The Runaways were a mediocre '70s band primarily known for expelling group members Joan Jett and Lita Ford out on an unsuspecting world. Although they never had a hit single nor album, their legacy has been romanticized in our politically-correct climate because they were all female and wrote their own songs. However, judging from their mostly unlistenable output, you would never know that the future talents of Jett and Ford were trapped inside this bubble. One of the lesser-known members was Cherie Currie, whose fame primarily came from co-starring with Jodie Foster in the 1980 film Foxes after the Runaways all ran away from each other. I recently completed Currie's 2010 autobiography Neon Angel after reading Evelyn McDonnell's 2013 bio book of the band Queens of Noise in March. While McDonnell's book isn't perfect - she could use a little fact-checking on the histories of Cheap Trick and Steel Breeze - she excellently sorts out the different accounts of the Runaways' history and neatly summarizes the best parts of Neon Angel, making the reading of this book unnnecessary. Neon Angel moves quickly because of its lurid tales of sex, drugs and family dysfunction, but it becomes numbingly dull after awhile when the book becomes one episode of chemical abuse after another. I quit feeling sorry for Currie when she takes a limousine ride with a questionable stranger that leads to the most harrowing horror of her life. Secondly, Currie just isn't that interesting of a person. She portrays herself as an unremarkable basic blonde party girl with unadventurous musical tastes who couldn't appreciate punk nor the Talking Heads. If she had covered her current status as champion chainsaw-carving artist or discussed her former marriage to Airplane!'s Robert Hays for more than one or two sentences in the final chapter, I might've seen her as a multi-dimensional person. And third, it's disappointing and a rip-off to read a book where the author refuses to name the names of the celebrities she came in contact with. For the record, Cherie, I'm guessing the "teen idol" you slept with was David Cassidy and the "Latin singer" you had an affair with was Morris Albert of "Feelings" fame. Readers are probably more inclined to flock to Currie's book because it served as the basis for the biopic The Runaways, but I recommend McDonnell's work to anyone interested in the band's history. While McDonnell sometimes lets her feminism get in the way of her narrative, Queens is much more concise and interesting then Currie's dragged-out and drugged-out drama. Grade: D+
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Walburgh's BlogMostly retro, mainly music, but generally whatever's on my mind. Archives
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