Last week I was reading the local paper and learned of the death of Kim Fowley (pronounced like “foul-y” not “foley” – and, yes, he is a guy). Mixed with sadness at his passing was my wonder at the size of the article about his death on the Obituary page in the Sun Herald. Entitled “Kim Fowley, Runaways’ Creator, Dies at 75”, it didn’t miss being a quarter of a page by a whole lot. I know that the Sun Herald is a Knight-Ridder newspaper (now McClatchy) – the Charlotte Observer is another of their papers that I am familiar with – but this Mississippi paper has surprised me more than once by giving prominence to hip news.
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.)”
Perhaps Kim Fowley was best at spotting talent, and as with the Runaways, he often worked with rock stars many years before they really hit their stride. Mostly he stayed in the underground where he seemed happiest.
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As mentioned, Kim Fowley is best known as the man who brought together the early all-female rock band the Runaways. In 1974 or 1975, he placed an ad in the fanzine Who Put the Bomp looking for women who wanted to start an all-female rock band. He got zero responses; but eventually, drummer Sandy West and rhythm guitarist Joan Jett introduced themselves to Fowley, and the band was in place by late 1975. As Fowley recalls (from Wikipedia): “I didn’t put the Runaways together; I had an idea, they had ideas, we all met, there was combustion; and out of five different versions of that group came the five girls who were the ones that people liked.”
The bandmembers 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. (Same goes for another Kim Fowley project that was put together a few years later, Venus and the Razorblades). 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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The Runaways’ sole hit “Cherry Bomb” was included on the tape Awesome Mix, Vol. 1 that was prominently featured in the 2014 mega-hit Guardians of the Galaxy. Not surprisingly, an album called Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix, Vol. 1 has also been released, and it too includes “Cherry Bomb”. In his Allmusic review of the album, Stephen Thomas Erlewine says that “the ‘Awesome Mix’ . . . offers a nostalgia trip that’s potent even if you’ve never seen the film”.
For his part, Kim Fowley downplays the band’s role in his own life and career – it was just one more stop along the way. From a 2010 interview by Chris Estey for the Seattle radio station KEXP – who practically opened his interview with Kim Fowley by gushing, “I don’t know what rock and roll would have done without you” – Kim Fowley recalls: “Anyways, the Runaways wasn’t my career. So I had a career in rock and roll from 1959 to 1975, and that’s when the Runaways started. And when I completed my work, I was gone by late ’77 or early ’78. And that’s 32 years ago. I’ve lived in 39 American cities, 22 overseas countries. I’m a cancer survivor; I lived with positional vertigo; a Polio survivor. I’ve had a lot going on in my life, and the Runaways is no more important to me than you reminiscing about your fourth grade classroom. Some of the songs are good, and some of the records are good, but it’s not the obsession of my life.”
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Remarkably, a movie about this band 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?”
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A cover of “The Trip” by a band called the Fire Escape is included on Kim Fowley’s 1980 album Hollywood Confidential that also features songs by the Runaways, Venus and the Razorblades, and the Seeds.
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About Ear Candy, the album that I have, Stephen Thomas Erlewine writing in Allmusic says: “Ear Candy qualifies as a genuine oddity in Helen Reddy’s catalog, a record that finds the queen of Australian soft rock paired with the king of L.A. sleaze, Kim Fowley, and his henchman Earle Mankey, a pair who were just coming off of the teenage kicks of the Runaways. Fowley and Mankey pushed Reddy toward unusual territory, but that doesn’t mean they lead her toward the gutter: They encouraged Reddy to write, prompting a surprising five originals on this ten-track album, let her dabble with synthesizers on the lurching ‘Long Distance Love’, and had her do a Cajun stomp with ‘Laissez Les Bon Tempts Rouler’ [French for “Let the Good Times Roll”, and a frequent slogan down here in Mardi Gras country]. . . . [W]hile there are no big hits here, there are few dull spots, and the odd moments help make this one of Reddy’s most interesting LPs.”
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Kim Fowley slowed down somewhat in the post-Runaways period, but he definitely still kept his toe in.
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Kim Fowley closes his interview with Chris Estey by contrasting the Hollywood movie about the Runaways with his own film, Black Room Doom; and in his trademark wide-ranging manner, he provides a vision of rock and roll that is so different from the situation today, when many rock bands are lasting for decades and are releasing albums that are designed not to offend any of their fan base:
“And that’s why Black Room Doom is more important to me than The Runaways. It’s a movie, and the premise is that a bunch of girls get together at noon in a recording studio, who have never met each other. And I say, ‘By the end of the day you will have recorded, and you will have danced and sung, and have pizza together. You will finish songs that you have played together, and then at 6 PM you will go home. And that will be your band experience. What do you girls think?’ ‘Let’s try it.’ And it’s a bunch of happy women. And girls. For that afternoon. And when it’s over, the movie’s over. Maybe all bands should form in one day, and at the end of the experience just break up at the end of the day.
“You think I’m kidding, but you go back to the early days of rock and roll, and there used to be people who would show up and play under a phony name, and sing together from other bands, and they all need $25 or $50 so they show up and sing and play. The drummer from one band would be the guitarist from that band, etc. And they would never play again. And they were called ‘One Hit Wonders’. Remember them? What if bands could be one hit wonders? What if you could form a band just for tonight? It would be a great night.
“And I do other things like run a rock and roll workshop, and help a studio, and supply food to musicians and technicians and anybody’s who’s good to come in to make noise if they want to. I don’t care what kind of music it is as long as it’s interesting.”
(January 2015/1)
