Sandy West (July 10, 1959 – October 21, 2006) was an American musician, singer, songwriter and drummer. She was one of the founding members of the Runaways, the first teenage all-girl hard rock band to record and achieve widespread commercial success in the 1970s. (More from Wikipedia)
The Runaways are the first truly successful all-female rock band and were formed in late 1975 under the auspices of Kim Fowley, a musician, songwriter, record producer, promoter, and self-promoter who has existed on the fringes of the music industry for decades. The way they are telling the story now, rhythm guitarist Joan Jett and drummer Sandy West had separately introduced themselves to Kim Fowley. He then gave Jett's number to West, and after they connected, he helped them find the other bandmembers.
* * *
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.
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."
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).
(January 2015/1)
