Every now and then there comes a time when everything lines up just right and great things happen in my life and this interview my friends, is one of those said moments. Lita Ford has been one of the most influential artists in music for the past 30 plus years. In the seventies, and at the rebellious age of 16, she was a member of the groundbreaking “all girl” group “The Runaways” that featured Lita, Cherie Curry and Joan Jett among others.
She blew up the music charts and MTV during the eighties and nineties with a string of hits; “Gotta Let Go,” “Lisa,” “Shot Of Poison,” “Hungry,” “Back To The Cave,” and the enormously successful smashes “Kiss Me Deadly” and “Close My Eyes Forever.” During this time she married “Nitro” vocalist Jim Gillette (who had major music success as well, with vocals that could break glass) and together they bought a house on a Caribbean island and took a much deserved time out (that ended up being 14 years) to raise their two boys and enjoy a more personal and private life together. Now after taking the break, she’s back with a new 15 track cd that’s crammed full of rockers like “Crave”, “Scream 4 Me,” “Patriotic S.O.B.” and the title track, “Wicked Wonderland.”
When the time came for our telephone interview, the phone rang, I answered it and it was her husband Jim apologizing to me because Lita was suffering from laryngitis and could barely warble a sound. But, instead of just cutting our interview short, Lita got on the phone and gave it a hell of a try. She had to stop and pass the phone back to Jim from time to time, where he picked up where Lita had left off and continued on sharing with me. Now comes the part where everything comes together. Because of Lita not being able to do the interview, Jim and Lita decided to invite me to their show in Columbus, Ohio to hang out and finish the interview in person! Yes, not only did I get to talk with two of my all-time music heroes…they invited me to hang out with them! Life is good!
PART ONE: Telephone Interview
Jim Gillette- Hi Troy, this is Jim Gillette, how are you doing man?
The Entertainment Nexus- Great, how are you doing?
JG- Good, are you ready to rock?
TEN- I’m ready if you guys are.
JG- Listen, I’m gonna have to help Lita cause she still has laryngitis. We went to the mountains and to make a long story short…she’s talking like a piece of toast. I’m gonna help her out cause the show must go on! Here she is:
Lita Ford- Hey Troy!
TEN- How are you?
LF- I sound like a piece of toast.
TEN- Do you want to do this some other time when you’re feeling better?
LF- No, no, I’m good. I just don’t have much of a voice. I might hand the phone to Jim here and there. We went up to the Rocky Mountains and we live at elevation sea level. So, we went up to the Rocky Mountains, which is about 10,000 ft. elevation and we got “altitude sickness.” So they put us in the emergency room. They pumped oxygen through our noses and gave me freakin laryngitis. (Laughs) “Damned if you…damned if you don’t.” My sons Rocco and James have it, so it’s pretty quiet around here. Nobody can scream…except Jim.
TEN- But he always could do that though.
LF- Yeah, no shit! Tell me about it.
TEN- So tell me about this new cd of yours.
LF- Oh, “Wicked Wonderland!” I’m really happy with this. It’s just something that we kind of accidentally put together. (Laughs) It wasn’t something that we had for fifteen years while we were livin on the island. We put together this album kinda in “the spur of the moment.” We started writing about a year ago…actually it was almost a year ago because it was September 19th…my birthday. I remember listening to the first track on my birthday. We put together our own “Wicked Wonderland” I guess you could say. Each song is written from the heart…written about our family…our love life…just our own “Wicked Wonderland.”
TEN- The packaging is over the top from what I’ve read.
LF- Yeah, that’s done by Rob Zombie’s bass player Piggy D who kinda has a “dark side” to him. He’s very detailed and intricate with everything that he does. I think it suits the music…what he’s done with the artwork. I don’t know…it just rocks. You can go online and look at the artwork on Myspace or Facebook.
TEN- There’s also a “Lita Mania” goin on too. There’s the movie theater gig and there’s something with Delta Airlines too?
LF- “Lita Mania” you got it! (Laughs) Jim is putting together this Delta Airlines thing. (Clears her throat) You know what, Troy? I’m gonna put Jim on and let him explain while I get a drink of water.
JG- Troy!
