On the 23rd March 2000, Chronological Crue called the Florida, USA home of metal queen Lita Ford, to gain an insight into her extensive career and involvement with members of Mötley Crüe along the way. After not quite getting the time difference correct when I called, Lita asked, “Can you give me a few minutes and call me back? I was just getting out of the shower and I'm not dressed and I'm all soaking wet.” Not sure if I was actually dreaming, I obliged.  Lita’s husband, Jim Gillette, answered the phone on the second attempt, and passed the phone to Lita, who was standing beside her man.

Chronological Crue: Hi Lita. Sorry about that!

Lita Ford: Hi. Sorry about what?

CC: Getting the time mixed up.

LF: Oh, understandable. It’s not like you’re right down the street, you know.

CC: Well I thought I had it right, but these things happen.

LF: A lot of the time I get phone calls from people doing interviews and things, that think that we’re on east coast time, same as New York, but we’re one hour earlier. We’re not quite that far east. So we’re 50 miles away from the Eastern Time line, where it goes over one more hour.

CC: Right OK.

LF: Yeh I know. So it’s easy to get confused.

CC: OK well, as you know, Chronological Crue traces the complete history of Mötley Crüe and its members. So I’d just like to start out by tracing some of your history.

LF: Sure OK.

CC: You were born in England going back to 1958. That was in London?

LF: Yep.

CC: And then you came out to the US as a young child. What sort of age were you when you came out?

LF: I think I was four. We moved to Boston, Massachusetts and we lived there for a while then sort of made our way across the United States. From Boston, we moved over to Dallas, Texas and lived there for a little while. Then by the time I was in Third Grade, I ended up in Los Angeles… or Long Beach, CA. Are you familiar with the West Coast of California?

CC: A reasonable amount. I’ve never been there but I’ve certainly looked at a lot of maps over the years.

LF: Right. So we ended up there.

CC: Was that because your parents were always changing jobs most of the time?

LF: No they hated the weather. The East Coast is cold, unless you live in Florida. Here it’s hot, but New York, New Jersey and all those places, they’re f*cking freezing cold with the wind and the snow. My Mom just said, "F*ck this." She’s from Italy. Born and raised in Rome. She was a beach bunny, so she loves the beach which is why we ended up in California.

CC: Yeh, right. I’m in Perth in Western Australia and it’s a bit similar here really. Cities like Melbourne on the east coast are quite cold and wet, whereas over here in Perth it's more like California. A lot of the American sailors that come here say it’s very similar to California.

LF: Are you in Perth?

CC: Yep.

LF: Wow! Perth is absolutely gorgeous.

CC: You’ve been here?

LF: Yeh I have. I loved Perth… but couldn’t you have found somebody a bit more local to do this [interview]?

CC: [laughing] No, there’s just me. I do the whole lot myself. I’m Chronological Crue’s only person.

LF: Wow! That’s tremendous!

CC: Thanks! So when did you come to Perth?

LF: Ah, it was… let me think… it was 1992ish. Somewhere in there.

CC: So that was after your Dangerous Curves album?

LF: Yeh, it was right after Dangerous Curves. I didn’t perform there. I was working for Ibanez guitars and I was doing some clinics. I would actually play but I didn’t have the band with me. I was pretty much doing it by myself.

CC: Yeh sure. I’ve been to clinics before.

LF: I wish I could have performed. We finished our trip in Perth, so that was the last place. It was just gorgeous… just beautiful.

CC: It’s a very clean city. It’s very similar to L.A. without the crime.

LF: Yeh, and the smog.

CC: Yeh that too. So just back peddling back a bit from that point in your life, I believe you first saw a rock concert when you were just becoming a teenager and it was Black Sabbath, yeh?

LF: Oooh yeh. Wild huh?

CC: Yeh. From what I understand that was really what turned you onto the guitar.

LF: Well I played guitar before I went to the Sabbath concert. Of course I was a huge Sabbath fan and used to listen to all their records. That was pretty much all I played, over and over and over. That, and a little bit of Deep Purple… and The Who… and of course [Led] Zeppelin now and then. Oh, and [Jimi] Hendrix! The list gets longer and longer! But I was a real big Sabbath fan.

CC: Sure.

