"Something had attached itself to me."
Currie, soaked in fake blood, performs "Dead End Justice" at The Starwood | source
Punk was not born - it was built. The musical movement stripped away the glitter and glitz of glam rock, hacked off the bright colors and sitar solos of psych rock, and returned to the basic structure built by the legendary rockers of the fifties. Punks peeled away the theatrics in favor of the basics, tacking on a cut-throat edge and political awareness to create something entirely new. It was an expression of youthful rebellion, led by leather-clad icons like The Ramones and The New York Dolls, bursting to life in the dingy streets and alleys of New York City and London. And yet, somewhere in the eye of the storm, there stood a sixteen-year-old, bleach-blonde surfer girl from California.
At just fifteen years old, Cherie Currie was plucked out of The Sugar Shack (a popular night club for teens) and thrust into the tumultuous world of rock and roll. With her thin frame and shiny blonde hair, freshly hacked off to emulate her hero David Bowie, she caught the eye of one Kim Fowley. Fowley took note of Currie’s pretty face and air of tough bravado and hatched his plan to make this prima donna a star. He took on the role of puppet master, pulling Currie's strings and pairing her with a guitarist he knew, sixteen-year-old Joan Jett. Aesthetic opposites, Jett and Currie were like yin and yang.
Currie & Fowley | source
Jett and Currie's friendship would be put to the ultimate test with the formation of their band, The Runaways. Powered by fierce guitar and heavy drums, The Runaways were Fowley's answer to a question no one had posed: How does one get men to drool over teenage girls openly? He flipped the script and put girls who might otherwise be seen as groupies behind the instruments. This group of girls, however, was not composed of dainty flowers willing to obey every command. The Runaways were full-blooded punks with an insatiable desire to break the rules. Currie took on the role of lead vocalist, while Jett took on rhythm guitar. Rounding out the lineup was drummer Sandy West, lead guitarist Lita Ford, and bassist Jackie Fox - all three were just sixteen.
Fowley trained the girls in a makeshift rock and roll boot camp, teaching them to deal with the abuse they would be sure to deal with by abusing them himself. He hurled beer bottles and soda cans at their heads while they rehearsed, screaming obscenities until he was red in the face. He poked and prodded at their insecurities, he taught them the best way to smash their guitars and drumsticks over the heads of hecklers, and, to ensure they would never revolt against him, he pinned the girls against eachother. To this day, the relationships between each of The Runaways are rocky at best.
The Runaways, from left to right: Joan Jett, Sandy West, Jackie Fox, Cherie Currie, and Lita Ford | source
The Runaways developed a heavy rock sound, the epitome of punk rock before punk had a name. The teenage girls wrote songs about sex, alcohol, and anti-authoritarianism, performing them trussed up in skin-tight leather or, in the case of Currie, white lingerie that left little to the imagination. Described by Bomp! Magazine as the “lost daughter of Iggy Pop and Brigitte Bardot,” men flocked to watch scantily clad Currie perform. They licked their lips and drooled, calling her “jailbait” and ogling her in her corset as she bragged about being their “ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb.” What they were likely unaware of was the living nightmare Currie’s life had become. Strung out on cocaine and quaaludes, the teenage girl was trapped in the never-ending cycle of performing, recording, and attempting to sleep, and still had barely two pennies to rub together. Currie, however, was no stranger to living a waking nightmare.
Cherie in her signature white corset | source
Before Currie became a Cherry Bomb, she was the original valley girl, a surfer girl never far from her identical twin sister, Marie, that harbored an intense curiosity for all things supernatural. When she was twelve, Currie made her first attempt to contact the Other Side. Alongside her friend, Currie sat cross-legged on the floor, a Ouija board resting ominously in front of her. The girls poked and prodded, asking questions that any other innocent twelve-year-old girl might ask if they had a chance to speak to a higher power - “Am I going to meet a boy soon?” they giggled, placing their hands on the planchette. Slowly, it moved to “Yes.” Currie’s eyes widened, “Did you do that?” “No, did you?”
Quietly, Currie asked another question: “Why will that happen?” The planchette began to move, sliding from letter to letter: “You’re pretty,” it said before the bedroom door flew open with a bang. Currie’s friend screamed in terror, demanding they get rid of the board, but Currie just sat there, a smile creeping across her face. That day she went home with the board safely tucked under her arm.
Currie was far too curious to sleep that night. Instead, she sat alone in her room, asking question after question, the planchette zipping across the board - yes, no, yes, yes. A chill ran up her spine as the strangest feeling that she was not alone seeped into her mind. She could feel a presence - an ominous one - as if someone, or something, were looming over her shoulder. She sat unmoving, paralyzed with fear, silent save for the sound of her heart pounding and rapid, shallow breathing. The lights began to flicker rapidly and a horrifying wail filled the atmosphere before Currie’s head hit the ground, fainting out of fear.
Over the next few weeks, Currie and her board were inseparable. She spent countless hours poring over it, obsessively asking question after question. She began to trade in her girlish frocks for dark-colored tops and grew inexplicably angry, quick to lash out against her family. The image of a twelve-year-old blonde girl ripping off her puka shell necklace and rimming her eyes in black liner is almost comical. It could perhaps be chalked up to a textbook case of teenage rebellion - or, perhaps, something far more sinister. Others were quick to pick up on the hot rage emanating from Currie, who always seemed to be teetering on the edge of a fit of rage. “Something,” she recounts, “Had attached itself to me.”
Currie’s anger continued to fester and grow, a dark seed planted in her unwitting mind. Like cracks in a dam, the pressure began to mount until, finally, it broke, and Currie’s brother was washed away by the flood. The siblings had been washing dishes when Currie felt something come over her, a dark shadow eclipsing her sunny personality. Like the flip of a switch, she turned on her brother, throwing him across the kitchen and pounding her fists against his chest.
“Cherie!” he cried, “Why are you doing this to me?”
She blinked her eyes slowly. “I don’t know, Don,” she whispered, running out of the room in a state of confusion and fear.
In another fit of rage, Currie turned against her mother, pinning her against the wall by her throat. “It’s like I was looking at her through somebody else’s eyes,” she said, “All I knew was that I wanted to hurt my mother.”
Currie became overwhelmingly possessive of the spirit board, treating it as if it were her flesh and blood. Her siblings would confront her, begging Cherie to, please, give them the board. Cherie only grew enraged, clutching the board to her chest and screaming at them, her tongue cracking like a whip as she verbally lacerated her siblings. The three Curries grew louder and angrier, wrestling with each other until Marie finally wrenched the board out of Cherie’s white-knuckled hands and hurled it into the family’s fireplace. The flames lapped at the edges of the board, eating away at its structure. Almost instantaneously, Cherie burst into tears, a sense of relief washing over her.
Her nightmare was over - at least for the time being. Although she managed to steer clear of any more demons or ghosts, she would soon meet someone who would instill in her the same terror and seething anger: Kim Fowley.
Sources
"Cherie Currie, Joseph Bologna, Diane Farr, Estella Warren" Celebrity Ghost Stories, season 8, episode 4
https://www.punk77.co.uk/groups/runaways.htm
https://www.spin.com/2010/03/sex-rock-rape-cherie-curries-untold-runaways-story/
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