TEN- Tell me about this “Delta Airlines thing.”
JG- Well we got Delta in January and February and every flight in the U.S. will have a “15 minute Lita show” on the entertainment thing. (Turns away from the phone and asks; “What’s that?” He returns and says: “Lita’s sorta squeakin at me. (Laughs) Usually she’d be hollerin at me. Laryngitis has it’s advantages! (Laughs) She can’t yell at me! So, when you’re flyin on Delta in January and February, you’ll get to hear three songs and a bit of an interview. That should be pretty cool and we also have just about all of the movie theaters across the country in October and November will have the song; “Sacred” playing in the theater before the movie comes on and then some of them also will be playing it in the lobbies too.
TEN- You wrote that song for Lita didn’t you?
JG- Yes sir! It’s a pretty sweet song. Have you heard it? Did you get the cd or just the 5 song ep?
TEN- I have the ep.
JG- What do you think of it so far?
TEN- It’s like a “kick in the teeth, man!”
JG- I LOVE to hear you say that! (Laughs) Lita and I, when we were first talkin about this whole thing she said; “I don’t wanna do a wimpy, sandals and hairy arm pit album!” (Laughs) “I wanna come back and kick people’s ass!” I was like: “YES!” because that’s what I dig doin. So, we started writing and the songs are about the sex we have. (Laughs) She’s looking at me! (Laughs harder and looks at Lita) How do you want me to say it, sweetheart? (Back to me) It’s about our love life. It’s about what we do at night when the kids are asleep. It wasn’t planned or anything. It just started happening. We were just writing from our heart, ya know? When you’re married…when you have kids…when you’ve kinda had a normal life or as normal as we can be livin on “Gilligan’s Island” and what not…there’s not a whole lot to do on “Gilligan’s Island” except have a lot of sex. (Laughs)
TEN- And dig for clams!
JG- Actually it’s “Gillette’s Island” but if you’ve ever seen “Gilligan’s Island” that’s what it’s like. Hey, Lita’s back!
LF- I’m sorry Troy.
TEN- That’s ok. I feel bad for you.
LF- I’m not doin too good today.
TEN- Like I said if you’d rather wait and do this some other time…
LF- Oh, I’m cool really, as long as you don’t mind throwin the phone back and forth between me and Jim.
TEN- It’s a bonus for me!
TEN- You have a big tour coming up too.
LF- Yeah, we’re gonna tour with Queensryche. We’re gonna do some shows with them and they’re my band…so to speak. We’ll do some jamming together and they rock so it’s gonna be awesome! We’re really lookin forward to that. That will last about a month and we gotta tour bus and we’ll follow them around and do some shows. (Laughs)
TEN- A lot of your songs, in the past had “sexual overtones” to them. With “Wicked Wonderland” it seems that you and Jim have actually written “The perfect sound track for having sex.”
LF- (Laughs) I guess so. I guess it is! It’s our own “Wicked Wonderland.”
TEN- I love the line: “Whatever you want, the kinkier the better. It’s only kinky once baby, go get the leather!”
LF- It’s only kinky once, go get the leath-a!
TEN- Looking at your pictures on your Myspace, it seems that the songs are autobiographical.
LF- A lot of them are. Hold on I’m gonna put Jim on again, bear with me. My voice is going in and out.
JG- Autobiographical? They’re very autobiographical! We wrote about us. We wrote about our relationship as husband and wife. Sex is a big part of our marriage. We were talking about this on another interview. It was a live interview on the radio and I don’t know if this guy was a preacher or what but he was trying to give me some shit about it. And I’m like; “Wait a minute. Doesn’t the Bible say for a husband to enjoy his wife?” and he was like: “Yeah, but…but…a” and he’s messing up. I said: “Sir, you do realize that we are a married couple?” He was like “Yeah, but…but…” It was like he wanted so bad because we were so heavy metal or hard rock…to try and stir the shit. But he couldn’t because there’s nothing wrong with a husband and wife enjoying themselves. We’ve got one rule here: “No other people and no barnyard animals!” We figure if we don’t go there…were not breakin any bad rules! (Laughs)
TEN- Will you be taking your boys out on the road with you?
