Sonic Boomers: You had a meeting with yourself, Joan Jett, actors Kristen Stewart and Michael Shannon recently in Woodland Hills, Ca. at a local Denny's restaurant. Joan is the executive producer of this Runaways movie and she felt it was appropriate for everyone to meet and have some insights and research into your multi-tasking roles that informed the band's 1975-1977 world.
Kim Fowley: I showed up to the meeting and dinner. I have 28 personalities and marched in. Kristen had been studying the real Joan Jett and Michael needed to see the real Kim Fowley in action. He wanted to see what that chemistry was. My parents were actors and I showed the stars some acting moves at the dinner table. Some actors and actresses like Kristen Stewart are reserved and quiet off camera but on the screen they become something bigger: Magical and edgier.
You see, all during the Runaways I had to create ‘New Kims' all the time to deal with the group because they couldn't concentrate. Michael Shannon went back to the movie set armed with information for his craft.
I wasn't invited to the set for any of the filming but at the last minute I picked up the phone and was invited that night to the movie wrap party at El Cid restaurant in Hollywood on Sunset Blvd. I showed up after I went and got a new ‘Marlon Brando' haircut from his Apocalypse Now movie, with a death row kind of veneer to it and makeup.
SB: What is it like to get paid and have an actor become you in a real movie?
KF: I sold my life rights for the section involving the Runaways. There's a window of time. I have songs in the movie, too. So, what happens is I show up, Michael Shannon had been running around in make up for the movie.
I go as Brando imitating Michael Shannon on a ‘Bent' level. So when I arrived, to all the actors and actresses, suddenly I became him. He was Kim Fowley for a month but I became Michael Shannon for a night. Because they were used to seeing him, same height, standing around and looking and acting like me. So I just played him as I remembered showing him how to play me.
SB: Break down the movie wrap party for me and the whole trip that evening.
KF: I met actress Riley Keough. She is Elvis Presley's granddaughter. I talked to Dakota Fanning. I had met her before months ago when I had green hair and she came to the Roxy Theater to watch Cherrie Curris perform. I met her father, too. Kristen Stewart remembered me and was very friendly. She enjoyed the Denny's meeting. She was happy.
There were a bunch of other actors, including one who is ‘The Denny Rosencrantz' figure. Denny was the executive who signed the group to Mercury Records. The female supporting cast was there, some of them had lesbian characters, and there might be a lesbian story line but I've never seen the final script of what it turned into. They were slightly older, like 21 or 22. I met the other three members who play the Runaways.
I had to answer a lot of questions about Runaways' records back catalogue. Peer Music the publisher has cared about the catalogue as well as they have cared for the Buddy Holly & The Crickets catalogue before Paul McCartney ever entered the picture. They have been very supportive.
I basically got film crew and technical and support people asking why I was not on the set because it would have been fun to have seen me and Michael Shannon in the same room. The director showed up, Floria Sigismondi. Her husband is Lillian Berlin of the Living Things, that we play on Sirius/XM radio on Little Steven's Underground Radio channel.
SB: What a cool artistic and economic victory for you. Am I the only one with a memory of the scorn and ridicule you received on occasion? Yet, you always knew there would be a major movie with movie stars about the Runaways. You predicted it in 1976.
KF: I always think cinematically.
SB: The Runaways film is from Art Linson Productions and his son John serves as the line producer. Art Linson's earlier film credits include Car Wash, Heat, Into The Wild, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Fight Club and Melvin and Howard. You met Art Linson 40 years ago in the music business when he managed the Clinger Sisters.
KF: I knew Art when he worked with the Clingers, who were a pro-type of the Runaways, an all-girl band of Mormon girls from Salt Lake City, Utah, sort of this female Osmonds, but had ‘Runaway rebellion.' They were on Columbia Records. We did a cover of the Easy Beats' Vanda and Young song, "Gonna Have A Good Time," which I co-produced with Michael Lloyd with Jim Gordon in the drum chair doing additional percussion.
SB: What goes through your mind as this movie is positioned for global theatrical release in 2010. Your songs populate the film and your concept and discoveries are now further documented in history.
