Tragic Details About The Runaways

The Runaways have rightfully earned their spot in rock-and-roll history. As one of the first all-female rock bands, they proved to the world that women could rock as hard as men could. Each one of them was a uniquely talented musician and highly precocious. Being only in their mid-teens when they started the band, The Runaways shocked the world with both their talent and their boldness. 

The Runaways may have made music history, but it absolutely came at hefty personal cost. This was the musical world of the 1970s — and it wasn't necessarily a safe place for young talent. The world of rock-and-roll looked far different than it does today — and many youths eager to make it big weren't always prepared for what they were getting into. The Runaways' music will always live on, but their history will also be remembered as one fraught with drugs, violence, abuse, and tragedy. 

Kim Fowley was a renowned music producer and promoter in the 70s, specializing in the glam-rock scene. He is credited with recruiting the members of The Runaways and becoming their manager, helping them rise to fame. But Fowley had a cruel streak. According to The Huffington Post, Fowley was notorious for preying on young, vulnerable girls, hence his interest in an all-girl rock band. He deliberately marketed The Runaways as "hard-rock jailbait," encouraging them and teaching them to look and act as sexy as possible on stage — despite the girls being as young as 15. In interview with Spin, Cherie Currie has stated that Fowley even had sex with a woman right in front of the girls as a form of "sex education."

In an attempt to prepare the band for facing rough crowds, Fowley also thought it would be a great idea to throw blunt objects at the girls while they were rehearsing. He would frequently scream at them, verbally abuse them, and force them to work grueling hours, as Cherie Currie described. "We just never had a break. Either we were touring, rehearsing, or in the studio, and we were making no money at all. They were making a lot of money off of us." Even more insultingly, The Runaways discovered that their management was ripping them off. They were barely getting paid, as Currie explained in later interviews. "We were doing sold-out concerts and getting $20!"

Eventually, The Runaways fired Kim Fowley as their manager.

All of the members of The Runaways dove head-first into the heady rock-and-roll lifestyle — the late-nights, the parties, the fans, and of course, the drugs. According to her interview with The Guardian, Cherie Currie shared that the band had extremely easy access to drugs. People would just give them to the girls.

"Our management, our booking agent — they were all feeding us drugs. The thing was, back in the 70s, if you didn't do drugs, there was something wrong with you," she said. 

Currie said it started with quaaludes, and she later graduated to cocaine. By the time she was 17, Currie was completely burned out on drugs. She admitted that she continued to struggle with drug addiction long after she left the band. Currie was ultimately able to get her life together and took a job as a tech in the drug and psych wards at Coldwater Canyon Hospital. Eventually, she became a drug and alcohol counselor.

During her time with The Runaways, Cherie Currie ended up getting pregnant by one of the band's managers (not Kim Fowley, for the record). She was 16-years-old at the time. At this point, Currie was still underage, touring with her band, and was regularly drinking, partying, and taking drugs. She was in no fit shape to take care of a child. Currie ultimately made the decision to have an abortion. In an interview with OC Weekly, Currie described the fear and panic she felt becoming pregnant at such a terribly young age.

"My god, it was such a horrific thing to happen at any age. It was horrible and came out of left field. I never thought that is was even a possibility. I never dreamed of something like that happening. To this day, it still bothers me," she said.

When asked if she regretted her decision to have an abortion, Currie owned her decision. "Well, I can say I regret it because I think I was too young. What can I say? It's a done deal."

Not long after leaving The Runaways, Cherie Currie was the victim of a horrific kidnapping and assault when she was only 17. According to The Guardian, the man responsible was a stalker, an obsessed fan who had previously killed six other women in Texas. Apparently, the kidnapper was driving a limousine and urged the young Currie to go for a ride. An admitted people-pleaser, Currie agreed to join him, probably not thinking about what might happen given all the risky behavior she had previously engaged in while touring with The Runaways. However, the man ended up driving her to an abandoned house where he imprisoned and assaulted her. 

Luckily, Currie was able to escape her kidnapper when she managed to get a hold of a knife and stabbed him. In an interview with Democrat & Chronicle, Currie acknowledged just how lucky she was to be alive after her ordeal. "Realizing it was a terrible thing that had happened, but I survived, I was blessed. I survived when I shouldn't have. This man had told me he had killed six women."

The Runaways' lead guitarist, Lita Ford, wasn't without her own personal problems, either. At one point, she was married to Nitro lead vocalist, Jim Gillette — they married in 1994 after knowing each other for two weeks. Ford and Gillette later had a highly contentious divorce in 2011 — with Gillette getting full custody of their two sons. Although Gillette publicly stated that Ford was allowed supervised visitation, Ford apparently didn't see her sons again for almost a decade. 

When asked in interviews about the custody arrangement and subsequent absence from her children's lives, Ford responded, "By the time our divorce was final and everything was said and done, it was such a joke that it didn't matter what I got on paper. There was no way I was gonna be in those boys' lives. They were such a mess by the time I left and my ex-husband left that it just didn't matter. I just needed to walk away from everything and regroup and come back with Plan B. The big problem for me was I couldn't find them after hiring four or five private investigators and them being out of the country in a Caribbean island."

The boys were around 17 and 21 when Ford finally saw them again in person. Evidently, the meeting did not go particularly well, and Ford's sons continue to avoid seeing her. Ford claims her ex-husband turned her sons against her and responded in 2015 by creating a Parental Alienation Awareness Facebook page.

As for Kim Fowley, The Runaways' disturbed, abusive manager, he continued to live on and died of bladder cancer at the age of 75. Most peculiarly, it was none other than Cherie Currie who helped care for Fowley in his final days. It comes as a shock to any outsider, particularly when The Runaways themselves have openly talked about how horribly Fowley abused him. Currie even once compared their relationship with Fowley to "battered wife syndrome."

Currie admitted in an interview with Spin that Fowley did apologize for his treatment of her and her fellow Runaways. "He apologized to me on the phone a year ago [2009], saying if he had to do it over again he wouldn't have treated us that way. He didn't know how to handle 15-year-old girls. In his own crazy way, he loved us."

An apology doesn't seem as though it should make up for years of abuse. But for Currie, it was enough. In a 2016 interview with The Guardian, Currie explained that it felt better to forgive Fowley than hold onto her anger. They even collaborated one more time for Currie's 2015 solo album, Reverie.

"People can change. They can. Without him, Joan never would have happened, Lita and myself, so I owe him a great deal and I was very honoured to take care of him towards the end of his life. I would have done it again and again, and I'm sorry that I lost him," she said.