Neon Angel by Cherie Currie
When we’d pull into a new city so we could play our music, everything changed. Then, suddenly, you were thrown into the fast lane. You became a neon blur, and when you’re a neon blur, time becomes an elastic concept. Troubles pass you by. Hours pass like seconds, and all you can see are the dazzling lights shining in your face. All you can hear is the roar of the crowd.
On the road, I saw thousands of teenagers, lining up outside filled-to-capacity concert halls and auditoriums. They carried our posters, magazines with our faces on the cover, copies of our records. The shows were incredible. The time that we spent up there onstage made all of the rest of the bullshit that came along with touring worthwhile. As the tour went on, the audiences got bigger, the venues got bigger—the Runaways got bigger.
Sometimes the kids who called out for autographs and photographs when we were heading into the venue for sound check would tell us that their parents didn’t know they were there. “Oh, my mom HATES you guys,” one kid told me. “She says you’re a bad influence! You know my mom tore your posters down off of my walls . . .” I found that stuff hysterical. I told Lita about it and she sneered. “Fuck ’em! You can do anything you want to do. You’re sixteen—no one can tell you what you should and shouldn’t do; we’re here doin’ a job! You know? We’re becoming fuckin’ rock stars, so they can stick it!”
Sandy would always say, “We’re the voice of a generation. We’re the voice of teenagers all around the world, and that won’t change . . .”
I knew that she was right about that. On the news they’d tell us that the world was changing . . . Vietnam had been over for years, and Nixon was gone, and Ford had stumbled out of the White House. Now Jimmy Carter was in, and they said it was a whole new America. But none of that stuff really meant shit to us. No matter what was going on in the world, teenagers were still the same: Mickey Mouse could have been in the White House, but it wouldn’t matter down on the dance floor. There may have been a war raging halfway around the world, but at home teenagers were still fighting the same old wars as ever: as long as there were teenagers, the Runaways would have an audience.
There was this weird sense as the tour progressed that we were generals in this war. When I’d see the audiences reaching out for us, there was something in their eyes—some strange kind of desperation, some hope that we would change things. I wasn’t a political person, but I did realize that there was something inherently political about a sixteen-year-old girl strutting about onstage, totally free of adult interference, screaming to kids about their own lives.
Nobody could tell us what to do.
Nobody could tell me what I could and couldn’t put into my own body. Yeah, we’d drink, we’d do coke, we’d take pills, but so what? We wouldn’t be talked down to, laughed at, or dictated to. In moments like that, life as a neon blur was so exciting, so real, that it made up for all of the monotony and boredom in between. Nobody could tell me what to do. I did what I damn well pleased. I would not be ruled by my mother, ten thousand miles away, or anybody else’s mother, for that matter.
It was while on the road that I realized something that seemed very important to me. I realized that I had spent most of my life as a slave to something. I grew up as an emotional slave to the rotten kids in school, to my parents’ bitter fights. Then, after Derek came along, I became a slave to something else: I became a slave to my own hatred and rage. It was on the road with the Runaways that I came to the conclusion that all of that was finally behind me. I was free to do whatever I wanted. I would never be a slave to anything again.
Chapter 14
Daddy’s Car
It’s strange how quickly things can change. When we set off on tour fourteen weeks ago, we were nobody. By the time the tour finally ground to a halt at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, we were practically household names. When we got back to California for that final show, I stayed in a hotel because I wanted my family to see me for the first time onstage. It was hard to be in town and not see them, but I knew it was going to be worth it. The Runaways really touched a nerve: we played that final night to a packed auditorium, and I have some strange memories of that evening: Cheap Trick was our support act. The idea of a band as big as Cheap Trick opening for US would have been totally unthinkable at the beginning of the tour. After they finished their set, Kim grabbed me—literally right as I was about to walk onstage—and said, “Someone wants to say hello!” I thought maybe it was my family—Kim had insisted that we couldn’t see our families until after the show, though.