JG- Of course, we don’t go anywhere without them. That was one of the things that we have been waiting for…the boys to get a little older…for them, to be able to enjoy it and to be able to learn from it and to be able to grow as people. They’re old enough now that they dig it…they love it…they enjoy themselves…they like the guys in the band. James is starting to play guitar now and he’s kicking ass! It’s kinda spurred him on. Both of the boys have been training to be U.F.C. fighters since they were two years old. They are pretty serious on that. They have learned jujitsu from the Gracies. The box now and their coach is Howard Davis Jr., the 1976 Olympic Champion. The ’76 boxing team had Tommy “The Hitman” Hearns and Howard was the boxer of the year. The guy is a beast and the kids learn the box from him. They’re very into that. We didn’t push them to do music ya know? We always figured they would and we knew that they would when they felt right. The more shows that we started doing the more interest James showed on the guitar. Now he spends probably three to four hours a day on the guitar. It’s really cool, we love that.
TEN- Is there any chance that he has the same vocal pipes that you do?
JG- Ya know what’s funny? We recorded a song when he was 8 years old and I swear to you man, he hit a note that I’ve never hit! It was unbelievable and when he was born he let out a scream and the doctor said: “Oh my God! I’ve never heard a voice like that!” I was like: “YES!” So yeah he’s got the pipes and right now he’s not doing much with them. He’s honing the guitar but when he’s ready…I’ll work with him. I love Lita’s style with her vocals. Ya know, she’s not Mariah Carey or anything but she’s got a really recognizable voice like when Tom Petty sings. When Lita sings, you know it’s freakin Lita. It’s funny, he had never sung anything before and his phrasing and his attitude with his voice is kinda like Lita’s. It’s kinda like he has the best of both of us. He has all of Lita’s feisty energy and then in the bridge he belts out that note like a damn teakettle on helium. It was awesome!
TEN- On Lita’s Myspace profile, under the heading “Influences” it says: “Drug Free Family!”
JG- Well, we don’t do drugs! We think it’s kinda cool for people to know that because so many people assume when we move into a neighborhood or go to the island and people see us they just automatically think that your druggies or drug dealers or whatever. They think of these weird pictures because of our appearance. Then, when people get to know us they’re like: “They’re not druggies, their normal people. A little freaky but they’re kinda normal. (Laughs) Lita told me to put that on there, which was her idea.
TEN- How did you become involved with the Gracies? Those are awesome pictures on Lita’s Myspace.
JG- I started doing jujitsu and the Valente brothers grew up with Helio Gracie, which is Royce Gracie’s dad who just passed away. He was 95 and what a killer guy. I got to spar with him a few times and it was like sparring with Yoda, man. It was insane. We became great friends and I became a sparring partner for Royce which is really cool. It was a real honor to be chosen to spar with them. He was training to fight Akebono. Akebono was the grand champion sumo wrestler in Japan and he was like 490 pounds. A huge guy! Royce looked like a little stick man. The Gracies wanted to get a lot of big guys and I think at the time I was 260 and I was a little more than half of what the guy weighed Royce was going to fight. There were two other guys, one weighed 300 and the other weighed 350. We would all take turns sparring with Royce. We’d be fresh and we would try to get him tired. It was great, Royce is a beast. He feels like you’re fighting an octopus. It was awesome!
TEN- What’s a “typical day” for the Gillettes when you live on a Caribbean island?
