NEON
ANGEL
CHERIE CURRIE
WITH TONY O’NEILL
This book is for my mother, Marie; you are a miracle, my best friend, and I love you. My son, Jake Robert Hays; you amaze me every day and I couldn’t be more proud. And Kenny Laguna. You never gave up on me or this book. Without you, none of this would be possible. You are extraordinary and I love you.
In loving memory of Sandy West Pesavento.
A special thanks to my twin sister, Marie; my brother, Don; Vena and my niece Grace; sister Sandy and brother Alan Levi; Cristina Lukather; Trevor Lukather; Wolfgang (Dad) Kaupish; Joan Jett; Gretchen Bonaduce; and Robert Hays, the best ex-husband in the world.
Can’t stay at home, can’t stay at school
Old folks say, “You poor little fool”
Down the street I’m the girl next door
I’m the fox you’ve been waiting for
Hello Daddy, hello Mom
I’m your ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb
Hello world, I’m your wild girl
I’m your ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb
Stone age love and strange sounds too
Come on, baby, let me get to you
Bad nights causin’ teenage blues
Get down, ladies, you’ve got nothing to lose
Hello Daddy, hello Mom
I’m your ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb
Hello world, I’m your wild girl
I’m your ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb
Hey street boy, want your style
Your dead-end dreams don’t make you smile
I’ll give ya something to live for
Have ya, grab ya till you’re sore
Hello Daddy, hello Mom
I’m your ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb
Hello world, I’m your wild girl
I’m your ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Epigraph
Author’s Note
Foreword by Joan Jett
Chapter 1 - Diamond Dogs and Revelations
Chapter 2 - Rebel, Rebel
Chapter 3 - The Queen of Hate
Chapter 4 - Learning Experiences
Chapter 5 - The Orange Tornado
Chapter 6 - Cherry Bomb
Chapter 7 - “Welcome to the Runaways”
Chapter 8 - Mom’s News
Chapter 9 - Saying Good-bye
Chapter 10 - Highs and Lows
Chapter 11 - Touring
Chapter 12 - Kim Fowley’s Sex Education Class
Chapter 13 - The Road
Chapter 14 - Daddy’s Car
Chapter 15 - Snapshots of Europe
Chapter 16 - Greetings from Scotland Yard
Photographic Insert
Chapter 17 - Postcards from Nowhere
Chapter 18 - The Queens of Noise
Chapter 19 - The Procedure
Chapter 20 - Too Many Creeps
Chapter 21 - Live in Japan
Chapter 22 - The Last Straw
Chapter 23 - Beauty’s Only Skin Deep
Chapter 24 - One Hundred Ways to Fry a Brain
Chapter 25 - The Terrible Green Limousine
Chapter 26 - Killers and Clowns
Chapter 27 - Foxes
Chapter 28 - Battlefields
Chapter 29 - Annie and Me
Chapter 30 - Life in the White House
Chapter 31 - Marie Says Good-bye
Chapter 32 - The Twilight Zone
Chapter 33 - A New Life
Chapter 34 - The End of the Ride
Chapter 35 - This Side of Forever
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Copyright
About the Publisher
Author’s Note
This edition is based in part on Neon Angel by Cherie Currie with Neal Shusterman, published in 1989.
All incidents and dialogue are to the best of the author’s recollection and knowledge. Some identities were changed to protect the innocent, and in some cases, regrettably, the not-so-innocent.
Foreword
by Joan Jett
I met Cherie one night in the San Fernando Valley, at a club called the Sugar Shack, which had become the place to go, since Rodney’s had recently closed. Kim Fowley and I went there specifically to find a lead singer for the Runaways. I remember seeing Cherie and her twin sister, Marie. They were standing together—they were quite striking, and they definitely stood out.
Cherie had her hair in kind of a grown-out Bowie cut, and I picked right up on that. When Kim and I spoke to her about trying out for the band as a lead singer, she said yes, but the rest I won’t chronicle here, since it’s all in the book. The thing is, she got the job! For me, Cherie was a great lead singer, perfect for our band. “The Blond Bombshell”—she had total command of the stage. A little tough, a lot nasty.
