Meanwhile, Lita Ford’s “Kiss Me Deadly” crawls up to No. 59 on the pop charts. At this point, I find myself driven to inject Lovely Lita Ford into this discussion. Lita Ford was one of heavy metal’s “exceptions.” This means ninth-graders constantly used her as a pertinent example whenever they wrote an essay for English class that argued metal was more than just satanic cock rock (in case you’re curious, the Christian supergroup Stryper was the other overused “exception” for these arguments). Ford began her career in the seminal all-female band the Runaways, a group that has since become a favorite among rock writers. The other star from the Runaways, Joan Jett, became a successful solo artist, but people rarely considered her version of hard rock to be metal. I’m not completely sure why this is. Part of it was timing; “I Love Rock & Roll,” her biggest hit, had come and gone before the modern glam era exploded. More importantly, Jett was always more of a punk rocker than a metalhead.