“Oh yeah?” I said, and turned, only to find myself face-to-face with Rod Stewart. What do you say when you are confronted with a bona fide legend in the music industry? I just smiled and said, “Nice to meet you, Rod.” It didn’t end there. Marie and I ended up snorting coke with him and Ronnie Wood at Rod’s mansion following the after-party. Talk about life in the fast lane! Rod was as drunk as a skunk, and actually started crying when I pulled out the coke.
“Oh my God!” he said, with tears in his eyes. “Nobody EVER gives me blow! I’m always the one expected to have it! You’re so kind! Thank you . . .”
Yeah, that was fun; right up until the point his girlfriend Britt Ekland emerged from her bedroom bleary-eyed, and chewed him out for making so much noise. Reluctantly, Rod told us we had to leave. Still, I think that Britt acted pretty cool for a woman who’d just found her boyfriend snorting coke with a couple of sixteen-year-old girls. Marie and I laughed about it all the way home. . .
Dad, Marie, Grandma, and Aunt Evie all came to that show. It really touched me to see how proud they were. “Well, it’s not my kind of music” was my grandma’s conclusion, “but you sure have something.”
But the surreal craziness of life on tour had to end, and now I found myself back at home again . . . lying in my bed at Aunt Evie’s house, physically and mentally exhausted. The house was tiny, and full to the brim: Aunt Evie, Grandma, Dad, Marie, and I were all packed into three bedrooms.
In the kitchen, I could hear Grandma banging pots and pans. Off in the bathroom, the shower was running, so I knew that Marie must be in there. I got back under the covers. Ever since returning from tour, I had been sleeping till noon, seemingly unable to shake the lingering fatigue that those three and a half months on the road had left me with. We toured the country the hard way—no planes, all of it by road, until we caught the plane that took us home. That really made us feel that we were returning as stars. The Runaways had now been featured on the cover of every major music magazine, with the exception of Rolling Stone. “Cherry Bomb” was climbing the Billboard charts, spurred on by our enthusiastically received live shows and the avalanche of press that Kim had been getting for us. Strange memories of life on the road: an early show at a little roadside dump called the Armadillo in Texas, where the audience tore the place up and tried to pelt us with bottles. Playing a tiny dive in New York City called CBGB, where the audience was a mixture of bums and art-school freaks, a show that landed us an article in People magazine. I remember we played alongside Television (who played very long guitar solos) and Talking Heads (who had a female bass player, and a really weird, pale, and sweaty lead singer). “You girls should stay out of the bathroom,” Kent had warned us. “I’ve been in there, and it ain’t pretty.” Or there was St. Louis, where we were the opening act for Spirit. When I lost my voice, Randy California came to my hotel room with hot tea and lemon, and gave me advice about looking after my voice while on tour.
Or there was the time toward the beginning of the tour when I got sick. Suddenly my temperature shot up to 102, and I thought I was dying. We couldn’t cancel any shows, though; Kim wouldn’t allow it. After the tour, I was diagnosed with tonsillitis and my doctor prescribed Placidyls to help me sleep. I didn’t know it at the time, but Placidyls were an extremely powerful narcotic and were a favorite downer of the King himself, Elvis Presley. We were still booked to play local shows, and my diagnosis was not allowed to interfere with our gig schedule. I would have to play a
When I finally had the tonsils removed, it was Joan who was sitting by my bedside when I came around from the anesthesia. She was holding my hand. “How you feeling, Cherie?” she whispered.
I smiled weakly, and squeezed her hand to show that I was okay. Out of all the girls in the band, Joan was the one I cared for the most. I loved her in my own strange way. No matter how tough life in the Runaways would become later on, Joan was always my reason for sticking things out. She was a real, genuine, sweet person. I closed my eyes again, and drifted off into a strange, drugged half sleep.
Now that I was back home, life seemed deceptively normal . . . on the surface at least. Grandma cooking in the kitchen. The teddy bears that I’d bought for Marie while on tour were sitting on her empty bed, right next to mine. Even though my mother was long gone, I was still surrounded by my family. Surrounded by love.