We were always well-rehearsed, so the shows were tight. As I watched from my position to her right, Cherie was always very compelling. We were very close friends, too. Besides our own music in the band, we both loved Bowie and a lot of the same music. (There was plenty of disconnect about favorite music, too.)
When the Runaways went to Japan with a hit record, it was so thrilling, so big, so hysterical—and so different from America—it seemed like all we had dreamed of. We lost one of our members in Japan, and Cherie soon followed after we got home.
She had a big following, and was on a lot of magazine covers, so she figured she could do better on her own, or at least that’s what I thought she felt. When Cherie quit the Runaways, I was so pissed! She had bailed on the dream! I was very angry and hurt for several years after that. Of course, I never stopped loving the Runaways, and Cherie, too.
She left in 1977, and after that Cherie and I didn’t really know each other for nearly two decades. I’ve grown up a lot since then, and now I realize things happen the way they are supposed to happen. I’m not mad at Cherie anymore, either.
And during the past fifteen years or so, since we have been working on the business and legacy of the Runaways, we have rekindled our friendship. I must say, I really only knew a small part of Cherie. Neon Angel is a chronicle of a remarkable journey—the story of a remarkable woman who has an uncanny knack of reinventing herself—from singer to actor to drug counselor to physical trainer to mom to author to painter to chain-saw carver. Anyway, when Cherie and I recently got together to record our songs for the Runaways movie, it was like we never left. Thirty-two years had passed, but time stood still, and we never missed a beat.
While excelling at every turn, she has also exhibited an ironic flair for finding herself in dramatic situations.
So, to conclude, Cherie Currie—mother, uniquely devoted ex-wife, musician, versatile visual artist—is really so talented. (I still can’t believe Cherie carves wood with a chain saw, and is so good at it!) But what truly amazes me is what a fine, honest, introspective author she is—with an incredible tale about an incredible life, and a fascinating personal odyssey, as she lived it.
Joan Jett
January 2010
Chapter 1
Diamond Dogs and Revelations
September 8, 1974
My twin sister, Marie, and I looked uncharacteristically plain that night. In fact, we looked like any pair of normal fifteen-year-old girls from the Valley. A pair of blue jeans, our plainest, most boring blouses. No makeup, no nothing, but the “plain Jane” look was deliberate. Tonight was a special night, and the outfits were carefully chosen.
When we snuck out of the bedroom, the duffel bag slung casually over my shoulder, our mom sensed movement immediately and called out from the kitchen, “Girls? Is that you?”
“Yeah, Mom,” Marie called back as we headed
toward the front door without pausing, “it’s us. We’re just heading out . . .”
“Where are you going?” she called again, her voice betraying a hint of suspicion.
“Babysitting!” we chimed in union, before I added, “We told you already!”
Babysitting was what we told our mom whenever we were doing something that we knew she wouldn’t approve of. Babysitting was code for going to the nightclubs where we dressed outrageously and danced all night. Babysitting was code for smoking pot and drinking Mickey’s Big Mouth beer with the neighborhood kids. On this particular night, babysitting was code for a rock concert. The lie fell easily off my tongue as we pulled open the door and the murky San Fernando Valley air hit our faces, sweet with the scent of juniper and the promise of freedom. I was fifteen years old, and it felt like lying had become almost second nature recently. That sickly feeling I used to get with every half-truth or outright lie was now so mild, it was almost unnoticeable. Anyway, tonight I had bigger things on my mind than the white lies I told my mother to keep her blissfully unaware. Tonight was a special night: it had been marked in my calendar for months. Tonight was my first-ever David Bowie concert, and nothing on this earth was going to stop me from getting there.
The door closed behind us, and we crept into the night.
We started off walking casually down the block, in case Mom was peeping out from a kitchen window. After all, we wouldn’t have wanted to make her suspicious. I walked with the easy gait of someone who had nothing to hide. Marie was looking over her shoulder, creeping along the sidewalk like a fugitive on the run.
