Neon Angel

by Cherie Currie

  The songs themselves were swamped with syrupy, seventies pop production. I imagined the reaction of those amped-up kids who had been slashing the seats and beating the crap out of each other in the aisles at Runaways shows when they’d get a load of this. At the very least I found something perversely amusing about imagining that.

  The sessions were quick and uninspired. I had come down with a bug and at times I was recording vocal tracks with a temperature as high as 101. Even Kim seemed more subdued than usual. Any spark, any fire, would flare for a moment, then dissipate just as quickly. Only two songs really stand out on this album for me, each for very different reasons.

  “Science Fiction Daze” was my favorite. It was the closest I ever came to recording something that really brought me back to my Bowie roots. We bathed the song in trippy Moog synthesizers, and I was really happy with my vocals on that one.

  The other song was called “Love at First Sight.” Back in Japan, where our fanatical fan base pored over every detail of our private lives, the story about me having a twin sister had proved endlessly fascinating. People just couldn’t believe that Cherie Currie, the wild-child singer of the Runaways, could have an identical twin sister. Never one to miss an opportunity for hype, Kim Fowley started feeding the Japanese press stories that there was no twin, and that the whole thing was a rumor. Then he would send out a conflicting story that Marie was real, and we were going to play some shows in Japan together. By the time he was done, there was a hysterical anticipation for me to return to prove once and for all whether there really were two Currie sisters. “Love at First Sight” would be the song that we performed together.

  At first I was resistant. Again, it felt like I was being led around by the nose. I loved my sister, and I knew that my success had been hard on her. I also knew that more than anything she longed for a similar success. Although Marie would never, ever admit this to me, I’d heard via Paul that sometimes she pretended to be me, and even signed autographs as me. Marie wanted to sing, she wanted to act, and instead she was watching from the sidelines as I lived out her fantasies. It was easy to imagine how her long-ago decision to tell Kim Fowley to go get bent was eating away at her.

  But if I recorded this song with her, what then? I sure as hell wasn’t willing to jump from one compromised situation like the Runaways into another. But unless this one song somehow kick-started a solo career for Marie, what would happen? Either she’d have to go back to doing what she was doing, or we would have to become some kind of double act. Neither of these options seemed like the right thing. However, with the studio clock ticking, I agreed to cutting the track. I felt I owed my sister that much.

  “This will go over huge in Japan!” Kim told me. “You said you wanted to go back, didn’t you?”

  “Of course. I loved it there.”

  “This is a good move. It will cause an instant scandal back there. It will mean huge press coverage, and big record sales. And all you have to do is sing a song with your sister. How hard can that be?”

  The song was a fairly pedestrian midtempo rock number, which had a little bit of a “sixties” feel to it, with plenty of opportunity for vocal harmonizing. We cut it in a day. Once Marie showed up in the studio, I was glad I had agreed to sing with her: she seemed so happy, so at home in the studio, and she really made me proud. The song came out sounding pretty good and then Kim went to work booking the two of us on a publicity tour of Japan to perform it to an audience that was already hysterical with anticipation.

  Once the album was cut, it was rushed to market. We briefly shot a single promotional video, and Mercury didn’t even bother sending me out on the road. It was pushed out into record stores with zero promotion, and quickly sank without a trace. I suppose it’s something of a cult record now. I still get contacted by fans once in a while who discover it, and really enjoy it. Looking back, I can see more positives about it these days, but at the time I considered Beauty’s Only Skin Deep a failure. However, Kim was right about one thing: the promotional tour of Japan was a hit.

  Marie and I were flown over there for two weeks to do interviews and lip-synch to the song a few times. The atmosphere between Marie and me quickly turned sour. I was pissed off that I was having to do my first solo tour with my sister in tow, and after the first half-dozen interviews the main thrust of which was questions along the lines of “Will you be recording more records with your sister?” I started getting belligerent.

  “No,” I told interviewer after interviewer, “this is a onetime-only thing. I need to figure out where I want to go first.”

  Of course, this didn’t make Marie feel good. She would be sitting on the couch next to me, an interviewer’s microphone shoved into her face, having to listen to her twin sister saying that as soon as we got back to the United States, she would be dumped. As every answer was translated into Japanese, the implication of my words was not lost on Marie: as soon as we were back in the United States, she would return to her old life while I’d go on to record more albums. In short, the whole idea blew up in my face in the exact way that I feared it would at the start. Marie agreed to recording this song as a onetime-only thing, and then resented me because I’d insisted that it really was a onetime-only thing. I could see her point. If the roles had been reversed, I would have been hurt and disappointed, too.

  But what else could I do? I wasn’t about to give up my one shot at being a solo artist, and the Runaways still haunted me. I missed Joan and Sandy and wondered what they were doing. When their new album, Waitin’ for the Night, came out, I couldn’t even listen to it. It was too painful. Putting that part of my history behind me was incredibly hard. If they’d asked me to come back, I would have. I’d always felt that all the band really needed was a break, some time to assess where we were heading, and maybe a little time off to look after ourselves. But, it seemed they were doing just fine without me, and of course, that hurt a lot, too.

