Neon Angel

by Cherie Currie

  There was a long silence.

  “Because I made a promise,” I said. “And one thing that you’ll learn about me is that my family means more then anything else.”

  “More than your career?”

  I swallowed hard. “Yes,” I said quietly. “More than my career.”

  With that, I assumed the Capitol Records deal was dead in the water. But a few days later I received another call from Rupert Perry. He had reconsidered. He was willing to sign me, with the stipulation that I understood that he didn’t want a sister act, and that I would consider at the very least limiting her role. Maybe I could just have her do a guest vocal on a couple songs, he suggested. I agreed to consider it, and we signed the deal. The album that would eventually be known as Messin’ with the Boys was born.

  With the money I was making from Foxes, I finally was in a position to move out of Aunt Evie’s place. I found a cool little one-bedroom apartment in Encino. This in and of itself was a huge step for me, and made me feel optimistic about the future. I felt that I was on the verge of something. All I could do was hope that this time it was something positive.

  Chapter 27

  Foxes

  Come on, Marie, it’ll be fun!”

  “I know, Cherie,” Marie said. “I’ll make it down to the set, soon. I promise. I’ve just been busy . . .”

  “Can’t you come today? You’d really like Jodie. She’s supercool.”

  “Yeah . . .”

  Marie sounded unsure, but she kept smiling at me, trying to reassure me. “I’ll come down. Soon. I promise, okay? Look, Cherie, I know you’re gonna do great.” Then she turned away, and halfheartedly added, “I hope you become a big star.”

  I left it at that. For the past week I had been trying to get Marie to come and visit the set of Foxes. And for the past week she had been giving me excuses. Although she wouldn’t say it to me directly, I was pretty sure what the problem was.

  While I had been away touring with the Runaways, Marie had been attending acting classes. I knew that she harbored some pretty serious ambitions; after all, with my mom and Sandie, the acting bug ran pretty deep in our family. And then I came along and landed a big role in a major motion picture. Reading between the lines, I knew that Marie was furious that I had seemingly been handed this opportunity without really working for it. She had no idea of how hard it was behind the scenes to be a member of the Runaways. I told her, but I don’t think she understood me. She seemed to think that life had been all fun and games for me, and that these opportunities had just dropped out of the sky.

  She had been the one studying acting while I had been singing for a rock-and-roll band. She had worked hard to have one thing that I couldn’t. And now I was the one acting in movies. As disappointed as I was at my sister’s reluctance to visit the set, at least I knew where it was coming from. It made me very sad that our relationship had become so damaged: there was this strange competitive edge to everything, all of it a direct result of my career as a Runaway. In a weird way, I almost wished that Marie had landed this role instead of me. It would have made things less complicated. I would have been happy for her. But that’s not the way things were. It made me feel that once the movie was wrapped, I was going to have to put all of this right by recording our album.

  With the Capitol deal inked, we had started working on the album every evening we could. We were going to cut the album at Cherokee Studios in Hollywood. At first the producer was supposed to be John Carter, who had arranged for the initial showcase with Capitol, but early on in the process, he was replaced by Jai Winding, a handsome and highly experienced session musician and producer. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, John Carter was very upset over being replaced on the record. Looking back, I really wish that I’d worked with John rather than Jai.

  I had been making the rounds of all of the top songwriters in Los Angeles, looking for the right songs for Marie and me. I knew that this album had to be a hit. I wasn’t about to make the same mistake that I had with Beauty’s Only Skin Deep, and put out an album that didn’t feel exactly right. No, everything had to be perfect this time around. We were going to have the best songs, the best producers, the best musicians, and the full support of a powerful record label.