JG- Lita and the boys wake up and we’ll have breakfast and then I’ll get on the computer to start doing work. Lita and the boys will go out on the beach. She’ll walk the beach and the boys will be snorkeling next to her. The dogs are running the beach. They’ll come in after an hour and the boys will do school. Lita teaches the boys school. We’ll all have lunch together and then the boys will go out and play. They have four wheelers and stuff like that that they drive all over the island. Lita will be getting dinner ready. When we are on the island, she will make bread from scratch. REALLY from scratch; “Grind the wheat scratch.” It’s insanely delicious! She makes this damn banana bread. I go nuts over the banana bread! Then when I get off work, I’ll train the boys for an hour or two in jujitsu. Then we’ll just kick back and watch a silly kid’s movie at night. We don’t have TV but we have a whole bunch of DVDs. We don’t have TV on the island so you’ve got to keep yourself occupied. The kids will fish pretty much everyday. They can snorkel and get lobster and conch. We have a lot of fruit trees. They’ll pick some fruit or vegetables for Lita. It’s pretty cool and it’s a lot different than I think people picture. Have you seen the movie “Nim’s Island?” That’s what it’s like. Lita always tells our friends that it’s like “Nim’s Island”. People just don’t get it. No, there’s nothing! There are palm trees, lizards, lobster and conch. (Laughs) Oh, and rats. We love it. If something bad went down with the world, our boys know how to take care of themselves. They can hunt, they can fish, and they can grow their own food. They know what to do. I think most people think that harvesting food is going to the grocery store. Our boys know that not all food comes in boxes and is neatly placed on shelves. Sometimes you have to dive down 30 feet and look under a rock and there’s a nice 8 pound lobster sittin there for you.
TEN- That has to be paradise!
JG- You know for us, it is paradise but some people…it would drive nuts. Some people need Starbucks coffee. Some people need malls and McDonald’s to swing by on the way home. Well we do have some sex toys. We shipped those down. (Laughs) Lita’s sittin here whispering stuff to me as I’m talkin. (Laughs more) We have what makes us happy there. We’re self-sufficient. We don’t need anybody or anything and that’s the way we like it. We are a very close family and only have a handful of friends and we’re good. Lita said that our friends would be our dogs. (Laughs) We love it and a lot of people wouldn’t want to get their hands dirty. They wouldn’t want to go pull bananas right off the tree or grab peppers right off of the vine.
TEN- So you grow your own foods and everything right there?
JG- Yeah, we’ve got bananas, papayas, oranges, lemons, limes. Oh, the oranges are gone, the hurricane got them. We have peppers, sometimes we have watermelon, tomatoes and we have coconuts for days!
TEN- How big is the island?
JG- The island is about 40 square miles and there is roughly 1500 people on the island but they live on the other side of the island. Our side of the island is pretty desolate. We will walk the beach and our footprints will be the only footprints on the beach. Most days we might see two or three cars. That’s it.
TEN- So you guys own half of the island?
JG- We own a lot of it yeah. (Laughs) We are very blessed and very fortunate to be able to do that. You know it’s funny, I think that’s why this album came out like it did. This album came from our hearts…ya know? We don’t need this album, we don’t need to do music and we don’t need to do any of it. We’ve got our own little paradise and were just fine kicking back. I think because of that comfort of knowing that we didn’t have to do this, we just kinda did whatever we wanted to. I think that when you’re concerned about what’s going on or you’re concerned about if it is going to sell a lot or you’re concerned about the suits that are telling you how to be cool or how to be acceptable or how to get on the radio or whatever the labels always do…it messes with your head. We were able to just rock and not worry about it. We’re the record company, we’re the management company. We hope people love it…we love it. But, if they don’t…we’ve got our island. (Laughs) We’ve got a life. Nobody in a suit is gonna scream at us. It’s just us and we said: “Hey, we’re going to make a cool, hard rockin, kick ya in the teeth, honest from the heart album and if it works, great. If not, we’re going to the island!” Hey listen, I’m gonna throw Lita back on real quick, we have another interview to do. I’m really sorry that you didn’t get to talk more with her. I hope you didn’t mind talkin to me?
TEN- Absolutely not, I’ve been a fan of yours too!
JG- Awesome and we would be happy to do another one sometime soon if you’d like to reschedule another one.
TEN- I tell you what. You guys are coming to Columbus and we can hook up there.
JG- Let me give you my e-mail address and you shoot me an e-mail a couple days before the show and we’ll make it happen. It’s just gonna be the four of us on the bus so you can come on the bus and hang out and finish the interview on the bus. Ok, here’s Lita, she wants to say goodbye.
LF- I think I can handle saying goodbye. I’m so sorry, I apologize.
TEN- No problem we’ll finish this when I see you. You take care of your voice.
LF- Great, I’m looking forward to it. Thanks, I’m going to try…God bless!
PART TWO: In Person Interview
TEN- How’s the tour going so far?