LF: So when I was thirteen, my cousin Paul took me to my first concert at the Long Beach Arena. The Long Beach Arena holds about 13,000 people. It’s quite a big arena… and we saw Black Sabbath of course. I was such a big fan.

CC: You never forget your first concert, do you?

LF: No. I don’t think my feet touched the ground, when I stepped foot inside that arena. It was like I was walking on air. The music was so loud and powerful, and the air was full of pot smoke and cigarette smoke, and it had a whole vibe. It was like the whole place was sort of Satanic.

CC: Wow!

LF: So I wanted to do that. I saw those guys… Ozzy and Toni and everybody on stage… of course I can call them first names now, as they’re people that I know, but then they were Black Sabbath and I wanted to do that. I wanted to be able to make the audience feel like they were making the audience feel.

CC: Well you soon got that chance with The Runaways. Was that your first band?

LF: Yes.

CC: Like you didn’t even have like a garage band before that? That was your real first band?

LF: No. Well, I had a garage band but we never even really made it out of the garage. We were going to do our first show and what happened was, a friend of mine’s band was going to play at a club. Their bass player got sick… a girl... or something happened to her, and they needed a bass player to fill in for them for that one night show. I was like fifteen or sixteen years old here. So they called me and said could I fill in for this girl, just for one night, and we’ll teach you how to play all the songs and everything. So I learnt all the songs and it was no big deal. Anyway, we never did play the show. It got cancelled, but Kim Fowley, who was putting together The Runaways at the time, had heard that there was a girl bass player in this band that was supposed to have played that night. So he called me and said, "Well I hear you’re a bass player and we’re looking for a bass player to put together this all girl band, and we need a bass player."

CC: But of course you weren’t.

LF: So I said, "That’s great, but I’m really not a bass player, I really play guitar" and he said, "Oh that’s great because we need one of them too." I guess the only ones they had were Sandie on drums and Joan on guitar, and didn’t have anyone else.

CC: Right. She was Joan Larkin back then too, wasn’t she?

LF: Yeh, Joan Larkin alright. [Joan Jett]

CC: What was your favourite Runaways song?

LF: Ah, ooh. I dunno. Maybe Saturday Night Special, or Black Leather. I dunno.

CC: Yeh I guess they’re all different. Different songs inspire you, or make you feel different ways at different times.

LF: Well it’s just that I’ve grown so much since The Runaways that it’s kind of like looking back at College. You know, like what did you do in College that was your favourite thing. It was like going through College to learn the real deal. That’s what The Runaways were.

CC: You did a VH1 online chat not too long ago and you said you wouldn’t do a Runaways reunion, whereas prior to that I understand The Runaways were going to get back together but Joan was too busy at that time.

LF: You know what? She’s not f*cking busy enough. She’s got a Looney Tunes manager that I don’t know what his intentions are with her, but he’s pretty much keeping the whole thing from happening. He wants to have complete control over the whole ordeal. All the other girls, I guess, are OK with that but I’m not because this guy has given me a real hard time my whole career. Since my very first solo album, this guy has given me a hard time. He’s kept me from using photographers. He’s tried to keep me from doing certain video shoots. He’s tried to keep me from writing with certain writers and I don’t know what his reason is. I suppose he thinks that Joan is going to become a bigger star if he can shove me out of the picture a little more. So this was MY idea to put The Runaways back together. A long time ago, about seven years ago, I originally came up with the idea and for seven years I’ve been battling with Joan and Kenny, her manager, about trying to put this band back together. For the last seven years! You know, in the last seven years, Joan Jett’s career has slowed down enough that it would be good for her to put The Runaways back together IF it was done properly and everything was in the girls’ hands. I mean we’ve known each other since we were sixteen years old.

CC: That’s a long time now.

LF: And we’ve done a lot of records since then. I mean, f*ck, we’re 42 years old now. We’ve been there, done that. Learnt this, learnt that, and I don’t want my life in this man’s hands. So what I said to him was, "Look. I will bring somebody in to handle me. You work with her and the two of you get together and make this thing happen." It’s not like each girl has her own manager. It’s just Joan and Lita and we’ll work together with the rest of the girls and make it happen. But he doesn’t want it that way. He wants it all or nothing and that’s the bottom line. I just think why should I put my career in your hands after what you’ve done to me the last… so many years? So that’s it.