  Despite the flurry of press interest, and the hysteria of the audiences when we’d do a public appearance together, Beauty’s Only Skin Deep was only marginally more successful in Japan than it was here in the States. We broke that first Runaways album by touring relentlessly. With this record, the songs were lackluster, neither Kim nor I really gave a shit, and Mercury barely promoted it. It was doomed from the start.

  The best thing that Beauty’s Only Skin Deep did for my career was to free me from my management contract with Kim Fowley. I was finally in control of my own destiny. At least, that’s what I thought in the beginning. After Marie and I returned from Japan, I was ready to finally undergo that period of soul-searching and healing that I had longed for since quitting the Runaways. No more being told what to do by my management, by the record label, by anyone. I was ready to step out on my own.

  That was the plan. Of course, it didn’t work out that way.

  Chapter 24

  One Hundred Ways to Fry a Brain

  I was seventeen years old. I was out of the Runaways, and out of control. I had one solo album under my belt that had flown very much under the radar, but now at least I was a free agent. No more Runaways and no more Kim. It was only after quitting the band that I could look back on that period with any kind of perspective. In my head, I likened my time working with Kim to being sucked up in the vortex of a tornado: at fifteen years old, that chance meeting with Kim Fowley and Joan Jett had ripped me away from my regular, suburban childhood and deposited me, two years later, beaten, bruised, and confused, on the other side of fame. Sure, I was still well known, and I had three albums to show for it. Now I was Cherie Currie, ex–lead singer of the rock supergroup the Runaways, and solo artist. Once Beauty’s Only Skin Deep had come out, I finally felt that I could try to regroup and focus on what it was that I really wanted to do with myself. But first I wanted to have some fun. And my idea of having fun involved a lot of drugs.

  My existence became a dizzying roller-coaster ride of uppers and downers. Tuinals, sleepers, or quaaludes when I needed to feel mell
ow. Cocaine when I needed a lift. I wasn’t much of a drinker, though. I thought, why spend all that time drinking when all I had to do was pop a pill for the same effect? Except now, without road managers and “nurses” around me twenty-four seven doling out the drugs, I had to pay for all the substances I ingested. My use of coke and pills was getting heavy. As well as feeling worn out, I was bitter: after three Runaways albums and one solo album for Mercury, people assumed that I was doing pretty well financially. Actually, nothing was further from the truth. The Runaways had been an adventure for sure, but it hadn’t given me any kind of financial stability. If I thought about it too much, it would eat me alive. So instead of thinking, I got high. With no source of income, and a mere pittance earned from my time with the Runaways, I found myself doing things for money that the old Cherie would never have done in a million years.

  I started forging my father’s checks and raiding his tip jar for drug money.

  Being high from the moment I staggered out of bed until the moment I collapsed back into it (if I even made it to my bed; sometimes I’d wake up on the floor of the bathroom or in the bedroom, face still smeared with last night’s makeup, wondering how in the hell I got there) was a total necessity for me. I was not an addict, I’d tell myself, I just liked drugs a hell of a lot. They became a part of who I was—Cherie Currie, the neon blur in the fast lane, the Cherry Bomb. I needed to be that person to cope with the pressure, because the pressure was everywhere. There was the pressure from myself, to bounce back from the Runaways and not just become another rock-and-roll casualty. After all, wouldn’t Lita have loved it if I just faded away quietly? There was no way I was going to give her the satisfaction! Sometimes the pressure came from places that even I didn’t expect. Like my father.

  When I told him that I was going to regroup, find new management, and start working on another record, his face clouded over.

  “What about your sister?” he asked.

  What about her? I wasn’t even sure what he meant. Sensing my confusion, my father pressed on.

  “You know, Kitten, this . . . this fame, this success . . . it’s been very hard on her. Put yourself in her shoes. Imagine if you were working at the Pup ’n’ Taco while your twin sister was on the front cover of every music magazine in the country. When she went to Japan with you . . . she really got a taste of what it’s like to be in your shoes. You said it yourself, she was really good on that track you did together.”

  “Yeah, that’s true. I know Marie can sing.”

  “But what does she do now? Do you just expect her to go back to her old life? To give up on her dream? How would that make you feel?”

  Ugh. Conversations like this were another reason I needed the drugs. Why would my father even say things like this to me? Why should I be made to feel guilty for the success I’d experienced? I earned it. I went through hell with the Runaways, and walked away from it all not with money, but with fame. If I used this fame wisely, I figured I could turn it into a career. But that would take a lot of work, and a lot of dedication. Sure, it was shitty luck that Marie was where she was right now, but why should I be made to feel responsible for that?

  I started to feel angry about the way this conversation was going, the anger even cutting through the Tuinals and the cocaine in my system. “So?” I said. “What am I supposed to do? I said right at the beginning that doing the song with her was going to be a one-time thing. All I can do is try to make a go of it myself. Use the opportunities I have and then . . . maybe—”

  “I think there’s more you can do than just that, Kitten. I think there’s a lot more that you can do. People really reacted to the song that you did with Marie. I think that’s the direction you need to be heading in.”

