THE RUNAWAYS — S/T: Neon Angels Shining In The Danger Zone

From the sec­ond they hit the pop­u­lar con­scious­ness, the Runaways were buried neck-deep in con­tro­versy.  Were they Monkees-style pop pup­pets or the hard-rocking real deal?  Did they rep­re­sent an aggres­sive tough-chick style of fem­i­nism or were they just play­ing into male fan­tasies?  Were they pas­sion­ate about rock or was they rid­ing a wave of hype to become stars?  Once all the con­tro­versy is stripped away, one thing is obvi­ous: the Runaways recorded one of the great­est hard-rock debut albums of all time.

The Runaways comes out of the cor­ner swing­ing on the open­ing cut.  “Cherry Bomb” is the group’s anthem, a dec­la­ra­tion of eman­ci­pated, man-eating sex appeal that remains as brac­ing and pow­er­ful as it was in 1976.  Lead vocal­ist Cherie Currie sings it like she means it, affect­ing a husky-throated style that glides from a las­civ­i­ous alto-croon to an assertive rebel yell.  Joan Jett and Lita Ford keep the song’s assault rolling for­ward with chug­ging riffs while the rhythm sec­tion of Jackie Fox and Sandy West give the song an unstop­pable stomp-beat.  Whether or not it’s a male fan­tasy doesn’t mat­ter.  It’ll roll right over you before you have the chance to reg­is­ter your objections.

The rest of the album con­tin­ues in a sim­i­larly hard-charging style:  “You Drive Me Wild” fea­tures Jett tak­ing the mic for a swing­ing bit of blues-boogie sleaze wor­thy of AC/DC and “American Nights” rides its stutter-riffed melody into hard rock nir­vana, par­tic­u­larly dur­ing the “every­body — wanna party” sing-along sec­tion.  The ladies also knock out a charm­ing cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Rock & Roll”: they strip down the cen­tral riff until it reaches a hard-rock assertive­ness, rebuild it around a cowbell-spiked beat and add in a call-and-response ele­ment to the “it’s all right” chorus.

In true hard-rocker style, there are no bal­lads to speak of on this album.  The clos­est the group gets to any­thing mel­low is “Lovers,” a song that off­sets its tough verses with a sleekly-harmonized cho­rus that shows off the pop hooks lurk­ing beneath the heavy gui­tars.  The group also work in a per­sonal ele­ment on “Is It Day Or Night,” where the lyrics hint at the weari­ness felt dur­ing the rare quiet moments of their hard-driving lifestyle, and “Secrets,” where their tough deliv­ery is revealed to be a mask for secretly sen­si­tive dream­ers who make up the group.

However, the real killer on The Runaways is its epic final track, the amaz­ing “Dead End Justice.”  This seven-minute garage-rock operetta fea­tures Currie and Jett push­ing their thes­pian skills to the limit as they act out the teen ver­sion of a women-in-prison movie.  The plot­line has Currie get­ting sent to juvie in the open­ing min­utes, where she meets a vet­eran tough essayed by Jett and the two plot an escape that rep­re­sents the “jus­tice” of the title.  The end result is a delight­fully hard-boiled affair that sounds like Alice Cooper circa School’s Out record­ing a sound­track for Born Innocent.

The Runaways fur­thers ben­e­fits from a focused, con­sis­tent sound.  The gui­tars are heavy enough to keep with con­tem­po­rary fare, with Ford and Jett show­ing the knack for tough lit­tle riffs that would fuel their sub­se­quent solo careers.  It’s also worth not­ing that West is a fan­tas­tic drum­mer, a real can-basher who keeps the album rolling ever-forward with ener­getic, unpre­ten­tious and occa­sion­ally quite inven­tive drum­ming (favorite bit: the Burundi-goes-glam fill that opens “Lovers” and acts as its anchor).  Currie and Jett’s vocals have a sur­pris­ingly level of author­ity, con­fi­dently mix­ing in play­ful ele­ments of the fem­i­nine to off­set their over­all assertive approach.  Finally, Kim Fowley’s no-frills pro­duc­tion is exactly what the album needs, giv­ing it a nice sense of imme­di­acy that matches the urgency of the tunes and delivery.

In short, The Runaways is a killer from start to fin­ish and a rare case where the hype is actu­ally the truth.  If the idea of girls with gui­tars thrills you, this album is an essen­tial purchase.