Album review : THE RUNAWAYS – Neon Angels On The Road To Ruin (5 CD boxset)

Cherry Red [Release date : 29.09.23]

An all female rock band is rare. A successful all female rock band is even rarer.

US band, The Runaways, Cherie Currie, Joan Jett, Lita Ford, Sandy West and Jackie Fox, broke through the glass ceiling in 1976, with their self titled debut album. Not in their home country, but all over the rest of the world, especially Japan, where they were huge.

This was a band just brimming over with talent. It’s subsequent dissolution in 1979 led to Jett writing and recording several Billboard Top Ten singles (including I Hate Myself For Loving You and I Love Rock’n’Roll). Ford enjoyed considerable solo commercial success under Sharon Osborne’s management (esp Close My Eyes Forever, a duet with Ozzy), and Currie went on to have an acting career as well as moderate success in music, along side her sister, Marie.

The Runaways

The classic pre punk song‘Cherry Bomb’ and the sexually charged ‘Is It Day Or Night’, both written by Jett and produced by the band’s manager and “Sunset Strip Svengali”, Kim Fowley, were released as singles from the debut. Each has a dark, derivative swagger, grounded in solid, bass heavy rhythms and both spin on Lita Ford’s tough as teak guitar figures.
They helped propel the album to best selling status all over the world (USA excepted).

Queens Of Noise

The band broke more ground with Queens Of Noise the following year, wading out confidently into a world where toxic masculinity was the norm.

Going toe to toe with genre giants like Motley Crue and Kiss might have seemed inadvisable, but arguably, The Runaways, realising only too well, were saying good bye to traditional views of femininity.

‘Neon Angels’ (also the title of the boxset) and Teenage anthem, ‘I Love Playing With Fire’ pushed them into the pop / rock music zeitgeist, again selling by the truckload in Japan.

Waiting For The Night

In the late seventies the cultural landscape was undergoing massive change. Looking back, The Runaways played a significant role. Women were now expressing their emotions in ways normally associated with men. The clamorous intensity of the band’s music and their knowing lyrics were finding an audience, both sexes.

Waiting For The Night was their third album and first without Cherrie Currie, who had departed. But it was a solid album, a seamless continuation of fiery, rousing hard rock with a feminist message. It broke into many European Charts as well as Japan (but still couldn’t crack the US Market).

And Now … The Runaways

This fourth album was the band’s parting shot.

By 1978, they were just going through the motions in the studio.

Fowley was gone. Producer John Alcock assembled a lot of other peoples ideas and themes into this postcript, for essentially it was the last thing they wrote. A couple of decent songs and performances bubble to the surface, raising hope as we reach them in the playing order…’My Buddy And Me’, and ‘One In A Million’, sung by Lita Ford. The popularity of that particular song / track fired up Ford’s ambition as a lead vocalist, and tutored by Sharon Osborne, she turned that ambition in to a major career.

Live In Japan

Sandwiched between these studio albums, we find the band’s one and only live release. It’s condensed from their Japanese tour recordings, and the sound quality is impressive, especially considering this was 1977. It’s a strong set that includes explosive covers of Chip Taylor’s ‘Wild Thing’ and Lou Reed’s ‘Rock’n'Roll’. As a lip smacking taster, it does just fine.

****1/2
Review by Brian McGowan

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Power Plays w/c 11 November 2024

ARCANE MOON Hello Sun (indie)
S8NT ELEKTRIC XTC (Long Branch Records)
ARCANA KINGS Here We Go (Curtain Call Records)
KLOGR face The Unknown (Zeta Factory)
BEYOND UNBROKEN Dance With The Dead (FiXT)
REVENGIN Decadent Feeling (Wormholedeath)

Featured Albums w/c 11 November 2024

09:00-12:00 The Best of 2003-2023 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2023 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2003-2023 (Singer Songwriter)