CC: I guess it’s the fans that dip out or miss out, because of that.

LF: Oh yeah. I mean he wants to write the songs. He wants to record the songs. He wants to be the producer. He wants to be the manager. You know, he is not The Runaways. He was never in The Runaways, and even if I thought the sun shined out of his ass, I still wouldn’t want him to produce the band because he’s not the right producer. It’s just the bottom line. Nor is he the right writer for the band. I mean, if we’re going to do this we need to do it properly and pick and choose the right team of people to make it all happen. But he’s not going to let it happen, so f*ck it. It’s not going to happen.

CC: OK sure. Well hopefully one day it will.

LF: Hopefully.

CC: But at least the fans know what’s happening there.

LF: Yep and I’m not picking on Joan. I’m not picking on anybody. I just think that he needs to back down a little bit and Joan needs to take hold of her own career a little bit. If she really wants to do this… and because she’s not taking a hold of it and making it really happen, I don’t think she really wants to do it, and she really doesn’t have a good reason. There is no good reason.

CC: Well when The Runaways were happening all those years ago, you were treated like Queens in Japan. They really took a liking to you. Did you enjoy playing in Japan?

LF: Oh Japan was tremendous! It was the highlight of The Runaways career. Absolutely.

CC: What kind of experiences from Japan sort of stand out in your mind to this day from those times? What made it so good?

LF: Just the fan base. The fans were just beyond belief. They were so dedicated and so warm and welcoming to us. They gave us gifts and followed us on the streets and just, you know. There was like packs of them everywhere. It wasn’t like just one or two fans here and there. It was just gangs of people. For instance, we’d be walking down the street and everybody in one whole school; everybody would be hanging out the windows. On every level of each floor of the school, screaming and yelling at us. It wouldn’t be like just one kid, you know. It was incredible. There were security guards everywhere. They had to hold crowds back at the airport. It was just major, major, major fan based. It was wonderful. The audiences were tremendous.

CC: You played your last Runaways performance in San Francisco in late 1979 and then went solo; put out a lot of solo albums since. It was in your early solo days that you met Nikki Sixx from Mötley Crüe which probably would’ve been towards the end of 1982?

LF: Yeh, God. I can’t remember when I met him. I think it was earlier than that.

CC: How did you meet Nikki?

LF: I saw him… I was in a nightclub. What club was it… let me think? The Troubadour on Santa Monica Boulevard and I was with some friends. We were having a conversation sitting at the table. We were talking about guys.

CC: As girls do.

LF: Yeh and my friends asked me what kind of guy do you like. I looked over across the room and I saw Nikki and I said, "Oh I like them kind of scuzzy looking, kind of scary looking, but kind of good looking at the same time, I dunno… kind of like a little rat or something" you know. I looked over and said, "Like that guy over there!" and I pointed at Nikki. If you knew Nikki then, he had no tattoos. He was very, very skinny. He was wearing thigh high red boots that were about four sizes too small for him. I don’t know how he got his foot into them and just some clothes that he picked up at the nearest goodwill.

CC: Did he play that night?

LF: No he was just there having a drink and hanging out. At that point they were nobody.

CC: There’s a story that you stuck something in Nikki’s mouth… some illegal substance?

LF: Oh yeh. I offered him an illegal substance and afterward he wanted to join our party and come home with us. Of course we accepted.

CC: You guys lived together for a while.

LF: Yeh we lived together for two years, maybe longer.

CC: Was that Clark St?

LF: Let’s see… Nikki had a place on Clark St and I would always stay there with him. I was always there with him. I was always there, but I didn’t really live there. Then later on we moved and we got our own apartment, and then after we split up he moved across the street from me. We were together for quite a while off and on.

CC: And Tommy was living with you as well, I think, for some time.

LF: Yeh Tommy was there. They were all there. It was pretty much Nikki’s place, but everyone would go there… bring their girlfriends, and we’d all have a drink, you know?

CC: Yeh. What things do you remember most from those days, hanging out with the guys? There was the famous Riot on Sunset incident where Nikki was faced with an assault charge after there was a run-in with some bikers as they left the Rainbow.