  I laughed. “It was a novelty, Dad! What could we do together after that? There’s nowhere else we can take this . . . Not now!”

  “You could cut a whole album with her.”

  “An album? Dad . . .”

  “You know that Marie can sing, Kitten. She wants to sing. She wants to act. I think you’re in a position to help her. And I mean really help her.”

  “Come on, Dad! What can I do? I don’t own a record label!”

  “You could work as a duo. If you told the labels and your new management that this is what you wanted to do, they’d have to say yes. They’d have to.”

  I thought for a moment that he was kidding. But then the look on his face told me otherwise.

  It all made a terrible, sick kind of sense. Full circle, right back to those days at the Kiwanis Club singing Dean Martin songs with Dad. The idea was utterly ridiculous: I knew in my gut that no label was going to agree to anything except a solo Cherie Currie record. Plus, in the past two years, I felt that I had finally crawled out from under my twin sister’s shadow. Now my father was asking me to share the spotlight with her again. I shook my head.

  “It’s a nice idea, Dad,” I said gently, “and I could maybe make that happen down the road after I prove myself . . . but now? It’s impossible! The record labels won’t go for it. I need time to breathe. I can’t just jump into something like that. Please be realistic . . . Kim only suggested it because it was a novelty and yes, I wanted her to feel proud of herself but now . . . I have to find out who I am. I deserve that much, don’t I? Even Kim didn’t expect me to do a whole album with her.”

  At the mention of Kim’s name, Dad’s face darkened. My father was not a man who showed anger often, but this time he shook a little and spat out, “Kim? What does that creep know? He’s made his living exploiting you girls!”

  Then my dad fell silent. He didn’t look so good. His eyes were watery, bloodshot. Over the past few months, his face had been filling out, his skin getting puffy and red. The booze was eating him up from the inside. I couldn’t say anything. I just stood there watching this once proud man trying desperately to pull his broken family together. I needed a pill, I decided. I needed to end this conversation now, and get some chemically induced peace into my brain. Some calm.

  Dad looked up to me. “I’m not asking you, Kitten. I’m telling you. Family has to come first. If you can’t put your family first this one time . . . then I’m sorry, I’ll have to cut you loose. Do you understand me, Kitten?”

  “Yes, Dad,” I said quietly.

  “Marie is your sister. I want you to help her. Otherwise, I’ll have to wash my hands of you.”

  I stood there nodding, dumbstruck. I wondered if he knew what he was saying. Maybe he knew about the checks. If he did, he was too proud to say anything. Too proud to admit that his own daughter was stealing his money to buy drugs. Maybe this was his way of making it right. Maybe he could forgive me so long as I helped Marie. Maybe then he could pretend that I wasn’t a thief.

  “Okay, Dad,” I said again. I walked away, confused and disoriented.

  “Kitten,” my father said, “not a word of this. To Marie, I mean. Marie would never accept this if she felt that I . . . got involved. It has to come from you. She’s too proud, too stubborn.”

  I nodded. Proud. Stubborn. I guess that was a Currie-family trait.

  At three o’clock the next morning, I staggered out of Daddy’s car. I had borrowed it for the evening to hit a party in Malibu that turned out to be really wild. I couldn’t stop laughing. The world was spinning around me, and I felt just about as wasted as a human being could get. When I hit the fresh air, I noticed deep scrape marks along the side, which exposed the raw metal underneath. I guess I’d sideswiped some cars. Maybe. I couldn’t remember much about the drive home. Some strange kind of autopilot must have kicked in, steering me over the freeway and back to the house somewhat intact. There were other deep holes in my recollection of the evening, and if I’d considered them too long, I might have fallen into one and never came out again. I remembered being in the bathroom, and people pounding on the door to be let in. I had fallen asleep on the toilet. That’s when I’d staggered out to the car. Still, despite having totally trashed my father’s car, I could
n’t stop giggling. The whole situation felt so unreal, so completely absurd.

  Inside the house, the living room was rotating. “Stop it,” I slurred, grabbing hold of the couch to try and make everything stay still. “Don’t move!”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone standing there. She was very unsteady and she was rail thin. I jumped, and then realized that it was my own reflection staring back at me from the big ornate mirror. I straightened up and tried to take a good look at myself, but the floor suddenly shifted under me and I staggered off toward the kitchen instead. I made it to the sink, and grasped hold of it, unsure if I was going to vomit or not. I groaned, but the puke didn’t come.

  I heard a familiar voice floating up from the darkness. It sounded like Marie. Marie in her typical overbearing way saying, “What the hell is happening to you, Cherie?” I heard that voice a lot these days, lecturing me, judging me. The only way to shut it up was to drown it out with more pills. I turned, and nearly fell over when I realized that it really was Marie.

  “Oh shit,” I slurred. “I thought you were in my head.” Then I burst into laughter again, and the laughter had a weird hysterical edge to it.

  “What the hell is so funny?” Marie spat, looking completely disgusted. I couldn’t answer. I kept right on laughing. Roaring, doubled over, the tears streaming down my cheeks.

  “Stop it!” she hissed. “You’re going to wake up the whole house!”