Except . . . except things were different. It seemed that we all wanted to pretend that things could just go back to the way they were, but the longer I was at home, the harder it was to keep up the facade. My little brother was gone. My mother was gone. Grandma was getting older . . . and there was Dad. Dad had some problems of his own.
I sat up in my bed. I felt groggy, disoriented. Like my skull was stuffed with cotton. I definitely needed something to get me going. I reached under my mattress and found the pill bottle. Popped the cap and shook out a small white pill with a cross etched into it. I swallowed it dry. I considered swallowing a second, but decided to wait. On the road with the band, these little pills were invaluable. Especially when you’d had a crappy night’s sleep and had to be up and awake to do a bunch of press the next morning. They were supposed to be diet pills, but the effect they had on you was similar to being jolted awake by a thousand volts of pleasure. Your heart races, a smile forms on your lips, and suddenly your mind is whirring in a dozen different directions at once. I remembered Jackie rolling her eyes at me and asking why I couldn’t just have a cup of coffee like a “normal person.”
“Coffee is bad for you,” I told her. “I saw it on TV.”
Moments after I’d stuffed the bottle back under the mattress, Marie walked in wrapped in a towel, drying her hair. “Where were you last night?” she asked. I was still bundled up in the covers, waiting for the speed to kick in.
“The Sugar Shack. It’s like the first time I’ve been back since the tour ended.”
“Is Chuck E Starr still DJing there?”
“Oh yeah!” I said. “You wouldn’t believe the fuss he made over me!” Chuck E Starr had been in top form last night, wearing his most outrageous pair of platform boots, the tightest T-shirt, and a pair of space-age silver pants. The moment I walked in, he announced it over the microphone. “Miss Cherie Currie—lead singer of the Runaways!” The dance floor cleared, and kids literally lined up to get me to sign autographs or take pictures with them. I had done this a lot on tour, but there was something different about doing it at the Sugar Shack. There is a special thrill about seeing kids you actually know clambering to see you like you were one of the Beatles or something. It was kind of hard not to let stuff like that go to your head. As soon as I thought this, I shouted myself down. With all of the stress and the hard work I’d put in on the road, why shouldn’t I enjoy a bit of attention? It sure beat being yelled at by Kim Fowley!
“That’s cool,” Marie said as she continued to get dressed. “You know, Mom called the other day. She said that she even heard of the Runaways over there.”
“Oh,” I said coldly. I hadn’t spoken to Mom since she left. And I had no intention of starting now. As far as I was concerned, she could stay away with Wolfgang for as long as she wanted. I didn’t need her anymore.
Of course, I’d hear about some of their misadventures there, especially the time Mom had called Aunt Evie to tell us Don had been attacked by a monkey. He and some friends were at a popular tourist attraction in Bali called the Monkey Forest when poor Don was ambushed by a group of screaming monkeys and one sank her one-inch fangs into his upper arm. Don was so angry he camped out at the entrance of the park with a bloody wrap around his wound. Tourists exiting the buses saw my bloody brother then turned around and got right back onto the bus. Don later found out that the monkeys had been trained to pick the pockets of the unsuspecting tourists. It just made me wonder all over again: What were they doing there anyway? God, I hated Indonesia!
Marie sighed. “You can’t stay angry with Mom forever, Cherie. You know how she is! We are family still . . .”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I snapped, and that ended it.
By the time I’d made it into the kitchen, the pill had kicked in and I felt alive again. I could smell the frying bacon permeating the house before I got close enough to hear it sizzling. Grandma always made bacon, and normally it was one of my favorite morning smells because it reminded me of her. But today, with the effect of the pill, my stomach felt unsettled. I couldn’t think of anything in the world I wanted less than food.
“How do you want your eggs?” Grandma asked as I walked in. I could feel the amphetamine buzzing around inside of me. I didn’t want to cause a scene, so I told her, “I’ll make a BLT for later. That way I get all food groups—my bread, vegetables, and meat for the day.”
Grandma gave me a concerned look. So I said, “Scrambled.”
“Like your brain,” Marie snorted.
“Yeah, like my brain.”
