Cherie Currie (born November 30, 1959) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, actress and artist. Currie was the lead vocalist of the The Runaways, a rock band from Los Angeles, in the mid-to-late 1970s. After the Runaways, she became a solo artist. Then she teamed up with her identical twin sister, Marie Currie, and released an album with her. They released a duet “Since You Been Gone” which charted number 95 on US charts. Their band was called Cherie and Marie Currie. She is also well known for her role in the movie Foxes. (More from Wikipedia)
Initially the Runaways was a power trio with the other member being bassist Micki Steele. Lead guitarist Lita Ford was added shortly afterward; she had auditioned to be the new bass guitarist. Cherie Currie was added as the lead vocalist. After Steele was fired, Peggy Foster took over on bass and was replaced after a month with Jackie Fox.
When Cherie Currie had auditioned to join the Runaways, the other bandmembers quickly came up with a song called “Cherry Bomb” – named after a famous firework, and not the John Mellencamp song by the same name, “Cherry Bomb” – that she was asked to sing instead of the Suzi Quatro song that she had picked out. The song features a line in the chorus “Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb!” that was a play on her first name; Joan Jett and Kim Fowley are credited as the songwriters. “Cherry Bomb” became the opening track on their album and the band’s first single; while “Cherry Bomb” only made it to #106 on the Billboard singles charts, the song was named #52 on the list of the greatest hard rock songs of all time by VH1.
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The biggest star to come out of the Runaways is Joan Jett. After Cherie Currie left the band, Joan Jett took over as lead vocalist on the last two Runaways albums, Waitin’ for the Night and And Now . . . the Runaways.
Cherie Currie and Sandy West occasionally played in bands together; West formed the Sandy West Band and toured California throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s before succumbing to cancer in 2006. Cherie Currie is still a musician, including a band that she was in briefly with another former Runaway, Vicki Blue, called the Currie-Blue Band; they never recorded any music but did appear together in the film This Is Spinal Tap. Currie’s passion now is as a chainsaw artist.
Randall Roberts offers a glimpse of the exploitive side of Kim Fowley in his article: “Most infamously, Fowley formed the all-girl rock band the Runaways, a relationship that delivered fame and success for the band while confirming Fowley’s avowed sleaziness. The band’s Cherie Currie, for example, accused him of holding a ‘sex education class’ for some of the teen girls – a charge Fowley denied. (Currie and Fowley later reconciled.)”
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The bandmembers in the Runaways were all young girls when the band was formed – much as “runaways” are in real life – and several went on to successful musical careers, among them Joan Jett, Micki Steele (later in the Bangles), and heavy metal chanteuse Lita Ford.
Two of the bandmembers were also featured in major motion pictures; Cherie Currie appeared in the 1980 film Foxes and also (with Vicki Blue) in the 1984 cult classic This Is Spinal Tap.
I wrote about the Runaways in some detail about a year ago, so I won’t say too much more about them now. But I will mention this. I have previously noted that their first album, The Runaways listed the bandmembers’ ages on the back cover. For the record, they are a little older than I had remembered (or at least they were by the time the album was released): Joan Jett (16), Sandy West (16), Cherie Currie (16), Jackie Fox (16), and Lita Ford (17).
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Remarkably, a movie about the Runaways was made in 2010 called The Runaways, starring Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning; it is based on Cherie Currie’s book, Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway. Michael Shannon appears in the film as Kim Fowley; about Shannon’s performance, Fowley told Chris Estey: “He’s a genius. He’s the new Christopher Walken. And I’m privileged that he was able to get enough of me to make it watchable. It transcended the printed page. He’s working with Martin Scorcese on his Broadway project, that’s what he’s doing now. This guy’s like John Garfield or Humphrey Bogart playing you. I mean, wouldn’t you like that?”
(January 2015/1)
