The Runaways..Yay or Nay?
batmon
27,574 Posts
I used to get hit over the head BITD by a Rocker Sista friend of mine that loved them.
Or at least stated how important they were to her as a female Rocker.
Is is just good Pop Rock? Were they on the last end of Glam/Garage Rock before Punk knocked that shit out?
When they flamed out were there obvious examples of how they "influenced" the game?
In 1978 and later, who benefitted from their groundbreaking..immediately?
These arent droids your looking for?
Have we discussed this already?
Im watching the flick and this along w/ Over The Edge, Foxes, Dazed & Confused, Saturday Night Fever ,and Virgin Suicides gives me that 70's teen rebellion shit.
Comments
And RIP Kim Fowley, who died just the other day.
Pretty much any all female rock band that came after had ground broken for them by the Runaways - The Slits, Raincoats, Sleater Kinney etc.
I never saw the biopic with Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart, although I thought putting them in the movie was an inspired bit of casting. Vicki Blue, who replaced Jackie Fox (far left) on bass after the second album, later made a flawed but watchable documentary about the band a few years back called Edgeplay. It was hampered from the jump by Joan Jett's refusal to take part or to approve the use of any of the band's music, but there are some hair-raising interviews with the rest of them. Lita Ford was the only one apart from Joan who had any kind of post-Runaways career, and she came across as grateful and a little surprised to have got out at the other end in more or less one piece. Sandy West (RIP) seemed to have hit a pretty nasty downward spiral after the band split, and Cherie Currie was clearly still at war with Kim Fowley when she was interviewed. After Fowley died, I read somewhere that he and Cherie had recently finally reconciled, and that she'd spent a lot of time looking after him when he was dying.
This is the only footage of the o.g. line-up that they could clear for that doc, presumably because it wasn't an original. There's a lot of stuff out there of varying quality. Some of it's a bit sloppy, but they were teenagers so it hardly matters. They were always a better band than they were given credit for.
The question I guess is about rock. And all the answers are essentially rockist.
Either, they were great and influenced everyone because they rocked.
Or, they suck, girls can't rock.
But in R&B, soul, I can't think any with the stature of the Runaways.
Fanny, Isis. Only Fanny was a rock band. (Pre-Runaways)
Isis was sorta rock/funk/horn outfit.
I guess in soul, where vocals were more important than guitar solos, the idea of an all woman band didn't hold the same appeal.
Berry was already in LA creating an acting lane for Ross by '76.
Especially this tune:
:beerbang: ;blap:
Were they just singers in front of dudes?
Not exactly.
They wrote a fair amount of their material and Nancy was a respectable guitarist, enough to be
unusual and ahead of their time.
But they had an all male backing band and were definitely more of a corporate product.
Bonus points because they can still bring it.
Its not like they were together 3 years, shopping their demo, and landed a deal.
Just sayin.
Haha, read up on Kim Fowley, don't think I'd describe him as a corporate dude.
And of course they weren't seasoned veterans who had been plugging away for years, they were 15 - 17 years old.