THE LADIES OF GEN X ROCK
Joan Jett & Lita Ford: All Hail the First Ladies of Girl Metal
Before we begin, I have a disclosure to make.
I dream of being Lita Ford's BFF.
There. It's out.
Lita has not been consulted about this arrangement, but I feel confident that if we ever ended up sitting somewhere together talking about music for three hours, eventually somebody would look over and realize:
Oh. Apparently they're friends now.
So no, this article will not be entirely objective.
But then again, this is Rock ’n’ Roll Angel.
We're not here to be objective.
We're here to remember what it felt like.
And for a girl coming into rock and roll during the Gen X years, Joan Jett and Lita Ford felt like something important.
They also came from the same extraordinary place.
The Runaways.
Before There Were Girl Bands Everywhere
Image: The Runaways. Source: Wikepedia
Today, young women forming a band isn't a particularly revolutionary concept.
Girl groups are everywhere. Women play every kind of music imaginable. There are female guitarists, drummers, bassists, singers, producers and songwriters across the musical landscape.
There is still plenty to talk about when it comes to equality in the music industry, but the sight itself doesn't require explanation.
In the mid-1970s?
Different world.
Now, The Runaways were certainly not the first group of women to make music together. The history of female bands and girl groups goes back much farther than that.
But The Runaways were something different.
They were teenage girls playing hard rock.
Joan Jett.
Lita Ford.
Sandy West.
Cherie Currie.
Jackie Fox.
Guitars.
Drums.
Attitude.
And absolutely no indication that they intended to stand quietly at the side of the stage.
The band formed in Los Angeles in 1975 and lasted only a few turbulent years, from 1975 to 1979. They never became the enormous American commercial success their later reputation might make you assume. In Japan, however, they were greeted by screaming fans and sold-out shows, with “Cherry Bomb” becoming a major hit.
And they were young.
That's worth remembering.
These weren't thirty-year-old professional musicians playing rebellious teenagers for a marketing campaign. These were teenagers trying to navigate fame, touring, management, money, sex, drugs, expectations and the music business while simultaneously figuring out who they were.
The story around their management and treatment has become increasingly complicated and disturbing as members have spoken about their experiences. There were allegations of manipulation and abuse, problems with drugs and money, personality conflicts and disagreements about where the music should go.
Maybe the whole thing was simply too much, too young, too fast.
Eventually, The Runaways came apart.
But then something remarkable happened.
Two women peeled themselves out of the wreckage carrying guitars.
Joan Jett.
Lita Ford.
And good God.
Image: Lita Ford and Joan Jett. Source: Loudwire
They were just getting started.
I Didn't Discover The Runaways First
Here's the funny thing.
I didn't know any of that.
The Runaways weren't really in my field of vision when they were happening. I was still young and, frankly, busy trying to figure out what this whole enormous rock and roll thing was.
I discovered Joan Jett first.
And the song was:
“I Love Rock ’n’ Roll.”
Chef's kiss, as the kids say.
That song deserves its own Gen X Reflex, and someday it is absolutely getting one.
Because that opening...
You know.
I don't even have to explain it.
I heard it and thought:
I like this.
Then I did what I always did.
I started digging.
Remember, we didn't have Google. We didn't have Wikipedia. We didn't have Spotify waiting to show us an artist's complete discography and then helpfully recommend twelve related bands.
You found a song.
You found an artist.
Then you went looking.
Somewhere during my Joan Jett excavation, I discovered this band she had belonged to when she was younger.
The Runaways.
I also remember a movie about a young female rock band that helped send me down that road. I believe it was Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains.
Image: Ladies and Gentlemen The Fabulous Stains poster. Source: Kanopy
Am I prepared to testify to that under oath forty-some years later?
No.
I've researched it. The timing fits. The memory fits. Nothing else has rung the bell.
It'll do.
😂
I found “Cherry Bomb.”
I listened.
And my reaction was essentially:
Um. Okay. Interesting.
That was about it.
The Runaways were already gone. I had an entire universe of rock music opening in front of me and approximately nine million other things demanding investigation.
So I filed them away.
Joan Jett used to be in The Runaways.
Got it.
And I kept moving.
Then, years later...
Kiss Me Deadly
Excuse me.
Who. Is. This. Woman?
Lita Ford hit me differently.
Maybe because by then I was deeper into hard rock.
Maybe because of where I was as a young woman.
Maybe because...
GUITAR.
Image: Lita Ford. Source: Wikipedia
The energy.
The swagger.
The hair.
The leather.
The sexuality.
The attitude.
And underneath all of it was the thing that mattered most:
Lita could play.
Not play pretty well for a woman.
Not stand at the front of the band looking fabulous while somebody else handled the serious guitar work.
The woman could shred.
And she arrived during the era of the guitar god.
Eddie Van Halen.
Randy Rhoads.
George Lynch.
Steve Vai.
Slash.
Joe Satriani.
Yngwie Malmsteen.
This was an era when guitar players became mythology.
And there was Lita Ford.
Standing toe to toe with them.
That deserves respect.
Then I discovered the connection.
Wait.
