Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway (25 page)

 

“Scott’s a good guy, Dad.”

 

“Well, he works for Kim Fowley. He might not be as much of a snake as Fowley is, but he’s a gofer for a snake. And I don’t know what’s worse.”

 

“I’ll marry Scott one day. Just you see.”

 

My father would roll his eyes and change the subject. If my dad had been in a better place, I’m sure he would have killed Scott. But Daddy was sick, and distracted. The entire family had been swept up in the chaos of the Runaways, and in a way I thought that my leaving on tour for a while might have been a relief to them.

 

I meant what I said to my dad. I felt that I was in love with Scott. Now I see I was just desperate for someone to love me. They didn’t have to mean it. The mere words were enough.

 

But everything changed once we left California. Once the European tour started, Scott began ignoring me. And I didn’t like the way he was talking to the other girls; he had that same smirky, flirtatious manner that he had with me before we got together. He acted like I was invisible, and was always having hushed, overfriendly, giggly conversations with the others. Sometimes, when we’d all be partying backstage, I’d notice him placing his hand on Jackie’s hip, whispering wetly into Lita’s ear. I didn’t want to seem jealous but it was eating me up inside. At the time, I swore that if that motherfucker screwed around with any of my bandmates, it would be over. I found out years later that he’d slept with all of us, with the exception of Jackie.

 

I spent a lot of time hiding out in the bathroom, crying. I took more and more pills, washing them down with booze. I remember once being so high and so angry at Scott that I practically pulled the guy who delivered the room service into my room in one of the English hotels we were staying in so we could have sex. Joan was out at the time. I grabbed the guy and said, “Will you screw me?” He looked terrified, but I didn’t give him much choice. I dragged him into the bathroom and we had sex right then and there, in total darkness. Then I told him to get out. I was so confused, so high, so homesick, and so hurt by Scott that a kind of temporary insanity had taken hold of me. A few weeks into the tour I was totally miserable.

 

We were in a black Mercedes-Benz driving past miles and miles of black, featureless highway. Outside, the air was damp and gray, the sickly haze of the streetlights hanging in the fog that was even grimier and thicker than L.A. smog. Thoughts of L.A. made the pain inside of me seem even more intense. Jesus, I was even homesick for the smog.

 

The limo was beautiful. Plush. Black leather seats, a minibar. Much better than Stinky’s beat-up van. Yes, the Runaways were at least touring in a degree of luxury in those days. But something had changed. There was little talk anymore, no seltzer fights, no jokes. We were simply there to do our jobs.

 

On the television we were watching Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon concert. The song was “The Great Gig in the Sky.” Nobody was talking. I was staring at the screen with heavy, stoned eyes. The light danced across my impassive face. During the song, a woman’s voice broke out of nowhere and suddenly the entire song soared. This heart-stopping, beautiful wail seemed to be coming from deep inside her soul. I felt Lita reaching out to me, tapping me on the shoulder.

 

“Whah?” I mumbled.

 

Lita smiled, and said, “Man, why can’t you sing like that?”

 

As the Runaways were gaining international success, we even made it to the magazines and the jungles of Indonesia. Don wrote to tell me that at school one afternoon he was in the smoking hut, an octagon building for students to smoke cigarettes and congregate between periods. He and his friends were just hanging out when a fellow classmate entered holding a poster from a rock magazine. It was of me, onstage in my corset. The guy held the poster up high for the entire group to see. “Hey, Don! Is this your sister?!” he said loudly, with a condescending tone.

 

Don said, “I dunno. Bring it closer.” The guy crossed the room, obnoxiously displaying his prized poster.

 

“Well, is it?” He sneered. He was really trying to get Don’s goat.

 

Don said again calmly, “Hmm, I’m not quite sure . . . bring it closer.” While the room hooted and hollered, the guy brought it right up to Don’s face. In a flash Don punched right through the page, hitting the boy square in the nose. His knees buckled as he stood stunned and embarrassed.

 

Don then took the poster, held it up for all to see. “This is my sister, everybody,” he yelled proudly. “Her name is Cherie Currie and she’s an international rock star!”

 

I laughed when I read that story, but usually the press caused lots of friction.

