Cherie Currie thought she was getting her big break when she joined The Runaways, a groundbreaking new rock band. Little did she know it would soon turn out to be a never-ending nightmare.
Michael Marks/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesCherie Currie of The Runaways.
Cherie Currie’s life changed when she was just 15 years old.
Unlike most 15-year-old girls in 1975, who were busy with homework and homecoming dances, Cherie Currie wasn’t that interested in a typical high school experience. She was more interested in making a scene.
Before she was even old enough to drive, she had become one of the lead singers of the all-girl rock band The Runaways, originally formed in Los Angeles. She captivated cheering crowds around the world and was once even described as “the lost daughter of Iggy Pop and Brigitte Bardot.” But in just two short years, she’d realize that the bright lights of her newfound fame didn’t do much to cover the rock industry’s dark side.
Cherie Currie’s Time With The Runaways
GAB Archive/Redferns/Getty ImagesCherie Currie with her rock band The Runaways.
Born on Nov. 30, 1959, and raised in Encino, California, Cherie Currie had a challenging start to life. She said her father was kind and loving, but suffered from a “horrific addiction to alcohol” and post-traumatic stress disorder from his time serving in World War II. While she said her mother was tenacious, she also said her mom was “hard to get along with” at times.
Before Cherie Currie joined The Runaways, she also said she was raped by her twin sister Marie’s boyfriend “because he had a thing for virgins.” In response to the trauma, she cut her hair in a style like David Bowie’s, giving her a distinctive look as she pursued her dream of being a rock star.
Meanwhile, Joan Jett, another future member of The Runaways, met record producer Kim Fowley around 1973. Fowley expressed an interest in creating an all-girl rock band, which intrigued Jett. Initially, Jett approached Currie’s twin sister Marie first about being in the band, but Marie turned her down.
That led to Cherie Currie getting the job instead. Looking back, she later reflected, she had no idea what taking the job would entail.
For the next two years, the rock band, originally formed in Los Angeles, traveled across America, Europe, and even Japan, spent hours upon hours in the recording studio — and they were paid little for their time and effort.
“We just never had a break,” Currie recalled of her time in the band with her fellow members Jett, Lita Ford, Sandy West, and Jackie Fox. “Either we were touring, rehearsing or in the studio, and we were making no money at all. They were making a lot of money off of us.”
If the grueling, thankless schedule wasn’t too much for the teenage girls to handle, the treatment they endured at the hands of their management was. Currie described the management’s behavior as an attempt to “toughen them up,” but to anyone else, it reads as flat-out abuse.
Kim Fowley allegedly used to throw jars of peanut butter at the girls during rehearsals to prepare them for the rough audiences they were bound to encounter (according to Currie, there were some audiences in Britain who later threw knives at them). Fowley would also purportedly verbally abuse them and pit the once friendly and united girls against each other.
“It was the abuse from Kim Fowley and our roadies that was so hard to take,” Currie said. “We got such abuse on a daily basis. They were trying to harden us to the reality of the rock ‘n’ roll world, but how could we possibly know this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be?”
Cherie Currie’s Life After The Runaways
Richard E. Aaron/Redferns/Getty ImagesThe Runaways performing live at CBGB in New York in August 1976.
Eventually, Cherie Currie realized she had enough. She had only been with The Runaways for two years, but she was already dangerously addicted to cocaine and Quaaludes. Though she later said she was probably “destined to have problems” due to the alcoholism in her family, it was clear that her time with the band had led to her addictions spiraling out of control.
“Being in The Runaways, and even with our booking agent, everybody was feeding us drugs,” Currie said. “We had adults pulling us aside putting a spoon to our noses. So did that escalate my addiction? It absolutely did. But I think that road was going to be traveled by me at one point or another.”
Currie was also fed up with Fowley’s treatment. In addition, she had gotten pregnant by another one of her managers, and she decided she didn’t want to be part of the unpredictable, exhausting environment any longer.
Perhaps the final straw was the feeling that the other girls in the band, particularly Jett, wanted her out — a feeling likely sparked by Fowley’s decision to constantly pit the girls against each other.
“There was so much conflict over the attention paid to me as the lead singer,” Currie later recalled. “Joan was very upset and hurt, but I really thought these girls wanted me out. It was a lack of communication.”
After effectively running away from The Runaways, Cherie Currie pursued a solo career, ultimately recording two solo albums. She also tried her hand at acting, even appearing alongside Jodie Foster in Foxes.
However, her journey was not all smooth sailing. In fact, just two years after leaving The Runaways, Currie said that she was abducted and raped by a stalker. Horrifyingly, she alleged that the stalker had already murdered six women in Texas by the time of the kidnapping, and Currie may have potentially been the next murder victim had she not escaped in time.
Meanwhile, Currie continued to struggle with her drug addiction, even freebasing cocaine, and it wasn’t until the mid-1980s that she was able to turn her life around and stay sober. She took a job at North Hollywood’s Coldwater Canyon Hospital, working as a tech in the drug and psych wards. Before long, she was working as a drug and alcohol counselor herself.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesThe Runaways posing for a portrait on the beach around 1976.
“I was only 25 and a lot of these kids were the age I was when I was in The Runaways when I was introduced to drugs, so it was a good fit for me,” she said of her experience counseling troubled youths.
The Candid Autobiography Neon Angel And The Movie The Runaways
Cherie Currie eventually went on to publish an autobiography, titled Neon Angel, which chronicled her journey with The Runaways in her own words. She initially wrote the book for teenagers, hoping they’d use it as a “what not to do” manual, but it soon turned into a darkly detailed adult memoir, recalling her experiences with rape, abortion, and drug addiction.
The memoir partly inspired a 2010 movie titled The Runaways, starring Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett and Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie.
Currie praised both Fanning and Stewart’s performances, saying, “I thought the acting was just off the map and great. Dakota really gave it everything she had and Kristin, I’m so proud of her. She did such a great job.”
Sony PicturesDakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart in The Runaways movie.
However, Currie also criticized some creative liberties the movie took, like not including Currie’s rape at the hands of her sister’s boyfriend. Instead, the film seemed to imply that Currie’s interest in David Bowie was the main reason why she cut her hair in such a daring style as a teenager.
“If you read the book, then you’ll know that my twin sister’s boyfriend had raped me and took my virginity,” she told SPIN. “That’s why I was angry, that’s why I cut my hair to look like David Bowie’s. I really felt that detail was important. The filmmakers didn’t. They did not want the Cherie character to lose her innocence so early in the film.”
Surprisingly, the book and movie also helped Currie and Jett reconnect again after years apart. As Currie put it: “Joan and I are really getting to know each other all over again. It’s so funny, in the forward, Joan admits how angry she was with me for leaving the band and I was like, ‘What? I thought you wanted me out.’ We never talked to each after I left and it’s water under the bridge now but we both wish we had spoken before.”
In recent years, Currie continues to work as a writer and musician, but she’s also taken up an unusual career as a chainsaw artist, using a chainsaw to carve pieces of art out of wood. She said, “I found it far more difficult than I thought it was going to be. It’s extremely dangerous… But I love it.”
As for her past in The Runaways and beyond, she says she has a few regrets, such as the fact that the band never got back together for a reunion, but for the most part, she knows getting out was ultimately the right move. “For me,” she said, “it was the end of a nightmare.”
Next, read about Angie Bowie, the eccentric first wife of David Bowie. Then, learn about rock ‘n’ roll’s most famous groupies.
