Neon Angel

by Cherie Currie

  “Well,” he said, sounding slightly disappointed, “I personally feel that you girls are on the wrong path. I also feel that you’re hiding something. Especially you . . .” He pointed right at me. “However, as much as I would have liked to have you stay with us for a while longer . . . it seems that we didn’t find anything in your luggage to warrant keeping you here. Personally I think you were damn lucky, but I will give you fair warning: I’m going to keep an eye on you. All of you. And I swear that next time any of you pull a stunt like this in England . . . we’ll have you. Now gather your belongings, and get out of here. You’re free to go.”

  We all sat there, dumbstruck. I looked over to the nice guard again, and he gave me a smile and a nod. I didn’t understand it, but I didn’t want to hang around too long to find out that it was a mistake and that they wanted to arrest me again. I grabbed my meager belongings, and on the way out the nice guard whispered, “Take care of yourself, sweetheart.”

  It was then that it hit me. This guard must have been the one who did the search. He must have found the drugs, and then chose to ignore them.

  “I will,” I told him. “And thank you. Thanks for everything . . .”

  When we got back to the car, Sandy let out a sigh of relief and said in a mock English accent, “Fucking hell! That was CLOSE!” I burst into nervous laughter. I had never felt so relieved in my life.

  Lita was waiting in the backseat with her arms folded and a pissed-off expression on her face. The first thing she said to us was “Yeah, well done. We missed the fucking Paris show because of you three and your fucking room keys!”

  “Oh, shut the fuck up, Lita!” Joan laughed as we piled in.

  Scott jumped into the front seat next to the driver and turned back to us. “Say good-bye to Scotland Yard, ladies!”

  And with a screech of rubber we took off as everybody in the car laughed. Everybody except me, that is. I stared at the back of Scott’s head, and it suddenly became clear just what kind of a man he really was: a wimp. Weak and scared. I started to think that maybe my dad was right about him after all.

  Chapter 17

  Postcards from Nowhere

  After the scare with the hotel keys, the rest of the tour limped on under a black cloud—both literal and metaphorical—hanging over it. The European tour felt like the longest month and a half of my life. I became so homesick that I wanted to die. I had never felt anything like it. Before joining the Runaways, I had never been outside of California. I’d only been on an airplane once before. Suddenly I found myself in strange, foreign countries with a steady rain falling all day and night, and alien food that turned my stomach. Everything looked different. Everything felt different. And it wasn’t like we could go sightseeing and try to get to know the countries that we were in; we rushed from venue to venue, hotel room to hotel room, the whole time. It didn’t matter that we were in France; it might as well have been in Paris, Texas. It all looked the same when you saw it through the window of a speeding car or bus.

  The fear was the hardest thing to live with. The fear that something terrible would happen. The fans were aggressive and angry, and I actually started to believe that eventually some psycho in the audience was going to open fire on us just like in Joan’s dream. That never happened, but the bottles, coins, spit, and other projectiles that rained down upon us were relentless.

  To top it off, as soon as we’d hit mainland Europe, I started to get sick—really sick, not just homesick. I would wake up in the morning feeling nauseous, and it would get worse and worse throughout the day. I figured it was the food—something in the mutton or reindeer or whatever other kind of crap they were feeding us over there. I started to worry that some kind of mutant bacteria were eating me up from the inside. It didn’t matter where we were, or what I was eating, I constantly felt like I was on the verge of vomiting. As the tour rolled on I was nauseous all of the time. All it would take would be the faint smell of cologne or food, and I would have to race off to the nearest bathroom to hold on to the porcelain for dear life. With all the nausea and unappetizing food, I started losing more and more weight. My clothes started feeling looser. There were dark rings under my eyes, and hidden beneath the makeup my skin started taking on a corpselike quality.

