“B.C. Rich guitars were God back then. They weren’t like a Strat or a Les Paul – they were something different. They had so much power”: Lita Ford on her trailblazing guitar journey – and that time she nearly joined Led Zeppelin

Due to the breadth of her songwriting accomplishments, which date back to her days as a teenage phenomenon with The Runaways, Lita Ford’s guitar exploits are sometimes overlooked.

But a quick scan through her discography – which includes three-chord chug and some tasty solos in songs like Cherry Bomb – shows that, even at a young age, she understood guitar was an instrument of expression rather than a means to show off.

Then there’s the melodic slow-burner Close My Eyes Forever, which found Ford duet with Ozzy Osbourne en route to chart-topping success; or the sing-it-like-you-mean-it stylings heard on one of her most well-loved tracks, Kiss Me Deadly. It all proves she was more than prepared to stake her claim as leading light in the mostly male-driven ‘80s glam scene.

Alternating between her well-worn Gibson SG and any number of shred-worthy B.C. Rich curios, Ford has helped define what it means to be a proper lead for over 45 years. Looking back on her impact, she says: “I’m grateful I’m still alive. That’s one thing. And I’m grateful I’m still able to get up on stage and play with my kickass band.”

“I feel like I’ve come full circle, or at least, almost,” she adds. “And it’s been a lot to learn – if you can make it that far in life. I’ve had the chance to play with some really great musicians. It’s good to be the queen!”

What sounds inspired you most when you first picked up guitar?

“I was not your normal little girl, I guess. At 11 years old, I just had to play guitar. I really didn’t have any main inspirations or influences, but my mother bought me an acoustic guitar from Sears and Roebuck, the department store. I’m like, ‘Mom, what is this?’ I expected something electric that had some volume!

“I really didn’t quite know what to do with it, but I started learning riffs on it, and for a couple of years, I played it. I learned Ritchie Blackmore – Deep Purple was something I grew up on, and Black Sabbath. I‘m playing all these Black Sabbath riffs on this little acoustic guitar!”

When did you acquire your first electric guitar?

“I ended up getting rid of that acoustic and got a job in a medical facility when I was 14. I lied about my age! I saved up enough money to buy a Gibson SG. It was the shit – I loved it so much, and it made all my dreams come true.

“I hitchhiked to the first festival in Anaheim, California [Cal Jam, 1974], and Deep Purple were on the bill, Black Sabbath were on the bill, Emerson Lake & Palmer were on the bill, Rare Earth and Black Oak Arkansas – it changed my life.

“I found a hole in the fence and I crept through, and I was right up front. I don’t know how I ended up there. There I was, watching the TV guys climb the ladder while filming Ritchie Blackmore, and then Blackmore knocked the guy off the ladder. Do you remember that?”

I’ve seen images and heard about it!

“I was right in front of them, and I didn’t know if it was staged or planned, but I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen in my life! And, of course, I love Black Sabbath and all those Tony Iommi riffs. It was just life-changing stuff.”

I’ve seen photos of you with an SG from the ‘70s while you were with The Runaways. Is that the same guitar?

“It’s the same SG, yeah. My father used to have a Sony reel-to-reel tape recorder, and I used to take it in my room; it was huge – as big as somebody’s oven! I would take it apart and disconnect the speakers, and move the speakers off to one side and the other.

“I would plug my guitar in and slap on the echo, and it just sounded like God. I didn’t have an amplifier back then; I was too young to have all the bits and pieces and bells and whistles. That reel-to-reel just kicked ass. It was as good as a Marshall stack as far as I was concerned!”

At some point in the ‘70s, you were playing in a club, and the story goes that Led Zeppelin asked you to play bass. Was that before or during The Runaways?

“The Runaways were playing at Gazzarri’s or The Starwood – I’m having trouble with names because those places aren’t there anymore. It was upstairs… yeah, it was The Starwood.

“It was early Runaways days – you can tell we were like 17 or something. But Jimmy Page and Robert Plant came to see the show, and The Runaways were quite the novelty, being teenage girls that could rip it up, kick ass and rock the house.

“The places were always packed with fans, and our manager at the time, Kim Fowley, said, ‘Okay, girls, gather around and get a picture with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page.’ I was scooched in there like, ‘Oh yeah, great!’ I grew up listening to them and I was still growing up.

“Robert Plant said, ‘We’re looking to replace our bass player, John Paul Jones,’ and I thought, ‘I’m not hearing this. I refuse to believe that this is really coming out of his mouth.’ I thought, ‘He’s got to be joking,’ because John Paul Jones is God on bass, as far as I’m concerned.

“But that’s what he said. And I walked away, just thinking, ‘Oh, that was nice. That was nice of him to look at me like that.’ In those days a lot of people didn’t look at us as musicians because we were female and we were young. They never took us seriously as musicians.”

It’s interesting they wanted you to play bass since you’re a guitar player.

“I got into The Runaways because they heard I was a bass player. I had played bass for a few shows in a local band in Long Beach, California, covering for somebody who got sick. Then everyone thought I was a bass player.

“So, I don’t know… but that’s what came out of Robert Plant’s mouth. And I was like, ‘Nah, he didn’t really say that’ – but he did.”

You were a pioneer when many women weren’t playing lead guitar. Was that something you were aware of then?