  Through Marie, we brought her boyfriend (and future husband) Steve Lukather on board. Steve was one of the most sought-after session musicians in L.A.; he had worked with everyone from Boz Scaggs and Aretha Franklin to Michael Jackson. He was probably best known for being the guitarist for multiplatinum and Grammy-winning rock group Toto. Bringing in Steve meant that we had access to the best of L.A.’s session musicians, all of whom had either worked with or knew Steve personally: Mike Baird, who had drummed for the likes of Hall & Oates and Journey; Mike Porcaro, who was the bass player from Toto; Trevor Veitch, who played for Donna Summer and Rush; Bobby Kimball, the lead vocalist for Toto; Bill Champlin, who had worked with Earth, Wind & Fire and REO Speedwagon; Michael Landau, who played guitar for Miles Davis and Pink Floyd . . . we managed to pull together a pretty amazing roster of talented musicians.

  During this period, the Runaways had continued with a fluctuating lineup, recorded another album, and then split. I would hear about the latest happenings with the band through other people, but I didn’t speak to any of the girls. If I started to seriously think about how the other girls were doing—especially Joan—it hurt too much. Leaving the Runaways was like giving up on a dysfunctional marriage. For my own sanity I had to start over, not continue wallowing in the past.

  With the movie and the album, I was really burning the candle at both ends. There never seemed to be enough hours in the day: I would be on the set of Foxes first thing every morning, and then racing off to the rehearsal studio to prepare for the album in the evenings. I started needing more and more Benzedrine to keep up with this insane schedule, and even with the speed, I felt drained and tired most of the time.

  Even though Marie wasn’t likely to be coming to the set, I knew that my mom would be there. I wish I could tell some big dramatic story about how my mom and I got back together, but it really wasn’t anything like that. There was no tear-filled reunion, with apologies or amends made. Three years after I had last seen her, Mom and Wolfgang moved to Washington, D.C., and Donnie came home to live at Aunt Evie’s. This didn’t mean that we reunited or anything like that. D.C. seemed just about as far away as Indonesia, and we never visited each other while she was there. It was only when I got the role in Foxes that Mom decided to visit the West Coast. She showed up just in time for the start of production: all of the years of us not speaking to each other were wiped away when I signed my contract with Casablanca Filmworks. My mom had also landed the role of a lifetime: the stage mother. And she was damn good at it.

  I pulled into the lot, took another tiny bump of Benzedrine to get me focused, and made my way to the set.

  Later that day I sat watching the crew start setting up for the next shot. I looked at them all running around like ants, tweaking the set and setting up the cameras. That surreal feeling I had on my very first day of shooting never really left me. The movie world was just as strange, bizarre, and unreal as the music world. As I stood there watching it all in awe, my mom appeared out of nowhere. She placed a hand on my shoulder and said, “You’re doing a wonderful job, Cherie.” She smiled when she said this, and it’s strange, but I think that this was the happiest that I had ever seen my mom. I had never seen her so approving of anything I had ever done. It’s hard to stay angry with your own family. All of the resentment that I carried around about how she left three years ago fell away as my mom reassured me, telling me that she was proud.

  It was as if the bad stuff had never happened. Sometimes I would get sad thinking about how things might have been different in the Runaways if I’d had my mom in my life back then.

  “Thanks, Mom.” I smiled.

  This isn’t to say that my mom’s sudden presence on the set of Foxes was smooth sailing. Let’s just say t
hat she could be a little . . . forceful. I remember on one of her first visits, she had come down with my sister Sandie, and a photographer had been taking some publicity shots of me. My mom jumped right in and practically started directing the shoot.

  “Okay, honey . . . now try posing with your hands on your hips . . . Yes, that’s it! One foot forward, yes—yes, put it straight out, like you’re marching. Yes! Just like the war-bond picture I was in when I was your age, the famous one . . .”

  I looked at the photographer and smiled apologetically. He returned the smile without much humor and went on snapping. In the background I could see Sandie groaning and rolling her eyes. I had to see the funny side of it. I was okay with my mom getting to relive her glory days through me. I found it endearing. Plus, my mom and Jodie’s mom, Brandy, had been getting along great.