LF: Yeh, Nikki accidentally hit one of the Sheriffs with my belt. I gave him my belt because there were all these guys fighting. I said, "Here Nikki use this." So I pulled off my belt… a chain belt, and he was swinging this belt trying to hit one of the guys that were giving him a hard time, and he accidentally hit one of the Sheriffs. Oops. So they threw him in jail. Nikki was in jail and I didn’t have any money to get him out and neither did Nikki. So I put up my Firebird TransAm as collateral.

CC: So you hocked it to get him out?

LF: Yeh. I gave the pink slip on my car to get him out.

CC: Excellent. What about Tommy back in those days. Was he as wild as Nikki?

LF: Yeh. He was worse. Yeh. I dunno. He was always in some kind of trouble. I remember the house that we all hung out in was full of cockroaches. The oven especially was full of cockroaches. So if you ever wanted to cook anything, you had to turn the oven on for a while to kill the cockroaches before you put your food in it. Did you ever burn a cockroach in the oven?

CC: [laughing] No.

LF: They stand up on their hind legs. They’re really weird. They stand up on their hind legs and then they’ll fall over on their back. So Nikki used to put the oven on and he’d do that German march where you kick your legs out in front of you and then you put your hand straight out?

CC: Yeh.

LF: He’d do that Heil Hitler German march thing to the cockroaches dying in the oven. That was a daily ritual. I thought that was interesting. That was something exciting before your dinner.

CC: Yuk!

LF: And another time the guys had a big map hanging on the wall in the hallway by the bathroom, and every time one of them had to have a crap, they’d go out and tear off a piece of the States. You know, like they’d tear off Florida, then they’d tear off Georgia, and then they’d tear out Mississippi and Texas and they would wipe their ass with a piece of the States off the map. The map would gradually be getting smaller and smaller.

CC: So they only had 52 times that they could use it before they’d need a new map, hey?

LF: Yes. It was cheaper that way than buying toilet paper.

CC: Eeww yuk!

LF: I know. It’s pretty disgusting.

CC: Well I guess they were those young decadent kind of days?

LF: Yeh, now I would run for cover. I’d run for my life if I saw cockroaches in the oven. You think I’d ever put my food in there and eat it? Eeww. Eventually that building was condemned because there were some rats or something in the trash out back, and they were getting inside the building, so they condemned the building. They shut it down or something. I don’t know.

CC: What about the music back in those days. Did you really enjoy the music of Mötley Crüe?

LF: Ah it was OK. I enjoyed them as people because they were so young and kind of like, rebels. Especially Nikki. He was a real go-getter, you know. He had his mind set on what he was going to do with his life. He knew exactly what he was going to call the albums. He pictured it. He had a vision in his mind and he made it all bigger than life; larger than life. He took the best of Kiss and the best of Alice Cooper and the best of W.A.S.P. and put it all together. There you had the best of Mötley Crüe and they were sort of bigger and better than those bands at that time in their careers.

CC: When you say he had a vision, do you mean like it suddenly came to him one day, or he just had a concept in his head of how it would fit together?

LF: He had a dream… as a kid. I think he thought about it for, I don’t know how many years, but he had had that dream when I met him. I mean, he knew Shout At The Devil. He knew Theatre Of Pain. He knew all those album titles like Girls, Girls, Girls. I mean he knew all that and had it in his mind that he was going to do this, this, this and this; and they were going to be big; and they were going to wear… I mean he knew it all because he told me.

CC: Wow. Unbelievable!

LF: And he made it all happen. He had a dream… and he lived it. He did it.

CC: He’s recently talked about when he had his overdose and died back in ’87 how he left his own body and had an outer body experience. So yeh, when you say about this vision; that’s quite amazing.

LF: He is incredibly intelligent. You know he had a real rough childhood.

CC: Yeh, sure.

LF: He just took over his own life and made himself. He didn’t have any help from Mom and Dad. He didn’t have anybody, you know. He’s the leader of the pack. Mötley Crüe wouldn’t have been anything without Nikki… well; they wouldn’t have been Mötley Crüe. You know what I mean? They’re all of course talented members of the band and would have gone off to do something else I’m sure, but they would never have been Mötley Crüe.

CC: Did you ever meet his sister?

LF: Nikki’s sister?

CC: Yeh.

LF: No.

CC:  What about Tommy’s sister, Athena?

LF: Yeh I know Athena.

