Micki Steele, Sandy West, and Joan Jett in the original Runaways lineup
The Runaways were the first all-female hard rock band to achieve mainstream success, but they had a famously abusive manager. How did this affect the band’s development, and where did women who refused to work with the Runaways’ manager end up? Meet Kari Krome, Joan Jett, Sandy West, and Micki Steele — and get a taste for how their rock ambitions paved the way for Los Angeles punk.
SOURCES
This season of Bad Reputation would not be possible without the work of journalist Evelyn McDonnell and her book Queens of Noise. If you are looking to learn more about the Runaways, this is a must.
Neon Angel by Cherie Currie
Living Like a Runaway by Lita Ford
We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk by Marc Spitz and Brendan Mullen
Mayor of the Sunset Strip (documentary)
Edgeplay: A Film About the Runaways (documentary)
"Rodney's Remembered" by Kari Krome
"Have You Ever Been a Teen?" by Lena Lecaro
"Kim Fowley: The Original Mayor of the Sunset Strip" by Kim Fowley
Additional articles from a paid database were used to research this episode.
Sandy West, Joan Jett, and Micki Steele
I read, watch, and conduct as many interviews as possible to make Bad Reputation, but this is a self-funded passion project. Only a fraction of the interviews I find or conduct appear in episodes, but all voice-acted parts are dramatizations of real quotes or interactions described in interviews.
If you have a question about where a specific piece of information came from or would like to provide a source for correcting something, please reach out.
CREDITS
Culture doesn't exist in a vacuum, and my voice actors are the people whose ideas, influence, and encouragement shape my work. If you like this podcast, you will probably like many of their projects, too.
Scott Plant (Kim Fowley) plays in the band Droids Blood.
Cat DeBacker (Cherie and Marie Currie) is a culture writer.
Hayley Jane Blackstone (Kari Krome) plays in the band Red Delicious.
Josh Watkins (Phast Phreddie Patterson) is a writer.
Johnna Jackson (Joan Jett) is a writer and organizer.
J.R. Nelson (Ritchie Yorke) is a music critic.
Eli Harvey (Sandy West) is a writer and comedian.
Kat Buckley (Lita Ford) is an art historian and curator.
Educator, artist, and publisher Dushko Petrovich was a developmental editor for this episode.
Bad Reputation's logo photo is by photographer Martin Sorrondeguy aka Martin Crudo. You may know him from Limp Wrist or Los Crudos, though he has played — and continues playing — in many bands.
Rodney Bingenheimer (center) stands outside Rodney’s English Disco, his small Los Angeles club that served as a foothold for glam rock and helped connect some of the innovators of the L.A. punk scene.
MUSIC
All music that appeared in this episode is from a royalty-free music library or the Creative Commons, with the exception of the outro, which is “Wavelengths” by Death Valley.
Audio clips were also taken from the movies Almost Famous and The Runaways.