Friday, March 6, 2009

Dakota Fanning: Singer For The Runaways In New Movie?

This one is too interesting to not post. It seems Dakota Fanning is slated to star in a movie about the Runaways, the 70's all-girl group that were famous for the song "Cherry Bomb" and performing while wearing lingerie, even though they were mere teenagers. The group toured with opening bands such as Cheap Trick, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Ramones, and Van Halen in the mid/late 70's and then broke up.

The most famous Runaway is Joan Jett, but most of the other members have achieved some fame after the group broke up in 1978. Lita Ford had some success as a hard rocker in the 80's. Micki Steele went on to join the Bangles. Sandi West, the drummer, unfortunately died of cancer a few years ago.

And Cherie Currie, who Dakota Fanning is supposed to play, went on to still perform sporadically, but also had an acting career and married Robert Hayes, of the movie Airplane fame. It's interesting, because of all the Runaways Cheri was the one that seems, by all accounts, to be the hard-party person of the group. Dakota is 15, and Cherie was just 15 when she joined the runaways. Here's "Cherry Bomb".



Oh, and to keep the SXSW love going, I saw Joan Jett a few years ago at Stubbs as part of the festival, and she was a lot of fun to watch, smiling, enjoying herself. My favorite part was when she pointed to a young lady rocking out on a deck a little above the stage. The girl looked around, mouthed the words "Me?" And Joan smiled, nodded her heard and mouthed "Yeah!" It was rock theatrics 101, but it was real, vs. when Gene Simmons points in a million directions but doesn't see any one of us, just doing his robotic rock move.

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