  I didn’t get much sympathy from the people around me. Kent Smythe’s solution was to put a bucket at the side of the stage in case I had to puke while performing. It was definitely a strange sensation to be strutting around in a corset in front of thousands of screaming European fans while all I could think was “where’s the bucket?” The audiences didn’t notice. They didn’t care. All they knew about the Runaways was the press image that Kim Fowley had created—the tough, don’t-give-a-shit feral teenagers. They didn’t know how much I was hurting inside, and I couldn’t let them know. This was my job; I was the Cherry Bomb. Suddenly, being a sixteen-year-old rock star was turning into a big fucking drag.

  If I’d thought I could get any sympathy from Scott Anderson, I was totally mistaken. My worst suspicions about his character after the Scotland Yard incident were confirmed in spades as the tour rolled on. The man who I had lived with before this tour, the man who had held me in his arms, and told me that he really cared for me, treated me like I was an unstable hypochondriac.

  “You’re just homesick!” he barked when I told him that I felt too ill to perform one night. “And you’re making yourself physically sick because of it. Jeez, Cherie, it’s all in your head! Can’t you just calm the fuck down and try to enjoy yourself?”

  It was hard to believe that I’d once thought that I really loved this man. He’d told me that he loved me. But now he was treating me like I was his annoying kid sister. As I watched him flirting with the other girls, I continued to suspect that he was fucking them, too. Maybe I was the idiot for believing his bullshit, and not listening to my dad’s warnings. Whenever this thought occurred to me, it would bring tears to my eyes. Daddy tried to tell me! And I was so infatuated with Scott that I ignored him. Dad had never been so relieved as he was the day I told him that I was moving back home, a week prior to the European tour. As soon as I said it, he jumped right into the car and drove me over to the place I was sharing with Scott. Within minutes, it seemed, he had packed up my things. The way my father talked about Scott and Kim, I think he would have liked to have them both thrown in jail.

  “I trust ’em about as far as I can throw ’em, Kitten,” he’d say to me, his blue eyes gleaming with anger. “They’re not okay cats. I’ve dealt with a lot like them in my time. Goddammit, they need shooting is what they need!”

  I mean, my father didn’t even know half of the things that went on when I was on the road with the band. I guess he was hoping that some responsible adult was looking out for us. . . . No, if Daddy had known about the drugs, the alcohol, the late nights, and the verbal and mental abuse that I had to put up with at the hands of Kim and his cronies, I would have been out of the band in a heartbeat. Dad would have freaked. Kim would have already been auditioning new singers. Up until this point, it seemed very important for me to keep all of this stuff under wraps so that I could continue to front the band. But as this long, miserable tour ground on, I was starting to wonder if my heart was even in it anymore.

  My sickness was proving to be a huge downer for the rest of the band. I was tired and irritable and I often didn’t want to go out, or do anything. Hell, I really didn’t want to be around people. Even Joan was getting sick of me. I knew that Scott was whispering about me, telling the others that I was faking my illness. I felt genuine animosity from the others in the band, but I was too sick, tired, and depressed to try to fix it. Deep down I didn’t blame them. I knew how it felt with Jackie complaining about being sick. That was a drag. I was becoming a drag.

  I remember back before the European tour started, when I was still living with him, Scott got a cold. You’d think that he’d been struck down with malaria from the way he complained. He was lying in bed, moaning and groaning, and I was brin
ging him bowls of chicken soup and hot tea with lemon. Even back then it kind of turned me off. He was supposed to be the man, and seeing him act like such a pathetic wimp really made me lose respect for him. I thought of that again when Scott pulled me aside to hiss, “Goddamn it, Cherie! Can’t you knock this shit off! You’re ruining the whole fucking tour for everyone with your whining! Seriously—whatever it is that’s bothering you, you need to GET OVER it!”

  “But, Scott—I can’t get over it! I’m sick! I’m really sick!”

  Scott grunted and shook his head. “You’re sick in the fucking HEAD!” he spat, before storming off.

  “But, Scott—” I said, but it was too late. Scott was gone, and there was nothing else I could do.

  When we finally made it back from Europe, I was sick, tired, weak, and utterly demoralized. My family was so happy to see me that they didn’t seem to notice how thin I was. One day I stood on the scale in the bathroom and realized that I was down to ninety-five pounds. That was too thin, even for me.

