LITA FORD Says Now Is The 'Perfect Time' For RUNAWAYS Reunion

Niclas Müller-Hansen of Sweden's Metalshrine recently conducted an interview with '80s hard rock queen Lita Ford. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Metalshrine: There's a lot of bonus tracks [on your new album, "Living Like A Runaway"]. Was that the plan from the beginning?

Lita: No, it wasn't. I wanted to do a Lita album. I wanted to make my own album and I didn't want anybody telling me how to make it, you know. I wanted to be left alone. I know what I'm doing, I've been doing this since I was a kid and I don't need anybody telling me how to make a fucking record. I just needed to be left alone and create what was in my heart. After so many years of not performing and being held back and being held away from the music industry, I had a lot of built-up riffs in my head. It was pretty cool, actually, when I started playing. It was flowing out of my head and I would get my song writing partner, Michael Emig, I would get him on the phone. We never hooked up. We would do everything over the phone and I would get him on speaker phone and I would say, (sings) "Michael, run baby run!" and Michael would go, "Across New York City!" and then I'd say, "Run baby run!" and Michael would go, "Through the streets of L.A." I would go, "Yeah, Michael, that's it!" and then Michael would say, "You can't slow down and you can never stay when you're living like a runaway!" I would go, "Yeah, Michael, it's brilliant!" and he'd go, "Yeah, it's badass!" Things came together really well. "Bad Neighborhood", which is one of the bonus tracks… you gotta hear it! We did the same thing and "Bad Neighborhood" was written from the saying bad neighborhood from an old friend of mine who used to run Narcotics Anonymous and he used to say, "Get out of your head, it's a bad neighborhood!" It goes both ways, because my ex used to get inside of your head, like "You're inside my head, get out of my head!" and he would get inside his own head and Michael Emig came up with that saying: "Get out of your head, it's a bad neighborhood!" and I said, "Where did you get that saying from?" And he said, "I got it from Tom over at Narcotics Anonymous," and I said, "He used to say that?" So we wrote (sings) "Better get out, better get out of your head. Ain't doing you no good. Better get out, better get out of your head, because it's a bad neighborhood!" It came out freaking great.

Metalshrine: The Nikki Sixx song, "A Song To Slit Your Wrists By", what about that one?

Lita: Honest to God, it appeared on my desktop. It just popped up on my desktop and I thought, "What is this? A Nikki Sixx song on my desktop? I don't have any Nikki Sixx songs saved on my desktop." So I listened to it and I thought, "Wow, this is pretty cool! I need to do this." After hearing it, it had such heavy lyrical content, I thought, "I gotta call Nikki and ask him what it is." Because it wasn't a MÖTLEY CRÜE song. It was from the 58 version. Are you familiar with that?

Metalshrine: Yeah.

Lita: I wasn't at the time and I didn't know what it was, so I sent Nikki an e-mail, "What is this and can I have the song? Can I do a remake of it?" and he said, "Yeah, it's a song I wrote for my ex-wife 15 years ago." and he thought, "Wow, cool! My ex-girlfriend is doing a song I wrote for my ex-wife 15 years ago." [laughs] So it worked.

Metalshrine: I've read that you've been in touch with Cherie Currie [ex-THE RUNAWAYS] and I'm just wondering, are there any plans? Are you doing anything together or are you just talking?

Lita: So far it's just us getting back together and talking. Cherie's all ready to do a RUNAWAYS reunion and I would love it and I think we should start writing songs and I think it would be great. I'm not sure what Joan [Jett] is doing right now. I don't know if she's in the studio or if she's touring, I'm not sure. I was in contact with her for a while and then all of a sudden she just disappeared. She's probably on tour, but I don't know and it really needs to come from Joan. I talk to Cherie all the time. I talk to Vicki all the time and I'm still good friends with Jackie, but we can't do it without Joan, you know. She's got to be a part of it and she gotta want to be a part of it, so hopefully by the end of the year she will have made up her mind and hopefully she says yes.

Metalshrine: Excellent. I would love to see that.

Lita: I think now is the time for it. It really is perfect timing.

Read the entire interview from Metalshrine.

"Mother" audio stream (courtesy of the Deciblog):

"Branded" audio stream (courtesy of AOL's Noisecreep):