Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway (13 page)

 

My face went from red to deep purple. I could feel them all judging me, laughing at me. Sandy twirled her drumstick and laughed. “Kim! You should have told her we don’t play that MOR shit!”

 

“What—what’s MOR?” I stammered.

 

“Fucking middle-of-the-road, pansy-ass shit, that’s what!” Lita spat.

 

Well, that was it. I figured it was about time for me to drag my sorry ass home and go hide in my bedroom closet for a while. I started to think about how humiliated I was going to be when I got home and told everyone that I blew it before I even managed to sing a note. Jesus Christ!

 

“Why don’t we just write a song for her?” Joan said suddenly.

 

I looked around the room for clues. “What? Right now?”

 

“No,” Lita snapped, rolling her eyes. “Three weeks from fucking Tuesday. Of course right now! Kim, what do you think? Kari?”

 

Kari looked as puzzled as I did, but Kim was intrigued. He got this gleam in his eye and said, “Why not? It’s only rock and fucking roll, isn’t it?” Then he looked up at me and waved his hand dismissively. “Go on, dogs! We have work to do!”

 

With that, Kim and Joan shuffled out of the garage and into what I had just discovered was Kari Krome’s parents’ house. The place was deserted, so I figured that they must be at work. Joan took her guitar with her. “We won’t be long!” Kim called out to us as they left.

 

We won’t be long? I didn’t know enough about music to wonder if this was unusual or not. For all I knew, this was how it worked in the music game. Maybe Bowie and Mick Ronson were in the habit of turning to the rest of the Spiders from Mars and saying, “We won’t be long! We’re off to write a song.” So trying to keep whatever cool I had left, I just stammered, “Sure.” Then I sat there with Kari, Sandy, and Lita glaring at me, trying to make small talk.

 

After a few moments, an obviously agitated Lita turned to Sandy and barked, “Come on! Let’s fuckin’ play something instead of sitting on our asses!” With that, Sandy jumped behind her drum kit and she and Lita started jamming out “Highway Star” by Deep Purple. As they played together I was amazed at how good they were. I felt like there was no way I would be good enough for this band. Not a chance in hell!

 

“ ‘Cherry Bomb’?” I said, looking at the sheet of paper that Joan had shoved into my hands. Everybody was in the garage again. This new song had been written in approximately half an hour.

 

“Yeah,” Joan said, “ ‘Cherry Bomb.’ Kim and I wrote it just for you. It’s, like, a play on your name. Cherie—Cherry. You get it?”

 

I looked at the paper. The lyrics were scrawled out on a tattered page from one of those spiral notebooks for school. Joan had her guitar slung over her shoulders. Kim was pacing around next to us. “Hmm,” I said, examining the words. I started to smile as I read them. They were pretty good, and kind of in-your-face, too. I started to wonder how strange it would feel to sing those words out loud. They had a fuck-you attitude that I liked. It was as if Joan and Kim knew me, because those words pretty much summed up my life at that moment. When I was done, I nodded my head enthusiastically. I looked up at Joan, and she was smiling expectantly.

 

“Whaddaya think?”

 

“I like it—”

 

“Good,” Kim interrupted. “So let’s do it!” Then he turned to Lita and said, “Play your guitar like this!” He started miming playing a guitar, and tunelessly chanted, “Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh!”

 

Joan started to play the guitar, and it sounded a lot better than the noise Kim was making. Lita joined in, watching Joan’s hands for the chords. Sandy tapped along on the hi-hats. Everybody started trying to figure out the song at once. As Joan strummed the opening chords, Kim started singing.

 

Can’t stay at home, can’t stay in school . . .

 

Well, maybe singing was too generous a term. He just . . . spoke the words, with that weird, deep voice of his. Whenever he’d chant a line, I would do my best to sing it back to him, imitating his rhythm as best I could.

 

Old folks say, “You poor little fool.”

 

“Good!” Joan smiled. “You’re a fast learner.”

