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From
the book
Working Musicians
by Bruce Pollock
One of the Guys
Lita Ford |
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Guitar playing to me is like riding a bicycle. You never forget
how to do it. You might get a little sore if you haven't done it
in a while. When I was younger I traveled a lot; my parents were
always living in different areas: Boston, Dallas, LA, London. I
was kind of all over the place and I never really got close to anybody,
so I spent a lot of time playing guitar. My first guitar was chocolate
colored Gibson SG. I got a job working in a hospital and I saved
up $450 and I went out and bought it. Later I sold it to one of
my old roadies. I wish I still had it. I could play it good; I mean,
I didn't think I could play it good, but when I think back at what
I was playing, it was good. I used to sit there with records and
learn all this stuff. I could play all these Black Sabbath
riffs, Grand Funk, and people would come up to me and go,
'Hey, you can play that?' Well, yeah, can't you? It was just sort
of second nature.
I used to love Johnny Winter. That guy sings and plays at
the same time and doesn't even watch his hands. He's looking off
into left field while he's singing and playing. I thought I'd like
to do that, so I just worked at it. I worked at not looking at my
hands when I play. I don't even have inlays on my neck when I play.
There are inlays, but they're not in the right places. Like it'll
say Lita Ford instead of a dot on the third fret, a dot on
the fifth fret, a dot on the seventh fret. So sometimes when people
come in and pick up my guitar, they're like, what fret is this?
Before the Runaways, I played bass with this band in Long
Beach with some guys I went to high school with, which is how Kim
Fowley found me. The Runaways were looking for a bass player
and a guitar player. Fowley called up thinking I was a bass player.
I said I'm not a bass player, I'm a guitar player.
It's very flattering when people say to me, 'Is that a girl doing
that? Is that you? It sounds like a guy.' To me that's very flattering
because it says to me that it's strong and it's powerful, 'cause
girls are supposed to be weak, right? When I was auditioning players
for my band, sometimes a drummer would come in or a keyboard player
or something, and I'd say, 'Get rid of him, he plays like a girl.'
I would say that. So when a guy tells me I play like a guy, that's
a compliment. I love it.
With my new band the guys have jam sessions before I get there.
When I get there we work on new stuff. We rehearse two weeks, take
two weeks off, then rehearse two more weeks and that's what we do
until we go out on the road. I don't think a band gets completely
tight until they've done a good 200 shows. You can sit home and
play till your fingers bleed but you're not going to get it out
like you do live.
I just feel like I'm in my own field here, like it's all mine. I
don't think being a woman really has that much to do with it. If
you're good you're good. In the Runaways it was a problem; there
weren't a lot of female musicians and people didn't take us seriously.
But, I think now there's a lot of women musicians out there and
the guys just seem to take them as one of the guys if they're good. |
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Copyright
©2002 Harper Entertainment. Reprinted with Permission.
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_________________________________
The following Working Musicians interviews are featured:
Cindy Bullens, It
Was the Rock and Roll Dream
Lita Ford, One
of the Guys
Cheryl James, It
Wasn't a Mutual Decision
Brenda Kahn, Almost
Famous
Laura Nyro, Growth
and Change |
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_________________________________
 This
interview is excerpted from the book Working
Musicians (Harper-Collins), by Bruce Pollock.
Bruce is the author of eight other books on music, including The
Rock Song Index, Hipper Than Our Kids, When Rock Was Young, When
the Music Mattered, and In Their Own Words,
as well as three novels, and is the founding co-Editor in Chief
of GUITAR: For The Practicing Musician. His work has
appeared in The New York Times, Saturday Review, TV Guide,
Entertainment Weekly, Musician, Family Weekly, USA Today, Playboy,
The Gannett Westchester Newspapers, and The Village
Voice. |
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