 

In England, they were all over us. The kind of press we were getting was causing problems in the band. I was in the lobby of a hotel somewhere in this gray, cold country flipping through the latest magazine article on us. Ugh, those magazines were so stupid. I finished flipping through the one I was holding and said, “I don’t like the pictures.”

 

“Oh, sure you don’t!” said Sandy sarcastically. The picture they used, just like in all of the other magazines, was an image in which I was standing front and center. The other girls were in the background. The piece itself was particularly stupid. Rock magazines were the worst! They constantly compared us with each other—not in terms of who was the best songwriter, or most talented musician—but by who looked the hottest. Who was prettier than who. Sandy wasn’t the only one who was resenting all of the attention I got as the lead singer. Everybody was starting to get pissed at me, as if I were somehow responsible for every stupid article written about us.

 

Lita grabbed the magazine, and sighed. “Surprise, sur-fuckin’-prise,” she said. “It’s the fuckin’ Cherie Currie show again.”

 

I didn’t even give her the courtesy of a glance, but she kept on anyway.

 

“You really don’t deserve all of this Cherie. It’s bullshit!”

 

“Oh, give me a break, Lita. I don’t write the damn things . . .”

 

“Oh! You don’t write them, that’s right. But you sure as hell make sure that you’re standing at the front pouting whenever a photographer is around. Dammit, this isn’t ‘The Cherie Currie Band,’ in case you didn’t notice! It’s the Runaways . . . and most of us were here before you were.”

 

“Shut up, Lita!” Sandy said. “We’ve only been here a week and we’re already fighting. How do you think we’re going to get through two months if you keep this up?”

 

I didn’t know if I was grateful for Sandy’s interference or not. Lita might have been a bitch, but at least she spoke her mind. The others were content to try to act like we were cool, but they weren’t so great at hiding their true feelings. They just expressed them in other ways. All in all, I had the feeling that this tour was going to be a nightmare.

 

“I’m telling you, Cherie,” Lita snapped, “you’re getting to be a regular fuckin’ prima donna!”

 

“Bullshit! No, I’m not!”

 

“Oh yeah?” She stood up, and started counting off the charges against me on her fingers. “Who demanded that Kim not come on this tour?”

 

“Oh! So now you want Kim around? You bitched about him as much as I ever did!”

 

Ignoring me, she went on: “Who pouted and sulked until she got the window seat on the flight over? Who keeps complaining that the songs aren’t in her key?”

 

“So what? The songs aren’t in my key!”

 

“Maybe if you had a better vocal range they would be!”

 

“Lita, man.” Sandy got between Lita and me. “You’re starting to sound just like Kim. Why don’t you just can it for a while?”

 

Everybody fell silent. Lita stormed off, and sat over in the farthest corner of the lobby, arms folded, back turned to me. The silence quickly turned uncomfortable.

 

“It’s not my fault!” I said again, in a pleading voice. “Doesn’t anyone believe me?”

 

No answer. Everyone was looking anywhere but in my direction.

 

“Joan,” I said, “don’t you believe me?”

 

Joan didn’t turn to look at me. Without meeting my gaze, she mumbled, “Yeah. Of course I believe you.”

 

Kent Smythe, our roadie, came over and said, “Okay, ladies. I have your room keys . . .”

 

I was rooming with Sandy this time around. As soon as we got into the room, she flicked on the television and started complaining about the lack of channels. I went straight into the bathroom and locked myself in. In the bedroom Sandy yelled, “Cherie, you ain’t gonna believe this. There’s only two fuckin’ channels, and one of them is showing a bunch of old geezers playing darts! Goddamn!”

 

I dropped the hotel key into my purse and then reached into my bag for a Placidyl. I popped it in my mouth and swallowed hard. I yelled to see if Sandy wanted to go get a drink with me. Another day loomed in front of me, and I wondered how I was going to get through it.

 

In Glasgow, the audience screamed at us, and beat the living crap out of each other in the aisles as we played. Debris rained down upon us, and we did our best to dodge the bigger items while still hitting our notes. As a song ended and the stage was plunged into darkness, I felt a heavy thud at my feet. When the lights came up again, I saw that it was a huge bowie knife that had flown through the air, landing only inches from my feet. I had actually felt it as it embedded itself in the stage.