 

As everybody got more and more confident, they started playing the track more forcefully. The noise was reverberating through the whole neighborhood. Over the music I could hear Kim screaming at them to play it faster, louder, dirtier. As the song started to take shape, I realized it had this stomping beat, and this raw aggression to it, that sounded really different to me. There was a feel to it, like nothing else I’d ever heard. I felt a shiver of electricity run down my spine.

 

Down in the street I’m the girl next door . . .

 

I’m the fox you’ve been waiting for!

 

I swallowed down my fears. Nobody had ever written a song for me, and I had to admit it felt pretty fucking cool. Of course, this scared me even more, because as excited as I felt right then, I knew that the disappointment would be crushing if this audition didn’t work out.

 

When Lita broke a string, we had to take a short break while she retuned.

 

“Uh, Joan,” I said, pulling her aside, “how many other girls are auditioning to be the lead singer?”

 

Joan shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. This is your time. Seriously—they might not show it, but the girls like you. I can tell. And Kim likes you, and that’s the most important thing. You’ve got as good a shot as anyone else . . .”

 

“But how many?” I asked again.

 

She shrugged. “Not a lot.”

 

“How many is not a lot?”

 

Joan finally sighed. “Jeez, Cherie, I dunno. Like nine or ten?”

 

I suddenly wished I had kept my big mouth shut. It was probably better when I didn’t know. I swallowed my doubts, and we continued to run through the song. “Cherry Bomb” was pretty simple—three verses and a big, rocking chorus. I liked it. I liked it a hell of a lot. I hoped that today wouldn’t be the only chance I had to sing it.

 

When I finally performed the whole song with the band, it passed in a heartbeat. I could barely hear myself above the sound of the blood rushing in my ears. Kim sat with his fingers in his ears and his eyes closed. He listened intently with a look on his face like he was deep in meditation.

 

I grabbed hold of the microphone and did my best to channel David Bowie.

 

Hello Daddy, hello Mom!

 

I’m your ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb!

 

Hello world! I’m your wild girl!

 

I’m your ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb!

 

When the song was done, nobody said anything to me . . . the music stopped, and Kim nodded, looking thoughtful. Then they put their instruments down and shuffled out of the garage into the living room so they could go deliberate. I could hear them all in there, arguing with each other. Complaining. I clamped my hands over my ears, determined not to hear what was going on. Painful minutes passed. With each second that dragged on, my anxiety grew.

 

This was going on for far too long for it to be good news. They were probably trying to figure out the nicest way to say, “Thanks, but no thanks. Now buzz off back to wherever it is that you came from!”

 

I still believed somewhere in the back of my mind that picking “Fever” had killed any chance I might have had. They probably thought that I was a total fucking geek. Lita’s words echoed in my head: “Middle-of-the-road, pansy-ass shit!” I looked back down to my watch. Twenty minutes had passed! They were probably sitting in there making fun of me. Doing impressions of my singing for each other’s amusement. For the nine-hundredth time that afternoon, I cursed myself for not picking “Can the Can.”

 

Suddenly the door opened, and Joan walked into the garage. Behind her were Kim and the rest of the band. Joan’s eyes were totally unreadable. The rest of them just stood around with their arms folded, staring at me. I looked to Sandy’s face, and I swear her look said, “You sucked.” I turned to Kim, and imagined him saying, “You have the look, kid, but you don’t got the talent. Now get outta here.” I couldn’t even bring myself to look at Kari, or Lita, who I was already convinced hated my guts.

 

“Okay, dogs,” Kim said, clapping his hands together. “Looks like it’s make-or-break time for our little Cherie Bomb. Let’s go down the line. Joan?”

 

“I liked it.”

 

“Sandy?”

 

“Great. You were great!”

 

“Lita?”

 

Lita looked at me and snorted. She shrugged her shoulders. “Yeah,” she said finally, “I guess.”

 

“Kari?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Well,” Kim said with a theatrical sigh, “welcome to the doghouse, Cherie. You have been given a chance to be part of history. Now don’t fuck it up!”

