Published in 2010
384 pages
Cherie Currie is an American singer, musician and actress. Currie was the lead vocalist of The Runaways, an all-female hard rock (of which Joan Jett and Lita Ford were also members) proto-punk band from Los Angeles in the mid-to-late 1970s.
Currie, not yet 16, joined The Runaways in 1975. The teen rock anthem “Cherry Bomb” was written for her at the audition. Attitudes to her impact at that time differ; one reviewer has written that “the received wisdom that carved out new territory for female musicians is hard to justify – it’s doubtful that the predominantly male audience who flocked to see the 16 year old in her undies picked up any feminist subtext”.
After three albums with The Runaways, (The Runaways, Queens of Noise, and Live in Japan ), Currie went on to record a solo album in 1978, Beauty’s Only Skin Deep, for Polygram Records, and an album with her twin sister Marie, in 1980, as Cherie & Marie Currie , entitled Messin’ With The Boys for Capitol Records. She then worked as an actress, starring in movies such as Foxes, Parasite, Wavelength, Twilight Zone: The Movie, The Rosebud Beach Hotel, Rich Girl, and others, as well as numerous guest spots on TV series (Matlock and Murder She Wrote, among others).
Currie wrote a memoir of her teen years called Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway. The book revolves around her dysfunctional family, her struggles with drugs and alcohol, sexual abuse and her days with The Runaways. The Runaways movie, a 2010 musical biographical drama film executive produced by Joan Jett, explores the relationship between Currie and Jett. In the film Currie is portrayed by Dakota Fanning.
In 2008, Currie contributed to Carrie Borzillo-Vrenna’s book, Cherry Bomb. Currently, Currie is a wood carving artist who uses a chain saw to create her works. Currie finally independently released her second solo album, Reverie, in 2015.
What is this book about?
At the tender age of fifteen, groundbreaking lead singer Cherie Currie joined a group of talented girls—Joan Jett and Lita Ford on guitar, Jackie Fox on bass, and Sandy West on drums—who could rock like no one else.
Arriving on the Los Angeles music scene in 1975, The Runaways catapulted from playing small clubs to selling out major stadiums—headlining shows with opening acts like the Ramones, Van Halen, Cheap Trick, and Blondie while riding a wave of hit songs and platinum albums, and touring the world.
A shocking, funny, and touching re-creation of a bygone era of rock and roll that chronicles the Runaways’ rise to fame and ultimate demise, Neon Angel is also an intensely personal account of Currie’s struggles with drugs, sexual abuse, and violence in a decadent, high-pressure music scene—a world of uncontrolled excess where she and her unsupervised bandmates had to grow up fast and experience things that no teenage girls should.