Lita Ford...
was in The Runaways too?
Come on.
Now I had to look at that old file again.
Wait. BOTH OF THEM Came From That Band?
That's when The Runaways became much more interesting to me.
I hadn't discovered Joan and Lita by following The Runaways forward.
I discovered The Runaways by following Joan and Lita backward.
And suddenly that short-lived teenage band looked completely different.
Because lightning had struck twice in the same band.
Joan Jett emerged and became one of the most recognizable women in rock and roll.
Lita Ford emerged and became a bona fide metal guitar hero.
Same beginning.
Completely different destinations.
And perhaps that's one of the most important things they gave girls like me.
They didn't demonstrate the way a woman could exist in hard rock.
They demonstrated that there wasn't only one.
Joan Was Joan
Image: Joan Jett. Source: Wikipedia
Joan Jett didn't emerge from The Runaways and try to become some polished version of what the industry thought a female rock star should look like.
She became more Joan.
Black hair.
Black leather.
Guitar slung low.
That voice.
That sneer.
That stripped-down rock-and-roll sound.
Joan didn't seem interested in explaining why she belonged there.
She simply was there.
And “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll” became almost a statement of purpose.
I love this.
This is what I do.
Turn it up.
We'll come back to Joan because her post-Runaways story deserves much more than a section in somebody else's article. The rejection she faced, the fight to get her music released, Blackheart Records, the songs, the career, the legacy.
And yes.
“I Love Rock ’n’ Roll” gets its own Reflex.
I'm not spending that song today.
And Lita Was Lita
Lita went somewhere else entirely.
Metal.
Big guitar.
Big solos.
Big hair.
Leather.
Sex.
Swagger.
And I loved every glorious inch of it.
There was something particularly powerful about seeing a woman occupy that space without apparently accepting the idea that she needed to sacrifice femininity to be taken seriously as a musician.
Lita could look like Lita Ford...
then plug in.
Whatever argument you were preparing about whether she belonged among the guitar players could continue after the solo.
If you still had one.
Her transition after The Runaways wasn't effortless, either. Ford has spoken about struggling after the band ended, stepping away from music for a period, and eventually pushing her way into a solo career in the male-dominated hard-rock world.
And then there's the duet with Ozzy Osbourne.
“Close My Eyes Forever.”
WHAT?
Oh, we're going there.
Not today.
Lita gets her own article.
I have an entirely professional investigation to conduct into her music, guitar playing and career.
And possibly submit a BFF application.
We'll see.
But Something Had Changed
Here's what becomes really interesting when we look beyond Joan and Lita.
The Runaways disappeared.
But women playing hard rock didn't.
Across the Atlantic, Girlschool became part of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, building a career in a world overwhelmingly populated by men. The band emerged at the end of the 1970s and became one of the most enduring all-women hard-rock and metal bands.
There was Rock Goddess, another British all-woman heavy-metal band formed in the late 1970s.
And then, for those of us watching MTV in the late 1980s...
Oh yes.
And Then Came Vixen
Image: Vixen. Source: Billboard
VIXEN!
Now we're talking.
Jan Kuehnemund.
Janet Gardner.
Share Ross.
Roxy Petrucci.
An all-woman hard-rock band standing right in the middle of the glam-metal explosion.
And they looked like they belonged there.
Because they did.
Vixen's self-titled debut arrived in 1988, and “Edge of a Broken Heart” became their MTV calling card. Their success wasn't imaginary or something we've inflated through nostalgia. The band's official history credits them with more than a million albums sold and four songs reaching Billboard's Hot 100.
“Edge of a Broken Heart” reached No. 26.
Then “Cryin'” actually went higher, reaching No. 22.
These women weren't standing outside the hard-rock party asking to be invited in.
They were touring with Ozzy Osbourne, Scorpions, Bon Jovi, KISS and other major acts of the era.
They were in it.
And looking back at those old videos now, something else makes me laugh.
The women had big hair.
The men had big hair.
The women wore eyeliner.
The men may have worn more eyeliner.
The women had leather.
The men had leather.
Everybody had spandex.
Everybody had makeup.
And everybody apparently maintained a deeply committed personal relationship with Aqua Net.
For one glorious stretch of rock history, nobody was entirely certain whose makeup bag belonged to whom.
And it was fabulous.
😂🤘
But Here's the Part That Wasn't Funny
The visual lines might have been blurring.
The professional lines hadn't disappeared.
A guy could walk onto a stage in teased hair, lipstick, eyeliner and pants apparently manufactured from approximately three square inches of spandex...
and nobody wondered whether he could really play guitar because of his gender.
Women still had to prove it.
That's the contradiction underneath all the wonderful excess.
Women were increasingly visible in hard rock and metal, but visibility didn't magically erase the assumptions they were fighting.
Which is why Lita standing there with that guitar mattered.
Why Joan refusing to disappear mattered.
Why Vixen mattered.
Why Girlschool mattered.
Why Rock Goddess mattered.
Not because any one of them single-handedly invented women in rock.
They didn't.
History is much richer than that.
They mattered because each time another woman stepped onto that stage and delivered, the proposition became a little less unusual.