  A few days after getting home, I was helping Grandma sweep the floor when I broke down crying for no reason at all. I started to think that I was losing my mind. I had returned from the European tour a physical and emotional mess.

  I’d noticed something else, too. It was my boobs. Despite my dramatic weight loss . . . they were getting bigger. I thought I was imagining it at first, but there was no denying it. That made me feel a little better, at least. Maybe I was taking after my mom. She was pretty well endowed, so I guessed that could be the reason. The thought amused me. It would send Lita through the roof. She already hated the fact that I was thinner than her, and got more attention than her in the press. Still, she was very proud of her boobs. If I got boobs, too, it would drive her crazy. I felt shitty, but the thought of the look on Lita’s face if I showed up to rehearsal one day with big breasts almost made up for it.

  I looked away from the mirror. I could smell something floating into the bathroom . . . Grandma was in the kitchen cooking. As soon as the smell hit me, my stomach lurched and I felt the color drain out of my face. Oh God.

  Marie started banging on the door. “Come ON, Cherie! We gotta start getting ready!”

  Tonight Marie, Vickie, and I were supposed to be going to a club called the Odyssey, an infamous gay dance club on Beverly and Gower. Like the Starwood, the place was run by Eddie Nash, and had already attracted a lot of familiar faces from the old English Disco scene. Tonight, none other than Chuck E Starr was supposedly DJing. I followed Marie into the bedroom, feeling listless and tired. Vickie was listening to records, lounging on the bed. I said hi. Sensing that I didn’t feel well, Marie decided to help me pick out something to wear. She started rummaging through the closet, tossing out potential outfits. “Hey! Cherie—why don’t you wear your black jumpsuit tonight? It looks really great on you . . .”

  She pulled it out from the closet and handed it to me. I looked at myself in the mirror, and shuddered. I looked like crap. “Man,” I muttered, “no matter how much makeup I wear, I just can’t get rid of these black circles under my eyes.”

  Marie and Vickie came over and peered at my face. “You look fine, Cherie,” Vickie reassured me. Marie didn’t say anything; instead she went back to her closet and went on pulling more clothes out. I slipped into the jumpsuit and buttoned it up. The waist and the butt felt loose because of all of the weight I had lost. But as I continued to button it up, suddenly things got very tight around the chest area.

  “Jesus!” I laughed. “Look at this, Marie! I can hardly button this over these things!”

  Vickie’s eyes looked like they were just about to pop out of her head. She took a closer look.

  “Holy SHIT, Cherie! I’m jealous! You look like a Playboy Bunny!”

  She was right. It was getting so that I didn’t even recognize my own body anymore. I’d never seen myself like this. It looked alien. Strange. I turned to the side and checked out my profile. Big boobs would take some getting used to; this looked like somebody else’s body. I couldn’t button the jumpsuit all the way up, so I left it low-cut. I turned back to the front. I had to admit my body looked good. It was my tired, haggard face that didn’t fit the picture.

  “Girls?”

  Grandma was calling from the kitchen, pulling me out of my thoughts.

  “What is it, Grandma?”

  “Are any of you hungry? There’s some franks and sauerkraut out here if you’re interested. We have plenty . . . Any takers?”

  As soon as I heard this, the sickness hit me. I turned cold, like a bucket of ice water had been dumped over my head. My stomach turned, and I felt the bile rising in my throat. “Oh shit!” I ran over to the bed and lay on it with my eyes closed tight, taking deep breaths. Slowly, I started to get the nausea under control.

  “Hey . . . Cherie. You okay?” Marie asked.

  All I could do was lie there and shake my head. Any sudden movement, any talking, and I knew I was going to puke. I felt my mouth filling with saliva and my guts fluttering unsteadily. Marie came over and knelt next to me.

  “You’re as white as a sheet,” she whispered.

  I just kept breathing. After a few moments I managed to croak, “I can’t go out tonight. I’m too sick. Sorry.”