LF- It’s amazing. It took a little adjusting. Queensryche are used to using the in ear monitors and we’re not so that’s what took a bit of adjusting for me to get those right. And now that we’ve nailed it…they’re fantastic and I’m in love with them! Not Queensryche…the in ear monitors. I’m in love with Queensryche too. They are great guys!
TEN- How did you become involved with this tour?
LF- Jim put the whole thing together so you really need to ask Jim…him and Susan Tate.
JG- I just had a wild hair up my ass! I had a silly idea and talked to our agent and talked to Susan and everybody liked it so it worked out.
TEN- Tell me again about your new cd: “Wicked Wonderland.”
LF- “Wicked Wonderland” is a 15 song cd written pretty much from the heart and the crotch. (Smiles) We wrote it at home…Jim and I and a record producer out of Hollywood, CA. It’s not taken from anything and I have to say this because it’s not something that we wrote to try to sound like anybody or try to fit in a certain niche. We just wrote the songs. We just wrote what we wanted to write.
JG- We don’t have TV or radio on the island so we didn’t know what was cool. If we wanted to fit in…we wouldn’t know how to anyway! (Laughs) We had no idea what was the “flavor of the day” and what was cool. It made it kinda cooler because we could do whatever we wanted.
TEN- It’s blowing up the charts!
JG- On CMJ we jumped to #9…man it was awesome!
LF- We’re staying at #1 on Amazon’s Heavy Metal chart. We’d fall down to #5 and then go back up to #1 and then we fall down to #3 and then back up to #1 so were sorta hanging around that #1 area which is AWESOME! I wanna thank the fans for letting us do that. “Wicked Wonderland” is a song that we wrote as “leaders” not “followers.” That’s why it’s so special to us.
TEN- When Jim and I spoke on the phone we discussed how a lot of your songs in the past have “sexual overtones” in them and that with the new cd, it seems like you’ve actually written the perfect soundtrack for having sex.
LF- YEAH!
JG- It’s us! We’d be writing…it was like taking notes. It would be a Wednesday and we were discussing what we did on Tuesday! (Laughs)
LF- He would say to me; “Honey, I’ve got a great idea for a song called: “Push” and I would say to him: “That’s what I said to you last night!” And he would say: “Exactly!” and I would say; “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
JG- You couldn’t get more red than that, man! (Laughs) We were a little freaked out about it in the beginning. We we’re like; “We’re kinda tellin the whole world exactly what we do. Our private life ain’t private no more!”
LF- Tell them about Stockroom.com.
JG- We were customers of Stockroom.com for many years…we like their goodies.
LF- “Adult toys.”
JG- I call them up and I say: “Hey, we did a song with Twisted Sister and Lita’s doing a duet with Dee and they’re making a Christmas video.” I said; “You can look at your records we’re customers…we use your stuff…could you make us a really cool “bondaged out, Christmassy” outfit for this video?”
LF- “Bondage/arrest” (Laughs)
JG- Yeah, red with a leather Santa hat! (Laughs) So they came through for us and we’ve kind of buddied up with them since then.
LF- This stuff is insane! If you go on their web site you can see the toys and clothes. The clothes take a good half hour to put them on because they’re so tight!
JG- That’s just cause I’m putting them on! (Laughs)
LF- You can tear them and if you tear them…you have to throw them away. You have to oil yourself up…you’re soaked in oil first. (Sticking her leg out and putting her hands around her ankle and then working her hands up her leg in short intervals) Then you have to pull it and pull it and pull it and like 30 minutes have gone by and you’re only this far. (Puts her hand on her calf)
JG- It reminds me of a snake except instead of slithering out of it’s skin…it’s putting it on.
LF- Then you gotta get your arms into it and the zipper goes all the way from the front…all the way through the crotch…all the way up the back. You have to make sure that it’s on right because you don’t want the zipper to bust! (Laughs) Then over that, there’s a harness that goes over it and goes around your neck…around your boobs…down your waist…through your crotch…it’s really sexy!
JG- That thing is called a “Slave Harness” and we use that at night!
LF- There are things that you can chain your wrists and ankles and your neck to a four post bed with.
