It's one of rock's great, unsettled debates: Did the Runaways — the all-female late-'70s band recently celebrated in a movie of the same name — blaze the trail for other female rockers with their talent and gumption? Or did they actually set women back with their prefab posturing and jailbait imagery?
The Runaways' long-sidelined frontwoman, Cherie Currie, obviously sides with the New York Times headline that called them "the girls that kicked in rock's door."
"Remember: We weren't women," said Currie, who will perform in Minnesota for probably her first time ever as part of St. Paul's second annual Girls Got Rhythm Festival on Saturday. "We were 15- and 16-year-old teenagers, so we weren't really thinking of what we were or weren't doing for women.
"But I think there was a statement made by the fact that we did what we wanted to do — play rock music — regardless of whatever adversity or push-back we faced. And we faced a lot."
As retold in the 2010 movie "The Runaways," starring Dakota Fanning as Currie and Kristen Stewart as bandmate Joan Jett, the quintet was put together by a sleaze-generating impresario named Kim Fowley and sold to the world as sex-kitten rock 'n' rollers. Its signature song, "Cherry Bomb," was a play on Currie's name. The band imploded after nearly four years of unprecedented scrutiny and scorn and, eventually, drugs and infighting.
Largely based on Currie's autobiography, "Neon Angel," the movie also showed the Runaways as dedicated musicians and devout rock lovers — and thus a band worthy of celebrating at the prideful Girls Got Rhythm Fest, Currie believes. She could not remember if she performed in the Twin Cities back in the day. (The Runaways did play here in 1978, opening for the Ramones at the State Theatre, but that was after she left the band and Jett handled all the lead vocals.)
"Everyone thought we were a novelty back then, and understandably so," Currie said by phone recently from her home near Los Angeles. "When they saw the show, though, it would change their minds. For Joan and Lita and Sandy to be as good as they were at that age, that was something you had to sit up and take notice."
After the band split up in 1979, Jett and fellow guitarist Lita Ford went on to become two of rock's more successful female solo artists of the 1980s (sadly, drummer Sandy West died of cancer in 2006). Currie attempted a solo career but, as she now puts it, "I had a wildly different path laid out for me."