“Calm down, will you?” I hissed. “You look so nervous! Mom’s cool. She’s so busy with Wolfgang she won’t even suspect anything. We’re just babysitting, remember?”
Wolfgang was my mother’s new boyfriend. Wolfgang was German, and extremely wealthy. He was handsome I suppose—for an old guy—and always dressed in expensive tailored suits. He worked for the World Bank and traveled a lot. All I really knew about his work was that he made a lot of money doing it, and lived in Indonesia. When he was here in California, my mom seemed happy. When he was gone, she would be quiet and a little sad. I had the feeling Wolfgang disliked me, but that was okay with me. I disliked Wolfgang because Wolfgang was not my father, and he never would be.
“It’s not Mom I’m worried about,” Marie confessed, still looking over her shoulder at the empty suburban street behind us. “Its Derek.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh PLEASE! Stop going on about Derek!” I sighed.
Derek was Marie’s ex-boyfriend, and a prime, grade-A creep. Marie had been seeing him in the months since Dad left for good, and she had finally gotten around to dumping his ass a few weeks ago. Mom knew nothing about Derek while Marie was dating him, and it’s a good thing, too, because I’m sure she would have had him arrested, or banned Marie from ever leaving the house again if she’d gotten wind that her fifteen-year-old daughter was dating some sleazy old dude in his twenties. I have no idea what the hell Marie saw in Derek: he wasn’t handsome, he wasn’t charming; in fact, all he had going for him was that he owned a car. Marie was way too good for him. She’s was a really beautiful girl, and I used to feel hopelessly inferior to her, despite the fact that we were twins and most people claimed that they couldn’t tell us apart . . .
That’s why the whole Derek thing puzzled me. The whole idea was gross, and I reminded Marie of this whenever I got the chance. When Marie finally got rid of him, I was really happy about it. The downside was that ever since she dumped him, Derek was all that Marie seemed to talk about.
“Don’t ruin my night!” I begged as we saw the car idling a little farther down the block. “I don’t wanna hear about Derek, okay? We’re having fun tonight.”
“Okay,” Marie said, sounding unsure. “He just makes me nervous. He’s CRAZY, Cherie! I’m not kidding, sometimes he really freaks me out . . . I think he’s been following me.”
“I’m not surprised, Marie. He’s a freak! Why the hell did you even date him? You’d better not ruin tonight by talking about Derek.” I spat the word as if it was so distasteful that I could barely stand to have it in my mouth. “He’s lame. He sucks! Don’t waste your breath talking about that loser . . .”
At this, Marie finally smiled. As we stood next to the car, she finally conceded, “Yeah. You’re right. He does suck.” Then she smiled, all of the worry finally falling away from her pretty face.
I pulled the door open. My best friend, Paul, was behind the wheel. His eight-track was blasting the soundtrack of the evening: Diamond Dogs by David Bowie.“Hey, girls!” He laughed. “Jump in . . .”
Paul was our designated driver for the evening. He was seventeen and an only child. His parents gave him anything he wanted, including a yellow Camaro Sport with a black stripe down the side. It was Paul who’d introduced us to Bowie, glam rock, everything that had become the center of my universe. Paul was a strange introverted guy who was totally obsessed with David Bowie. He talked through his teeth, and had this weird phobia about never eating anything that he had touched. When we were at McDonald’s, he would eat every part of a french fry except for the part that his fingers came into contact with. And he had this strange, wheezy laugh that reminded me of Muttley from Wacky Races. Despite all of these quirks, I liked Paul: I thought he was cute; weird but cute. I guess he was handsome in a bizarre kind of way; he dressed and even looked a little like Bowie. Plus he had cool taste in music. I would have gone out with him if he had asked me to. He just never seemed interested. I sensed something uncomfortable between us whenever I got too close to Paul.