  On the first day of shooting, Brandy’s attitude toward me thawed considerably. Once the cameras were rolling and she saw me act, she decided that I was doing a great job. Coming from her, that meant a lot. Even Jodie seemed amazed that I was doing as well as I was: I was delivering like a real professional. As the shoot went on, she and I became very close. While the crew went on setting up the next scene, I walked over to Jodie’s trailer. I thought she might be working with her tutor. Unlike the Runaways, to whom tutors were promised but never delivered (and let’s be honest: nobody in the band was too heartbroken about it), Jodie was a dedicated student. I peeked into her trailer, not wanting to disturb her. But, instead of working, Jodie was having lunch.

  “Hey, Jodie,” I said, knocking lightly and letting myself in. “Whatcha eating?”

  This was a joke, because Jodie was on this weird papaya-and-cottage-cheese diet, so I knew very well what she was eating. It sounded strange, and it looked gross, but it definitely worked. Jodie looked really great. She was becoming a gorgeous girl, shedding the tomboy image she was known for.

  “Oh, you know, my usual gourmet stuff . . .” She smiled. “What are you doing?”

  “Would you mind going over my next scene with me?”

  “Sure thing . . .”

  I sat next to her, and she put down her half-eaten papaya, peering at her dog-eared copy of the script.

  “Um . . . Cherie,” she said as her eyes darted over the pages. “You know you only have a couple of lines in this scene, right?”

  “I know! I just wanted to rehearse it, anyway.”

  Jodie chuckled and shook her head. “You’re too much, Cherie.”

  I blushed a little. “I just want to get it right. You’ve done this like a million times. This is my first movie!”

  Jodie fixed me with those big blue eyes of hers and smiled warmly. “You’ll do fine.”

  Hearing Jodie say that definitely made me feel better. I was in awe of her talent as an actress, especially when coupled with her youth. “Thanks, Jodie,” I said. “So . . . uh . . . does that mean you’ll still go over the scene with me?”

  I always had a wonderful time hanging out and rehearsing with Jodie. We both talked about our upcoming birthdays. She was about to turn sixteen and I was celebrating my eighteenth birthday in a week. We’d joke about our director, Adrian Lyne, who was so delightfully British. We both found his accent adorable, and cracked up whenever he’d pepper his conversation with weird, wonderful, and sometimes downright bizarre British expressions. Sometimes we’d wonder if he wasn’t making them up to see how much he could sneak past his gullible teenage American stars. We’d also whisper about our producer, David Puttnam, who we both thought was simply gorgeous, despite the fact that he was nearly forty years old—which seemed super old to us both back then. We even found his salt-and-pepper hair sexy and endearing.

  Those moments definitely reminded me of my time in the Runaways—of the hours spent sitting with Joan in a hotel or the mobile home, driving from city to city, talking about stuff like rock music, and guys, and all of the other things that made our glittery little world go around. But Jodie Foster, Marilyn Kagan, and Kandice Stroh were not the Runaways . . . they were actresses doing a job, not young girls with a dream, clawing for a hit song. Our shoot was scheduled to run for three months. I knew that we would all be together for that time, and then when it was over, we’d all go our separate ways. There would be no strings attached: no Kim Fowley, no binding record contracts, and no international tours. I knew that I would cry when the film was done because I’d miss everyone. I’d miss Jodie most of all. That fleeting, intense friendship with Jodie Foster reminded me of just how much I really lost when I left the Runaways. It wasn’t the lifestyle that I missed, the crowds, or even the music. Not really. It was my friends. It took me a long time to realize this, but the friendships that you form when you’re a teenager are among the most intense you will ever experience. What I felt for those girls in the band . . . well, it was love, pure and simple. A dysfunctional kind of love, but love nonetheless.

  They called us out for our next scene. As we stepped out of Jodie’s trailer, my mom was waiting for me with a concerned look on her face.

  “There you are!” she said, sounding mightily relieved. “I was looking all over for you! Do you know your lines?”

  “Yes, Mom.” I sighed.

  “Have they touched up your makeup? Did they check?”

  “Yes, Mom they did . . .”

  “Well then . . . go to it, sweetheart!”