 

I felt my blood turn to ice, and I ran offstage in terror. Backstage, I screamed at Kent, who was uselessly trying to calm me down. “That’s it, Kent! I’m not going back out there!”

 

“But, Cherie . . . listen!”

 

“They want to kill us!”

 

“Cherie—they’re gonna tear this place apart if you guys don’t finish the set!” Then I saw Joan storming off the stage with a worried look on her face. She ran over to me, her guitar still around her neck.

 

“What the fuck just happened?” She had obviously seen the knife sticking up out of the stage, and it had scared the holy shit out of her, too.

 

“I don’t want to go back out there, Joan!” I said, on the verge of hysterics. “I don’t want to die playing this stupid show!”

 

“Look!” Kent interceded. “I’ll talk to them. I’ll calm them down. They’re just kids . . .”

 

First Kent walked out onstage and said that if they continued throwing stuff at us, the show was going to be canceled. You could barely hear him above the screams and jeers. Then Joan went out, threatened the same, and they quieted down a little. After a few tense minutes, we reluctantly went back out and finished the set. From that point on, I stood back from the edge of the stage, my eyes combing every inch of that audience. I was determined to head off any more attacks, in case they were planning on throwing grenades, Molotov cocktails, or whatever other shit they hurled at bands they “liked” in this hell hole of place.

 

I looked down and all I could see was a sea of faces, all twisted up in a mask of rage and hate. Hate was definitely “in” all of a sudden. All of the music I had grown up on seemed quaint, sweet even. These kids were fucking insane. I thought I had taken it to the extreme, but the audiences here actually scared me. They made me look like Cinderella! From the corner of my eye, I noticed something twinkling, suspended in the air for a split second. Then it careened toward the stage, and I realized that it was a large glass bottle. It hit Joan’s guitar with a loud clunk, deflected, and then shattered at our feet. I caught Joan’s eye—she looked as pissed off and scared as I felt. That was too close.

 

When the show finally ended, a dozen security guards had to clear a path to get us out of the venue in one piece. We huddled our way toward the waiting limo, and I realized that this is what it must feel like if you’re an infamous prisoner running the gauntlet of a screaming mob on your way to court. Desperate hands reached out to us, trying to tear away a piece of our clothes, a chunk of our hair, anything they could rip away from us to keep for a memento.

 

“GO!” screamed the security guard as we shoved our way into the limo and the door slammed behind us.

 

“Jesus Christ,” said Joan, her voice dripping with fear and awe.Looking through the windshield, I could see the sea of screaming kids parting slightly as the limo started to roll slowly forward. There was a heavy, rhythmic hammering as the throng of rabid kids slammed their palms against the hood, the roof, the windows.

 

“I feel like I’m on the last plane out of Burma,” Jackie said.

 

“Me, too,” I agreed, although I had no idea what she was talking about.

 

The limo inched forward, coming to a stop every few moments because the crowd was blocking the way. The driver honked and cursed at our insane fans through the tinted glass.

 

Sandy smiled, and looked at me. “Man, I’m thinking that we should maybe throw you to them, Cherie. Hey, guys—d’you think that they’ll let us go if we give them Cherie?”

 

Everybody laughed at this, and I joined in. But a part of me wondered how much of a joke it was. I suddenly felt like I was fourteen again, hanging out with Marie and her cool friends. On the outside, looking in.

 

“Where the fuck are the security guards?” Lita sneered as the limo started to rock from side to side. They seemed to have vanished, and the limo wasn’t even moving forward anymore. In fact, the crowd was swarming the vehicle from all sides. I felt hot, claustrophobic. The inside of the limo got dark as the crowd pressed up against the windows, blocking out all light. Faces, smushed out of shape like Play-Doh masks, were pressed up against the glass. Screaming, squished mouths and saliva dripping down the glass, steaming up on the outside. Mohawks and skinheads, leather jackets and chains, and fists pounding against the glass. The rhythmic rocking of the limo got more and more intense. Side to side. Like they were trying to flip us over.