Rock legend Cherie Currie is a singer, songwriter and guitarist best known as the frontwoman for cult all-girl band The Runaways. Featuring Joan Jet, Lita Ford, Sandy West and Jackie Fox, The Runaways set the world stage alight with cult hit Cherry Bomb and a slew of solid rock songs, kicking off an explosive career that saw them tour the hottest venues on the planet before the band’s spectacular breakup.
Listen on iTunes: Riffing With Christina Episode #05:
Cherie Currie (The Runaways)
Happily, The Runaways birthed incredible rock and roll careers for its members, who have gone on to inspire generations of musicians. Christina speaks to Cherie Currie on the Riffing With Christina podcast as she prepares for her first ever Australian tour about her new album, spiritual experiences at David Bowie concerts, making peace and music with her estranged manager Kim Fowley after unimaginable turmoil and lots more.
“Doing a record [her new solo album] with Kim [Fowley, manager of The Runaways] was really a wonderful experience. I had made up my mind that I did not … he and I basically talked a lot and we got through all the stuff that had happened forty years ago,” Cherie told Christina. “It was really a brave thing for me to do it because I suffered for thirty years of really disliking this man and not being able to get over it and me forgiving him and us actually becoming friends … it was really great closure for me.”
Listen on iTunes here. Listen on Stitcher here. Listen to Cherie’s incredible new album Reverie here.
Christina: You’ve made an album for the first time in a few decades, I know you worked on a collaboration album a few years ago. What was it like getting back in the studio? They’re really great songs.
Cherie: I actually made a record with Matt Sorum in 2010. I was with Blackheart at the time, Joan Jett’s record company. Kenny Laguna (her manager) was managing me for a period of time. But that record was kind of shelved about three years after it was finished and I just now signed a contract. So that’s coming out in September. Doing a record [her new solo album] with Kim [Fowley, manager of The Runaways] was really a wonderful experience. I had made up my mind that I did not … he and I basically talked a lot and we got through all the stuff that had happened forty years ago and for me to be able to go full circle again, and with my son Jake – that was to me, something that was just a blessing because I don’t have any other bad feelings that I had. I just remember him, and the good times we had before he passed away.
Christina: I think that’s a really fundamental part of being human when you can really accept that people make mistakes, and make peace with them, especially to be able to make music together, that must have felt pretty amazing.
Cherie: I love you Christina, I love you for saying that. Because that is so true. People do change and it was forty years ago and you know, he was under very bizarre circumstances, you know what I mean? It was really a brave thing for me to do it because I suffered for thirty years of really disliking this man and not being able to get over it and me forgiving him and us actually becoming friends … and then he came and lived at my house when he was dying. I took care of him for nine or ten days before he went back into the hospital. It was really great closure for me.
Christina: I’ve been reading your book and it’s awesome. You talk about this spiritual moment at a David Bowie concert, when everything changed for you. How did those moments when you performed compare to that?
Cherie: We were playing very small venues at first and I was terrified. It only happened once. It was my very first show and I froze. You have all this positive energy that you’re going to be great and you walk out and you’re just a kid. It’s the one and only time that happened. I did have my moments on stage where I felt the way I did the time I saw David Bowie. that I was doing the right thing, that this was what I was meant to do.
Cherie Currie is touring Australia this May. All details & tickets available here.
The Riffing With Christina podcast has featured a range of fascinating creative people. Interviews include: Devin Townsend, Ben Weinman (Dillinger Escape Plan), Matt Pike (High on Fire & Sleep) and Penelope Spheeris (director of rock documentary series The Decline of Western Civilization and Wayne’s World).
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