View Full Version : What do you know about Lita Ford?


Femmetal
9-08-02, 01:30 AM
I was a huge Lita Ford fan in the 80's, so lets see how much of that trivial knowledge I can come up with!

*Lita was born in London England in 1958, and grew up in Long Beach CA .

*Lita Rossanna Ford is her full name.

*Lita's first guitar was an acoustic one from Sears which was a Christmas gift from her parents.

*Lita wrote her first song just days after getting her first guitar, she called it a fancy Spanish piece.

*Lita decided music was going to be her career when she was 11 years old and attended her first concert-Black Sabbath.

*Lita joined her first band when she was 17 years old, she was lead guitarist.

*The Runaways was Lita's first band, it also featured a 16 year old rhythm guitarist named Joan Jett.

*The Runaways were something of a joke to the press in the U.S.; but the band was hugely successful in Japan. The Runaways outsold KISS in Japan.

*The Runaways broke-up after 5 years, Lita then worked odd jobs including pumping gas and selling cosmetics in a department store.

*Lita's break-through album titled "LITA" was actually her 3rd solo album. "Out For Blood" was released in 1983, the title track's video included Lita wearing a leather teddy while playing a guitar hooked up to an IV of blood (instead of an amplifier). "Dancin On The Edge" was released in 1984, and spawned 2 videos occasionally shown on MTV: Gotta Let Go and Dressed To Kill.

*Lita recorded an album titled "The Bride Wore Black", had a black wedding dress made for the cover, but her recording label never released the album.

*Lita was engaged to Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi in the mid-1980s.

*Lita was married to heavy metal band W.A.S.P.'s lead guitarist Chris Holmes in the late 1980s, they divorced after a couple years.

*Lita lived in Tujunga CA in the 1980s. She and hubby Chris had a modest ranch-style home with horse corrals.

*Lita married ex-Nitro guitarist Jim Gillette in the mid-1990s. They moved to FL and have 2 sons (5 yrs and 1 yr old). Lita announced her retirement when she was pregnant with her first baby in 1997.

*Jim proposed to Lita by having an airplane fly over an outdoor cafe with a banner saying "Rossanna will you marry me?"

*Lita recently wrote music for ex-Runaways bandmate Vicki Blue's documentary film about the band titled "Edge Play".

~~~~Anybody have any other Lita factoids?~~~~~~~~~~~~

ValJ
9-08-02, 01:49 AM
Lita did a duet with Ozzy Osbourne called "Close My Eyes Forever".

Femmetal
9-08-02, 02:09 AM
Here's some more I thought of:

*Lita dated Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue in the early 80s. He used to throw her out of motel room windows! The band mentions her in the Shout At the Devil liner notes, telling her "good luck kid".

*Lita owned a miniature dachshund named Chili Dog in the early 1990s

*Lita designed a line of "sexy club clothes" in the early 1990s, but the company backing her went bankrupt.

*Lita's dad (Len Ford) died just before the release party for her LITA album.

*The song "Lisa" on the Stiletto album was written by Lita for her mom (Isabella Ford). Her mom died of cancer shortly after the album was released.

*Lita's favorite food is curry. She called her father's English food "boring", but loved her mother's Italian cooking.

*Lita's English dad met her Italian mom while he was in the British military.

*Lita is an only child.

*Lita calls Joan Jett the "most talented of The Runaways".

~~~I'll probably think of more later!

Christine
9-08-02, 04:36 PM
Wow! Those are pretty interesting facts - I didn't know most of them.

Iluvthe80s
9-08-02, 04:52 PM
Lita started to play guitar at age 11.

Didn't leave much for us to add, Femmetal. :lol:

bigcozy
9-19-02, 03:08 AM
At one time she was a endorser of BC Rich guitars. Don't know if she always was, but I have never seen her without a BC Rich Warlock, or a variant of that model.

Cartoon_Chris
9-19-02, 07:02 PM
The only thing I can think of that hasn't already been said is that she has the distinction of having appeared on "Roller Games", where she revealed she was rooting for the T-Birds!

Femmetal
9-21-02, 06:04 AM
Originally posted by Cartoon_Chris
The only thing I can think of that hasn't already been said is that she has the distinction of having appeared on "Roller Games", where she revealed she was rooting for the T-Birds!

Cool, I remember seeing her on that!

Harmony Bliss
9-27-02, 12:52 AM
I am also a fan of Lita. I still see her ocassionally on vh1. I would love to see her make a huge come-back and start rockin' again!