KF: Better late than never. A lot of girls picked up musical instruments because of the Runaways. Some have gone into bands that have made chart recordings. I know the influence and impact. Girls and women have said ‘Thank you for giving girls a chance to prove that they can rock.'
We were right. We were first. We bled like dogs. It was hard giving birth.
SB: Why does this band the Runaways still resonate with fans, record buyers and musicians? A German film crew was just in Hollywood doing a documentary on the Runaways. And now there will be another round of media coverage shortly.
KF: We were first. There were women in the American Civil War that followed armies around and played music for the troops around famous battles. There was Ina Ray Hutton in Groucho Marx movies and her all-girl band but they were women over age 21. There were people like Bertha, Fanny, girl singing groups, the Spector groups, the Gordy groups, the Brill Building groups. And in 1964 my own girl singing group, the Murmaids topped Cash Box and Record World with "Popsicles and Icicles" that I produced. .
The Murmaids were the last all-girl singing group that ever had a top 5 record in Billboard before the Beatles came along and conquered America. I had done girl and women-themed work before. But the Runaways was the first time that girls under age 18, females, played guitars, bass, drums, sometimes keyboard, sang and wrote or co-wrote their own material. That was the news. It was brand new.
Because it was brand new and never done before, and because teenagers have no legal rights to anything, and girls and women have had a hard time all these years, and this was at the beginning of the feminism movement, there was no sympathy for this concept anywhere.
SB: Decades ago some music magazine and newspaper editors used to hang the telephone up on me when I pitched articles on them and you. Now the same places are calling me as well as online venues. Why?
KF: Because the Darwin Law. If you look at the Darwin book of Evolution, you see Cro-Magnum and I saw rock ‘n' roll from a Darwinian perspective. Elvis shaking his *** like a woman. All through the New York Dolls and David Bowie, and all of a sudden you turn the page and there has to be a girl standing there. The U.S. male was becoming more feminine. And the British male. Men kept getting more and more feminine. They weren't turning into John Wayne guys. Even David Lee Roth, who was growling, he did it like a striptease dancer. The feminine aspect of the Western male just kept going on and one day it just evolved into a vagina, breast, curves and estrogen. And so I saw it coming and went looking for it, talent scouting like Sam Phillips of Sun Records anticipating Elvis Presley who was looking for a white guy who sounded like a Negro.
SB: You met teenage lyricist, later poet, Kari Krome in 1975 at an Alice Cooper party in Hollywood. Kari then steered you to guitarist Joan Jett (Joan Larkin) who was already working with drummer Sandy West. (Sandy Pesavento).
KF: I met Joan for the first time at the Jolly Roger restaurant on Sunset Blvd.
SB: Michael "Micki" Steele (Sue Thomas) then was the bass player for a while who you subsequently replaced, and she later joined the Bangles. Guitarist Lita Ford came to the band from an advertisement in an industry trade paper. Cherie Currie was found at The Sugar Shack club and Jackie Fox (Jacqueline Fuchs) became the bassist, who was recommended by KROQ-FM radio DJ, Rodney Bingenheimer
KF: As a trio I brought the Runaways into Gold Star studios with Stan Ross engineering, who had worked on records of Eddie Cochran, Phil Spector, Brian Wilson, Sonny & Cher and Buffalo Springfield. I also brought the group as a trio into Cherokee Studios which the Robb brothers owned.
SB: You were the catalyst in molding five schoolgirls together to comprise the promising outfit. Before then Phast Phreddie of Back Door Man magazine offered his living room in Carson, California for the trio to make their official live debut.
KF: I bought Joan Jett a guitar to replace her $39.95 special from Sears. Sandy had a drum kit and Micki Steele a bass from a girl from Cleveland who left it behind. I took the girls to Cherokee studio to see how tape works. Already I could tell Joan wanted to be Keith Richard instead of Duane Allman. She leaned toward a rhythm stance.
There were five versions of the Runaways before I got them signed to Mercury Records. The got their record contract from a live rehearsal in a room in a converted trailer in North Hollywood. No one who heard the Runaways on demo or saw them perform live understood it except for Denny Rosencrantz in the West Coast office of Mercury Records.