TEN- I’m completely lost now. I’ve lost my train of thought. (Everybody laughs) You’re new release is a lot heavier than some of your previous albums. Do you think it’s heavier because it’s a direct result of how much emotion that you put into the new cd?
LF- We’re just heavy fanatic freaks. We just like heavy music and “Wicked Wonderland” is an album that I’ve always wanted to make. It’s not “Kiss Me Deadly” it’s not “Close My Eyes Forever” and they’re great songs…God love em. If you want to hear them, go buy them. We’ve already done those songs, ya know? This is 2009/2010 and we wanted to make something that’s more…
JG- 2009/2010 (Laughs)
LF- I love heavy music. I don’t like the kind of music that sounds like you’re puking. It’s like: “Oh yeah, let’s sing along to that. No, I don’t think so!” I just like heavy rock-and-roll…I grew up on it and that’s what I enjoy playing.
TEN- What other bands do you listen to nowadays?
LF- I can tell you the cds that are in my truck. I do listen to “Wicked Wonderland” that’s number one. Other than that, I listened to the Ramones: “They beat on the brat with a baseball bat…oh yeah!” and I dedicate it to my kids. I like Metallica’ s “Black” album…we’ve got some old Alice Cooper and old AC/DC. James listens to Def Leppard…Guns ‘N Roses…
JG- “Appetite era” Guns ‘N Roses.
LF- But, none of it is really a favorite except for “Wicked Wonderland” and the only reason we put it on is that we home school our kids and I want our kids to learn from the classics. I don’t want them to learn what’s “today.” I don’t even know what’s “today.” “Today” is sucked off of what was yesterday and yesterday was sucked off of what was the day before that. That’s where I want them to know…what happened “then.” I want to teach them the classics. They know who Led Zeppelin is. They know who AC/DC is and that’s what I listen to.
TEN- How does it make you feel after taking such a long time out that when you came back the fans are more rabid than ever?
LF- (Long pause, smiles and her eyes start to well up) I’m sorry, I’m getting choked up. It’s AMAZING! It’s absolutely amazing! When we played Rocklahoma everybody was saying to me; “Lita, there’s somebody here of a higher power. The vibe in the place was freaky. It was like the President of United States or the Queen of England was there. It was really…really freaky and I was walking around going; “Wow, I wonder who it is? I can’t wait to find out” and somebody walked up to me and said; “It’s you, you asshole!” (Laughs) I thought: “What? It’s me? Really? WOW! How cool is that? I haven’t been around for 15 years and this is the comeback I get!” I couldn’t have asked for more.
TEN- Why do you think that there’s such resurgence in popularity of the hard rock bands of the ‘80s?
LF- I don’t know. I really don’t know. I think people are finally coming to their senses. The people that were young and listened to these “grunge acts” and listened to these bands that look like they should be working at a bank instead of being “rock-and-rollers” I think are finally coming around and they’re listening to Heavy Metal music. There is a stage where there was Punk Music: there was “The Sex Pistols” and there was “The Runaways”… “Blondie” and then there was “Heavy Metal”. Then Heavy Metal died off and then came the “Grunge” music: Nirvana and Pearl Jam…both of who I love. But then it started to go to a different extreme. It started to get to the point where it was ridiculous. It was like: “You don’t even dress up. You don’t even look like anybody. You don’t even sound like anybody.” This is my opinion and if nobody likes it…they can kiss my ass! This is my opinion and every asshole is entitled to their opinion! Now, I think that that era is dying off and the Heavy Metal era is coming back again. We’re getting the classics back again. We’re getting our AC/DCs and our Led Zeppelins and our Lita Fords and our Queensryches…they’re comin back again. It’s like Heavy Metal…Punk…Heavy Metal…Grunge…Heavy Metal…then what? I don’t know what…Goth?
TEN- How has the music industry changed since you took your timeout?
JG- How hasn’t it changed? Every single thing is different. Nothing is the same. We used to spend 2 grand a day in a recording studio. That sucked! Not only because of the $2000 a day but also for stuff that you don’t think of. When you’re sick…you still go in and record because you’re going to lose $2000 that day if you don’t. If the vibe is not there…you try and push through it and try to make it happen even if that’s not happening. For this cd…if she wasn’t in the mood or the vibe wasn’t there it’s like: “Ok, go in the house and we’ll do it tomorrow.” It was awesome because we didn’t have any money to lose and we could just get those magical moments ya know? If we just weren’t feeling the magic we didn’t do it. Record companies…they blew up. Dumbasses! Greedy bastards! Well, where are they now? They’re going down the tubes…they’re nothin. They’re “powerless pieces of shit!”