Uncomfortable really summed Paul up. I didn’t know too much about boys and how their minds worked back then, and it wasn’t until years later that I found out he was gay. He was one of the coolest guys I knew, my best friend back then. There was a time when Marie was my best friend, but over those past few months I’d been closer to Paul than to Marie, who had been sucked up into the vortex of Derek. Over the summer we had begun to slowly drift apart: Marie was hanging out with her own circle of friends, most of whom I thought didn’t like me. Tonight was typical behavior from her. We’d been talking about going to this Bowie concert for months, and now that the day had finally arrived, Marie was too busy worrying about her goony ex-boyfriend to enjoy herself.
“Jesus,” said Paul as we pulled away, “what’s with the frown, Marie?”
“I’m NOT frowning!” Marie screeched. “I’m just worried about Derek . . .”
I rolled my eyes at Paul, and he grimaced, well familiar with the ongoing saga of Marie and Derek. It was Paul who’d originally introduced us to all of the hot clubs in L.A. It was Paul who’d first brought us to Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco, a club on the Sunset Strip that was ground zero for glam rock in L.A. It was Paul who’d taken us to the Sugar Shack in North Hollywood—an under-twenty-one club where they played all the best new music, all of that amazing English glam that I loved: Bowie, Elton John, the Sweet, Mott the Hoople . . . The Sugar Shack had become a home away from home for me in those past few months, a place where I could forget about all of the problems I was having at home since Dad left, a place to have fun, dress up, and dance. And Rodney’s! Everybody was a star at Rodney’s, and the club was a frantic mix of young kids dressed in their most outrageous, sluttiest, sexiest outfits, groupies, faces from the glam scene, and the weird, older guys who’d congregate to ogle all of the barely teen jailbait staggering around the dance floor in revealing outfits and six-inch platform boots. Of course, that’s where Marie met Derek.
“Don’t worry about Derek.” Paul sneered. “He’ll be at Rodney’s tonight. Like always . . .”
“But—”
“Shut UP!” I yelled. “Derek, Derek, Derek! I don’t want to hear his name again tonight!”
We pulled into a run-down gas station on Ventura Boulevard. The attendant was a fat slob in grease-stained denim overalls chomping on an unlit cigar. We smiled our sweetest smiles, and asked
for the key to the bathroom. He looked us up and down, and with a grunt tossed it over to us. The key itself was tiny, but it was attached by a chain to a piece of two-by-four as big as my arm. We hurried around the corner and let ourselves into the bathroom.
Inside, the place was even worse than I’d imagined. The toilet was backed up with wads of paper, and the bowl was full to the brim with yellow water and God knows what else. The tiled floor was cracked and dotted with puddles of pee and dark smears of who knows what. Around the bare flickering lightbulb, flies swarmed and swirled. The mirror was cracked and filthy, but it made no difference to us: tonight, this was our dressing room. Using the tiny sink as a dressing table, we began our transformation.
“This place is really gross!” Marie shuddered, pulling out her red-glitter-covered jeans and her makeup case.
I said, “Uh-huh,” trying not to breathe through my nose.
We stripped down to our underwear, careful not to touch any of the disgusting surfaces in the place, well used to this routine by now. Piece by piece the old Cherie started to disappear. In her place, this new Cherie-thing was appearing, Cherie the glitter queen: fire-engine-red satin pants, a T-shirt with a purple glittery thunderbolt emblazoned across it, and silver five-inch platform space boots. I admired my look in the mirror: I was so bright, so shiny, that for a moment I forgot I was standing in this shitty, gross public restroom. As Marie applied her shocking-pink lipstick, I began the delicate process of gluing a string of rhinestones onto my eyelids with eyelash glue. Everything was borrowed from Mom’s makeup case. When I was done, I looked perfectly bizarre, an alien princess crash-landed in Southern California. It was not just a physical transformation; it was a mental one, too. When I was dressed like this, I finally felt at home in my own skin. I was not just plain old Cherie Currie, sweet little surfer girl from the Valley anymore; I was the Cherie-thing: something wild, untamed, and glamorous. I was my own creation, something monstrous, mysterious, and powerful.
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