Lita Ford

A punk pioneer who became one of hard rock’s leading female stars, Lita Ford has blazed her own trail in music since receiving her first guitar at age 11. Born in London in 1958, Lita Rossana Ford moved to California with her family as a child, and she was recruited by L.A. sleaze-rock impresario Kim Fowley to join his girl-punk quartet The Runaways at age 15. Ford’s guitar playing, influenced heavily by hard rockers like Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore, helped make songs like the chugging “Cherry Bomb” genre-defining anthems. The Runaways broke up in 1979, in part because her interest in hard rock diverged from bandmate Joan Jett’s love of punk. When Ford went solo, she dove headfirst into metal-edged music, releasing Out For Blood in 1983 and following it up a year later with Dancin’ On the Edge. She reached her commercial peak during hard rock’s late-’80s moment in the sun, with her glossy barnburner “Kiss Me Deadly” and her goth-tinged Ozzy Osbourne duet “Close My Eyes Forever,” both from her 1988 full-length, Lita, becoming crossover hits. Ford took a break from music in the mid-’90s but resumed touring and releasing records in the late 2000s.