LF- YES! And so they should be!
JG- Listen, everybody’s confused right now…nobody knows what to do. Musicians/bands/labels/managers…we’re all kinda freaking out like we don’t know what to do. But at the same time, there are kids that are 16 years old and they put their songs up on Youtube and they will have a million people look at that thing. You could never have done that 20 years ago. So there’s good, there’s bad, there’s different, there’s changing, there’s evolving. It’s cool because, man, there’s so many good things and yeah there are some bad things…everybody’s ripping it off and downloading it for free. I think it’s coming to the point where you’re not going to have albums anymore…which kinda sucks because we like the old school packaging. You saw the packaging for the cd right?
TEN- Absolutely!
JG- We’ve got vinyl…we’ve got a picture disc vinyl coming out…we like that. I think that you will always have that like a “collector’s addition” thing instead of trying to sell a million of them; you press 5000 of them as “limited collectors’ additions.” I think everything else is going to be via the computer…ya know? I think that bands that would never have gotten a chance 20 years ago…they get a chance today because they can throw crap up on the Internet just as easily as “Whoever Records.” That’s what killed the record company. You know, Protools. We’ve got Protools…so does every other person that wants to do music. We don’t need the labels’ money to make an album. Protools put the labels out of business or they helped. We don’t need to spend 2000 bucks a day! I remember meeting some guy from a band…Tool I think…15 years ago and they had just decided that they weren’t going to go into a studio to record, they were gonna buy their own studio. I asked: “Well how much are you gonna spend?” and he told me “Fifty grand, man.” I said “Fifty grand? And he said: “Yeah, we got $150,000 from the label and were going to spend $50,000 of that on a recording studio and guess what? We’ll have that recording studio forever!” I don’t remember who it was but he was really excited about that and that got me thinkin. When we decided to do this cd…straight to the ol’ Protools! (Laughs) We were recording with a friend of ours and he was in California and we’re in the Caribbean and we’re zapping stuff through the Internet. It was killer! We wouldn’t have done this album like the old way. There’s no way…no. There is no way that she would’ve locked herself up in a regular recording studio. The kids would have went nuts.
LF- They were nuts anyway! (Laughs)
JG- No, you know what I mean. It wouldn’t have happened.
TEN- How much of an impact to you think MTV had on your career?
LF- MTV? (Long pause) MTV gave it to me. I was one of the first to have a video on MTV…“Gotta Let Go.” I was all over MTV. And then they were one of the first to take it away.
JG- “MTV giveth and MTV taketh away!”
LF- Exactly!
JG- They were another one of those entities that had the power. If MTV liked ya…you are golden. If MTV didn’t like you…you were shit! Boom, just that quick!
LF- That’s exactly right.
JG- Now what are they? They’re like a frickin…
TEN- A reality show channel.
JG- Yeah…they don’t have any music on there. It’s a joke!
LF- We don’t watch MTV. I hate MTV!
TEN- VH1 Classic is about the only thing going for them.
JG- Did you see us on “That Metal Show?”
TEN- Yeah!
JG- That was funny wasn’t it! (Laughs)
LF- VH1 Classic are human beings…ya know. They are…they’re good people! I had a video out at the time called; “Playin With Fire” and MTV wouldn’t play it so that video went straight in the toilet. It was disgusting because that video was nominated for a Grammy. I was up for a freakin Grammy and they wouldn’t play the video. I was nominated against Melissa Etheridge for: “Best Female Rock Vocal Performance” and MTV wouldn’t play it.
JG- Yeah but guess what? It doesn’t matter anymore. You don’t have to be on MTV. (Laughs)
TEN- With all of the “Lita Mania” going on…with Delta Airlines and the movie theater promotions and the tour, you seem a lot happier than you were back in the ‘80s. It seems that you are more of a person than a product and more accessible. Did you have much pressure from the record companies back then to keep putting out hit after hit?