  “Shhh.” Marie gently placed a hand on my clammy forehead. “It’s okay. I’ll hang back here with you. It’s cool.”

  Hearing this, Vickie grabbed her purse. “You’re not coming out either?”

  “No. I think I’d better stay home, too. Cherie’s feeing really crappy. You go on. It’s cool . . .”

  With an exasperated sigh, Vickie said her good-byes. I managed to groan at her as she left.

  When the nausea passed, I got changed again and managed to make it to the living room. Grandma, Dad, Aunt Evie, and Marie were in the den. The family was all sitting around with TV trays, watching Three’s Company. I smiled faintly at them before lying down on the couch. I covered my nose with my hand because the smell of the food was sending queasy shock waves through my body. I closed my eyes, and the static roar of faraway applause filled the room.

  “Cherie?”

  I opened one eye, and looked over. My aunt Evie had turned away from the television and said, “Are you sure you don’t want any franks? They’re delicious! And the sauerkraut—that’s what makes them so good!”

  Seconds later and I was in the bathroom, vomiting. I barely made it before it erupted from me, a tidal wave of liquid heat. The puking was violent, and lasted for a long time. My whole body convulsed and shook with the strain. Tears ran down my cheeks. When it finally stopped, I just lay with my head next to the toilet bowl trying to catch my breath. Marie came in, and placed a cool, damp cloth on the back of my neck.

  “Cherie . . . man, what’s wrong with you?” she asked, with real fear in her voice.

  I looked up, the tears still on my cheeks. I was trembling. “I don’t know, Marie . . .” I said. “I really don’t know!”

  I was about to start crying. But before I could, the vomiting started again.

  Chapter 18

  The Queens of Noise

  My illness was not allowed to interfere with the Runaways’ schedule. No sooner were we home from the European tour than it seemed that we were sent back into the studio to record our second album. Kim didn’t believe in giving the general public time to get bored with you, I guess. This time we had a real producer, a long-haired guy called Earle Mankey who played guitar for Sparks and supposedly had produced a lot of cool records, including stuff for the Beach Boys. We were actually recording the album at Brothers Studio—the Beach Boys’ recording studio out in Santa Monica. Still, the fact that there was another producer present didn’t mean that Kim wasn’t still ranting and raving from the sidelines, and making everybody’s life a living hell.

  This album was a lot more work than the first. In a way, I almost preferred Kim’s approach. There was something to be said for just getting everybody to run through the songs live in the studio
and wrapping up the album in record time. This time around, we were spending days on each song, perfecting the drum sound, getting the bass lines just so, overdubbing the guitars. This might have been the way that it was done professionally, but the whole process became as boring as hell.

  On top of this, the atmosphere was very different. Things were quickly turning sour within the group. The tensions and rivalries that we’d put aside during the first album and tour were now simmering, ready to explode. Every day there was a new fight, mostly about the arrangements: who would play what, who would sing what. Every time I cut a vocal, Lita was ready to rip my performance apart, just like a mini Kim Fowley.

  Now that we had a “real” producer, the process had become painful, laborious. There was a lot of time to sit around reading magazines. On this particular day, that’s exactly what I was doing—reading the latest issue of Crawdaddy, which happened to have a nice big cover feature on the Runaways. The cover was cool and iconic: we were all on there, with me in the center wearing a gold glitter vest. We looked tough, playful, and cool. Lita, Joan, and Sandy were aiming water guns at the camera. Jackie shot a slingshot right out of the picture. Images like this were helping to make the Runaways a household name in America—at least in every household with a teenager in it.

  But the content of the article was another matter. As I read it, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, a sick feeling coming over me. This journalist had been on the road with us for a while, hanging out with us backstage, even coming back to my home with me on one occasion. It had really seemed like he dug us, and after a while we kind of forgot that he was even there. Maybe we had let our guards down a little too much. We had expected a good piece, or at least a positive one. Instead, as soon as he left our tour, he went back and wrote an article that absolutely creamed us. Creamed us! He called us whiny, stupid; he basically made us seem like a bunch of clueless kids.