Living Like a Runaway

A “fun, often hilarious” memoir by the queen of heavy metal and Runaways guitarist, packed with “plenty of colorful ’80s rocker stories” (Philadelphia Inquirer).

Wielding her signature black guitar, Lita Ford shredded stereotypes of female musicians throughout the 1970s and ’80s. Then followed more than a decade of silence and darkness—until rock and roll repaid the debt it owed this pioneer, helped Lita reclaim her soul, and restored the Queen of Metal to her throne. Fearless, revealing, and compulsively readable, Living Like a Runaway is the long-awaited memoir from one of rock’s fiercest survivors.

In 1975, she left home at sixteen to join the world’s first major all-female rock group, the Runaways—a pioneering band that was portrayed in a film starring Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning. Lita went on to become “heavy rock’s first female guitar hero” (Washington Post), a platinum-selling solo star who shared bills with the Ramones, Van Halen, Motley Crue, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Poison, and others—and who gave Ozzy Osbourne his first Top 10 hit. She was a bare-ass, leather-clad babe whose hair was bigger and whose guitar licks were hotter than any of the guys’.

Hailed by Elle as “one of the greatest female electric guitar players to ever pick up the instrument,” Lita spurred the meteoric rise of Joan Jett, Cherie Currie, and the rest of the Runaways. After the group’s 1979 breakup, her phenomenal talent on the fretboard carried her to tremendous individual success and established her as a “legendary metal icon” (Guitar World) and a fixture of the 1980s music scene who held her own after hours with Nikki Sixx, Jon Bon Jovi, Eddie Van Halen, Tommy Lee, Motorhead’s Lemmy, Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi (to whom she was engaged), and others.

Living Like a Runaway also provides never-before-told details of Lita’s personal story. Life as a woman in the male-dominated rock scene was never easy, a constant battle with the music establishment. But then, at a low point in her career, came a tumultuous marriage that left her feeling trapped, isolated from the rock-and-roll scene for over a decade, and—most tragically—alienated from her two sons. And yet, after a dramatic and emotional odyssey, Lita picked up her guitar and stormed back to the stage. As Guitar Player said in 2014 when they inducted her into their hall of fame of guitar greats: “She is as badass as ever.”

“Fearless. . . . A fast-paced read . . . and an inspiring one.” — Rolling Stone

Includes photos and a foreword by Dee Snider