and she had absolutely no interest in ever going back.

Since that reunion dinner in the early 2000s Lita and I have remained friends, spending a lot of time together. Hell, our tribes have even gone on vacation together. And since that fateful night, Lita has come blazing out of retirement to rock the world once more. She blames me for her return (youre welcome, everybody!), but Litas not fooling anyone. The girl was born to rock, and whether shes in a band, performing solo, or just being an amazing, dedicated mom, nothing can ever change that. And why would we want to?

The rock-and-roll world needs Lita Ford!

FROM
THE CRADLE
TO THE STAGE

I had a dream that I was sweet sixteen And could play in a rock and roll band I saw some guys that played guitar They said, Come on if you think you can. R OCK AND R OLL M ADE M E W HAT I A M T ODAY (W RITTEN BY L ITA F ORD )

I GUESS I COULD START WITH WHEN I WAS BORN OR MY FIRST CONCERT OR the first time I picked up a guitar or something like that. Well get there. But if you want to know the moment when everything started to shift for me, it was my sixteenth birthday party.

It was a Saturday night in September 1974. I was going to turn sixteen in a few days, and my mom wanted to throw me a party at our house. I wasnt really the type to have a Sweet Sixteen, but I told my mom I would invite some friends from school and wed keep it small. My mother had my aunt Rose and uncle Wyman over; they were planning to play cards inside and keep an eye on the party in the backyard. My dad was on a fishing trip in Oregon and due back the following night.