CC: Her band KrunK actually contributed a song to the Mötley Crüe Tribute CD I’ve just put out through Pulse Records in Chicago. It’s a pity that we didn’t hook up earlier, as you may have been able to contribute a track to it.

LF: Yeh! Well maybe next time… oh, what song was it that he told me he wrote for me? Looks That Kill.

CC: Right, OK.

LF: I don’t think he [Nikki] wrote the whole song… but a couple of lines in the song.

CC: What, that he had in mind as such. More so, wrote it about you, or for you?

LF: More with me in mind when he wrote it, you know. So that was nice.

CC: Do you have many photos of you and Nikki?

LF: I don’t think I have any shots of me and Nikki.

CC: There is one floating around on the Internet that I’ve seen.

LF: That probably came from me. It’s an old shot. I know that one you’re talking about.

CC: You’re in a blue leather jacket.

LF: It was taken at the Santa Monica Civic when we were both there. Nikki was performing there. I remember that shot and I think that’s probably the same one that I have. We didn’t get in too many pictures together. I don’t know why. It’s weird.

CC: Sure. You later got together with Nikki back in 1987 and wrote a song together called Falling In & Out Of Love that was on your self-titled Lita album released the next year. How did that occasion come about? What was the story behind that? Who called who?

LF: Ahh… God, I don’t really remember. I think we were both in the same studio recording at the same time. Is that what happened? God, I don’t remember but I know they were in the studio. They were over at One On One in Studio City on Lankershim [Boulevard] over there. There’s a little room off to the side of the studio with a piano in it and stuff. I was trying to collect material for my new record. I had just written some stuff with Ozzy. We wrote that there too in the same studio.

CC: Right, OK because that was actually your highest charting song.

LF: Yeh I was in that studio a lot. I don’t remember what I was doing there. I don’t remember if I was recording. Maybe I was recording. I don’t remember. I was there a lot and they were there too, so we were probably both recording in the same studio. You know how they have different rooms?

CC: Yeh, sure.

LF: So I think that may have been the situation.

CC: That was the album that had Close My Eyes Forever on it which was the song you co-wrote and performed with Ozzy. Did you get a Grammy nomination for that?

LF: No, can you believe it? For Close My Eyes, no.

CC: What was your Grammy Nomination for?

LF: Ahh, Kiss Me Deadly. They did a whole thing at the Grammy's for Best Duets… Rock Duets and Ozzy and I didn’t even get nominated.

CC: Right OK. Weird considering it made Top 10.

LF: Kind of weird. Sharon Osbourne probably put a stop to it or something. I don’t know.

CC: Back in those earlier days you met Randy Castillo and he went on to play drums for you on your 1984 album Dancin’ On The Edge. How did you hook up with Randy Castillo?

LF: Randy was playing at a little club in Los Angeles called Madam Wong and I had gone to see his band play because I was looking for a drummer. I don’t remember who referred me to Randy… but anyway I had gone to see him perform and I thought he was unique with his style of playing. He had a wonderful personality. Everybody loves Randy.

CC: Yeh?

LF: Yeh he’s a great guy. So that was it. No major stories there. Just saw him at a club then hooked up.

CC: It’s kind of interesting how he ended up becoming a member of Mötley Crüe.

LF: Yeh, he played with Ozzy too. It’s a small world. Everybody wears everybody else’s underwear. Whatever fits at the time, you know.

CC: After Nikki, you were married to Chris Holmes from W.A.S.P. I remember seeing the Decline of the Western Civilization video and thinking who’s this drunk rocker?

LF: Yeh well, he played it up on that. I mean he really… Chris is quite a show man. I think a lot of people took him dead serious though. I mean he did have a drinking problem. Definitely did have a drinking problem, as we all did at one point.

CC: Now of course you’re married to Jim Gillette, who was in a band called Nitro a long time ago.

LF: Yeh!

CC: The OFR album. Is that still available?

LF: The what?

CC: The OFR album; OutF*ckingRageous.

LF: Oh, I don’t know. I never listen to Nitro.

CC: Really? Jim’s never played it to you?

LF: I didn’t know who Nitro was. I’d never heard it. Oh yeh, he’s now played it for me, since we’ve been married.

CC: Do you have to hide all your glasses in the house?