SB: Record producer and music business veteran Denny Bruce was in attendance as your "Henry Kissinger" figure when the band performed at that memorable audition. He knew Denny Rosencrantz as well. When the Runaways went into "Cherry Bomb" the first song Denny Rosencrantz heard, he then turned to Denny Bruce, slapped five, and said, ‘Deal!'
KF: I saw magic in the rehearsal room. Magic is uniqueness with a spiritual power behind it. Nobody bought it and nobody was interested except Denny Rosencrantz. He was told by Jimi Hendrix about this event. Denny went to Garfield High School in Seattle Washington with Jimi and Bruce Lee. The three of them. Luther Rabb of Ballin' Jack was also from Seattle. He was in Jimi's first band as a sax player.
Rosencrantz was on Jimi Hendrix's last American tour. Jimi said to Denny, ‘Someday girls are going to play guitars and there will be girls and women in rock ‘n' roll and they'll be really good.'
Denny Rosencrantz told me that the next morning after he decided to sign the band, ‘Don't you want to know why I signed them?' ‘Why' ‘Because Jimi Hendrix predicted this.' Jimi told him this in Arizona after a live date and they were having dinner. Denny and Jimi were longtime friends.
SB: I recall Robert Plant and Jimmy Page coming to the Starwood Club in West Hollywood to see the Runways. They were friends of yours and came down to check out the band.
KF: Jimmy said afterwards, ‘I saw nothing on stage tonight that needs to be fixed. It works." Robert said, ‘I love this band.' and we went up to the dressing room. And there was a photo op. Jimmy went back to his hotel. Ritchie Blackmore and Steve Hunter each were mentors/teachers of Lita Ford. They saw her as a guitar genius.
SB: Tell me about the first album being recorded in North Hollywood.
KF: It was primitive. At Fidelity Sound. It was owned by Artie Ripp. I had met him in 1960 in New York when George Goldner introduced us at the Brill Building. Artie took me and Gary Paxton around New York.
SB: How did Joan Jett's songwriting skills evolve during first few albums on her own tunes and what you and her wrote together?
KF: There was no difference. It was the expansion of the dream. She became quite a great front person and a great lead singer.
SB: Lita Ford as a guitarist?
KF: Lita Ford was Ann Margaret and Sophia Loren's daughter playing like one of her guitar teacher, Richie Blackmore.
SB: What about writing with Lita Ford?
KF: The guitar riff comes first.
SB: Cherie Currie?
KF: She had good lyrical ideas. On stage she was Bridget Bardot on a rock ‘n' roll level.
SB: What about Sandy West's drumming?
KF: Sandy West was a world-class drummer. And a prodigy. Tremendous on stage and really good in the studio. Sandy had melodic ideas and lyrical ideas.
SB: Jacki Fox as a bassist. These days she is a lawyer and attended Harvard Law School with Barack Obama.
KF: She was the girl that all the normal kids fell in love with but were afraid of the more radical Runaways. She was a good performer. She had good ideas. She had both riffs and good lyrical ideas.
SB: In 1977, you hired dancer/choreographer Kenny Ortega, long before his awards for High School Musical and who was working with Michael Jackson on his planned 2009 U.K. tour dates. I seem to remember you and him talking at show that the Runaways played in Norwalk, California.
SB: It was at that Norwalk gig. Kenny was the dancer and choreographer of the Tubes at the height of their commercial success. I said, ‘I would like to hire you to stage their show.' And he accepted. He came out to rehearsals in the trailer on Barham and Cahuenga and drilled them there. He's thanked on the back of the second LP.
My concept was a female sports team with guitars. Like the backfield of a football team. Joan and I with Sandy had gone to see the original Rollerball with James Caan and we all thought ‘That's what the Runaways should be like.' We then saw Clockwork Orange and decided to put the two together. That's the concept of the band live.
SB: The relationship then ended with the Runaways. How was it severed?
KF: I was sent a letter saying goodbye. So they went elsewhere.
SB: How has Hollywood changed?
KF: Hollywood is a state of mind and an attitude and the whole L.A. metroplex is a parking lot pretending to be a city.
oh god, this is a serious, very serious movie, or at least they're trying to make it look like one. 
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