The Door Stayed Open
That's the legacy I see when I look back at The Runaways now.
I didn't recognize it when I first heard “Cherry Bomb.”
How could I?
History hadn't finished telling the story yet.
Sometimes you don't know you're looking at the beginning of something until you see what comes afterward.
The Runaways burned brightly and disappeared almost before much of America figured out what to do with them.
But the idea didn't disappear.
Girls could form a hard-rock band.
Girls could play guitars.
Girls could play lead guitar.
Girls could write the songs.
Girls could be loud.
Girls could be angry.
Girls could be sexy.
Girls could refuse to be sexy.
Girls could wear leather.
Girls could wear whatever the hell they wanted.
Girls could walk onto a stage full of male guitar gods and say:
Move over. I need some room.
And the women who followed didn't all look alike.
That's important.
They didn't all sound alike.
That's even more important.
Because progress isn't replacing one box with another.
It's getting rid of the damn box.
One Band. Two Icons.
That's why, all these years later, I keep coming back to the strange little miracle of The Runaways.
They didn't last.
They didn't conquer America.
They didn't remain together long enough to become one of those gigantic legacy bands celebrating a fiftieth anniversary tour.
They exploded.
And from that explosion came two women who would help define very different corners of rock and roll for the generation coming behind them.
Joan Jett.
The woman who told us she loved rock and roll as though there had ever been any question.
Lita Ford.
The woman who picked up the guitar, stepped into the boys' club and proceeded to play.
I found them separately.
Joan first.
Then The Runaways.
Then Lita.
And only later did I understand that those roads led back to the same place.
Maybe that's why The Runaways mean more to me now than they did when I first discovered them.
I needed history to finish the sentence.
Because The Runaways weren't merely a band that disappeared.
Look what came next.
Look at Joan.
Look at Lita.
Look at Girlschool.
Look at Rock Goddess.
Look at Vixen.
Look at all the women who came afterward and didn't have to be the first woman ever to walk into the room because somebody else had already kicked the door open.
And for a girl who was falling headfirst into rock and roll?
I noticed.
I loved the men.
Of course I did.
Some of them were magnificent.
Some of them were very pretty.
It was the '80s. Sometimes those were the same thing.
😂
But Joan and Lita gave me something different.
They weren't simply women standing near rock and roll.
They were rock and roll.
Two girls from one wild, short-lived band.
Two guitars.
Two completely different paths.
Two icons.
And one hell of a legacy.
All hail.
The First Ladies of Girl Metal.
🤘🔥❤️
A Little More to Explore
The Runaways — AllMusic A useful overview of the band's formation, changing lineup, music, turbulent history, success in Japan, and eventual split. It also gets into the musical differences that emerged between Joan Jett's punk/glam direction and the harder-rock instincts of Lita Ford and Sandy West. Explore The Runaways at AllMusic
The Runaways and Japan — The Japan Times A particularly useful piece for the part of our article about how enormous The Runaways became in Japan despite never achieving comparable success at home. It also discusses some of the darker realities surrounding their remarkably short career. Read The Japan Times feature
Lita Ford After The Runaways — Guitar World This is a terrific source for our Lita section. Ford talks about the difficult period after The Runaways dissolved, temporarily walking away from music, and eventually finding her way back to the guitar and building the solo career we remember. Read the Lita Ford interview at Guitar World
Vixen — Official Band History Straight from Vixen's official site: the band's origins, EMI signing, MTV breakthrough, touring history and commercial success. Their history credits the band with more than one million albums sold and four Billboard Hot 100 songs. Explore Vixen's official history
Girlschool — Apple Music Artist History A solid overview of Girlschool's emergence from the British hard-rock scene, their connection with Motörhead and their place among the early all-women bands breaking into the overwhelmingly male world of heavy metal. Explore Girlschool's history
**
Thanks for taking this trip back with me.
What do you remember? Were you there too, or did this story bring back a memory of your own? I’d love to hear it. Share your stories in the comments, and if this made you smile, laugh, cringe, or turn up an old favorite song, share it with someone who remembers too.
Follow and subscribe to Rock ’n’ Roll Angel for more music, memories, pop culture, and wonderfully strange adventures from growing up Gen X.
Come find me beyond the memories:
🌐 DrAYHeath.com
▶️ YouTube: @TheMysticScribe
📱 Instagram: @ayheath
📱 TikTok & X: @drayheath
📚 Books by Dr. AY Heath available on Amazon
Until next time...
Keep the memories alive. Keep the stories coming. And whatever you do... turn it up.
— Dr. AY Heath (Angel)
#JoanJett #LitaFord #TheRunaways #Vixen #Girlschool #RockGoddess #WomenInRock #WomenWhoRock #WomenInMetal #FemaleGuitarists #GirlMetal #RockNRoll #ClassicRock #80sRock #HardRock #GlamMetal #GenX #GenerationX #GenXMusic #GenXNostalgia #MTVGeneration #ILoveRockNRoll #KissMeDeadly #CherryBomb #EdgeOfABrokenHeart #LadiesOfGenXRock #RockNRollAngel #MysticScribe