LF: [laughing hard] No we have a three-year-old son, so all of our glasses are plastic!

CC: [laughing] Just as well.

LF: But our son has Jim’s voice.

CC: Really?

LF: Oh man! You wouldn’t believe it. You wouldn't believe this powerful sound that comes out of this kid.

CC: So how old is James now?

LF: James will be three in May. He’s almost three. Amazing huh? I have a three year old.

CC: How has life been since the birth of James? Has it really changed your lifestyle a lot?

LF: Oh tremendously. I’m a completely different person. I have to be… being a full time Mom. James doesn’t have babysitters or day-care, or nannies or anything. It’s just James and Mommy and Daddy. You know, here I am watching kids movies every night and going to Playgroups with other kids. Just going and hanging out in toyshops. It’s great!

CC: How do you get on with the other parents at playgroup and stuff?

LF: Well, I try to keep a low-key profile. I mean, I don’t wear leather pants and all that stuff like stiletto heels. I sort of keep a low profile with them and just try to mind my own business and talk about kids. I don’t bring anything else into it. The people out here… I mean we’re in the south right now and it’s real hard for them to relate. The people out here didn’t grow up in Hollywood with music, drugs, tattoos and hair dye. I mean they didn’t grow up like I did, or Jim did. So it’s a real weird touchy thing out here, so I don’t talk about it much.

CC: Right OK.

LF: Jim’s building us a house out in the Caribbean. So we’re going to be moving out in the Caribbean pretty soon.

CC: Really? Wow! What made you want to move out there?

LF: We just want to get into a place that’s less populated. It’s British Government. It’s a cleaner environment. There’s less crime. Just mainly to raise our son. It’s going to be great.

CC: When you say Jim’s building it, do you mean he’s contracting people to do it, or is he actually building it?

LF: No Jim builds them. We’ve got ten houses in Florida that Jim has built, that we own. We’ve sold a bunch. No, Jim builds them himself. He’s got people that work for him and he gets in there and he does a lot of the dirty work himself.

CC: So what kind of construction are they? Is it timber frame? In Perth here we have mainly double brick homes.

LF: Well here they have to withstand hurricane force winds, so a lot of the house we have are on the water so they are built up on pylons in case the water rises. The houses are built high. They’re wood framed houses but they are extremely, extremely strong with concrete foundations and stucco. Metal roofs and hurricane storm proof windows. There’s lots of hurricanes here. Lots of tiles… you know, real Florida style stuff. You probably don’t know what they are right?

CC: Well, I am on the other side of the world.

LF: I know you are.

CC: But I’m always ahead of you though… when it comes to time.

LF: That’s right. [laughing]

CC: Where do you see yourself in about ten years from now?

LF: Still being a Mom.

CC: There’s been some talk that you’ve been working on a new album with Nile Rogers.

LF: Well I started to do some work with Nile but it didn’t happen. Maybe it’ll happen in the next couple of years. What happened was, I was busy doing things and Nile was busy doing things and we tried to make other things connect but they just didn’t connect. We’re going to keep trying and maybe we will in the future. I’m not ready to give up my career. I have slowed down because you get a little bored doing the same shit for what… I had my first record out when I was seventeen and I’m going to be 42 in September. So I’ve taken some time off and let Jim pay the bills for a while, and he does that well let me tell ya... and raise our son. In ten years I’m still going to probably be doing the same thing. I’m probably going to be doing a little bit more music than I am now. My son is so into music I know he’s going to want to be a part of it too.

CC: Excellent. My daughter is fifteen and my son is ten towards the end of this year, so they’ve certainly enjoyed always having music around them. My daughter takes singing and dancing classes and loves it.

LF: Well you’ve got to build your world around them because if you don’t, then you’re not a good parent.

CC: Definitely.

LF: Unfortunately my Mother and Father both passed away.

CC: Yeh cancer, again.

LF: Yep. Of course.

CC: You wrote a song dedicated to your Mom called Lisa that was on the Stilletto album.

LF: Yep.

CC: What’s it like for James not having Grandparents there?

LF:  Well he doesn’t miss them because he never knew them, but I think it’s harder for me than for James.

CC: Yeh there’s times when you need that break and it’s very difficult if you can’t offload them.