  I went to walk toward the set, but before I could, Mom grabbed me and gave me a big hug. She held me in her arms for a long time. It felt like she hadn’t hugged me like that in ages . . . since before she and Dad got divorced, at least.

  “I’m so proud of you, Cherie!” she said, her eyes looking wet.

  I smiled. “Thanks, Mom . . .”

  When I thought about it later, I realized that all I ever really wanted was for my mom to be proud of me.

  The apartment that I was renting in Encino was a small one-bedroom. It was tiny, but I loved it. It was a strange feeling to finally have a place I could call my own. But I definitely missed Aunt Evie’s a lot, and I visited often. Not having my family around me took some getting used to. There was something a little sad and lonely about coming home to an empty apartment.

  On this particular day I was on the couch with my father, scratching my head and looking distractedly at my watch. I felt like I was late for something, although I didn’t know what. It felt like there was always something I was late for, like there was always some other place I was supposed to be.

  “Kitten,” my father said, cutting into my thoughts, “I’ve been worried about you.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Worried. About you. The last time I saw you, you were thin . . . I mean, I thought that you couldn’t possibly get any thinner. But . . . you look even worse now. You need to start taking care of yourself!”

  This was the first time I’d seen my dad in a few weeks. My schedule had been so grueling that I hadn’t had the time to be anywhere but the set or the rehearsal studio. Even Adrian Lyne had noticed that I was looking a bit thin.

  “You need to eat a few steak-and-kidney pies, luv!” he’d told me.

  “Steak and . . . kidney?” I laughed. “Man, you Limeys eat some pretty crazy stuff.”

  “Ha! I’ll have to tell you about toad in the hole sometime. Seriously, though—you’re looking worn out, luv. What’s going on? Are you getting decent rest? Do you have anything else going on besides the movie?”

  “Well, there’s the album. I’m working on that in the evening when I can . . . I guess I’ve just been spreading myself pretty thin recently.”

  “You want to know the best advice I can give you about that album?”

  “Sure. What?”

  “You need to stop working on it until we wrap this. I need you to be there one hundred percent for me, every day, Cherie. Three months is a tight schedule. No distractions, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  So for the time being, the album was put on hold. Capitol understood, but Marie was pretty disappointe
d. Being able to focus entirely on Foxes helped a lot, but there was still pressure and stress, and even when I was alone, or with my family, I couldn’t really relax. I couldn’t seem to unwind. Also, a strange thing had recently happened: my heart started palpitating wildly, for no reason. It freaked me out the first time, and I promised myself that I would see a doctor, but I was determined to finish the shoot first. Putting in twelve-hour days on the set wasn’t helping. Sometimes I was so preoccupied that I’d forget to eat. It’s easy to forget to eat when you’re taking Benzedrine. You don’t notice the hunger, your stomach feels detached from the rest of you. With all of that going on, my weight had been dropping dramatically.

  So now my father was looking at me with a concerned look on his face. I gave him my best smile. “I’m fine, Dad. Don’t worry . . .”

  “But I do worry, Kitten. I’m your father! How come you’re so thin? Don’t you keep food in your apartment?”

  “Of course I have food! I’m eating fine, Dad . . .”

  Looking at my father, I wondered if he shouldn’t have been worrying about himself. He looked terrible. I was getting really concerned about his health. His skin had taken on this scary, yellowish tint; his eyes, too. Every time I saw him, he seemed to have deteriorated further. He looked older, frailer, and sicker. The booze was really eating him up from the inside.

  Marie would keep me updated on his drinking. She told me that it was getting worse. That he couldn’t go more than a few hours without a drink. That he was losing his balance, and that he seemed down and depressed. She was seriously considering putting him in the hospital.

  When I was younger, I’d thought that my father’s drinking was perfectly normal. I thought that my dad just needed a drink to relax, and I didn’t see how this was a big deal. Some people just enjoy alcohol, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re an “alcoholic.” Because my father could always handle drinking so well, I felt sure that he didn’t have a problem. That’s what I’d thought for most of my life. Now I was beginning to realize just how wrong I had been.