LF- OH YEAH… “Lita, write us another: “Kiss Me Deadly.” It’s like: “I can’t! You can’t write another song like that!” Then they would tell me; “Ok, then play it backwards!” Literally that’s what they would say. Ok, it’s not the same song. I’ll play it backwards but it’s not the same song…ya know. “What do you want me to do? I’ll try my hardest to write another hit like: “Kiss Me Deadly.” They would put you with different songwriters…they put you with different people who come up with different ideas just to come up with another; “Kiss Me Deadly.” During that time at the label, we had a wonderful president at the record company who was a HUGE Lita Ford fan. The vice president that worked under him was a huge Lita Ford fan. All of the people who worked underneath him were huge Lita Ford fans and they helped me. They helped push “Kiss Me Deadly” and helped push “Close My Eyes Forever” and they made them come to life. Then something happened…I don’t know exactly what, but something happened at the record company and the head of the label got pushed out. They replaced him with a “country music guy.” This country music guy didn’t know anything about rock-and-roll. So the vice president quit and when he quit…everybody underneath him quit. Everybody quit and all of a sudden I was faced with a completely different record company.
JG- They brought in the “Nashville crew.”
LF-They brought in the Nashville crew and on his own stationary, in his own handwriting the guy wrote me a letter and sent it to my house. It said; “Lita, I’m so sorry. You are one kick ass lady but we don’t know what to do with you.” signed, blah, blah, blah. I still have that letter to this day. After that letter is when I got nominated for a Grammy.
I thought: “How did they find you? You don’t even know what you’re doing! You don’t know your job!” They had paid off the rock-and-roll president and got rid of him and replaced them with this bozo. Maybe if I had been Shania Twain I might have stood a chance. I was at the height of my career at that point and they rubbed out the president of my record label! Today, were not dependent on these people. Today we don’t need these people. Today we have ourselves and fuck everybody else! We do what we wanna do, when we wanna do it. That’s one reason why we don’t listen to radio and we don’t watch MTV. We play what we wanna hear. I think what we wanna hear is what the fans wanna hear.
TEN- How did you become involved with the game “Brutal Legend?”
LF- That’s awesome! “Brutal Legend” is a gift from God.
JG- They wrote to our Myspace and I think that they didn’t think they would get a reply back. They were like: “We don’t know how to get ahold of you any other way.”
LF- They were like kids.
JG- So we checked them out and it was real. Tim Schafer, the creator of the game and an awesome, awesome guy and is a huge “Metal” fan. Have you seen the soundtrack? It’s killer man! They spent millions on that soundtrack! So we checked them out and he was real so we said: “Of course, absolutely!” We recorded at the house when they were on the phone. We were talking to Tim and I said: “Ya know, were doing an album right now. You need any songs for the soundtrack?” He said: “That would be killer!” I said: “Dude, we got a track that we haven’t written the vocals for it yet but it’s heavy as hell.” He said; “That sounds perfect for this! Dude, can you send it to me?” I e-mailed it to him like five minutes later and he called me and said: “Dude! That tracks killer!” I said: “Listen, just write out a few paragraphs and explain the game for us.” We wrote those lyrics for the game; “Crawling through the Sea of Black Tears” and in the game there is the “Sea of Black Tears” so we got to put in little things like that. It was great!
LF- Yeah and I’m the Queen in the game!
TEN- Tell me something disturbing about yourself that you’d never revealed before in an interview.
JG- I love to eat my wife’s toes! (Laughs) I go down on her toes and I swear sometimes she is like: “Well alright already…let’s get on with it!” Alright, everybody’s blushing now!
I really want to thank Jim and Lita for sharing a slice of their life with me, their son James for the taking the cool pictures during the interview, their son Rocco for the guitar pic. You guys don’t know how much that all means to me! I also want to thank Elaine Schock and especially Terry Wang both at Shock Ink. for setting up the interview and being so cool with me.
For more information on Lita please visit www.litaxx.tv
For more information on Shock Ink. Please visit www.shockink.com
For exclusive photos of Jim and Lita, visit the “Showing Some Love For TEN” gallery.