LF: And you need somebody to talk to and support from a family member that’s been there. Somebody you trust. We just don’t have that and it’s real empty. It’s a very empty feeling.

CC: I think at the end of the day though; I think being the best parent is just going with your gut. You know what’s right and you just do it.

LF: Yeh sometimes it’s not that easy and sometimes it is. I think it’s hard when the holidays hit. That’s when I have a real hard time. My parents used to make such a big deal out of Christmas. They used to buy Nikki [Sixx] all kinds of stuff too for Christmas and he would sort of hide.

CC: What sort of stuff would they buy him? Music, or…?

LF: No, clothes and cookies and food. You know, my mother was Italian so the food thing was a big ordeal.

CC: Did Nikki get along well with her, with Nikki having Italian descent in him as well?

LF: Oh absolutely! Yeh. When my Father died… my Father died first… he sent my Mother a dozen, dozen roses. White roses. I think it was a dozen. It was either half a dozen, or a dozen dozen roses all in one big pot.

CC: Lovely!

LF: It was incredible.

CC: When was the last time that you caught up with Nikki?

LF: A long, long time ago. Maybe seven years, something like that.

CC: What sort of music are you listening to these days?

LF: You know what I listen to? It drives me nuts. I listen to myself… f*cking over and over. That’s all my son wants to hear. “Play Mommy singing. I want to hear Mommy singing Playing With Fire. I want to hear Mommy singing Shot Of Poison” and he makes me play it over and over and over. If I put on anything else, he’ll say to me, “I don’t want to hear that. I want to hear Mommy singing.” So I’m letting him hear it. It drives me a little crazy sometimes, but he loves it. He’s learning the words and he’s singing along with it. It’s just real neat for me.

CC: Does he like watching the videos, as well? Obviously there’s that whole visual thing as well. Does he recognise?

LF: Oh, of course. Oh he knows. Oh yeh.

CC: Cool. Well that pretty much covers everything I wanted to go over with you Lita. Is there anything you want to say to fans of The Runaways… or Mötley fans as well?

LF: Hmmm. Gosh, I don’t know. I wish I could be there in Perth.

CC: Well, you’re welcome here anytime.

LF: Oh thank you. Just tell everybody that I hope I can get to Perth and perform. That’s something that we never had the opportunity to do before, other than doing the in-store clinic… but that’s not the same thing. I don’t know. What do you tell the fans. Thanks and God bless you all.

CC: Are you a religious person?

LF: No… but I do believe in being happy and healthy… being safe and living a good strong life.

CC: And having fun.

LF: Yeh, you only live once.

CC: Have you got any new tattoos lately?

LF: No, but I died my hair red!

CC: Like bright red?

LF: Yeh, a dark strawberry red.

CC: Excellent.

LF: Yeh it’s pretty cool. It’s real long too. I look different.

CC: Well maybe you might be able to send me some photos?

LF: Yeh, it was my Y2K hair. That’s what it is. I kept it. I’m going to go blonde again once summer’s here.

CC: What did you do on New Year's Eve for the year 2000?

LF: I hid. I thought it was going to be the end of the world. So I hid. Went to bed with a pillow over my head. I was afraid. I thought please let us be here in the morning when we wake up… and we were.

CC: [laughing] Excellent. What about your 40^th Birthday? Was that a big milestone party? How did you celebrate that?

LF: It was a quiet dinner. When you turn forty it’s not like you really want to think about it. I just went to a quiet dinner and ate, then came home and sort of forgot about it. It’s not like when you’re sixteen or twenty-one or anything like that. Forty is like, "OK. Great. I’m forty. So what? Next?"

CC: OK then Lita. Well thanks for your time.

LF: Sure. Hey, please tell all the fans, "God bless you all and I miss you." Tell them, "I MISS YOU."

CC: OK, will do for sure. Thanks very much for your time. Nice talking with you.

LF: Thank you. Yeh, I enjoyed it. I’ll see you soon… I mean, I’ll talk to you soon.

CC: [laughing] OK bye.

* If you enjoyed this interview, click to support Chonological Crüe and Lita Ford by ordering your copy of LITA LIVE, due May 9, 2000 *

Thanks to Dena Weisman for the hook up and laughs
and also Tenn at the Lita Ford Information Centre for assistance and pictures.