 

They all just stood there. I was stunned, unable to speak. Joan was the first one to come over to me. She smiled.

 

“Congratulations,” Joan Jett said. “Welcome to the Runaways.”

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 7

 

“Welcome to the Runaways”

 

 

 

 

Before I even knew what was happening, Sandy West had picked me up and literally thrown me over a parked car. Sandy was my friend and I loved her, but she could have a temper and she definitely had the muscles to back it up. Off in the distance, I could hear Kim Fowley screaming, “You fucking dog! If that dog puke talks back to me ONE MORE TIME, it’s over! In fact, it’s all over for all you fucking dog cunts! You seem to forget who the main dog is here!”

 

“Shut up, Cherie!” Sandy screamed in my face. “Goddammit, can’t you just keep your fucking mouth shut? You’re going to ruin this for everyone! You know what Kim’s like!”

 

Yeah, I knew what Kim was like, all right. This incident took place only weeks into my stint as the Runaways’ lead singer. Ever since I’d joined the band, my day-to-day existence had suddenly become all about Kim Fowley: his demands, his threats, his expectations, his insults, and his promises. My life was suddenly all about rehearsals, and full of talk about potential record deals; and Kim Fowley was ruthless at the helm like some kind of demented ship’s captain. Despite the fact that Kim was loud, and as rude as hell to all of us, something he was doing seemed to be working: there was a definite feeling within the band that something big was about to happen.

 

But, goddammit, he was a nasty bastard. That’s what led to the blowup between Sandy and me. Sandy’s strong arms suddenly hurling me through the air did shock me enough to calm me down a little. A moment ago I’d been ready to snap. It was a typical rehearsal, and Kim had been his usual abusive self, screaming and hurling insults at us, and I had just had enough.

 

“Listen, man,” I’d said. “Don’t fucking talk to me like that! I’m not your fucking dog, okay? Don’t call me names anymore!”

 

When you were screaming at Kim, he would always look like he was holding back a laugh. His eyes would look right at you and his face would twitch from a smile to a pucker. It was infuriating. When I was done, Kim smiled and waved his hand dismissively.

 

“Go and sing,” he said in a voice dark with sarcasm. “That’s what you’re here to do. Why don’t you leave the thinking to me, sweetheart?”

 

We stared at each other for a moment as the rest of the band looked on with detached interest. Lita had a smile flickering on her lips. After all, she didn’t like me much and she thought that Kim was an asshole, too, so this was prime entertainment for her whatever way it turned out. It was the first time I had tried to assert myself with Kim since joining the band.

 

My heart was pounding, anger coursing through me. But Kim just nodded again, signaling for me to go back over to the microphone and continue singing. “Go on,” he said. I gave him one last look, thought, “Fuck it,” and turned to walk back to my spot.

 

Then I heard him mutter, “Good dog.”

 

Motherfucker!

 

In the ensuing fight, I called him a lousy bastard cocksucker and he lost it with me, and started threatening to drop the entire band and find some other girls. “Younger, prettier, more talented girls who would appreciate all he was doing for them!” as he put it. That’s when we all spilled out of the rehearsal room yelling at each other, and Sandy threw me over the hood of a parked car to silence me.

 

I looked up at her looming over me. I could see in her eyes that she really didn’t want to hurt me. Since I’d joined the Runaways, Sandy and Joan had been the two people closest to me, and I knew that the band meant everything to them. As soon as I hit the ground, Sandy was the first one there to help me up. She pulled me aside and whispered, “I’m sorry, Cherie. Look—this band means everything to me. When I heard Kim say he’d pull the plug, I just freaked . . . Man, are you okay?” She turned me around and brushed the dirt off my butt.

 

“I’m okay,” I said, starting to laugh a little at the ridiculousness of it all. “I understand.”

 

“Okay, cool . . .” She smiled at me with those beautiful, piercing blue eyes of hers. In a few moments everything would be forgotten, and the rehearsal went on as if nothing had happened.