Interview with Lita Ford (Part One)
Lita Ford is a rock music legend. As a teenager she was a member of The Runaways, the first all-female hard rock band to play its own instruments ( which also featured a young Joan Jett). Ford then segued into a solo career, with early releases like Out For Blood and Dancin’ On The Edge garnering her a rabid cult following, while failing to propel her into the mainstream. A subsequent album entitled The Bride Wore Black was never released due to creative differences between Lita and Mercury Records. Ford spent several years extricating herself from that deal and landing a new contract with RCA, as well as management with Sharon Osbourne.
The result was Ford’s 1988 breakthrough Lita, which featured four hit singles including Lita’s best-known song “Close My Eyes Forever”, a haunting ballad with guest Ozzy Osbourne. Subsequent albums like Stiletto and Dangerous Curves still found a receptive audience, but the music scene was fast changing, and by the time of Ford’s 1995 album Black the writing was on the wall not just for Lita Ford, but for hard rock in general as it was left behind in the wake of the emergence of grunge.
That would prove Lita Ford’s last studio release for fifteen years. She married Nitro singer Jim Gillette and had two sons, and in a remarkable twist the family moved to a deserted island in the Carribbean, far away from the spotlight Ford had once enjoyed.
In 2008 Lita Ford shocked the world of hard rock by announcing that she would return to the stage at the Rocklahoma festival in July. This was followed by the news that she would begin touring again in anticipation of a new album. Since June 2009 Lita has been playing festival dates with her new band while preparing for the October release of her first album in fifteen years, entitled Wicked Wonderland.
I spoke with Lita Ford on Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 via her cell phone. It was an interesting interview; I had been working with her publicist for several weeks to schedule something, and the main stumbling block was that I usually do an hour-long interview and Lita just did not have an entire free hour in her schedule anywhere. So I settled for what I could get, and Lita actually called me at her appointed time to tell me that she was at the dentist with her son and would be about five more minutes, and asked if that was okay. So this interview actually took place during the drive from her son’s dentist back to the house to rehearse. I was very aware of how little time we had, and in some ways I think that played into this being such a good interview because I had no choice but to fire as many questions at Lita as I could in the time allotted. This interview may be shorter than usual, but it covers an awful lot of ground.
In this segment we discuss Lita playing festivals in Europe and the US; whether she is nervous about the impending release of Wicked Wonderland after an absence of fifteen years; what songs she has been playing live; the reasons behind her long hiatus; living on a remote island with her family and not listening to the radio or watching TV; did her kids grow up knowing who their mother was; why Lita waited until her sons were ready for her to make a comeback; changes in the business since she has been away; writing process for the new record; how does an artist in her position try to garner radio support now; work process for the new record vs. how she has worked in the past; and hiring a new band to go on tour.
Special thanks to Elaine and Terry at Shock Ink for arranging this interview.
Stay tuned for Part Two, which I will post next Tuesday.
