RUNQN-icon

Album num­ber two for the Runaways is a decid­edly dif­fer­ent affair from their rough and ready debut.  This time, producer/svengali Fowley led his young charges into the high-tech con­fines of Brother Studios (the Santa Monica record­ing facil­ity cre­ated by the Beach Boys) and spent more time on the music.  He also brought in a for­mi­da­ble engi­neer in the form of Earle Mankey, an ex-member of Sparks and a future mem­ber of Concrete Blonde.

Thus, it shouldn’t be sur­pris­ing that Queens Of Noise gives a seri­ous makeover to the Runaways sound.  The album-opening title cut clubs the lis­tener into sub­mis­sion with all the changes:  the gui­tars are thick­ened with echo, the drums are drenched in reverb and the vocal har­monies are multi-tracked to the heav­ens.  The end result makes it sound like everyone’s favorite teen-girl hard rock out­fit is swing­ing the Hammer of the Gods.

Thankfully, this changeover works.  The Runaways was com­posed of young ladies who dreamed of arena-sized rock star­dom and this pro­duc­tion style allows them to achieve the grandeur of those dreams.  It also feeds into an ele­ment of Mott The Hoople-style self-mythology at play within the grooves here: “Midnight Music” has Currie reach­ing out to her fel­low dream­ers in the audi­ence as the music behind her bal­ances its rock riffs with sul­try, echoed acoustic gui­tars and creamy vocal har­monies while “Born To Be Bad” is the group’s ulti­mate tough-chick anthem, boast­ing a killer, snarled cho­rus that gets amped up by stun-riffs from the gui­tarists and drum beats that hit like bomb blasts (it’s also got a spo­ken bridge that is the height of juvenile-delinquent melodrama).

“Born To Be Bad” is sung by Joan Jett, as is the album’s title track, and that under­lines another key ele­ment of this album — Queens Of Noise finds Jett prepar­ing to become the front­woman in the band.  Two other key cuts that high­light her grow­ing skills are “Hollywood” and “I Love Playing With Fire.”  The for­mer song is a charm­ing pop-glam item where Joan Jett lays out her plans for rock celebrity over a catchily-riffed tune that boasts great Jett-Currie vocal har­monies.  However, the lat­ter tune is the real gem, a stomp-rocker that deploys killer hooks at chorus-time.  The fusion of hard rock deliv­ery and pop smarts on these tracks ably fore­casts the high­lights of Jett’s solo career.

The only dud on dis­play with this album is its closer, “Johnny Guitar.”  This dreary, over­long blues-rocker is a spot­light num­ber for Lita Ford, who over­loads it with wanky gui­tar solo­ing.  It’s also the one song on the album where the pro­duc­tion is off: the sound is murky and buried in echoed, sug­gest­ing that Fowley didn’t care much for it.  Currie namechecks it as the worst Runaways record­ing in her auto­bi­og­ra­phy and it’s hard to argue with her on that point.

That said, “Johnny Guitar” is an easily-forgotten stum­bling block when one con­sid­ers how strong the rest of the album is.  It should have helped them break into the big leagues but that was unfor­tu­nately not in the cards for this hard-luck out­fit.  Currie would be gone by the next stu­dio album, never man­ag­ing to find the solo suc­cess she deserved.  Jett would keep the out­fit together for two more albums but never man­age to scale the charts or coun­ter­act the neg­a­tive hype they got from the rock press.  However, The Runaways live up to their dreams on Queens Of Noise and it’s worth hunt­ing down for any­one into the more cultish plea­sures of the 1970’s rock scene.