I watched Grandma preparing the eggs, and immediately I sensed that something was wrong. She beat the eggs with a special anxious fervor; her face had a dark shadow over it. I wondered if she’d had an argument with Dad, but then immediately I dismissed the idea. I had never heard them so much as exchange an angry word. I nudged Marie.“What’s up with Grandma?”
“Beats the hell out of me . . .”
There was an uncomfortable silence in the kitchen as Grandma beat the eggs and poured them into the pan. As the eggs began to cook, she started to cry. Marie and I looked at each other. Then we went over to her to see what was wrong. “Your father didn’t come home last night.”
It was strange, because there was a time when Grandma would never have worried about my father—who was, after all, a grown man, and a veteran at that. We all knew that Dad could take care of himself. But lately, every time Dad was a little late coming home, Grandma had been worrying up a storm.
“He probably . . .” I began, but then trailed off. He probably what? He probably stayed at someone else’s house? I dismissed this thought immediately. Not Dad. That wasn’t like him. He probably pulled off the side of the road somewhere to sleep? Yeah, right. Finally I settled on, “He probably has a good reason.”
“Yes,” Grandma said. “Well, maybe.”
I knew what she was thinking. We were all thinking it, although nobody dared articulate it. Since returning to California, Dad had been working as a bartender again. He worked five nights a week, and then would have to drive home at two in the morning. But as Aunt Evie was fond of pointing out to us, Dad had been at the bar seven nights a week recently, and it wasn’t because he was a workaholic. Grandma was worrying that one day those 2 a.m. drives were going to catch up with my father, just like Aunt Evie warned. One night he was going to fly through one red light too many. He was going to miss a stop sign. Maybe he might not see a road divider. And then . . . Dad wouldn’t be coming home ever again.
I looked around the house; the effects of the amphetamine and the growing fear in the pit of my stomach were making me feel ill.
“Maybe he got in late and left early,” I offered weakly. But looking beyond the kitchen to Aunt Evie’s quiet, antique living room, I could see no evidence that Dad had been here at all last night. Nothing on the couch, no shoes on the floor. The coffee table had nothing on it—no cups, no glasses, no keys. I looked over to Marie, but al
I left the food behind and went to check out Dad’s bedroom. It was quiet, dark, and cold. The bed had not been slept in. Walking around the house, I tried to think of other things. Tomorrow there was a publicity shoot, a session that would last all day with some big-time photographer. Then, in the afternoon, a reporter from People magazine was going to interview us. In a few weeks we were leaving for our European tour, which was really exciting. I would finally get a chance to visit the land that David Bowie himself had come from. Today I had decided that I was going to go back to school to drop off some magazine articles that featured the Runaways in old Mrs. Whittaker’s office. She was the one who’d told me that I would never amount to anything. Let’s see what old Whittaker would think now! Maybe I could hang out in a classroom, and listen to all of the boring facts I’d been missing out on while I’d been touring with the band. All of the stupid equations I’d never be tested on. If I did that, I wouldn’t have to think about Dad.
When I walked back in the kitchen, my breakfast was waiting for me. I sat down and looked at the food. Eating was the last thing on my mind. Grandma noticed me staring at my plate and said softly, “I guess we shouldn’t worry. He’s a grown man. He can look after himself.”
I knew that Grandma didn’t really believe that. After all, she was his mother. Dad would always be her one and only loving son as far as she was concerned. I took a few unenthusiastic bites of my food and swallowed it down. I could feel cold sweat on my palms, in the nape of my neck, as the pill and the anxiety started to make my heart pound. I went to the living room and started to pace on the thick, beige carpet. I looked at the pictures on the walls; Aunt Evie had dozens of them. Pictures of Aunt Evie, of Grandma and my late grandpa, pictures of Sandie and Don, Marie and me. There were pictures of Dad when he was younger, his hair dark and thick, the eyes shining out from the past. Even back then, when posing for most of those pictures, he had a cigarette in one hand and a glass in the other. I heard Aunt Evie’s voice in my head again. “One day those 2 a.m. drives are going to catch up with him!”