“I really tried not to think about it. I just did what I wanted to do. I wasn’t trying to carve out a path or the way for whatever was coming behind me. I just wanted to be a leader, and I just wanted to play guitar.”

Was it difficult to transition from the punk rock nature of The Runaways to the ‘80s hair metal era?

“That’s a good question. It wasn’t easy. I had to figure that out. Because The Runaways obviously had a certain sound, vibe and look. After The Runaways broke up, I had to create what Lita was going to be. And I thought, ‘Well, what does she look like? What does she play? What does she sing? Who is in her band? How do I want to go about doing this?’

“It was almost like there was me, myself, and I. One of the things was that Nikki Sixx cut my hair – and it’s never been the same since he chopped off all my long locks! He gave me that shag haircut, and that helped create the ‘80s look. And then there were the torn-up jeans, those torn-up jeans that I wore in the Kiss Me Deadly video… they have a story.”

Oh, do tell!

“I wanted to show some skin, but not like a centerfold would; I wanted it to be more on The Ramones’ level. So I bought a pair of jeans off a construction worker on the way home from Lemmy’s house one morning; my girlfriend was driving me because I was too drunk to drive. I said, ‘I have to have this guy’s jeans.’

“I got out of the vehicle, gave him a hundred bucks, and he gave me the jeans. I took those jeans to my clothes designer, and she tricked them out, hung some beads off of them, and added some leather. I wore them in the Kiss Me Deadly video – the jeans, together with the hair and B.C. Rich guitars, were the look.

“B.C. Rich guitars were God back then; I put them through the ultimate test. Those guitars weren’t like a Strat that Blackmore played, or a Les Paul like Jimmy Page would play. They were something different. It was a lead guitar; they were just kickass and had so much power. The preamps were so great.

“They allowed me to kick up the gain, the volume and the power without having to turn and physically go to the amp. And the DiMarzio pickups, the Super Distortion pickups are just badass, together with the preamps in those B.C. Rich guitars.

“I fell in love with the Kahler tremolo units. They’re just unbreakable, and God knows I tried to break them over and over; I couldn’t do it!”

B.C. Rich guitars have become synonymous with you, but you mentioned you loved your SG, too. What was it about the B.C. Rich guitars that made it easy to segue from the SG?

“You know, I never segued from that SG. It just doesn’t happen. It’s like an old pair of jeans, you know? You put them in your closet and come back to them every once in a while, and you love them; they’re special.

“That SG will always be special. I used to take a patch cord and cross the channels, because there are four. It added a bit more crunch where I didn’t have a preamp on the SG, and that’s why I had it added to the B.C. Rich.”

You went on hiatus from 1996 through 2007. After being away for so long, what was your approach to rebuilding your rig?

“Well, Grim Reaper guitarist Nick Bowcott gave me one of the very first DSL100s. I still have the old JCM800s from the ‘80s; there’s no amps like those. But the DSL100 sounded like God when Nick brought it into the studio, saying, ‘Lita, this is for you.’ 

“What I do now is profile the sound right into the Kemper. It’s easy to travel with, it’s lightweight; I can put it in a road case and carry it on a plane. I’ve got my DSL and I’ve got my JCM800 right there at my fingertips. It works.”

Some say they can’t tell the difference between a Kemper and an amp, and others say they miss the push of air. Which is it for you?

“Yeah, some say there’s no difference at all, but I feel it. Sometimes you can’t have everything with the way travel is these days. We just hired our own monitor man, and he’s really helping me to dial it in. 

“A lot of it is high and low-end volume and just being able to control the output of the Kempers. It’s not a JCM800, and not a DSL; it’s a different animal. It’s like putting a Rolls Royce into a Volkswagen body! There’s going to be a difference there, like it or not – you’ve just got to dial it in the best you can.”

Guitars aside, is there a piece of gear you can’t live without?

“I love my Jerry Cantrell [Jim Dunlop Cry Baby] wah; I would be pretty lost without it. I use it in multiple ways. The Wah was one thing I started way back in The Runaways days, and it was really not all that easy. People think you just plug it in and go; well, not really.

“The Jerry Cantrell wah has that deep sound I use on solos. I crack it open, change the treble, and I add some low and high-end when I really want to make those high notes scream. That’s the one piece of gear I have to have.”

Which solos from your career are your most definitive?

“Ah, let’s see… The Ripper solo is pretty badass. That was a gnarly solo. And everyone knows Close My Eyes Forever; it’s not a shredding solo, but it’s a kind of solo where you can walk away from it and hum and sing it in your head. It’s very melodic, and a lot of people are getting away from that. 

“And as for that real melodic-sounding stuff, Kiss Me Deadly is melodic. I don’t think it’s so much about how many notes you can cram into one second of guitar playing; do those notes matter? Do they count?”

Do you feel modern guitarists are getting too far away from melodic playing and relying on too many notes?

“Yeah, some of them. Some of them seem to get lost and don’t really have any meaning. I think solos should have a beginning, a middle and an end. And I think, to really make it count, it helps if you play off the melody of the song.

“That sounds like a no-brainer, but a lot of people don’t do it! It’s just like, ‘Okay, solo!’ and it’s like, ‘Well, what the fuck was that? Oh, man, okay, so you’re done? Alright…’

“I think it’s important to make that last note count – make it scream, make it sing, make it mean something. And make the first note count, and you get the whole middle of the solo – make it count.”

• Ford has a series of North American shows booked across the year.